December 1, 1997
Scientology Faces Glare of Scrutiny After Florida
Parishioner's Death
In This Article The Commitment:
Strong Beliefs And Large Donations The
Collapse: A Roller Coaster Barrels Downward The Death: From A Hotel Room To An
Emergency Room The Aftermath: An
Investigation Expands, And A Lawsuit Follows
Related Article In
Clearwater, Fla., Grudges Against Scientology Are Slow to
Die
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ
CLEARWATER,
Fla. -- Late on a November afternoon two years ago, a
36-year-old Scientologist named Lisa McPherson was
involved in a minor traffic accident. She was not
injured, but she inexplicably stripped off her clothes
and began to walk naked down the street. A paramedic
rushed her into an ambulance and asked why she had taken
off her clothes. Ms. McPherson replied: "I wanted
help. I wanted help."
She was taken to a nearby hospital for a psychiatric
examination, but several Scientologists arrived and
explained that their religion opposes psychiatry. Ms.
McPherson asked to leave and, against medical advice, she
was released into the care of the Scientologists.
Seventeen days later, after being kept under 24-hour
watch at a Scientology-owned hotel in downtown
Clearwater, Ms. McPherson was dead. By church accounts,
she had spit out food, banged violently on the walls of
her room and hallucinated. The county medical examiner
said Ms. McPherson was deprived of water for at least her
last 5 to 10 days and died of a blood clot brought on by
severe dehydration.
Church officials denied responsibility for the death
and challenged the medical examiner's findings. But the
image of a healthy young businesswoman slipping into
dementia and dying inside the Church of Scientology's
landmark building here has rekindled deep suspicions in
this serene retirement community, which for two decades
has been the unlikely spiritual headquarters of one of
the world's most-debated churches.
Since moving here in 1975, Scientology has bought $32
million worth of property, mostly downtown, and its 1,000
staff members are seen on every downtown corner in their
distinctive naval-type uniforms. Its parishioners own
dozens of businesses, and devotees come from around the
world each year to take upper-level Scientology courses
available only in Clearwater.
But despite its efforts to join the mainstream here
and abroad, the Church of Scientology has never
completely overcome the distrust and fear generated by
its clandestine arrival in Clearwater more than 20 years
ago. Only later was it discovered that Scientology had
come here with a written plan to take control of the city
and silence anyone who got in its way. Today, although
the plan failed, suspicion runs so high that the police
assign an intelligence officer to monitor the
organization, and detectives are now concluding a
two-year criminal investigation into Ms. McPherson's
death.
Even as it illuminates the church's relationship with
this Gulf Coast city, an examination of Ms. McPherson's
life and death, including a review of church records and
other documents from a lawsuit filed by her family, also
offers an unusually rich look into the world of one
Scientologist. It shows how virtually every aspect of her
life -- work, friendships, relationships with family
members, even choices of vacation spots -- was influenced
by the church.
It also shows the financial demands Scientology places
on its members, and the tremendous value to the church of
the landmark decision by the Internal Revenue Service in
1993 to grant tax-exempt status to Scientology.
Ms. McPherson worked at a business owned by
Scientologists and spent so much of her salary on church
courses that she had to borrow from her employer to keep
up with her studies in church doctrine, according to
documents provided to The New York Times by lawyers for
the family. She was able to deduct the payments for those
courses from her taxes, but when she got her refund from
the federal government, it was turned immediately over to
her employers to pay for more courses.
Since receiving tax-exempt status, Scientology has
waged a campaign to persuade members to increase
contributions and take advantage of the deduction.
For 25 years, the IRS had considered Scientology a
commercial enterprise and refused to give it the tax
exemption granted to churches. The refusals had been
upheld by every court. The agency reversed its position
after a campaign by the church that involved lawsuits,
the use of private detectives to investigate IRS
officials and a meeting between the church leader and the
IRS commissioner.
The financial pressure on members of Scientology is
one reason critics worldwide describe the church as a
cult and money machine intended to bilk the faithful, who
pay large sums to undergo counseling sessions. This is
the primary reason given by the German government for
refusing to recognize Scientology as a religion.
Beyond the financial issues, the circumstances
surrounding Ms. McPherson's death raise questions about
whether the church's handling of her medical treatment,
particularly its failure, for philosophical reasons, to
provide psychiatric care, contributed to her death.
For their part, church officials and lawyers said the
death was accidental, the result of an undetected blood
clot. They accused the Police Department of a vendetta
and said the police would not have investigated Ms.
McPherson's death were she not a Scientologist.
Echoing the same stance they have taken in struggles
with governments around the world, church officials said
that the days of covert attacks on critics of the church
were long over and that Scientology simply wanted to be a
good neighbor. They recite a list of civic projects, from
sponsoring Boy Scout troops to running a winter carnival
to raise food for the poor.
