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Tom Cruise est poursuivi en justice pour des écoutes téléphoniques illicites (tmz.com - 21 décembre 2009) Tom Cruise Sued for Allegedly Spying (tmz.com - Dec 21st 2009) Michael David Sapir versus Tom Cruise - Read the document (Dec 18. 2009 - Superior Court of the State of California) .pdf Video satire: Tom Cruise Kills Oprah Lawsuit alleges abuses at Golden Era (thevalleychronicle.com- December 18, 2009) Scientology faces multiple setbacks within one week. The past few days have not gone well for the secretive religion known for its celebrity followers (guardian.co.uk - 30 October 2009) Scientology: Religious sect, or money-making cult ? (theglobeandmail.com - Oct. 31, 2009) |
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Tom Cruise est poursuivi en justice L'article explique que M. Safir poursuit Cruise en justice pour espionnage de sa vie privée par l'intermédiaire d'un "Privé" extrèmement célèbre pour avoir servi entre autres, à l'espionnage entre des couples de superstars. Safir avait dit dans un premier temps qu'il avait une vidéo de Cruise, puis les deux parties s'étaient mises d'accord pour dire que ça n'existait pas. Désormais, Safir poursuit Cruise sur la base d'écoutes téléphoniques illicites. Tom Cruise Sued for Allegedly Spying by TMZ Staff
Tom Cruise is being sued for allegedly hiring a notorious P.I. to illegally wiretap a magazine editor's phone ... according to documents obtained by TMZ.
Read the document (December 18. 2009 - Superior Court of the State of California) .pdf The plaintiff, Michael Davis Sapir, claims Cruise, attorney Bert Fields and jailed private investigator Anthony Pellicano conspired to spy on him. There is a long history between Cruise and Sapir. In 2001, Cruise sued Sapir for $100 million after Sapir claimed to have video evidence that Cruise "engaged in a homosexual relationship." That lawsuit settled later that year. In the settlement, both parties issued a statement saying that no such tape existed. In the latest suit, filed Friday in L.A. County Superior Court, Sapir claims Pellicano illegally wiretapped his phone during the time the 2001 lawsuit was active. Sapir claims in the suit that Cruise, Fields and Pellicano were all in cahoots. Sapir is suing for $5 million, minimum. Bert Fields tells TMZ, "The allegations are absolute garbage. We did not even hire Pellicano to work on the Sapir case." No immediate comment from Cruise's rep. Pellicano is in the pokey. |
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Video satire: Tom Cruise Kills Oprah |
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Plainte en justice contre la société d'éditions "Golden Era" Lawsuit alleges abuses at Golden Era WAGES SOUGHT: Scientology official denies conditions at compound described in the suit. By Charles HAND / The Valley Chronicle
A lawsuit seeking unspecified back wages describes the Scientology compound outside San Jacinto as a virtual prison camp in which workers are forced to put in long hours in exchange for little pay, to give up their children to a boarding school where they are taught only about Scientology, and to give up their right to communicate with those on the outside. Scientology spokeswoman Catherine Fraser declined an interview to discuss the allegations and asked for a list of questions in writing. She declined to answer questions about the lawsuit, saying she would answer only general questions about living conditions at Golden Era Productions. Fraser said Scientology officials could not answer the other questions because they had not been served with the suit. Nonetheless, she said in a written response: “With regards to your other outrageous questions about our staff, they are categorically denied.” Barry Van Sickle, a Roseville attorney representing John Lindstein, acknowledged notice has not been served on officials at Gold Base, as the San Jacinto Scientology compound is known in some circles, but he has spoken repeatedly with officials and their attorneys. Van Sickle said he has told the Scientology lawyers he plans to turn the complaint into a class action to represent not only Lindstein, but other former workers at the compound. In a complaint filed with the California Superior Court in Los Angeles, Van Sickle accuses Scientology officials of human trafficking, violations of wage and hour laws, and illegal business practices primarily regarding labor issues. In the suit, Lindstein alleges that he was separated from his parents when he was 8 years old and sent to a boarding school, where he was denied a general education and given books by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard to read. Fraser said the school was closed 10 years ago when there were no more children of Scientologists to educate. She said her own son attended the school and she knows he was doing well “because I saw him and he looked great.” He is now grown and working