Scientology Harasses WFI Staff Member
Watchman Fellowship, Inc., and some of its staff have experienced the
wrath of Scientology firsthand.
WFI vice-president Craig Branch was invited to present one of Watchman's
Cult Awareness Conferences in April, 1995,
at the prominent Calvary Baptist Church in Clearwater, Florida, a major
center for Scientology's land-based operations. He was met with an
attack by Scientology that included protesters at the airport and people
following him wherever he went. Here is his account:
At the conference, during the session on Scientology, Scientologists
were outside videotaping everyone who came into the church and handing
out slanderous propaganda. Inside the church Scientologists would
periodically stand up and shout out, sometimes even cursing, to disrupt
the meeting.
Included in their propaganda distribution was the notorious Scientology
tabloid Freedom. In it I was called a "huckster for bigotry,"
a liar, and accused of being involved in "violent and illegal 'deprogramming.'"
In that connection, Freedom also falsely accused me of conspiring
with the Cult Awareness Network for the conference, and charged that "Many
CAN members and associates have faced criminal charges on a wide variety
of offenses, including kidnapping, rape, assault, unlawful imprisonment
and possession of cocaine." These charges are ludicrous.
This was not the first time Scientology had used such tactics against
me. Several years ago I was involved in an unsuccessful voluntary
exit-counseling session with a young woman in The
International Church of Christ. Following those meetings, someone
who claimed to represent the Church of Scientology approached the woman,
asking her to sign as her own, a false written account of her counseling
sessions with me.
The false account, which portrayed me as abusive, was obviously intended
for defamatory, discrediting, possibly even incriminating use against me.
Though I did not successfully persuade the young lady to leave the ICC,
and therefore one might have expected her to harbor some resentment toward
me, she refused to sign the Scientologist's false fabrication (legal affidavits
on file). Later, the false story made its way into two cult publications,
one by the International Church of Christ (Upside Down, Issue 4-5,
1993, pp. 42-45), the other in a Frederick Lenz (Zen Master Rama) publication
(The Deprogramming Network and Its Impact on the Advanced Systems, Inc.,
Seminar Program, pp. 28-30).
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