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This was recently put up on the LMT website at:
They forced a mixture of aspirin, Benadryl and orange juice down her throat with a turkey baster. She died on December 5, 1995. Lisa's gruesome death is the subject of ongoing litigation. There are stories about her and the litigation here at this site.
What is the Lisa McPherson Trust? The Lisa McPherson Trust (LMT) was formed to carry out the dying wish of Lisa's mother, Fannie McPherson. She wanted to expose the abusive and deceptive practices of Scientology and help those who have been victimized by it. The LMT will keep Lisa's memory alive as an example of the callous brutality that the Scientology tries to hide.
Not even Scientologists know what the leadership of this organization will do to preserve their power. There is no need for harmful and fraudulent practices that must be hidden from members as well as the public, especially from an organization that claims to be a religion.
What does the Lisa McPherson Trust do? Scientology leaders will never admit to a mistake or apologize for their abusive behavior. The LMT is here as the conscience that they do not have. We are here to educate the public and Scientology's own members about aspects of Scientology that the leadership does not want exposed. We are here to ensure there will never be another Lisa McPherson, and to insist that the abuse, deception and fraud must stop.
How do you do that? We do it by being here and letting the organization's spiteful, hateful and bigoted behavior exemplify what we are saying. We also answer questions and provide information to citizens, current Scientologists who are searching for answers, and concerned family members and friends.
Every day people tell us horror stories about how their lives or the lives of their family members have been destroyed by Scientology. We do what we can to help these people, including directing them to the proper authorities for filing specific complaints about what has happened to them.
Are you trying to get people out of the Church of Scientology?
We are always willing to help people who wish to leave.
We help them by providing them with information that Scientology has forbidden them to have. We believe that a person has the right to make an informed choice about any organization they are considering joining. We also believe that the leadership of Scientology has failed to be responsive to the concerns of its members, the general public, and governments. Members of Scientology should be able to communicate with anyone:
friends, family, former members and even critics without being fearful of being punished. Scientologists are forbidden to communicate with anyone who questions the Scientology world view. This kind of enforced isolation is what we saw before the wall came down between East and West Germany and the citizens were finally allowed to interact. We are here to bring down the wall that Scientology has created.
Are you comparing Scientology to a totalitarian regime?
Yes, very much so. By their own policy, Scientology is an aspiring totalitarian, political movement. Just like in East Germany, the "citizens" of the Scientology world are bombarded constantly with propaganda to convince them that the "other side" is evil and that only within the protection of their regime is there freedom and hope. It was a lie in East Germany, and it is a lie being forced on the Scientology membership.
But it is not the citizens or the members who are to blame. There was never any conflict between the citizens of East and West Germany. It was the East German leadership that deceived them and held the barriers and the conflicts in place so that they could hold onto their positions of power. That is what the Scientology leadership is doing now. That is why the Wall must come down, and that is why we are here.
Are you opposed to Scientology? We are opposed to all of Scientology's policies that promote abuse, deception, secrecy and fraud, as well as those that encourage hatred of any criticism.
What other "religion"
Don't the members know of these activities and thus approve of them?
Citizens of East Germany knew about the secret police and the gulags, but that didn't mean they approved of them. Meanwhile no one could speak openly or honestly about them for fear of punishment. Even those who experienced these abuses firsthand and were released back into the population didn't speak until they had fled the country. Meanwhile, the leadership convinced everyone that only the "traitors" or those who might bring down the government were the targets of these practices.
It wasn't until the Wall came down and the abuses were revealed that the citizens finally learned the whole truth, because no one could speak out until then. We believe members of Scientology are in a similar situation. They ignore or justify what they hear or learn, just as the East Germans did, because they will be punished if they believe it or speak about it.
Are former members part of the Lisa McPherson Trust?
The President of the LMT, Stacy Brooks, had 15 years in the leadership of the organization. The Executive Vice President, Jesse Prince, had 16 years and rose to be second in command at an international level. Both were incarcerated in the camps and both saw the abuses and even participated in the propaganda efforts to hide activities from the membership. There are a number of other former members either on staff or working with the LMT on a volunteer basis.
The Scientology organization says these people and the LMT are criminals. What is your reply?
This is how the East German government treated defectors. It is how the Soviet Union treated Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who fled and wrote The Gulag Archipelago to expose the prison camps. It is how every totalitarian regime deals with those who manage to find a safe place from which to speak out. Scientology policy is very clear on this point. If you leave them alone, they will leave you alone. If you don't they will label you a criminal and destroy you. If people leave and speak out, the leadership will "find or manufacture" enough evidence against them to "ruin them utterly." These are exact quotes from their Fair Game policies that were written by L. Ron Hubbard, the man who started this organization.
That is why Time magazine and others have compared Scientology to the Mafia. The leadership controls its members through lies, threats, intimidation and harassment. That is why 11 of the top leaders went to jail in the 1980s. They were following these exact policies that are still in place and followed today.
Who started the Lisa McPherson Trust? The LMT was started by Robert Minton. Although he was never a member of Scientology, in 1995 he became concerned about Scientology's attempt to stifle free speech on and off the Internet. Later, as he learned more about the abusive tactics of this organization, he became concerned about the lives he saw being destroyed by it.
He began to correspond with various people who were being attacked by the organization to see how he could help them. He established the LMT when it became clear that it would take an organization to fully expose Scientology's abusive and deceptive practices and to bring about the needed reforms.
How is The Lisa McPherson Trust structured? The Lisa McPherson Trust is a corporation with six full-time staff, a number of volunteers, a board of directors and an advisory board.
Is The Lisa McPherson Trust non-profit? Solely to protect the privacy of financial supporters of The Lisa McPherson Trust, we are registered as a for-profit company. If we were required to report the names of our contributors, we would run the risk that Scientology could find out their identities. They would then be subjected to harassment and intimidation to punish them for supporting the LMT. At some point in the future, the LMT may become a nonprofit organization.
Why did you locate in downtown Clearwater, Florida?
This is where Lisa McPherson was killed. We are almost directly across the street from the building where she was held prisoner. We could think of no better place to keep her memory alive and to remind Scientology management that it must develop a conscience and take responsibility for its actions.
What have you accomplished? First, we have kept the memory of Lisa McPherson alive, reminding the leadership what they did and how they tried to cover it up.
Next, we have been able to speak with Scientologists and to let them see that what they are being told about the non-Scientology world and people are lies. No one is out to destroy their beliefs. In fact, we encourage people to understand fully the core beliefs of Scientology.
Further, we are here to give members the ability to attain one of Scientology's goals it fails to deliver, the ability "to communicate with anyone on any subject."
We have also spoken to families and political leaders and the media around the world and that is what we will continue to do.
Perhaps most important, we are directing people every day to the proper agencies in our government that will help them with the complaints they have about Scientology.
If someone wanted to help, what should they do? There are many ways to help, from financial contributions to volunteering your time to assisting us with our education efforts. The best thing to do is to call or write and tell us your interests and your concern. That is what we are here for.
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