overseas, she said. “The children who attended this school performed physical chores like most other children, but were never forced to engage in any manual labor that was either unsafe or prohibited by law,” said Fraser in her written response. Lindstein alleges that, as a minor, he was put to work at physical labor, including construction jobs, for long hours, sometimes so long that he was deprived of sleep. When he was older, he was assigned to the movie production studio the Scientologists operate there and forced to work long days, sometimes 24 hours at a time, transferring L. Ron Hubbard material from film to digital disks, according to the lawsuit. “This was tedious frame-by-frame work that would normally cost more than $400,000 per movie to accomplish at industry rates,” says the court complaint. “Plaintiff and his crew of five did this for only $50 per week, thus saving defendants thousands of dollars.” “Golden Era Productions does not use child labor and complies with all labor laws,” Fraser said in her written response. “The youngest Sea Org member currently is 26 years old.” The Sea Org, short for Sea Organization, is the Church of Scientology’s religious order. Lindstein contends in his lawsuit that he was virtually imprisoned at the San Jacinto compound, unable to leave without permission. His mail was censored, he contends. Fraser denied anyone is held at the compound against their will. Another Scientology representative, Muriel Dufresne, said those living at the compound are not denied contact with the outside world. On the other hand, said Dufresne, she would not allow a reporter from The Valley Chronicle access to the compound or allow a reporter to talk with the people living and working there without interference. “Golden Era does not permit unsupervised tours of its facilities,” said Fraser in her written response to questions about the lawsuit. “I don’t know of any religious order that would permit non members, let alone a reporter, to wander the property unsupervised. I would be happy to provide a tour at a mutually convenient time.” Both Dufresne and Fraser conceded that the compound is enclosed by fences, parts of which have sharp metal prongs that appeared to be intended to wound anyone trying to get over the fences. Fraser said the brand name of the devices is Ultra Barrier. They are not installed on all the fences. Fraser said they are mostly on the back portion of the 500 acres to prevent people and animals from intruding. A location accessible by public roads has the Ultra Barrier mounted on the inside of the fence, however. The compound’s perimeter is also monitored by cameras, lights, and what appear to be motion or sound detectors mounted on the fence posts. Though Fraser would not discuss the possible presence of motion or sound detectors, Lindstein’s lawsuit said the sensors are intended to detect attempts to leave the compound without permission. Anyone caught trying to leave, says the suit, is subjected to emotional and physical harassment, including corporal punishment. Fraser conceded Scientologists use cameras to monitor the perimeter, as well as the public property of Gilman Springs Road, which bisects the compound and connects Highway 60 and Lamb Canyon with State Street just north of San Jacinto. “If you had visited any of the major (movie) studios in Los Angeles, you would have seen that they resemble fortresses, with thick high walls and massive gates,” Fraser wrote. “This look would not integrate well with the rest of the valley. We do, however have the same security concerns as do those studios ...” Scientologists, citing safety concerns, are trying to get Gilman Springs Road closed so they can end public use. |
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Scientology faces multiple setbacks within one week The past few days have not gone well for the secretive religion known for its celebrity followers By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Oscar-winning film-maker Paul Haggis. Photograph: AP Most religious organisations can weather a high-profile defection or two. Many might successfully explain away a fraud conviction in a foreign criminal court, or deal with the spectacular suicide of a member, or muddle through a less than stellar public performance by a prominent spokesman. Rarely, though, does a religion have to face up to all these challenges in the same week. The past few days have been little short of a nightmare for Scientology, the strange, secretive religion that thrives on its coterie of Hollywood celebrities and its promises of personal empowerment through psychological counselling. First came the defection of Paul Haggis, the Oscar-winning screenwriter and director of such hits as Crash, Million Dollar Baby and In the Valley of Elah, who accused the church fathers of lying about everything from their position on gay marriage to their policy of ordering certain followers to sever