Christmas Dinner/’Directions for CISNEO’ Discussion Meeting

We will hold our annual Christmas Dinner on TUESDAY , December 2 (Drinks 6:30pm, dinner at 7pm) at Yocono’s Restaurant, 1666 West Exchange St, Akron  Please call Dorothy Jemson for your reservation at 330-864-4665 no later than November 30.   We will have a discussion of what the future course will be for our organization.  Several members have had to curtail their attendance due to the high cost of travel prompting the need for a discussion about the future of our monthly meetings and other activities.
 

CISNEO WEBSITE REACHES 1,000 HITS/MONTH MILESTONE 

CISNEO’s website at www.CISNEOinc.org has been recording more than 1,000 visits per month by web visitors seeking information regarding cults.  The website includes book reviews, articles on cults and mind control, and a copy of the well- regarded CISNEO brochure “Avoiding a Little Known Threat.”  Visitors can download a copy of the brochure.  Another feature of the website is a listing of links or references to other web sites that provide information on cults.  The list provides a capsule review of the other web sites, enabling visitors to prioritize their research and avoid becoming overwhelmed by the subject of cults. 
 

TV SHOW PROVIDES USEFUL INFORMATION TO FAMILIES 

The television show “What Should You Do?” typically provides re-creations of harrowing situations that people have survived, followed by advice given by experts who detail the proper course of action for each scenario.  Examples are people driving their cars through flash floods, carjack victims, etc.

A recent show profiled a family whose son had joined a cult.  The son was attending a local college and became involved in a Bible Church that quickly took over his life.  He announced to his parents that he was abandoning long-held career plans; exhibit a sudden personality change and loss of spontaneity and sense of humor.  The group called him repeatedly at odd hours of the night.  The family contacted ex-members of the group and hired an exit counselor.  An intervention was arranged while the family was on vacation and the son subsequently left the group.

The show then answered the question “What should you do?” if you suspect a loved one is involved with a cult.  The advice that then followed was closely aligned with what responsible anti-cult groups typically recommend:  Learn the warning signs of cult involvement; do not confront the individual about his beliefs before you understand the group; keep the lines of communication open; talk to ex-members; learn as much as you can about the group; and hire a skilled exit counselor.

It was heartening to see that this type of complete, responsible information is now being transmitted through the media. 

 
DISGRACED PASTOR RETURNS AS CHRISTIAN BUSINESSMAN
Washington Post, November 23, 2008  By Eric Gorski, AP 

(AP) -- Earlier this month, a guest took the pulpit at Open Bible Fellowship in Morrison, Ill., a 350-member church surrounded by cornfields. The speaker was an insurance salesman from Colorado named Ted Haggard.   The former superstar pastor, disgraced two years ago in a sex-and-drugs scandal, had returned _ this time as a Christian businessman preaching a message that was equal parts contrition and defiance. Haggard linked his fall to being molested in second grade and apologized again.   His two sermons were posted, fleetingly, on Haggard's Web site under one word: "Alive!"   While his exact plans remain unclear, Haggard is unmistakably making himself a public figure again, nine months after his former church said he walked away from an oversight process meant to restore him.

The man who confessed to being a "a deceiver and a liar" is asking for another hearing, finding encouragement from a loyal circle of supporters, skepticism from those evangelical leaders who think it's premature and complex emotions at the Colorado Springs church he betrayed.   Haggard, 52, resigned as president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals and was fired from New Life Church amid allegations that he paid a male prostitute for sex and used methamphetamine. Haggard said in 2006 he bought the drugs but never used them, confessed to "sexual immorality" and described struggling with a "dark and repulsive" side. He had risen from preaching in his basement to taking part in White House conference calls and fallen so far that he became a late-night punch line.

As part of a severance package with his former church, Haggard agreed to leave Colorado Springs for a period and not speak publicly about the scandal, church officials said at the time. But he never really disappeared, making news when he relocated his family to Arizona and solicited financial support in an e-mail.  Haggard's plea for funds was rebuked by a three-pastor team overseeing his "restoration" _ a healing process that doesn't necessarily mean a public return. In February, New Life Church announced that Haggard had prematurely ended that relationship.   One restoration team member, H.B. London, said a return to vocational ministry in less than four or five years would be dangerous for Haggard, his family, former church and Colorado Springs.