"Our goal is to be able to work with the
community on community activities, to help the city and
help the people in the community to survive better,"
said Ben Shaw, director of external affairs for
Scientology. "I think we have accomplished that in a
lot of ways, with a lot of people."
Some remain unconvinced, and the sometimes-sordid
details surrounding the death of Ms. McPherson have fed
their anxieties.
"The death of Lisa McPherson reaffirms that what
we heard 20 years ago was true and I have not heard or
seen anything to make me think they have changed,"
said Clearwater's mayor, Rita Garvey, who won a fourth
term last year over an opponent backed by Scientologists.
"They may be here, but I'm not going to accept it. I
refuse to meet with them."
The Commitment: Strong Beliefs And
Large Donations
Certainly in her progression within
Scientology, Ms. McPherson gave more to her church than
average Americans donate to traditional churches. In the
last two years of her life, she paid $97,000 for
Scientology courses with names like "Wall of
Fire" and "New Life Rundown." The payments
amounted to 40 percent of her earnings.
Because of the IRS decision, Ms. McPherson
could deduct her payments as charitable gifts. In 1994,
her payments of $55,767 led to a $17,500 tax refund,
which, records turned over in the family's lawsuit show,
Ms. McPherson signed over to pay for more Scientology
courses.
Scientology officials and lawyers said it
was possible to advance within the church without paying
large sums and they scoffed at the idea that there was
anything unusual about Ms. McPherson's donations.
"She was a 36-year-old woman who had
been a Scientologist for 13 years, and she could give
whatever she wanted," said Laura L. Vaughan, one of
20 lawyers hired by the church to deal with the McPherson
investigation and the wrongful-death suit brought by her
family. "There are a lot of people who give a heck
of a lot of money to the church."
Ms. McPherson's links to the church went
beyond her donations. Like many Scientologists, she made
the church her life.
She was a sales representative for a small
business owned by Scientologists and operated according
to the management theories of the church founder, L. Ron
Hubbard. Many of her co-workers and friends were
Scientologists and, when she fell behind her goals at
work, she submitted to Scientology techniques aimed at
working through her problems.
In keeping with the church's belief that
people live many lifetimes, Ms. McPherson signed what
Scientology calls a "billion-year contract," as
a member of the Sea Organization, Scientology's elite
staff group. Although she later resigned from the staff,
she remained a devout Scientologist. And when her life
began to fall apart, she turned her back on conventional
medical treatment and sought refuge in Scientology.
"For members who are deeply involved,
Scientology becomes a totalistic institution," said
Stephen A. Kent, a sociologist at the University of
Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, who has studied the
organization. "It provides them with everything from
occupation, pseudo-medical treatments, entertainment and
a justice system to an overarching purpose for their
lives."
Ms. McPherson joined Scientology in 1982
in her hometown of Dallas. Eleven years later, she
arrived in Clearwater, part of the wave of pilgrims to a
city that, for reasons that remain unclear, Hubbard
selected as his mecca.
Ms. McPherson's employer, AMC Publishing
Co., moved its operation from Dallas to be closer to
Scientology. AMC, which sells promotional material to the
insurance industry, is one of dozens of businesses here
that belong to the World Institute of Scientology
Enterprises, which uses the acronym WISE. These
businesses operate according to Hubbard's management
theories and pay a fee to Scientology, usually 10 percent
of annual earnings.
They often follow Scientology methods in
dealing with discipline and other workplace issues, and
employees are encouraged to take church courses.
Scientology describes itself as the only
major new church to emerge in the 20th century and boasts
eight million followers worldwide, though critics put the
number at far less. Though its main offices are in Los
Angeles and Clearwater, the church maintains missions in
many foreign countries, including Germany and Britain.
Its founder, Hubbard, said people were immortal spirits
who have lived through many lifetimes and accumulated
traumatic memories that are obstacles to achieving their
full potential.
Adherents believe that those afflictions
can be eliminated through a series of counseling courses,
known as auditing. Most of the courses involve detailed
questioning about Scientology and the members' lives, by
church ministers who monitor responses with a crude lie
detector they call an E-meter. The result, after years of
courses, is an individual who is "clear" of
problems.
In Clearwater, Ms. McPherson thrived at
first. In 1994, she wrote to an uncle that she was doing
well and meeting stiff targets at work. She was so
successful that she earned commissions of $136,812.
And, on a personal level, she was
repairing long-ruptured relations with her mother,
Fannie, back in Dallas. In a family videotape from Dec.
31, 1994, Ms. McPherson laughs and chats with cousins in
an easy Texas drawl as they prepare for a New Year's
party.
"Fannie had finally decided that she
just had to ignore the Scientology part if she wanted a
relationship with Lisa and they had been getting along so
well," Dell Liebreich, one of Lisa's aunts, recalled
recently as she sifted through a box of her niece's
belongings at her home in Yantis, 80 miles east of
Dallas.
