Tag: cults

Right to repair’s unlikely new adversary: Scientologists

The right-to-repair movement has had its share of adversaries. From Big Tech to politicians and individuals who don’t think product repairability should be government-mandated, it has been a tedious battle for a movement that has seen major wins lately. One of the most recent wins came from Apple, a former DIY repair combatant, supporting repairability legislation. But taking Apple’s place is a new entity aiming to limit right-to-repair legislation: Scientologists.

Today, 404 Media reported on a letter sent on August 10 to the US Copyright Office by Ryland Hawkins of Author Services Inc. The company, its website and letterhead say, represents the “literary, theatrical, and musical works of L. Ron Hubbard, the late founder of Scientology. Author Services, according to records archived via the WayBackMachine, is owned by the Church of Spiritual Technology, which describes itself as a church within Scientology.

The letter addresses Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which “makes it unlawful to circumvent technological measures used to prevent unauthorized access to copyrighted works.” The Scientology group’s letter seeks to alter exemptions granted for self-repairing some consumer electronics, like video game consoles, laptops, home appliances, and farming tractors.

Author Services’ letter argues that while that exemption works for the “many consumer devices” that include “unilateral ‘shrink-wrap’ licenses governing the terms of use of the software,” they shouldn’t apply to devices that “can only be purchased and used by someone who possess [sic] particular qualifications or has been specifically trained in the use of the device.” With those products, the license agreement is “negotiated and agreed to in advance” of purchase and may include restrictions that are critical to “safe and proper” device usage.

The Scientology-tied group seeks an amendment to the exemption so that it doesn’t apply to software-powered devices that can only be purchased by someone with particular qualifications or training or that use software “governed by a license agreement negotiated and executed” before purchase.

Before we get into what horse the Church of Scientology could have in the right-to-repair race, let’s consider whether its amendment is extreme.

“It’s a totally unreasonable proposal,” Elizabeth Chamberlain, director of sustainability at iFixit, told Ars Technica. “I can imagine manufacturers using the presence of a ‘quick start’ guide for a product as evidence that their consumers are ‘specially trained in use of the device’ and thus denying broad access to repair.”

She noted that such an amendment would render the proposed exemptions for commercial and industrial equipment from right-to-repair activists “toothless.”

Keep reading

Inside an Abusive Anti-Porn Camp for Teens

When Cameron was growing up in the 2010s, he was preoccupied​ with two things: that he was gay, and that there would be dire consequences if his parents and community found out. He lived in a small town in Utah, where over 90 percent of the residents are Mormon. “They are very strict about gender roles and sexuality,” he says.

But Cameron didn’t want to keep his secret to himself. In 2014, when he was 14, he came out to a close friend via text message. Soon after he sent the message, his parents went through his phone and discovered it. “They immediately confronted me about it,” he says. “I was barely ready to tell one person. I was not ready to have that conversation with my parents.”

That conversation was just the beginning. “There was probably about a year there where it was just absolutely brutal—where every day it was coming up around the dinner table,” says Cameron, identified here by a pseudonym at his request. “I can remember my mom picking me up from school and being like, ‘You realize that you’re taking away everything that I thought I could ever have, right? You realize that because of this, I’m never going to have grandchildren from you.'”

His parents’ disapproval was devastating enough, but Cameron says things got worse when the news spread throughout the community. Anonymous accounts started sending Cameron homophobic messages on Facebook. “All gays of the world should be strung up and drowned in the ocean,” he recalls one of them saying. Even scarier were the random people who showed up at the family’s doorstep to confront his mom.

“It was, honestly, really, really terrifying….Everybody around you hates you and essentially wants you purged from the earth,” Cameron says. Around this time, he attempted suicide.

In spite of the harassment, he managed to go on a few dates with guys when he was 16. Nothing panned out, but his parents found out about it. Around the same time, they found some gay porn on his phone. They started locking him in his room at night, forcing him to pee in Gatorade bottles.

During this time his father told a co-worker who was in his late 20s about Cameron. Soon the man “started reaching out and being very schmoozy,” Cameron said. “I was so alone. Everybody hated me….And here’s this person.” He was giving Cameron the attention he craved. They began having sexual encounters. Cameron says the relationship was consensual, yet “you’re under the age of consent, and there’s no way to justify pedophilia. But he was always just really, really nice.”

Once again, his parents found out. They confiscated his phone, so he could no longer talk with the man or look at porn. They also pressed charges, and the man was sent to prison for a year. Cameron was sent to his own prison of sorts: STAR Guides Wilderness Therapy, which bills itself as “the country’s premier wilderness treatment program for teens with technology, pornography and sexual addictions.”

