L. Ron Hubbard's Great-grandson slams Scientology as 'dangerous cult'
- Calls Scientology 'absolute poison'
- Hunted down, investigated and had phone tapped by church
- Claims founder L. Ron Hubbard spent his final days unhinged, lost and surrounded by 'dark security forces'
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Jamie DeWolf, the great-grandson of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, has come out with new explosive claims against the church and its controversial founder.
And it's not pretty.
'My family sees Scientology as absolute poison,' says Jamie DeWolf. 'It’s a dangerous cult.'
Jamie DeWolf, left, the great-grandson of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, right, has come out with new explosive claims against the church
He says that the church's influence undoubtedly lead to the break up of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' family as well
DeWolf’s great-grandfather, L. Ron Hubbard, created Scientology, and his grandfather, L. Ron Hubbard Jr., was a high-ranking member for most of his life.
'But he became disgusted about what he was seeing behind the curtain, so he left,' DeWolf tells the New York Post. 'For the rest of his life, he was hunted. And he couldn’t even have a relationship with his father.'
DeWolf says the Scientology founder 'became more and more unhinged in his last days. He was lost in his own little wonderland, surrounded by this armada, this dark security force. He was totally lost.'
When DeWolf was 8, he found a picture of his great-grandfather in a book about cults.
'Then I started to ask questions,' he said. 'Then I started to learn about this darker legacy.'
He claims that the church is dangerous cult
Mr DeWolf said that he never met his great-grandfather and had never been a member of the church
DeWolf, who was raised Baptist Christian, was warned about publicly admitting his connection to the group.
'My uncle said it was like poking a sleeping dog,' DeWolf said. 'The Scientologists didn’t know who I was or where I was, so why should I take the risk? My family was very wary.'
When he finally did come forward to share his story, DeWolf claims the Scientologists hunted him down.
'I had private investigators following me,' he said. 'It’s possible my phone line had been tapped. They fight nasty. Part of it actually is a certain malicious glee in going after their targets.'
He said it was definitely the cause for the split between Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.
'The more [Katie] saw behind the curtain,” he’s said, “the more horrified that she probably was.'
Mr DeWolf is grandson of Ron DeWolf, L. Ron Hubbard's eldest son, pictured left holding Jamie's mother
DeWolf said he has met people over the years that have shared similar stories with him.
'I’ve met people who’ve had 20 years of their lives utterly destroyed by this cult,' he said. 'They have relatives they can’t speak to any more, lost their kids, lost their house. It’s become very serious to me.
For me to even speak out on my own genetic legacy and to be aware that I could absolutely threatened and hunted for that, that really emboldened me. I’m not gonna die with these secrets and they should be exposed.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2264888/Great-grandson-L-Ron-Hubbard-slams-Scientology-dangerous-cult.html#ixzz2IQLVc1xn
L. Ron Hubbard’s great-grandson: Scientology is 'a dangerous cult,' 'absolute poison'
- Last Updated: 4:05 PM, January 18, 2013
- Posted: 3:54 PM, January 18, 2013
L. Ron Hubbard’s great-grandson says Scientology is a “dangerous cult” that ruined his grandfather’s life and cast a dark shadow on his family.
“My family sees Scientology as absolute poison,” Jamie DeWolf tells Page Six. “It’s a dangerous cult.”
DeWolf’s great-grandfather, L. Ron Hubbard, created Scientology, and his grandfather, L. Ron Hubbard Jr., was a high-ranking member for most of his life.
“But he became disgusted about what he was seeing behind the curtain, so he left,” DeWolf says. “For the rest of his life, he was hunted. And he couldn’t even have a relationship with his father.”
The Scientology founder “became more and more unhinged in his last days,” DeWolf claims. “He was lost in his own little wonderland, surrounded by this armada, this dark security force. He was totally lost.”
L. Ron Jr. changed his name and moved away so he could try to disentangle his family from his church, and the family’s dark history was rarely mentioned as DeWolf grew up.
“I had a natural affinity towards being a writer, and my family supported that and made reference to the fact that my great-grandfather was a famous writer,” he reveals. “They would show me his science fiction books but did not mention Scientology. In some ways, he was a very early role model for me.”
But when DeWolf found a picture of his great-grandfather in a book about cults around age 8, he says, “Then I started to ask questions. Then I started to learn about this darker legacy.”
DeWolf, now a writer and performer, has recently started disentangling his family’s messy past in his work, including a performed piece called “The God and the Man,” and others on his Web site. But even though he was raised Baptist Christian and never had anything to do with the church, his family warned him about mentioning it in public.