Despite her income, Ms. McPherson lived
frugally. She shared a $695-a-month apartment with a
roommate and bought little jewelry or furniture. But no
expense was spared when it came to Scientology.
Church financial records turned over in
the family's lawsuit show that Ms. McPherson paid $55,767
for Scientology courses in 1994 and contributed $41,924
in 1995.
The Collapse: A Roller Coaster Barrels
Downward
The final year of Ms. McPherson's life was
tumultuous. In Scientology terms, she was "roller
coastering," meaning she was going through emotional
ups and downs. In June 1995, she apparently suffered a
mental breakdown. A report prepared after her death by
the church said, "She caved in and went into a spin
(psychotic break)."
She spent two days recuperating at the
Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, the church's primary
retreat. Her payments to the church fell sharply, but
within a month she had resumed paying thousands of
dollars a week for courses.
Her commissions at work remained low,
however, and she borrowed from her employers to pay for
the courses. AMC payroll records show that Ms. McPherson
borrowed more than $33,000 in 1995, and paid the same
amounts to the church for courses.
By September, she apparently had recovered
enough to reach the coveted status of clear. Photographs
of her award ceremony show Ms. McPherson beaming, and she
wrote passionate letters of thanks to fellow
Scientologists.
But the roller coaster was headed down. In
late October, she was on the telephone to her mother,
sobbing that she had let down her group at work, her aunt
said.
Two weeks later, she telephoned Kelly
Davis, a childhood friend in Dallas, and said she was
going home to stay, by Christmas at the latest, Ms. Davis
said. In a sworn deposition, Ms. Davis said she
interpreted Ms. McPherson's remarks to mean that she was
leaving the church.
Her aunt, Mrs. Liebreich, said the family
also thought that Ms. McPherson was considering leaving
Scientology. Church lawyers said she had no intention of
leaving the fold. Instead of planning on Christmas in
Dallas, the lawyers said, Ms. McPherson had made
reservations for a holiday cruise aboard Freewinds, a
ship owned by the church.
She never went home or on the cruise.
About dusk on Nov. 18, 1995, Ms. McPherson
was driving her 1993 Jeep in Clearwater when she struck a
boat being towed by a car that had stopped for an earlier
accident. Damage was minor and paramedics at the scene
examined Ms. McPherson and found her uninjured.
Then she took off her clothes and began to
walk along the street. Bonita Ann Portolano, one of the
paramedics, helped her into the ambulance. Mrs. Portolano
said Ms. McPherson was muttering about not needing a body
to live and said she had taken off her clothes because
she wanted help.
In a later deposition, Mrs. Portolano
estimated that Ms. McPherson weighed 155 pounds.
"She was a very healthy person, just
voluptuous," the paramedic said.
After Ms. McPherson was taken to a nearby
hospital, seven Scientologists, including some senior
officials arrived. She refused psychiatric treatment and
said she would not harm herself, and she was released
into the care of her fellow parishioners.
Although Scientologists do accept medical
treatment, Ms. McPherson was following the church's
conviction in rejecting psychiatric care. Church
literature says psychiatrists were paid by the government
to denounce Scientology as a hoax when Hubbard, a
successful science fiction writer, began the church in
1954.
In 1969, the church created the Citizens
Commission on Human rights, which was supposed to expose
and eradicate "human rights abuses by
psychiatry." In January 1974, Hubbard wrote a paper
describing what he called the "Introspection
Rundown" for treating people who suffer mental
breakdowns. He said that the technique "possibly
ranks with the major discoveries of the 20th
century" and that it would do away with psychiatry.
The first step is to isolate the people
who suffer breakdowns to protect them and others. No one
is allowed to speak to the people or within their
hearing, except to deliver lessons supposed to locate and
correct the problems that led to the breakdown.
The Death: From A Hotel Room To An
Emergency Room
Lisa McPherson spent her final days in
isolation in Room 174 at the rear of the Fort Harrison
Hotel. A church lawyer initially described her stay to a
local reporter as restful, and he said she had received
no medical treatment.
But 33 pages of handwritten logs tell a
far bleaker tale. The logs were released this summer on
orders from the judge hearing the McPherson estate's
lawsuit.
Scientology staff members who monitored
Ms. McPherson 24 hours a day kept them, and the notes
depict a woman whose mental condition deteriorated
rapidly and whose health began to fail well before she
died.
Two days into her stay, the logs recount
Ms. McPherson spitting out food and vomiting. The fourth
day, she was ashen-faced and feverish. She was often
described as violent, striking her attendants and banging
on the walls.
She soiled herself and hallucinated that
she was Hubbard. One of the logs indicated that she tried
to leave the room, but church lawyers say that she was
not restrained. Rather, Ms. Vaughan, one of the lawyers,
said, she was incapable of caring for herself.
