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.