These camps say they can change teens’ lives by helping them overcome severe mental and behavioral issues. STAR Guides claims the camp “provides a specialized ‘unplugged’ environment to reset and re-balance the physical, mental and spiritual health of youth…under the guidance of highly trained therapists and professionals, we provide a setting where youth can feel safe and supported when working through sensitive pornography or sexual issues along with trauma, free of fear, embarrassment or shame.” And some parents and teens testify that STAR Guides was a positive experience. “You gave me my daughter back, and helped her how she needed,” one parent said in an exit interview. A teen said the program was “extremely helpful and life-changing”; another said, “I found myself.”

Keep reading

Leah Remini sues Scientology over alleged ‘harassment, intimidation, surveillance and defamation’

Actress Leah Remini has filed a lawsuit against the Church of Scientology for being “dead set on making her life a living hell now that she’s no longer a part of the church,” TMZ reported on Tuesday.

Remini is “being stalked and harassed by the Church of Scientology as part of a coordinated campaign to destroy her life because she left the religion,” TMZ learned from the complaint.

“According to the docs, obtained by TMZ, Leah claims Scientology is stalking her and invading her privacy because the church is determined to silence her and others who are critical of the religion,” TMZ wrote. “Leah claims the alleged abuse coming her way is part of a broader policy and practice of intimidation within the Church of Scientology … which she says dates all the way back to founder L. Ron Hubbard.”

Remini posted a statement to Instagram outlining her reasons for suing the faith.

“After 17 years of harassment, intimidation, surveillance, and defamation, I am filing a lawsuit against Scientology and David Miscavige,” Remini said. “While advocating for victims of Scientology has significantly impacted my life and career, Scientology’s final objective of silencing me has not been achieved. While this lawsuit is about what Scientology has done to me, I am one of thousands of targets of Scientology over the past seven decades. People who share what they’ve experienced in Scientology, and those who tell their stories and advocate for them, should be free to do so without fearing retaliation from a cult with tax exemption and billions in assets.”

Remini added that she is advocating for Scientology’s alleged victims.

Keep reading

Feds fight Nxivm sex cult leader Keith Raniere’s bid at new trial on claims FBI planted child porn on his computer

Federal prosecutors slammed convicted Nxivm sex cult leader Keith Raniere’s bid for a new trial — denouncing his claim that he has “newly discovered evidence” that proves the FBI planted evidence on his computer.

In a response filed Friday in Brooklyn federal court, prosecutors wrote that Raniere’s third attempt at securing a new trial — like his first two — was “entirely without merit,” adding that the motion should be denied as “untimely, unfounded, legally unsupported, and contrary to the evidence adduced at trial.”

When the 62-year-old sicko — who is serving a 120-year sex trafficking sentence — filed for a new trial in May 2022, he claimed he had unearthed evidence showing the government “manufactured child pornography and planted it on a computer hard drive to tie it to him,” according to court papers.

Raniere’s lawyers also said the feds “falsified, fabricated, and manipulated all the key evidence it used” to convict him of child exploitation and child porn.

Prosecutors, in the Friday filing, detailed the evidence the FBI found in Raniere’s Halfmoon, NY, residence — including nude photos of his first sex slave, Camila, who was around 15 years-old at the time.

Keep reading

Allison Mack, actress convicted in NXIVM case, released from prison

Former television star Allison Mack, who provided “slaves” to NXIVM leader Keith Raniere for his secret group that blackmailed calorie-starved and sleep-deprived women into sex acts and subjected them to physical branding on their pelvic areas, has been released from federal prison.

The 40-year-old Mack, formerly of Halfmoon, pleaded guilty to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy in 2019 in a deal that required she cooperate with federal prosecutors in Brooklyn. She was released from custody on Monday, according to the website of the federal Bureau of Prisons. 

Two years ago, Senior U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis sentenced Mack to three years in prison, calling her “an essential accomplice” to Raniere. One female victim likened Mack’s role assisting Raniere in the secret group — Dominus Obsequious Sororium, or DOS, which translates in Latin to Lord/Master of the Obedient Female Companions — to that of convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in her assistance to late sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

Mack is the first NXIVM defendant who received a prison sentence to complete their term. Former NXIVM president Nancy Salzman, 68, of Halfmoon, who pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy and received a three-and-a-half year sentence, is scheduled to be released in July 2024. NXIVM operations director Clare Bronfman, 44, the Seagrams’ heiress who lived in Manhattan and Clifton Park, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to harbor illegal immigrants for financial gain and fraudulent use of identification and received an 81-month sentence, is expected to be released in June 2025.

Two other defendants — NXIVM education director Lauren Salzman and bookkeeper Kathy Russell, both of whom lived in Halfmoon — received probation.

Keep reading

How young religious Australian women were ‘brainwashed’ and lured into a South Korean sex cult to become ‘spiritual brides’ of a convicted rapist

A South Korean cult has been accused of recruiting vulnerable young Australian women at shopping centres to be brainwashed and then sent abroad. 

