Jan Eastgate (also known as Janice Meyer), a senior member of the Church of Scientology accused of coaching a child to lie about sex abuse, has had her bail relaxed so she can travel to California.

Outside the Sydney court house her fellow Scientologists violently attacked the media.

The Church of Scientology — a cult marketing quackery and other nonsense under the guise of religion — has just bought itself a bigger pulpit.

KCET-TV has sold its landmark Sunset Boulevard studio to the cult, which plans to use it to counter the mostly negative flow of news reports about the organization.

A runaway from the Church of Scientology‘s restrictive religious order, the Sea Org, alleges in two lawsuits filed Friday that the church violated California laws regulating child labor, wages and school attendance.

After just two hours of deliberation, an Adams County jury found Rex Fowler guilty of first-degree murder in the slaying of his former business partner.

Paul Haggis is making headlines around the world for denouncing the Church of Scientology, but the Oscar-winning director doesn’t think the rebuke will affect his career — but he is already aware of the consequences.

Rolling Stone has republished the web version of ‘Inside Scientology‘ — its in-depth article on the Scientology cult, first published in 2006.

The article is authored by Janet Reitman, whose publisher today announced the publication of her book titled “Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion.”

Once again the Scientology cult is being exposed to daylight. This time there are reports that the FBI is investigating human trafficking within the cult.

Five former church staffers confirmed to the St. Petersburg Times that the FBI interviewed them individually over the past 15 months about their experiences in the church’s religious order, the Sea Org.

The St. Petersburg Times, which has a lengthy history of exposing the Church of Scientology to daylight reports about a controversial company operated on the management principles of the cult’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard

A Chicago judge will decide this month whether a city code prevents protesters who oppose Scientology’s teachings from expressing their discontent any time the church’s doors are open or only during its conventional Sunday worship service.

Jennifer Hoyle, a spokeswoman for the city’s law department, said that in preparation for the hearing, the city is examining the factors that led to the citation as well as the wording and intent of the ordinance.

For 34 years, thousands of Scientologists traveled to Clearwater and stayed in hotels owned by their church, enjoying a free ride from the 5 percent tourist tax that other visitors pay at Pinellas’ commercial hotels.

But that quietly changed earlier this year.

Pressed by the staff of Pinellas Tax Collector Diane Nelson, the Church of Scientology agreed to start collecting the tourist tax a few months ago and pay it monthly to Nelson’s office, the St. Petersburg Times has learned.

It’s a surprising reversal that will generate significant new revenue for Pinellas’ tourist promotion efforts.

But the change raises questions about another tax that Pinellas hotel guests pay – the 7 percent sales tax. Does the church now collect that tax from its guests too?

The Florida Department of Revenue, which separately administers the sales tax, wouldn’t say, citing state laws that make confidential almost all information about sales-tax payers.

The church, meanwhile, suggested it doesn’t collect sales tax on hotel stays. Read the full story here.

Then, if you haven’t already done so, inoculate yourself against the Scientology cult — which we consider to be a commercial enterprise masquerading as a religion, and acting like a destructive cult.

Vanity Fair asked Scientologist Juliette Lewis whether she celebrates Christmas.

“I’m a Christian! I think there’s so much confusion because people don’t understand a religion where you can be another religion but you can still practice Scientology,” the actress replied.

That’s a standard Scientology claim — and like so many other things that religious cult teaches — total nonsense.

Scientology is incompatible with Christianity because its teachings (not to mention a good many of its practices) violate the essential doctrines of the Christian faith.

The Church of Scientology has been offering alcohol-dependent Aborigines a drug bomb therapy, which it has been told could kill people with kidney problems.

The Scientologists this week responded to a warning by the Northern Territory Health Department and stopped distributing literature which promotes a dangerous drug detoxification therapy.

“This was not an easy book to write. For three years following my departure from the Church of Scientology, I was not able to write anything sensible about my experience. Then gradually, the onion layers of indoctrination started to peel off, one by one, and I began to get some distance and perspective.”

“I knew that I could never tell part of the story; it had to be the whole story or nothing. When I would try to tell people about the abuses I experienced within the Church of Scientology, they would ask me one thing: why had I stayed so long? And understanding that meant telling the whole thing.”

“Once my blog account was completed, my readers and friends encouraged me to expand Counterfeit Dreams to book-length and publish it.”- Jefferson Hawkins

A father claims Narconon International and the Association for Living and Education International are fronts for Scientology, and that he paid them $35,500 for “essentially worthless treatment” for his drug-addicted son.

He says the groups run rehab programs “to enrich themselves and to provide a recruit base for the Church of Scientology rather than to provide competent treatment for chemical dependency.”

The government is urging councils across the country to stop giving hundreds of thousands of pounds in tax breaks to the Church of Scientology.

The communities secretary, Eric Pickles, said a majority of the public did not want the “controversial organisation” to be given the kind of favourable treatment usually reserved for charities and questioned this use of public money.

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