“My uncle said it was like poking a sleeping dog,” DeWolf laughs. “The Scientologists didn’t know who I was or where I was, so why should I take the risk? My family was very wary.”
And rightly so, it turned out. “Immediately they came after me and came to my door and were hunting me down,” he remembers. “They had a whole cover story. They told people that they did a show with me and that they were promoters, fellow poets and artists.”
“They were just lying to everybody,” he says. “I had private investigators following me. It’s possible my phone line had been tapped. They fight nasty. Part of it actually is a certain malicious glee in going after their targets.”
But people in Scientology, he says, have it much worse. DeWolf has said that that reality probably even contributed to the Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes split. “The more [Katie] saw behind the curtain,” he’s said, “the more horrified that she probably was.” And that dark truth is why he speaks out.
“The more that I perform, and especially in the last two three years, I’ve met people who’ve had 20 years of their lives utterly destroyed by this cult,” he says. “They have relatives they can’t speak to any more, lost their kids, lost their house. It’s become very serious to me. For me to even speak out on my own genetic legacy and to be aware that I could absolutely threatened and hunted for that, that really emboldened me. I’m not gonna die with these secrets and they should be exposed.”
(The Church of Scientology has previously rejected DeWolf’s claims, saying: “Despite his public representations and self-promotion, Mr. DeWolf is not knowledgeable about the Church of Scientology or its founder.”)
Nicole Kidman: "I can't talk about Scientology because of my children"
Handbag.com – 19 hours ago
Nicole Kidman has admitted she will never reveal her true thoughts about Scientology because of her children.
The actress adopted Isabella and Conor when she was married to Tom Cruise and the kids are still firm believers.
Nicole said, "I've chosen not to speak publicly about Scientology."
"I have two children who are Scientologists - Connor and Isabella - and I utterly respect their beliefs."
Nicole and Tom were married for 11 years before their highly-publicised 2001 divorce.
Tom is seen as one of Scientology's most high-profile star and is an avid supporter of the controversial religion.
It is thought his marriage with Katie Holmes ended last year because of his beliefs!
Book review: ‘Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief’ by Lawrence Wright
Americans have a suspicion, justified or not, of unfamiliar faiths. We like our spirituality comfy and upbeat, suitable for summarizing on a Hallmark card. Newfangled religions, outre theology, secret rituals — these are threatening and titillating in equal measure; the more a religion’s leaders block or deflect reporters’ probes, the more the public wants to know (and the more sinister the faith can seem).
Mormonism has suffered most recently and obviously from this bias. Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election because he was the lesser candidate; still, it couldn’t have helped that every time he stood before a crowd in his banker’s suit, the television audience was yearning for X-ray glasses, the better with which to see his sacred undergarments.
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(Knopf/Knopf) - ”Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief” by Lawrence Wright
Scientology has been a target, too, of much derision. Its founder was the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who once told an employee that his adherents wanted him to appear in the sky over New York but that he declined, not wishing to overwhelm them. Its theology is built on the nuttiest of founding myths, involving incidents that Hubbard said occurred 75 million years ago in something called the Galactic Confederacy, in which an evil overlord named Xenu sent human souls (thetans, in Scientology jargon) to Earth in space planes resembling DC-8s.
Scientology’s elite corps of clergy belongs to something called Sea Org, whose purposes and activities are shrouded in secrecy. Andits most famous practitioner, Tom Cruise, has come across in recent years as domineering, overzealous and cracked.
The many endnotes in Lawrence Wright’s book on the church, “Going Clear,” are the first clue that this author is not fooling around. Sixnotes explain facts on the introduction’s first page, and they multiply from there, 40 pages worth, wedged between the bibliography and the acknowledgments, not including the footnotes in the text itself, which signal “he said, she said”-type differences of opinion and feature boilerplate denials from lawyers and publicists. (One of my favorites reads, in part, “Cruise’s attorney says that no Scientology executives set him up with girlfriends, and that no female Scientologist that Cruise dated moved into his home.”)
Scientology has for almost all of its history been one of the most notoriously secretive and litigious religious organizations in the world, its leaders among the most paranoid and obfuscating. In this book, Wright, a staff writer at the New Yorker and winner of a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11,”brings a clear-eyed, investigative fearlessness to Scientology — its history, its theology, its hierarchy — and the result is a rollicking, if deeply creepy, narrative ride, evidence that truth can be stranger even than science fiction.
“Going Clear” starts with exactly the right questions: “What is it that makes the religion alluring? What do its adherents get out of it? How can seemingly rational people subscribe to beliefs that others find incomprehensible?” And in his early chapters, Wright implicitly draws parallels between this religion and those with which readers may be more familiar.
