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Man
alleges assault, unwanted pills at Narconon
in Newport
Lawsuit
from Florida resident seeks $29,000 refund from company.
By
JEFF OVERLEY - THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
- Source:
http://www.ocregister.com/
- March 13, 2009
- [texte
intégral]
- The
Narconon triplex on the Balboa Peninsula is scheduled
to shut down in February 2010
- under
an agreement with the city of Newport Beach. FILE PHOTO:
THE REGISTER
NEWPORT
BEACH A Florida man is suing Narconon Southern California, saying
a brief stint in its Newport Beach drug rehab house subjected
him to sexual assault, unwanted medication and demeaning work..
Pablo
Mendoza checked into the company’s Balboa Peninsula triplex
in September seeking help for cocaine addiction and found the
oceanfront house to be “filthy” and filled with an “unbearable
odor,” according to the lawsuit filed against Narconon Southern
California on March 6 in Miami-Dade County Court..
“He immediately
wanted to leave and go back home to Miami, but the facility
representatives refused his request to call his family to complain
and request that he come back home,” the lawsuit says. “He was
prohibited from using the telephone.”.
Soon after,
Mendoza says he was given pills that resulted in nausea and
diarrhea. “He asked not to take the pills anymore,” the lawsuit
says. “The facility said he was obligated to ingest these pills,
(four) times per day.”.
Over the
next three days, Mendoza says he suffered an array of “horrendous
and outlandish mistreatment,” such as a male masseuse rubbing
his crotch, and being the only client forced to clean the kitchen,
a duty Mendoza attributes to his race..
Later,
after a fellow client targeted him with a vulgar sexual comment,
Mendoza “told the student he would throw him off the balcony”
because he is a “proud Hispanic Cuban and this violated his
cultural norms,” according to the lawsuit..
In the
suit, Mendoza also complains about Scientology being practiced
at Narconon. “It was never revealed that Narconon is a Scientology
facility. Pablo Mendoza is a Catholic,” the lawsuit says..
Mendoza
says he left the home after three days having finished only
“1 (percent) of the program.” .
Several
hours after being asked for comment Friday, a Narconon official
e-mailed a reporter asking about the inquiry. A link to an online
story about the lawsuit was sent back, and five minutes later,
Mendoza’s attorney - Frank L. Hollander - phoned the reporter,
saying he’d received a call from Narconon offering a $29,000
refund to his client and admitting no wrongdoing..
“They
haven’t admitted anything,” Hollander said. “The parties have
fully resolved their differences.”.
In a follow-up
e-mail, the Narconon official declined to comment..
The home
in the 1800 block of West Ocean Front has been used for drug
rehab since the mid-1980s, but Narconon didn’t move in until
the mid-1990s..
Resident
complaints about noise and constant deliveries at the 27-bed
home have been heavy at times, and under a previous agreement
with the city stemming from a new law on rehab homes, the Narconon
house has agreed to close in early 2010.
Contact
the writer: 714-445-6683 or joverley@ocregister.com
Reader
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MaryMcConnell
wrote:
Hey rising
up, Narconon does this on the intentionally and deceptively.
If you google search ' drug rehab referral' or drug rehab 9
out of 10 links on the first page will be unidentified but definately
owned Narconon owned and oiperated pages. They even have fake
referral sites, pretending to help the person find the best
facility for them and only refer the victim to Narconon. Where
you are sent is actually determined by which Narconon in the
USA has openings but of course they do not tell the victim that.
They will say, " Oh, it's better if he goes far away from
the people places and things associate with his drug problem"
They lie, lie lie on the phone to desperate loved ones, saying
whatever they can to get that credit card number, promising
things and then not delivering.
The scientology relation is
NEVER discussed, nor is the refund policy. Pressure is put on
the loved oneto act quickly before the addict changes his or
her mind. Narconon preys on loved ones, draining them dry of
life savings or putting them into debt and then not delivering
a stabndard rehavb program that will actually help their loved
one. As soo as rthe addict is in the throws of detoxing, they
pressure him or her to sign papers they naver get to read na
d thenm send to the loved one wto sign, where for ht e first
time the paying loved one sees that there is a no refund policy.
Often, those papers go unsigned because the addict is calling
home begging their loved one to go look on the internet about
ths place, this program, begging to be gotten out of the place
because of the degrading drills one muct do and lack of real
therapy. God forbid one thinks L Ron Hubbard is an idiot because
it could and hads landed others dumped at motels in other states.
