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Die Kirche
Berlin-Brandenburg Sunday Paper
July 7, 2002

Scientology: a former member sued the cult and won, but the totalitarian group continues to be

Dangerous as a Giant Octopus

by Benjamin Lassiwe

A short time ago, American Lawrence Wollersheim finished and won the last round in his decades long bout with Scientology. The Scientology cult paid their former member 8.6 million dollars to avoid further court hearings in a legal dipute that was already t wenty years old.

Wollersheim sued the totalitarian group in 1980. They had driven him to the brink of insanity, said the basis back then for the today 53-year old Californian. This made the second time a former American cult member has received payment for damages from the Church of Scientology. One of the reasons for the small number of successful cases, according to American attorney and Scientology opponent Graham Berry, is a a successful infiltration of the American justice system by adherents of the cult.

Fewer and fewer legal advocates still have the courage to bring proceedings against the cult, he said, and many are afraid of what has happened to Berry himself. That is a reference to the mischief recently brought upon the attorney, who has recently visited with Reverend Thomas Gandow, commissioner for issues of worldview and cults: in a drawn-out process, Scientology managed to get Berry's licence to practice law temporarily revoked for making a false statement. Several prior attempts had failed to rid them of their increasingly dangerous opponent, including one with a bribed witness for child molestation and [... rape]. A transvestite who was fetched from prison to testify against Berry took the cult's money and calmly stated before the judge that he had never met Berry, he chuckled in remembrance. They did eventually get to him, though. According to information Berry learned too late, the judge who had made the decision about taking away his license to practice had once served as an attorney for cult founder Ron L. Hubbard [should be cult leader David Miscavige, ed.]. This thrills Berry all the more that today Scientology is being closely scrutinized in Germany. He says that almost every German knows about the dangers of the cult, due to good local inf ormation measures.

One important vehicle to that end is the Leipzig Human Rights Award of the "European-American Citizens Committee for Human Rights and Religious Freedom in the USA," an organization of Scientology opponents which includes Reverend Gandow. Award winners fo r years past are former federal minister Norbert Bluem and Robert Minton, a US millionaire who opposes Scientology. The most recent to join their ranks is French politician Alain Vivien. The list of well-wishers is long - it ranges from German President Johannes Rau to former federal minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger and to CDU chairperson Angela Merkel. This is because they are all aware that the threat emanating from Scientology is not going away. It was not for nothing that Graham Berry c ompared Scientology with a giant octopus: even though one of its tentacles has been cut off in Germany, as long as its head remains intact in the USA, it can continue to grow new appendages.

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