their ties with close family members. Haggis said he knew for a fact that Scientology practices a policy of "disconnection" – something it denied in a recent interview with the cable news channel CNN – because his own wife was ordered to stop talking to her parents for more than a year. "To see you lie so easily, I am afraid I had to ask myself: 'What else are you lying about?' " Haggis wrote in a long resignation letter to church spokesman Tommy Davis, which was meant to be confidential but found its way onto the internet over the weekend. Davis himself, meanwhile, earned less than positive notices for his decision to walk out of an on-air interview with the British television journalist Martin Bashir. Bashir invoked both the science-fiction origins of Scientology and what are widely believed to be its deepest secrets when he asked: "Do you believe that an intergalactic emperor called Xenu brought his people to earth 75m years ago and buried them in volcanoes?" Davis called the question offensive, said it was against his religion even to talk about the subject, pulled off his mike and walked away. Meanwhile, a French court found the church guilty of fraud because of the large amounts of money it charges its members to conduct idiosyncratic counselling sessions (known as "auditing") and other services. The court, essentially characterising the whole enterprise as a scam, imposed a fine of €600,000. And on the other side of the world in Brisbane, Australian investigators openly criticised the church for failing to hand over documentation they want to examine for clues about the suicide of a 30-year-old soldier who threw himself at an electricity substation tower two years ago. A coroner's report said church officials had been pressing the soldier, Edward McBride, to finish the final stage of his auditing and called him 19 times in the 48 hours before he took his life. Davis, the church's 37-year-old spokesman, has spent much of the past week issuing denials and rebuttals. He insisted the church never supported an anti-gay marriage initiative in California and that the San Diego chapter's inclusion in a list of supporters was a mistake. He told one interviewer his remarks about "disconnection" on CNN had been misunderstood. He also faced questions about John Travolta, the Hollywood leading man and hitherto loyal Scientologist who recently acknowledged that his dead teenage son Jett suffered from autism - a condition Scientology does not acknowledge along with other mental illnesses (Scientologists believe that psychiatry is a fraudulent "industry of death"). While Jett was still alive, Travolta and his wife Kelly Preston insisted he suffered instead from Kawasaki disease, a condition characterised by inflamed arteries. Davis also came under scrutiny for his own activities – including the allegation that he once so displeased the church that he was made to scrub toilets with a toothbrush for a week (he denies it ever happened). Davis is the son of the Hollywood actress Anne Archer, another prominent Scientologist, and is believed to owe his rapid rise through the organisation as personal minder to the biggest star adherent of them all, Tom Cruise. Many of the church's misadventures this week can be traced back to two huge recent defections. Mike Rinder and Marty Rathbun have been described as Scientology's equivalent of the top Nixon aides HR Haldeman and John Ehrlichman in the Watergate scandal. Together, they helped the St Petersburg Times newspaper in Florida put together a huge three-part series last June in which they and other defectors accused church leader David Miscavige of using physical and psychological violence to keep his supporters in check. They said Miscavige would repeatedly slap and kick his subordinates, and encourage them to do likewise. He would also force his fellow church members to jump fully clothed into pools or lakes, and play all-night games of musical chairs. The church said at the time the accusations were baseless and motivated by the defectors' desire to stage a coup and take over the church for themselves. The defectors said they had no such interest and merely wished to expose the dark side of the religion to which they devoted most of their lives. |
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Scientology: Religious sect, or money-making cult ? by Susan Sachs
