Scientology Center Holds Anonymous Member Hostage

It is no secret that a group of unknown InterTubes users have been trying to make life very hard for the Church of Scientology. From DDOS attacks on the Church’s website to monthly protests highlighting the group’s less-than-PR-friendly tactics of disconnection and fair game, Anonymous has been trying to “enturbulate” (a Scientology word for annoy, pester, or otherwise be a pain in the ass) the church ever since Scientology tried to pull a video of Tom Cruise from YouTube and threatened media site Gawker with a lawsuit for distributing said video.

The Church has retaliated by unmasking members of Anonymous and attempting to block protesters from their Scientology Center in Clearwater, FL, but have to date not used the sort of tactics known as “fair game” that cause Anonymous to mask themselves. Fair Game was a policy under which known detractors of the church were subject to defamation, harassment, and worse. _[1]

The Church of Scientology’s website acknowledges the Church’s former activities, such as the framing of Paulette Cooper for bomb threats against the Church, but says such events were the work of rogue agents with the Guardian’s Office (including founder L. Ron Hubbard’s third wife, Mary Sue), and such illegal activities no longer happen within the Church.

“It subsequently came to light that a handful of GO staff members had been influenced to adopt an “anything goes” approach in dealing with government discrimination against the Church. These dupes infiltrated and burglarized several U.S. government offices to obtain copies of files maintained and circulated about the Church. Obviously such activity was illegal and directly violated Mr. Hubbard’s policies.”_[2]

The Church further states that Fair Game is no longer an acceptable practice and was revoked by Hubbard himself. _[3]

And yet, one member of Anonymous says s/he was held hostage in a Church of Scientology Center in Amsterdam yesterday, with church members attempting to obtain his/her personal details.

Here’s the story in his/her own words:

Yesterday, on May 21, I went to a flash-raid in Amsterdam. There were around 6-7 people present, including a long-time critic of Scientology, Jeta Eggers.

We were handing out flyers in front of the Org for about 20 minutes before a police officer showed up, the police station is right next to the Org so he was wondering what was going on. He’d never heard of us before (which is strange considering we participated in every raid) and asked if someone could step into the station to explain everything. I volunteered.

We discussed whether we were allowed to hand out flyers without a permit because that right is usually reserved for religious groups. I argued that even though Anonymous is not a religion, we were still doing it from an ideological point of view and not for commercial purposes or financial gain.
We couldn’t agree on it and we had to stop flyering and keep the enturbulation to a minimum.

I told the group this and we continued without flyers and spoke to people passing by. We met a few Londoners who knew about Anonymous and wanted a flyer, we gave them one and they went inside the Org to ask for material.

They came out again with a free DVD.

After some discussion about how we were going to get our hands on one of those DVDs I said: “Maybe I could just ask for one really nicely.”

We discussed that option shortly but some guys didn’t want to take their mask off and we agreed that going in masked would put them off, to say the least.

I was wearing sunglasses and a hood, I’m 5′6 . . . I do not look threatening.

I didn’t think I’d need physical protection stepping into what’s basically a church and/or a bookstore.
I thought the worst they would do was tell me to fuck off.

There was no indication we couldn’t go in there to ask a question, in fact, the British Anon-sympathisers just did. I wouldn’t have tried it otherwise.

Maybe this is naïve of me and maybe it was a stupid idea but I did not expect their reaction would be this bizarre. This is not America, there have been hardly any incidents of Fair Game or bullbaiting here.

Once again, I did not walk in to troll them, I just asked one polite honest question.

I walked into the Org and two people were standing at the reception desk, a girl with dead eyes and an expressionless face and a guy who seemed to immediately snap into focus when he saw me.

I walked up to the desk and said: “Hello, excuse me but I saw the DVD you gave to the British guys and wondered if you had an extra copy for me.”

The girl didn’t say anything, the guy asked me why I wanted the DVD. I told him: “Just for information, I’d like to know where you are coming from”, he scoffed at me. He didn’t seem to able to control himself for a moment and started telling me how ridiculous that was coming from me and how I had been standing outside for 30 minutes with “those guys”.

At this point I was feeling like this wasn’t going to go anywhere and asked once more “Can you give me a DVD or not? Otherwise I’ll just leave.”

He started acting shady and pretended to go look for a DVD to give to me while walking around the room. I started to feel uncomfortable.

Then I heard a ‘click’ behind me and when I turned around I saw he had just locked the door and was walking away from it with the keys in his hand.

I don’t start freaking out just yet, Anonymous was watching through the glass doors and knocked on the window, pointing to the locked door.

I asked the Scientologist guy why he had locked the door and he continued to act shady, saying something like: “Oh, no reason. I’ll just find you a DVD now”.