Do some reading at the links I wrote of in my previous post.
The Mendoza brother's case is not an isolated case. You will
be very surprised at what is going on over there and why people
from Miami wind up in Newport Beach.
3/15/2009
8:36:36 PM
MaryMcConnell
wrote:
Good job,
Jeff Overly & ocregister! It's good to see some action being
taken to right the wrongs of this organization. See how quickly
Narconon scampered to pay the man off in hopes of stopping the
bad press? Well, I wish you would investigate fiasco which the
LATimes Daily Pilot wrote about but failed to follow up on.
It needs a good reporter like you.
Rehab
home cited for alleged code violations:
|
Rehab home cited for alleged code violations
Newport Beach city officials have cited the rehab home Narconon for allegedly
transporting outside clients to receive treatments at the program’s West
Oceanfront triplex.
Code enforcement officers say Narconon let
non-residents use its steam baths at the 1810 W. Oceanfront site, said Assistant
City Manager Dave Kiff.
The Narconon program, which is supported in part
by the Church of Scientology, uses the baths to treat addiction, Kiff
said.
The city also logged a complaint against the home with the
California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, Kiff said.
Narconon
inked a deal in October with city officials to leave by the end of February
2010, when its state alcohol and drug treatment facility permit expires. The
deal requires Narconon to abide the terms of its state license.
A
Narconon spokeswoman declined to comment.
— Brianna Bailey
Source:
http://dailypilot.com/articles/2009/02/05/topstory/dpt-narconon020409.tx
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If you
are interested, I have about 20 other ongoing Narconon victim
horror stories that have been sent to me as a volunteer advocate
by those ripped off by this facility and other Narconons CA
and Michigan. I do what I can to guide these people so they
can try to get their money back and get their complaints heard
at the appropriate agencies since most lawyers don't take these
cases on contingency basis. Many cannot afford a lawyer and
are already pinched trying to find legitimate replacement rehab
services for theirt loved one after being ripped off pretty
much like Mr Mendoza was.
The average loss is $29,000, with
some paying as much as $33,000. It's shameful what these people
are put through. If one goes to www.ripoffreport.com
and enters the search box using Narconon as a keyword, one will
see approximately 24 complaints about Narconon, primarily about
this facility in Newport Beach and the one it owns in Warner
Springs.
There is one other sexual assault case there as well.
This is in addition to those complaints found at narcononvictims.com
,
www.narcononexposed.org
and www.stopnarconon.org
.
I'd like to see whather the City of Newport Beach is actually
doing something about the flagrant code violations and the fact
that the facility is operating with 1 license in 3 separate
condominiums while the building dept allowed them to get away
with this for years. Maybe City Manager Dave Kiff, will supply
you with the documents on this last violation fiasco which he
failed to send to me upon my request.
It's been
said that if you keep pulling the strings, the whole thing will
unravel. I hope you have the courage to keep pulling the strings.
3/15/2009
8:14:19 PM
bobdobbs
wrote:
http://www.studytech.org/study_tech4.php
This is
a standard feature of Scientology management practices. Hubbard
stated that the key statistic for measuring the success of an
organization is "PAID COMPLETIONS ACCOMPANIED BY AN ACCEPTABLE
SUCCESS STORY" ("Org Condition Stat Change",
LRH Executive Directive 153 Int of 30 August 1971).
They are
not simply a method of surveying customer satisfaction. If a
Narconon client does not submit a success story, he or she is
deemed not to have completed the course and may have to redo
it, with possible adverse financial implications. This gives
clients a motive for submitting as positive a success story
as possible. It is not clear whether precisely the same arrangement
is in place in Applied Scholastics, but given Scientology's
penchant for standardization it would not be surprising.
Wow, it
really sounds like Scientology cares more about it's image than
any Narconon client
3/13/2009
9:23:31 PM
bobdobbs
wrote:
Narconon
only exists to indoctrinate people into Scientology and make
money for Scientology, the Purification Rundown has been called
dangerous by the Surgeon General. The four previous posters
to myself
are Scientologists here to "fair game" the guy.
3/13/2009
7:43:57 PM
oc911gal
wrote:
Narconon
is a Scientology-based rehab program...
http://www.narconon.org/about_narconon/about_lronhubbard
3/13/2009
4:52:09 PM
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