"To sit on the sidelines for a person with that kind of personality and gifting is probably like being paralyzed," said London, who counsels pastors through a division of Focus on the Family, the Colorado Springs-based conservative Christian group. "If Mr. Haggard and others like him feel like they have a call from God, they rationalize that their behavior does not change that call."   Haggard, who declined to be interviewed, is not the first fallen evangelical figure to agree to oversight and then balk. In the late 1980s, televangelist Jimmy Swaggart confessed to liaisons with a prostitute, begged forgiveness and submitted to the Assemblies of God, his denomination. Swaggart was ordered not to preach for a year, but resumed broadcasts after a few weeks and was defrocked.

Haggard's support system includes Leo Godzich, who runs a Phoenix-based marriage ministry and said he met with Haggard at least once a week for more than a year. Godzich said Haggard remains committed to restoration, has paid a high price and still has much to offer.  "If all men are honest, all men are liars and deceivers," Godzich said. "Once someone is gifted and called, that is something they generally cannot escape. They will be used in that regard again."   "True redemption occurs when someone is fulfilling a destiny and purpose in their life."

Haggard's Nov. 2 return to the pulpit was set in motion by the Rev. Chris Byrd, a college classmate from Oral Roberts University. Byrd said he first invited Haggard to speak at his church last summer to offer the Haggard family support, help them heal and teach his own flock about sin and forgiveness.  By then, Haggard had moved his family back to Colorado Springs and was selling life insurance at their $700,000 home down the road from New Life Church, angering some who thought he should stay away.   "I had confidence his heart was solid, his theology is sound and the message he's always bought to the body of Christ would come forth," Byrd said. "The Bible is filled with great leaders, men and women of God, who have failed. They were restored and resumed roles they were called to previously."

In the sermons, Haggard said a co-worker of his father molested him when he was 7, an experience that "started to produce fruit" when he turned 50. Haggard said something "started to rage in my mind and in my heart." Haggard said though some allegations were exaggerated, "I really did sin."   He apologized for making his family suffer, acknowledged suicidal thoughts and chastised church leaders for missing an opportunity to use his scandal to "communicate the gospel worldwide." Haggard said he emerged with a stronger Christian faith and marriage than he'd ever had.   Byrd said he was not restoring Haggard to Christian ministry and introduced him as a businessman _ hinting at a possible future speaking to churches and civic groups.

"You could make a career out of your reformed fallen Christian life," said David Edward Harrell, a retired Auburn University history professor who studies charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity. "What you can't do is go back and do the same thing. Once you've lost that clientele, it's lost."

Evangelicals believe God can change hearts, yet Haggard also must be held accountable and should not return to ministry early, if ever, said David Neff, editor of Christianity Today magazine.   "It's like someone who has announced he's an alcoholic and they've got that under control and are dry now," said Neff, a National Association of Evangelicals executive committee member. "You don't want to chance putting them back in the situation where it could happen again."   The risk is diminished if Haggard seeks a role outside the pulpit, Neff said. Yet if Haggard stumbles again as a Christian speaker, it could crush those he inspired, he said.   On the Sunday after Haggard's return went public, Russ Gordon sat studying his Bible in the coffee shop of New Life Church in Colorado Springs. A church member for 12 years, Gordon said he's concerned Haggard stopped the restoration process, but he listened to Haggard's sermons and found them sincere.   "I can't really judge what's in his heart," Gordon said. "I think we have to watch and observe and see his actions. We as Christians believe in giving second chances. I just say, we all have fallen short."

Sitting a few tables away, Sandy Oltrogge had harsher words for her former pastor. "I wish he'd just leave it alone and let God promote him and not promote himself," she said. "It's good he can apologize, but I don't think anyone can believe anything he says after that."   A New Life spokeswoman would not comment on whether the church believes Haggard has violated his severance agreement, which paid him a year's salary. The church is trying to move on.   "It's sort of like the mouse in the corner," said church elder Paul Ballantyne. "If he wants to squeak, he can squeak. But I don't think it's going to affect New Life."   Haggard's replacement, Brady Boyd, approved a three-sentence statement saying that while the church cannot endorse Haggard returning to ministry, "we do wish him only success in his business endeavors."   And on the day Haggard returned to the pulpit in another state, Boyd began a sermon series on heaven.
 

