The Australian, Wed 06 Oct 1965, p13?
The Victorian board of inquiry into scientology sat for 160 days, heard four million words of evidence, cost £37,500, listed 621 exhibits, and received thousands of magazines and letters as documentary material.
The inquiry was conducted by a leading Melbourne barrister, Mr K. V. Anderson, QC.
The first sitting took place on December 6, 1963, and the final sitting on April 21 this year.
During the inquiry the board visited scientology centres in Melbourne, inspected files, and watched closed circuit television demonstrations of scientology processing.
The founder of scientology, Mr L. R. Hubbard, did not attend the inquiry, which was conducted for the scientologists by Mr Peter Roger Williams, described as the continental director of scientology for Australia, New Zealand and Oceania.
Sittings were held in open session and in camera. There were 151 witnesses, including some of Victoria's leading doctors.
"The board has been unable to find any worthwhile redeeming features in scientology.
"While making an appeal to the public as a worthy system whereby intelligence and personality may be improved, it employs techniques which further its real purpose of securing domination over the mental enslavement of its adherents.
"It involves the administration by persons without any training in medicine or psychology of quasi-psychological treatment which is harmful - medically, morally and socially.
"Its founder, with the merest smattering of knowledge in various sciences, has built upon the scintilla of his learning a crazy and dangerous edifice.
"The Hubbard Association of Scientologists International (HASI) claims to be 'the world's largest mental health organisation.'
What it really is, however, is the world's largest organisation of unqualified persons engaged in the practice of dangerous techniques which masquerade as mental therapy.
"Its practitioners are more dangerous because of their spurious air of competence and the tremendous amount of misdirected energy which has gone into promoting the organisation and devising of techniques, the mentally crippling qualities of which are clevery concealed.
"Few, if any, of these dedicated scientologists whom the board heard and saw seemed to be conscious they were perpetrating a fraud masterminded by its founder, Hubbard. They seemed to be deluded, mistaken and almost innocent tools.
"The overall picture of scientology is one of grave disquiet."
The report gives details of the training of people from many parts of the world, including Australia and New Zealand, at the home in England of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, the founder of scientology.
"Many scientology techniques beyond the elementary stages are essentially those of command or authoritative hypnosis, and they are potentially dangerous to mental health," it says.
Scientology is administered by "auditors" - those who have reached the state of "clear" mind. A "preclear" is a person taking scientology who has not reached the stage of having an unaberated state of mind.
During the inquiry the board saw through closed circuit television a woman "preclear" being processed by an "auditor."
"At the end of the session she (the woman preclear) said she had made gains. Nine days after the demonstration session this preclear was admitted as a patient to the care of the Mental Health Authority.
"The board is appalled at the realisation that it witnessed this unfortunate woman being processed into insanity.
"Subsequently a psychiatrist witness who read the transcript of this woman's demonstration session gave evidence that her behavior in the session indicated clearly she was in a state of mania rather than ecstasy, which would have been readily apparent to a psychiatrist."
The report says there is no evidence of blackmail in the popular sense, but a big potential for the misuse of the intimate secrets and confessions placed on file.
Copies of these confessions from "processed" people were also held in Hubbard's house, Saint Hill Manor, in England.
The appeal of scientology is sometimes deliberately directed towards the weak, the anxious, the disappointed, the in-
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themselves, who are in some cases are mentally unwell, says the report.
At other times, the appeal is directed at university and senior school students, ambitious business men and women, public servants, schoolteachers and housewives.
Advertisements for scientology make extravagant promises and unjustified claims, the report says.
Dealing with other auditing sessions, the report says:
"The evidence and the processing files reveal that the preclear is very frequently experienceing mental torture, which shows itself in contorted and flushed features, tears, moaning, inability to speak, apparent deafness, nausea, dizziness, sensations of pain, coma and unconsciousness.
"One witness said he almost killed his auditor, a close personal friend, who was questioning him about the withholds he had as to 'sexy thoughts' concerning a female staff member.