Among those who cared for her was Dr.
Janis Johnson, a member of the church medical office. Dr.
Johnson is a physician who is not licensed to practice in
Florida and had agreed to restrictions on her medical
license in Arizona in 1993 after two hospitals questioned
her use of prescription drugs.
On Dec. 1, 1995, Dr. Johnson administered
a prescription sleep medication to Ms. McPherson, and
left written instructions that Ms. McPherson be given two
liters of liquid when she awoke.
Kennan Dandar, the lawyer for the
McPherson estate, said two liters was a substantial
amount of liquid and that the instructions were an
indication that Ms. McPherson was in need of immediate
medical attention.
"They should have taken her to the
hospital immediately," Dandar said. "Instead,
they kept her there until she died."
Notes for Dec. 2 and 3 indicate that Ms.
McPherson drank some liquids and was coherent at times.
Scientology officials said they could not find the notes
for the final two days of her life.
On the evening of Dec. 5, Ms. McPherson's
condition had deteriorated to the point that Dr. Johnson
sought outside help.
Records indicate that about 7 p.m. she
telephoned a Scientologist who was working as an
emergency room doctor at a hospital in New Port Richey,
Fla., 45 minutes from Clearwater. Dr. Johnson and another
church staff member took Ms. McPherson to the New Port
Richey hospital, passing four other hospitals.
When they arrived, hospital records and
court files show, Ms. McPherson had no pulse. She was
pronounced dead after 20 minutes of resuscitation
efforts.
"She was thin, she was unkempt,
dirty, just not taken care of," said the emergency
room nurse who helped to try to revive Ms. McPherson.
Because it was an unattended death, an
autopsy was done, it found that Ms. McPherson, who was
5-foot-9, weighed 108 pounds and that she had scratches
and bruises on her hands and arms. The cause of death was
listed as a thromboembolism, or blood clot, in her left
pulmonary artery.
Severe dehydration and bed rest caused the
clot, the autopsy said. A police inquiry was started, as
a matter of routine.
The Aftermath: An Investigation
Expands, And A Lawsuit Follows
In January, Dr. Joan Wood, the county
medical examiner, appeared on "Inside Edition,"
the syndicated television program. Saying that she was
speaking out because of misinformation from the church,
Wood said the autopsy indicated that Ms. McPherson had
gone without water for at least 5 to 10 days, and
possibly longer.
She said Ms. McPherson had been
unconscious for the last 24 to 48 hours of her life and
that the scratches on her arms were cockroach bites.
"This is the most severe case of dehydration I've
ever seen," she said.
The church hired its own medical experts.
Its lead lawyers in the criminal case, Ms. Vaughan and
Lee Fugate, said in an interview that those experts
disagreed with Dr. Wood. By their account, the church's
doctors determined that Ms. McPherson's death was
unrelated to her stay at the retreat. The lawyers
declined to identify the experts.
They also said that the county pathologist
who performed the autopsy disagreed with some of Dr.
Wood's findings and that the lawyers disputed the
paramedic's estimate that Ms. McPherson weighed 155
pounds the day of the accident.
"A Scientologist can refuse
psychiatric treatment and be treated in accordance with
her own religious beliefs," Ms. Vaughan said.
"And while that may not be easily understandable by
someone who is not a Scientologist, it is part and parcel
of their basic makeup, their religion and their belief.
When the competent medical testimony comes forward, what
you will have is a woman who died an accidental death
from a pulmonary embolism."
In February, the McPherson family sued the
church on behalf of Lisa McPherson's estate. The suit
claimed that Ms. McPherson was held against her will and
died after slipping into a coma.
About the same time, the Clearwater police
expanded their investigation. Over the last 10 months,
detectives have interviewed dozens of Scientologists and
outside experts on the church.
Police officials declined to discuss their
findings, but the results are expected to be turned over
to the prosecutors this month.
State Attorney Bernie McCabe, the chief
prosecutor for the county, will decide whether criminal
charges are warranted. Before making his decision, McCabe
said in an interview, he will take the unusual step of
allowing Scientology's lawyers to present the results of
their investigation, including analyses by several
forensic pathologists.
"Does it happen every day that the
defense presents its evidence before charges are
filed?" McCabe said. "No. But not to avail
yourself of an opportunity to review the defense's
evidence before making a decision would be foolish."
In Texas, Dell Liebreich waits impatiently
for the decision.
She took over the suit after Ms.
McPherson's mother died of cancer earlier this year. Her
lawyer, Dandar, tells her that the outcome of the
criminal inquiry will not affect the suit, but Mrs.
Liebreich said she wanted people held accountable for the
death of her niece. "They murdered her, and we don't
want it to happen to someone else," she said.