DEPROGRAMMING JIHADISTS
New York Times Magazine, November 7, 2008  By Katherine Zoepf 

The sunset prayer had just ended, and Sheik Ahmad al-Jilani was already calling his class to order. When the latecomers slipped into the front row, Jilani nodded at them briskly. “Young men,” he began, “who can tell me why we do jihad?”  The members of the class were still new and a bit shy. Jilani clasped his hands and smiled encouragingly. Before him, sitting in school desks, were a dozen young Saudi men who had served time in prison for belonging to militant Islamic groups. Now they were inmates in a new rehabilitation center, part of a Saudi government initiative that seeks to deprogram Islamic extremists.   Jilani has been teaching his class, which is called Understandings of Jihad, since the center was established early last year. A stout man who makes constant, self-deprecating references to his weight, the sheik is an avuncular figure, popular with his students. On this chilly evening he had on a woolly, brocade-trimmed bisht, the cloak that Saudi men wear on formal occasions or in cool weather, which gave him a slightly imposing air. But behind his thick glasses, his eyes shone warmly as he surveyed the classroom.  Finally, someone answered: “We do jihad to fight our enemies.”  “To defeat God’s enemies?” another suggested.  “To help weak Muslims,” a third offered.  “Good, good,” Jilani said. “All good answers. Is there someone else? What about you, Ali?” Ali, in the second row, looked away, then faltered: “To . . . answer . . . calls for jihad?”  Jilani frowned slightly and wrote Ali’s answer up on the white board behind him. He read it out to the class before turning back to Ali. “All right, Ali,” the sheik said. “Why do we answer calls for jihad? Is it because all Muslim leaders want to make God’s word highest? Do we kill if these leaders tell us to kill?”   Ali looked confused, but whispered, “Yes.”  “No — wrong!” Jilani cried as Ali blushed. “Of course we want to make God’s word highest, but not every Muslim leader has this as his goal. There are right jihads and wrong jihads, and we must examine the situation for ourselves. For example, if a person wants to go to hajj now, is it right?”    The class chuckled obligingly at Jilani’s little joke. The month for performing hajj, the holy pilgrimage to Mecca that observant Muslims hope to complete at least once in their lives, had ended five weeks earlier, and the suggestion was as preposterous as throwing a Fourth of July barbecue in November.   “Well, just as there is a proper time for hajj, there is also a proper time for jihad,” Jilani explained.

Jilani’s students, who range in age from 18 to 36, are part of a generation brought up on heroic tales of Saudi fighters who left home to fight alongside the mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the 1980s and who helped to force the Soviets to withdraw from the country. The Saudi state was essentially built on the concept of jihad, which King Abdul Aziz al-Saud used to knit disparate tribal groups into a single nation. The word means “struggle” and in Islamic law usually refers to armed conflict with non-Muslims in defense of the global Islamic community. Saudi schools teach a version of world history that emphasizes repeated battles between Muslims and nonbelieving enemies. Whether to Afghanistan in the 1980s or present-day Iraq, Saudi Arabia has exported more jihadist volunteers than any other country; 15 of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were Saudis.

But jihad can go too far. The Saudi government has condemned the Sept. 11 attacks and arrests jihadists who attempt to enter Iraq. Some Saudi veterans of overseas jihads have adopted one form of the doctrine of takfir, in which a Muslim is judged by another Muslim to be an unbeliever. Because traditional Islamic law calls for the execution of apostates, some have used takfir to justify attacks on the Saudi state. In recent years, these attacks have raised fears that the chaos in some of the world’s conflict zones is being brought home to Saudi Arabia by radicalized jihadists. The Saudi government thus finds itself in the awkward position of needing to defend the principle of jihad to its citizens while discouraging them from actually taking up arms. One step it has taken is simply to talk to those who have proved to be most vulnerable to the temptations of jihad, the captured militants themselves. As Jilani put it to me, “The kingdom of Saudi Arabia has the confidence to fight thoughts with thoughts.”

Jilani and his colleagues are not just fighting a war of ideas. Though the Saudi government tends to explain its rehabilitation program in purely Islamic terms, as an effort to correct theological misunderstandings, the new program also addresses the psychological needs and emotional weaknesses that have led many young men to jihad in the first place. It tries to give frustrated and disaffected young men the trappings of stability — a job, a car, possibly a wife. Though international human rights groups continue to sound the alarm about Saudi Arabia’s habit of detaining suspects without charging them and of punishing certain crimes with floggings and amputations, these young men seem to have become the subjects of a continuing experiment in counterterrorism as a kind of social work.