"The witness said he aimed a judo blow at the auditor and checked himself just in time to avoid inflicting injury.
"Sometimes preclears are so distraught that they scream, develop murderous feelings, have bouts of anger, grief and morbid feelings and thoughts; their sexual passions are aroused, they act insanely, laugh hysterically and engage in other hysterical behavior."
The processing frequently leads to discussion between the preclear and the auditor of the preclear's most intimate sexual secrets and behavior, says the report.
"At times the preclear frequently develops sexual urges towards the auditor, if of the opposite sex.
"In auditing sessions, where the preclear is not allowed to have inhibitions or to show reticence or reluctance to revealing and discussing the most intimate things, sexual matters are frequently discussed at length and in startling detail and sexual feelings are aroused and dwelt upon."
The report says evidence showed that lax or even low standards of morality existed at the Melbourne scientology clinic.
Abortion was a regular coffee break topic and some of the female staff members, married and unmarried, had had abortions.
"Scientology theories are in part at least responsible for the distorted attitude of scientologists towards sexual matters, for it is argued among some scientologists that to seduce a girl of say 15 years of age would be of no moment, for the thetan has had many sexual experiences and really such a girl would be 76 trillion and 15 years old.
"It is said among scientologists that if a girl of 15 years was to be
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ual relations at that age it would be because she had some enormous overt on sex in a past life.
"On this basis, a particular scientologist may well have considered it of little account that he was living as man and wife with a young girl of 15 or 16 years, who at the age of 17 was a staff auditor at the HASI."
"In session, the barriers to intimate sexual revelation are down and teenage female auditors discuss the most intimate and disgusting sexual matters with their male preclears; and it would seem there is little restraint on conversation between the staff on such matters.
"One female preclear, whose husband was a staff member, revealed in auditing either a real or imagined 'affair' with another scientologist.
"In the course of office routine, the preclear's file came to her husband, who, reading of the 'affair', merely endorsed the file 'lacks morals.'
"Part of the scientology technique is not to allow the preclear ever to achieve complete fulfilment of his aims, and the preclear who has obtained good results is told that he could do better, and is left with the guilty feeling he has not done his best.
"The feelings of guilt are thus accentuated by encouraging the preclear to find fault and further
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procedure is common in brainwashing techniques."
Many individuals pay large sums of money to scientology, says the report. Amounts of over £1000 are not uncommon.
The hourly rates for processing ranged from 4½ guineas downwards.
For the six years ended June 30, 1964, the gross income of the Melbourne scientology clinics was £273,000, of which a flat levy of 10 per cent was sent to Hubbard's headquarters in England.
"Many of the theories and teachings of scientology are so fanciful that the reaction of the normal individual on hearing them is generally one of amusement and incredulity.
"On this account the impression may exist in the community that scientology is just harmless nonsense and its followers merely queer people, that its theories are foolish but funny and that not much harm is being done by allowing silly people to have their silly beliefs and carry on their silly practices.
"Such an attitude is welcomed by the scientologists, for it serves to obscure the real nature of scientology.
"A tolerant 'live and let live' attitude is what scientologists fervently desire, for it is on the inertia of a community generated by tolerence and polite disinterest that scientology thrives."
"Many aspects of scientology are on the fringe of existing laws which have not been designed to deal with the particular problems raised by scientology," says the report.
The Committee for Mental Health and Na-
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scientology practitioners had revealed a variety of offences including treason, sedition, blasphemy, assault and conspiracy, but the proof which often existed was difficult to obtain.
"The board does not consider the problems which scientology presents may be appropriately dealt with by invoking criminal law."
Mr Anderson, QC, in his report recommends a Psychologists' Registration Board in Victoria.
The board would control the activities of psychologists, but exemptions would be made for those legally qualified, or engaged on recognised social work.
There would be a long list of exemptions to guard against too narrow a category of people legally allowed to practice as psychologists.
