A PRIVATE WAR

Millionaire spending big bucks in battle against Scientology

Jean Marbella - Baltimore Sun

Sunday January 30

Clearwater, Fla. - It’s a modest, two-story office building in a sleepy downtown. But for Bob Minton, it’s the field office for nothing less than a war for the heart and soul of this quiet coastal city.

“We’re going to liberate Clearwater,” Minton declares.

Whether Clearwater needs liberating is open to debate. But after about 25 years of serving, often uneasily, as one of the Church of Scientology’s most important bases in this country, Clearwater finds itself once again drawn into a battle over the controversial group.

Minton, 53, is a retired millionaire from New England who has protested and funded lawsuits against the church, which he says is a cult that has destroyed members’ lives and trampled on the civil rights of its opponents. This month, he brought his fight to the heart of the church’s Clearwater operations by opening a center to distribute information about the group and provide “exit counseling” for members who want to leave.

The Scientology group, founded by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard and perhaps best known for celebrity members such as John Travolta and Tom Cruise, has drawn many detractors over the years, from disenchanted former adherents to the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS fought a decades-long battle with the group before finally restoring its tax-exempt status as a religion.

But Scientology has probably never before come up against someone like Minton, who could be dismissed as just another gadfly if it weren’t for the fact that he seems willing to put considerable money where his mouth is. To date, he estimates that he has spent $2.5 million on his crusade.

“The only difference between me and any other critic,” Minton says, “is I was fortunate enough to make some money to be able to retire early and fight these guys.”

Scientology officials have fought back: Pickets have descended on Minton’s various homes to denounce him as a religious bigot, and he says his family and friends have been harassed. The church sought to block Minton’s center from opening by offering the seller of the building twice the $325,000 that Minton paid.

“They’re here only for one purpose, to harass Scientology,” says Mike Rinder, a spokesman for the group.

Minton’s center is named the Lisa McPherson Trust, to memorialize a Scientologist who died in Clearwater four years ago while in the care of fellow members. The church faces criminal charges in connection with McPherson’s death, and Minton has helped fund a family member’s civil lawsuit against Scientology. Both cases are scheduled to come to trial later this year.

The church, founded in 1954, has long been controversial. Its philosophy is part sci-fi, part self-help: Hubbard wrote that people are spirits who were banished to Earth 75 million years ago by an evil galactic ruler and need to be “cleared” of problems and ailments that they have picked up in previous lives by going through a series of “auditing” sessions with a trained counselor.

But critics say Scientology is actually a business that coerces members to spend tens of thousands of dollars on its literature and to go through auditing. The IRS, in fact, revoked the group’s tax-exempt status in 1967 but reversed the decision 26 years later, after a costly battle in which Scientology launched numerous lawsuits and its own investigation and infiltration of the federal agency.

Scientology bought its first building in Clearwater --- the landmark Fort Harrison Hotel --- in 1975 under a pseudonym, “United Churches of Florida.” Documents seized in an FBI raid on Scientology properties elsewhere revealed that the group arrived with plans “for taking control of key points in the Clearwater area,” by infiltrating the government, police, media and other institutions.

Outraged city officials held investigative hearings in 1982 to find out more about the group. Clearwater subsequently enacted an ordinance requiring strict record-keeping and disclosure methods for religious and charitable groups, but Scientology sued and ultimately got the law overturned as unconstitutional.

The group now owns more than 30 Clearwater properties, valued at about $40 million, and it has begun construction of a giant training and counseling building.

Minton’s crusade against Scientology began, he says, as a free-speech action. Minton, who retired in 1992, says he learned of the church’s attempt about five years ago to destroy an Internet news group dominated by former members and other detractors, who sometimes published its secret documents. Groups devoted to the free flow of information on the Internet, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, of which Minton is a member, rose up in protest.

Rinder, the Scientology spokesman, says Minton’s Lisa McPherson center can only hurt relations between the city and the church. He declined, however, to discuss the McPherson case, saying it is a pending legal matter.

In the last two years of her life, McPherson had spent nearly $100,000 on Scientology courses. In November 1995, after a minor traffic accident, she suddenly took off all her clothes and told paramedics she wanted help.

She was taken to a hospital but refused psychiatric treatment after a group of Scientologists showed up to meet her. According to court documents, they took her to the Fort Harrison Hotel. After 17 days, during which she hallucinated, vomited and struck out at her attendants, she died.

The group was charged with abuse of a disabled adult and illegal practice of medicine. The trial is scheduled for October.