If the Saudi rehabilitation program succeeds, it could reduce the ranks of dangerous extremists and have a far-reaching impact: domestic and regional stability and, though it’s not a stated goal, increased safety for potential targets in the West. Program administrators claim that the Saudi initiative could also provide a model for other Muslim countries struggling with Islamic militancy. They say that Saudi Arabia — home to Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina — has an unmatched moral authority among the world’s Muslims and is uniquely placed to find the intellectual and spiritual vulnerabilities of organizations like Al Qaeda and to fight Islamic extremism on its own terms.

Though the exact nature of the role that religious belief plays in the recruitment of jihadists is the subject of much debate among scholars of terrorism, a growing number contend that ideology is far less important than family and group dynamics, psychological and emotional needs. “We’re finding that they don’t generally join for religious reasons,” John Horgan told me. A political psychologist who directs the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Penn State, Horgan has interviewed dozens of former terrorists. “Terrorist movements seem to provide a sense of adventure, excitement, vision, purpose, camaraderie,” he went on, “and involvement with them has an allure that can be difficult to resist. But the ideology is usually something you acquire once you’re involved.”

Other scholars emphatically disagree, stressing the significance of political belief and grievance. But if the Saudi program is succeeding, it may be because it treats jihadists not as religious fanatics or enemies of the state but as alienated young men in need of rehabilitation.  In 2004, the Saudi Interior Ministry started the Munasaha, or Advisory Committee, program, to reform prison inmates convicted of involvement in Islamic extremism. Abdulrahman al-Hadlaq, the program administrator, says that a committee of senior Saudi clerics interviews inmates about their beliefs before placing them in appropriate classes. Enrollment in the Munasaha program is not voluntary, and Human Rights Watch reports that some participants have been in detention for months or even years without trial or access to lawyers. But graduates of the program say the treatment is far from harsh.

In January 2007, the Interior Ministry began renting small vacation compounds in the Riyadh suburb of al-Thumama. Half-a-dozen adjoining compounds now house the Care Center, a post-prison continuation of the Munasaha program offering more intensive rehabilitation activities. Each compound holds up to about 20 men, who study, eat and sleep together for the duration of the program.

On arrival, each prisoner is given a suitcase filled with gifts: clothes, a digital watch, school supplies and toiletries. Inmates are encouraged to ask for their favorite foods (Twix and Snickers candy bars are frequent requests). Volleyball nets, PlayStation games and Ping-Pong and foosball tables are all provided. The atmosphere at the center — which I visited several times earlier this year — is almost eerily cozy and congenial, with mattresses and rugs spread on stubbly patches of lawn for inmates to lounge upon. With few exceptions, the men wear their beards untrimmed and their thobes, the long garments that most Saudi men wear, cut above their ankles in the style favored by those who wish to demonstrate strict devotion to Islam. The men are pleasant but many seem a bit puffy and lethargic; one 19-year-old inmate, Faisal al-Subaii, explained that they are encouraged to spend most of their daytime hours in either rest or prayer.

In Saudi Arabia, psychological disorders are often understood as the results of a person finding himself somehow outside the traditional circle of family and community. Most of the counseling that the inmates receive is focused on helping them to develop more healthful family relationships. “We use Western psychiatric techniques together with Islamic techniques,” T. M. Otayan, the center’s staff psychologist, says, referring to the intensive religion classes. A number of the inmates have received diagnoses of antisocial personality disorder, he adds, but he claims serious mental illness among the former jihadists is rare.  

Though it might seem out of place in a society whose religion proscribes the representation of animal or human forms, art therapy is practiced. Awad al-Yami, who studied the subject at Penn State, leads the classes, and chalk drawings by former jihadists decorate the walls of his classroom. Although the sketches — mostly ornate Arabic calligraphy and depictions of flowers — do not especially suggest that demons are being wrestled with, art therapy helps inmates to examine the consequences of their actions, Yami says. “I ask them, ‘If you blow up a car, what will happen?’ The paper gives them a safe place to express some destructive emotions.”  Most prisoners complete the program within two months. Upon release, each former jihadist is required to sign a pledge that he has forsaken extremist sympathies; the head of his family must sign as well. Some also receive a car (often a Toyota) and aid from the Interior Ministry in renting a home. Social workers assist former jihadists and their families in making post-release plans for education, employment and, usually, marriage. “Getting married stabilizes a man’s personality,” Hadlaq says. “He thinks more about a long term future and less about himself and his anger.”