Mr Anderson expresses concern about the existence of files in the Melbourne scientology centre. These files contain the most intimate and personal secrets of people who have been "processed."
"Preclears could be constrained to return to their earlier allegiance to scientology, and in some hands, files could be used for the purposes of blackmail and extortion."
The board could find no way short of legislation to seize the files of the centre but copies of files were also kept in England at Hubbard's house.
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curb scientology in Victoria could not be fully effective while it was allowed to flourish in other states.
"Unless some action is taken it is unlikely that the fortunes of scientology in Victoria will remain at their present low ebb for very long.
"Hubbard is very resilient, his organisation is international, large, efficient and powerful and can comfortably absorb the reverse which it is presently suffering in Victoria.
"For many people dalliance in scientology has been an unhappy interlude.
"Very often, persons in scientology have been, and still are, normal people who have lapsed into gullibility and have had disquieting experiences without which they would have been far better off.
"It is unfair to ostracise or otherwise punish these innocent victims of scientology's deception.
"The fervent prayer of many who resisted the urge to sample scientology should be 'There, but for the grace of God, go I'." says the report.
[photo, apparently from Scientology doorway] THE Scientology sign, hung outside the organisation's headquarters directly opposite the portals of the Victorian Parliament.
The building is the Melbourne headquarters of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists International - otherwise known as the Melbourne scientology centre, the subject of the damning scientology report tabled in the Victorian Parliament last night.
Before long, it seems, the scientologists will be taking down their sign, and their window displays which offer free tests, and moving out.
One of the heaviest items to shift would be a larger-than-life bronze bust of Hubbard, which stands in the centre's reception office, little the worse for the damage which the report says was caused by an assault on it by a disturbed scientologist.
The bust is one of many throughout the world to honor Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, described by expert psychiatrists as showing long-standing symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, with delusions of grandeur.
Hubbard, aged 54, was raised on a ranch in Montana, and during his late childhood he travelled in the Orient with his father, a United States naval officer.
His travels in the East aroused in him an interest in Eastern philosophies, and he learned of Buddhist and other teachings from fakirs and yogas.
Between 1932 and 1941 he travelled in central America and developed as a prolific writer of books of fiction, travel, science fiction and fantasy.
In 1958 Hubbard moved to Engand, and the Manor House at Saint Hill, Sussex, now the mecca of his followers, is used for refresher courses and advanced courses for experimental and administrative purposes.
"His early formal education seems to have been sporadic," the report says.
"Hubbard was a student at Washington University and claims to have studied engineering there and to have been one of the first men to have studied engineering there and to have been one of the first men to have studied nuclear physics.
"He did not graduate there. Although he uses the letters P.S. and C.E. he has no such qualifications."
He claims to have "many degrees," but only one "university deagree," which is identified as a Doctrate of Philosophy at the Sequoia University, Southern California.
The report says this suspect degree and a self-bestowed doctorate of scientology enable Hubbard to describe himself and be described as "Doctor" Hubbard.
Hubbard is governing director of Hubbard Association of Scientologists International (HASI).
"Hubbard claims he is always right, that he has all knowledge on all subjects and that he has had supreme experiences, including visits to the Van Allen Belt, Venus, Heaven.
He claims equality with Einstein, Freud, Sir James Jeans and others.
"He has instituted his own calendar, his own dynasty and he grants amnesties as would a potentate," says the report.
"He has a great fear of matter associated with women and has a prurient and compulsive urge to write in the most disgusting and derogatory way on such subjects as abortions, intercourse, rape, sadism, perversion and abandonment.
"Hubbard is a fraud and scientology is a fraud."
Agitation in the Melbourne Truth sparked off the inquiry and the medical men supported it. The report of the inquiry is a scathing, outspoken attack on scientology.
The Victorian Government is certain to act harshly and swiftly to bring Hubbard's once-lucrative empire in Victoria to an ignominous end.