I start freaking out and demand he unlock the door so I can leave, I tell them I’ll gladly leave if they don’t want me here and that there is no reason to lock the door. I start raising my voice and try to talk to the receptionist girl, asking her if she thought this was normal behaviour and why they would lock me in without a reason. She just blinked at me with those lifeless eyes and didn’t respond in any way.

I start yelling at the guy to let me the fuck out of the building, I didn’t want to be there any more and

I showed no sign of aggression before they locked me inside. The guy calls for back-up from upstairs, several Scientologists arrive.

Apart from some beefy guys who didn’t look like security (they were wearing the regular Scientology ‘math teacher from the 90’s’ clothes) I remember one skinny guy with glasses getting in between me and the receptionist guy. He stared at me and I asked him why they were doing this, why I couldn’t leave and if he thought this was appropriate behaviour for a so-called church.

He kept staring at me and didn’t react except for a slight nodding of his head.

I decide “Fuck this, I’m leaving one way or the other.” and start for the door. Receptionist guy yells at one of the goons: “Stop her! Keep her here!” and as I was nearing the door he got in front of me, I pushed past him and he grabbed my arms.

At this point, Anonymous is standing less than two feet away in front of the glass door. As they saw what was happening they started banging on the glass doors and called out to me that they were calling the police.

I yelled back: “Get a fucking camera!” but there wasn’t a video camera available.
I’m not ashamed to say that at this point, I was feeling the panic rise up in me.

The beefy guy let me go and I started in on the receptionist again, demanding to be let out. He told me: “You’re not going anywhere, you’re staying here until the police shows up to take care of you.”
I yelled at him that there was no way the police were going to arrest me for walking into a building and that they were seriously in the wrong here.

The police arrive, I bang on the glass door and tell them I’ve been locked in and please, just make them let me go.

The Scientologists open the door for the police and I see the male officer is the same one I’ve been talking to that evening. I was relieved and shaky.

The police officer told me to sit down on the staircase while his female partner went and talked to the Scientologists on the other side of the staircase where the reception desk was. When I was sitting down I couldn’t see that area because of the high banister.

The cop started to yell at me about how that was the stupidest thing I could have done and that I had disregarded our previous conversation about keeping the enturbulation to a minimum.

At first I was shocked, I wasn’t out for enturbulation and only asked a polite question. I didn’t understand why he was blaming me for what just happened to me. I tried to tell him I honestly wasn’t trying to directly confront them, I was just asking for information.

He told me he didn’t want to hear any of it and seemed to feel personally betrayed by me after our previous conversation. He then accused me of faking my shakiness and upset, which really pissed me off. He asked for my ID.

Stunned, I gave it to him and he asked for my address. Earlier I explained to him about Fair Game and why we were wearing masks, he obviously remembered it when he leaned in while I recited my contact information in an almost-whisper.

I told him I honestly didn’t mean any harm and now saw how me going inside could be interpreted as a hostile action.

He told me to shut up and sit down. He then joined his partner to talk to the Scientologists.

Unable to just sit there, I got up and peeked out over the banister. The cops saw me but didn’t do anything about it. Julia Rijnvis was there, Director of Special Affairs in OSA, and tried to smooth out the situation with the cops.

The cops asked receptionist guy (who seemed pretty meek now) if he had asked me to leave before locking the door, he admitted he didn’t.

Rijnvis told them “security didn’t handle the situation in the best possible way”, way to understate the situation.

One of the beefy Scientologists pointed to the cop’s notebook with my information on it and asked “Can I get a copy of that?”, the cop said: “No”. _{[Ed. Note: Emphasis, mine]}

I left the building with the Police and he told Anon to move the fuck away from the Org. Anonymous asked me if I was okay, what the fuck just happened and one guy had a cigarette ready for me.
I love Anonymous.

I stood aside while the Police argued with Anon, taking a few deep breaths of thetanless-air and wondering what the fuck just happened.

We eventually left and had some drinks to calm down.

I probably won’t be pressing charges because I don’t want them to find out my identity and don’t have the money to go to court over this. I will be checking out the options I have without going public with my name.

Today I heard it wasn’t Scientology who called the cops but Anonymous, this is pretty fucking terrifying because who knows what they were going to do with me if they weren’t planning on delivering me to the police.

Yes, it sounds like every other church I’ve ever heard of. I mean, I hear about Catholics locking up people who make fun of the priests who engage in pedophilia all the time. In my Catholic school, we had this guy in a dungeon in the basement who we nicknamed Skinny Pete. He was like the school pet, always moaning about food and when would we let him out to see his family. He’d been distributing flyers to people in front of our chapel about how he believed the Catholic church had been led astray by Pope JPII and Vatican II, and how we shouldn’t have to tithe or anything in order to be saved. We used to tease him so bad, sitting in front of his cell, eating our lunches, baiting him by dangling the keys in front of his eyes so he’d run up to the bars, waving his bony arms out in vein. It was really funny, and we’d walk away laughing.

I wonder whatever happened to him.