Other countries have experimented with efforts to rehabilitate Islamic extremists. In Egypt and Yemen, moderate clerics counsel prisoners accused of militant activity. The Religious Rehabilitation Group in Singapore has been widely praised for reducing the influence of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist organization. But the Saudi approach is unusual and, according to Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University, “is consistent with Saudi history in that you try through nonviolent means to cajole, to bribe, to buy off the opposition.”

Sheik Jilani likes to encourage class discussions by asking the men to share their experiences, and on one of the occasions I visited, he asked a student named Azzam to explain why he spent five months in Iraq. Referring to the infamous Mahmudiyah killings of 2006, Azzam replied that he had seen an article on the Internet about “the little girl named Abeer who was raped and killed by the Americans.”  “I felt so much sympathy for the Muslims,” Azzam continued. “The infidel rape women and kill children. I decided then that I should join the Muslims in Iraq in order to drive the Americans out.”  The desert evening was growing chilly. Jilani removed his bisht and handed it to a shivering student. He turned back to Azzam. “Tell us, Azzam. What did you find in Iraq? Did you feel good when you went there?”  Azzam frowned. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t find what I was expecting,” he said. “In Iraq, even the Muslims fight each other. I was expecting them to be well organized, but they weren’t.”  Jilani nodded. “So did you fight?”   “I didn’t have the chance,” Azzam said, sounding defensive. “For months, we went from safe house to safe house. There wasn’t anything to do — no action, no training. Finally, they asked me to be a suicide bomber. But I know that suicide is forbidden in Islam, so I came back home.”

Many of the former jihadists seemed to feel unappreciated, their sense of injury plain. Jilani and his colleagues encourage the former militants to examine those feelings, even to think of themselves as victims. Yes, they were tricked and manipulated by deviant ideology (a favorite Saudi catchphrase for Islamic extremism), but now they have a chance to turn back.

Of all the concepts addressed in classes at the rehabilitation center, takfir is the one that tends to evoke the most anger among mainstream Saudi Muslims. The idea that there’s a slippery slope from jihad to takfir comes up regularly in discussions with Saudi clerics.   “Some of our young people don’t listen to the right scholars,” Jilani told me. “First they start to think that they have the right to go to jihad at any time. After that, they start to think that we have the right to kill any non-Muslim.   “Then they start to say that our leaders are kuffar, infidels,” the sheik continued. “After that they start to say that our scholars, too, are kuffar. Before long, they’ve declared war against the whole world.”  

The Saudi government has recently intensified efforts to fight extremism and to turn public sympathy away from terrorist groups. Several prominent clerics have taken public stands against Al Qaeda, and late last year Saudi Mufti Sheik Abd al-Aziz bin Abdallah Al al-Sheik issued a fatwa prohibiting Saudi youth from traveling overseas to wage jihad. The Ministry of Islamic Affairs has initiated a new program called Serenity to fight terrorism online by drawing terrorist recruiters into one-on-one ideological chat-room combat with moderate-minded clerics.   The government maintains that no graduates of the Munasaha program have returned to violence. But the program is still relatively new, and there are unanswered questions. Is the government dealing with captured militants while really failing to address the root causes of extremism? Will released extremists, now counted as successes, eventually return to jihad?

A consulting psychiatrist at the King Faisal hospital in Riyadh says that to truly fight jihadism would mean fundamentally changing how Islam is taught in Saudi schools and mosques in a way that the Saudi government has until now been unwilling to attempt. “The government is never going to say, full stop, that jihad is wrong,” he explains. The doctrine is an integral part of Islamic law, and arguing against it would raise the ire of religious scholars and possibly call the Islamic credentials of the Saudi government into question.  And global jihad is still a socially acceptable path for a young Saudi man with few options, the psychiatrist says. “You have a young man who’s depressed, frustrated with life, maybe he fails an exam. He can go from being a loser, a failure, to being a jihadi, someone with status.”