.The German domestic intelligence service keeps the Church of Scientology under surveillance as a potential threat to democracy. Belgian prosecutors have been building a blackmail case against it for 11 years. Now the French have taken a more forceful step. In a decision that could reverberate across Europe, a court in Paris Tuesday convicted the French branch of the church of “organized fraud” and said it had systematically tricked recruits out of their savings. The two flagship Scientology outposts in Paris, a bookstore and an information centre, were ordered to pay €600,000 in fines. The head of the church in France was given a two-year suspended sentence for fraud and fined €30,000. However, the court allowed the church to keep operating in France. In May, when the trial began, prosecutors asked that it be shut down as a criminal enterprise, only to discover that the law that might have allowed its banishment had just been deleted as part of an overhaul of the penal code. The judges said they did not order the church offices closed because they did not want to drive Scientologists underground, where they could not be monitored. They also said a paid notice of the church's conviction would be published in Time magazine and the International Herald Tribune so that news of the church's conviction would spread beyond France. “The court told the Scientologists, in essence, to be very, very careful, because if you continue to use the same methods of harassment, you won't escape next time,” said Olivier Morice, the lawyer for the civil plaintiffs in the case. Church lawyers, who likened the Paris trial to the Inquisition, said they will appeal. Individual members of the Church of Scientology have previously been convicted in the French courts. The founder of the Lyons branch was sent to prison for involuntary manslaughter in 1997 after the suicide of a debt-ridden church member. In 1999, five church members were found guilty of fraud. Tuesday's ruling was the first to directly target the methods of the church, which has been fighting legal battles across the continent to be registered as a religious association and to fend off restrictions from European governments that view it as nothing more than a money-making cult. In Germany, it has been under fire from local governments that have shut down its after-school programs and distributed pamphlets warning people against joining the Scientologists. National and state interior ministers two years ago said the church posed a threat to constitutional values and ordered the intelligence service to keep it under watch. But late last year they backed off from an effort to try to ban it outright. In Belgium, another country that has tried to marginalize the Scientologists, the 12 members of the Brussels branch have been under investigation since 1998 after a complaint from a woman who said she was defrauded. In May, when hearings were finally opened in the case, the church won a postponement. The U.S. State Department regularly criticizes efforts by France and other European countries to marginalize or regulate Scientology. The church itself has also been aggressive in defending its operations. Three weeks ago, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in Scientology's favour in a case it brought against Russian authorities who refused to recognize two church affiliates as religious organizations. The court hears cases from the 47 countries that are members of the Council of Europe. The French case stemmed from similar complaints from people who said that in 1998, Scientology officials harassed them into emptying their bank accounts to pay for expensive courses, equipment, vitamins and what were called purification treatments. One of those plaintiffs, Aude-Claire Malton, broke down in court as she described how the church pressured her to spend all her savings of €30,000 in the space of four months and then tried to convince her to borrow more. “They cleaned me out, demolished me,” she said. “It's mental manipulation.” The church's top official in France, who was convicted in the case, called the payments demanded of adherents simple donations. “No church lives only on the energy of the good Lord,” he told the judges. France has labelled the Church of Scientology a cult, a designation that brings it under the purview of a special government monitoring commission that reports each year on “abuses by sects.” At least five other cases involving complaints against the church are under investigation by courts around France, according to press reports. One was brought by the family of a woman who said she threw herself in front of a train three years ago after being told repeatedly by her Scientology mentors that she was a failure. Tuesday's ruling could encourage other unhappy Scientology recruits to come forward, said Catherine Picard, head of the French Association of Victims of Sects. “They've had a real slap in the face,” she said. “Nationally and internationally, the word Scientologist will be associated with fraud.”
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LA SCIENTOLOGIE DANS LES MÉDIAS
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Un must: "Ron Hubbard, le gourou démasqué" Ce livre de Russell Miller révèle la face cachée de la scientologie. On y découvre un Ron Hubbard, malade, mythomane et poursuivi par la justice. Il est disponible en format pdf ou html sur notre site. Nous avons également publié une version résumée.
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