How and why violent extremists come to leave their organizations are a fairly new focus in academic studies of terrorism. Horgan’s findings — that simple fear and disillusionment can play a major role in an individual’s decision to disengage from his group — seem to be echoed by a recent RAND Corporation report on the demise of terrorist groups, which found that efforts by police and intelligence agents to create intense internal pressure within terrorist groups are more successful at fighting extremism than military actions.  Consider Abu Sulayman, a stocky 32-year-old who spent more than three years in prison at Guantánamo and says he fought alongside Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora. Abu Sulayman spoke on the condition that I would use only his old nom de guerre. He completed the Munasaha program but was released shortly before the Care Center was established; he joked that he envies the current batch of former jihadists their “resort vacation.”  “Getting captured and Guantánamo — it was all a good lesson,” Abu Sulayman told me. “I mean, the main idea of jihad is good — no one disagrees with that.”

His first jihad was in 1996, when he traveled to the Philippines to fight with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. “They had guys from everywhere, all these different countries, working together,” Abu Sulayman said. “The majority are always Saudis.” In 1997, Abu Sulayman went on to Afghanistan. Four years later, after his second trip to the country, he grew disillusioned with bin Laden and planned to leave for the Philippines because “Chechnya said they didn’t need anyone at the moment.” Instead, he was captured. Today he notes that the Qaeda camps where he worked as a training instructor offered him clear professional advancement. His new life — in a middle-class Jeddah suburb, doing shift work at an electrical company — doesn’t provide the same sense of purpose. Even so, he has little regard for those who have followed in his footsteps.   “Most people just want to carry weapons,” Abu Sulayman said. They do not, as he put it, have especially sophisticated religious arguments. “For me, it was always more about the feeling that I wanted to help the Muslims. But jihad is complicated. If you’re heading to Afghanistan or Iraq, do you really have the facts you need to get involved on the right side?

“With Al Qaeda, the training was really excellent,” Abu Sulayman went on. “These people they’ve got going to Iraq nowadays, they have no training, so they’re just sent to explode themselves.  “Now our government is saying: ‘Don’t go to Iraq. It’s not in our interests,’ ” Abu Sulayman continued. “Now I think, At least I did something with my life. I went out and fought for my beliefs, and I found that things were not as I had planned. But at least I fought for my beliefs. God knows my heart.”

The sheiks who were charged with rehabilitating him were startled by his easygoing attitude, Abu Sulayman recalled. Even though Saudi public opinion has largely turned against Al Qaeda, many Saudis remain concerned that American-led efforts to fight terrorism are anti-Muslim and are infuriated by Guantánamo. “They thought that after all this time in Guantánamo I’d have some hate in me,” Abu Sulayman told me. “But I never look back. I said, ‘O.K., now I’ll start a new life.’ ”

Katherine Zoepf, who writes regularly for The Times, is working on a book about young women in the contemporary Arab world.
 

I’D HAVE KILLED FOR CRUISE CULT
The Sun (UK), November 3, 2008  By David Lowe 

A TOP Scientologist who escaped the cult has given the most explosive insight yet into the shady “celebrity religion”.

A-list followers including Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley and John Travolta believe their faith is the secret of their success. But for John Duignan it cost him everything and everyone he held dear after he become a leading figure in the church’s British branch. John says he was so brainwashed that he would have killed for Scientology. And he claims another member was driven to a suicide bid when she was “rehabilitated” after trying to leave.  John tells of his nightmare in his book.  His hell began in 1985 when he was approached in the street by a pretty girl who offered him a free personality test.   John — who had never heard of Scientology — was 22 and living in Stuttgart with his German girlfriend but their relationship was on the rocks. Depressed and lonely, he accepted.  John, now 45, says: “The test is a clever recruitment device because it appeals to people who are searching for something. I was unhappy and latched on to the prospect of gaining confidence. I probably needed proper psychological counselling but I got nothing of the sort. The result of my initial test was Urgent Action Required.   “These friendly people seemed to have the answer in Scientology and I surrendered myself to it.”   In the following weeks, John was grounded in the Scientology doctrine.

The movement was founded in 1952 by an American sci-fi writer, the late L Ron Hubbard. He claimed humans are really spiritual beings called Thetans which have lived for trillions of years and are constantly reincarnating.   Followers believe that through past life recall therapy they can enrich their understanding and souls.   Under a regime of sleep deprivation, brainwashing and so-called counselling, John gave up his mind to the bizarre teachings.   He says: “On one occasion I sat on the floor while others shouted in my face and flicked things into my eyes. “It went on for hours. I wasn’t allowed to react or blink. You’re suppressing your natural reactions and that helps Scientology creep in to take over your mind.”

John quickly became fanatical about his new-found faith.  He says: “I saw myself as a soldier for Scientology. I believed it was the only route out of oblivion for mankind.  “The doctrine teaches a human’s body doesn’t matter because it is the Thetan, or soul, which survives.   “If I’d been told someone had to be eliminated because they were a threat to Scientology I could have justified the killing. They’d just lose their body, which isn’t needed.”   When it was suggested John might train to become a church staff member, he jumped at the chance.   He signed up for an “advancement course”, where he endured constant “auditing” sessions, being grilled on every aspect of his life.   John says: “I was hooked up to a Scientology machine called an E-meter. It has a swinging needle and believers think it shows hang-ups or concerns.   “Your goal is to achieve no movement of the needle and a state of “Clear”. That’s when you’re ready to receive the secrets of the universe.   “By now I had cut all ties with friends and family. I was trying to take Scientology doctrine on board but it felt as if my mind was being repeatedly hit with a hammer.”   John persevered, and three months after his personality test he received a call from Scientology Missions International in Los Angeles.   They wanted him to join the church’s 3,000-strong elite core, Sea Org, which oversees recruitment and its other big international interests.   For John it was his ticket to the Scientology big-time.   He says: “As a Sea Org member I’d get to wear a special uniform and be highly respected by other Scientologists. We were told other members would bow to us. Suddenly I felt important.”  But when John arrived at the cult’s headquarters in LA, conditions were not what he’d imagined.   He says: “We were expected to work, eat and sleep Scientology with every minute of the day scheduled, from 7am until lights out at 11pm.”   The harsh conditions John endured were in stark contrast to the luxury enjoyed by stars at the glittering Scientology Celebrity Centre down the road.  

 L. Ron Hubbard believed the church should have famous names as the church’s public face.   John says: “The centre is beautiful. I loved it when I worked there in the garden. Once I spoke to Kirstie Alley on the phone about a rally we were organising. I also saw John Travolta a couple of times.   “But interaction with celebrities wasn’t encouraged. They arrived through a special celebrity entrance and were taken to exclusive suites for auditing sessions.”  After the Sea Org bootcamp John was posted to Scientology’s UK HQ, Saint Hill Manor in East Grinstead, West Sussex.  Here he spent almost two decades devoting his life to the cult — until a bizarre encounter with Scientology poster boy Tom Cruise made John begin to question his faith. He says: “In 2004 Tom was welcomed to the annual International Association Of Scientologists Gala Ball as the Most Dedicated follower.   “I was working in the grounds and Tom came out wearing a bad fake beard. It was pathetic.   “Scientologists look upon Tom Cruise as one of their best assets, but it was him who made me think twice about the cult.  “I was earning £15 a week, doing my best to spread the word. I had no privacy or time to relax and was afraid or stressed all the time.   “Yet I wasn’t as dedicated as Cruise? It hurt.”  Two years later John made his escape bid.   He says he knew he would be hunted by the sect’s intelligence wing, the Office of Special Affairs (OSA). John says: “Members who try to leave Scientology are subjected to the Rehabilitation Project Force.  “This uses military tactics and are feared. A friend, Alice, was put through rehabilitation. At 19 she was subjected to daily interrogations for six months.   “One afternoon Alice swallowed a tin of paint thinner and jumped from a 15ft roof.  “The whole thing was hushed up. Alice is now crippled.”

Despite the risks, John told his superiors he needed to visit a sick relative in Ireland, then he fled to a hotel in Birmingham where he hid for a week.   He says officers were sent after him and even staked out relatives. In a bid to lure them away he made sure he was sighted near the Birmingham Scientology office. Then he fled to Dublin when he knew the officers had been recalled to England.   John is now rebuilding his life in his native Co Cork. He says: “I gained nothing. I still bear the scars of my time in the church.   “But I’m now studying for an arts degree, getting to know my family and putting the past behind me.”