The victims were told they were the ‘spiritual brides’ of Jung Myung Seok (JMS), the self-proclaimed second coming of Jesus Christ and messiah of the Providence church he founded in 1978.

But JMS is a convicted rapist and the women were sent to his Wolmyeongdong compound not for any spiritual reasons, but to allegedly be sexually assaulted.

The recruiters are reportedly told to find tall, slim white women for JMS, and two Australian survivors, Liz and Amy (not their real names) have spoken out to warn others to be aware they could be targeted too.

Amy was recruited while on her way to meet a friend to go bowling at Melbourne Central shopping centre, she told Channel 7’s Spotlight program.

‘All of a sudden, somebody tapped me on my shoulder, I turned around and two girls were smiling at me … they asked me to do a survey about my faith,’ she said. 

Amy was 22 at that time in 2014 and had a growing interest in Christianity. The chance encounter would change her life for the worst. 

‘I believed that this was a almost an elevated version of Christianity because that’s how they pitched it to me,’ she said.

Liz had just finished Year 12 when she was approached at the Canberra Centre and thought it ‘sounded really fun and exciting’.

‘I was on a gap year, so I was looking to travel, I was working part-time, and I was also thinking about what I was going do with my life. 

‘I was in a really good position to be susceptible to psychological coercion, and they definitely took advantage of that.’

The young women attended bible study classes and lecturers and eventually moved into cult houses in Australia, where their lives were strictly controlled, including getting up at 2am every day to pray to JMS. 

In time, their physical and mental resistance was worn away and the people they thought of as friends told them they were ‘faith stars’.

Keep reading

What in the World Happened at Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978?

Iam Laurie Efrein Kahalas, survivor of the Peoples Temple. I never lived in Jonestown, but I held a key position in the States up through the time of the tragedy on November 18, 1978. I am also the author of the “In Plain Sight (IPS)” project, the documented deconstruction of the Port Kaituma airstrip massacre (where Leo Ryan was killed), which preceded the deaths at Jonestown. Hard to deconstruct what was accepted as “history” in just this single article, but the IPS project fills that out. 

I realize that, from out of the deep dark jungle, headlines ablaze. From them all the public retains to this day is “drink the kool-aid.” For years following, it was even “a bizarre murder/suicide ritual.” Twin tragedies: Congressman Leo Ryan murdered—a foremost CIA critic and sponsor of the Ryan Hughes amendment requiring the president to report all covert operations to Congress sent to investigate the People’s Temple in Guyana—and then close to a thousand deaths at Jonestown. Not just that you can’t have one without the other, but that the same party must have been guilty of both.

That was never true; but there was never any investigation, just blaring headlines. I was in D.C. personally a year after, when congressional aides admitted that they had the on-site NBC film footage (NBC had accompanied the congressman). But when I demanded that they blow up the faces and bring in survivors to identify the so-called “Temple killers,” they adamantly refused. Even though that would have been Burden of Proof 101, especially in the face of massively contradictory so-called “eyewitness IDs”! 

Keep reading

What Happens When a QAnon Cult Leader Moves Into Town

TATAMAGOUCHE, Nova Scotia – The QAnon Queen of Canada leans so close to the windshield of her motorhome her face is almost pressed against the glass when she screams into her walkie-talkie. 

“Ignore them!” her voice crackles over the radio. “Ignore them!” 

The small collection of Romana’s Didulo’s ragtag group of cult followers-turned-servants who populate a rural Nova Scotia property look at me with a mix of horror and apology. One man, wearing a security hat straight out of a dollar store costume section, tries to take control and meekly tells me I need to leave the area. Another follower, a bit bolder than the security guy, coldly says “absolutely not” when I ask if we can speak to their so-called “queen.” 

There are three motorhomes strewn across the front lawn of the property and our conversation has to be loud in order to hear over the cacophony of the dozen or so dogs barking and fighting. Here is where Didulo and her followers, who have been proselytizing her unique brand of QAnon conspiracy-cum-alien stuff-cum-soverign citizenship beliefs  across Canada for the better part of a year, stayed over the winter. Here is where Didulo made her most loyal followers sleep on the floor of RVs so her dogs could sleep on the bed, and made people sit in their filth for weeks, eat expired food, and face torrents of abuse. 

Marching from the motorhome housing their spiritual leader, Didulo’s second-in-command comes storming towards us. Pointing her phone at us she begins to take control of the situation.

“No comment,” she screams repeatedly. “No comment!”

Keep reading

Danny Masterson’s lawyers leaked discovery material to Church of Scientology

The ex-lawyers of “That ’70s Show” actor and convicted rapist Danny Masterson were sanctioned Wednesday for leaking confidential discovery material about his victims to the Church of Scientology — which has been accused of harassing the women for several years.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo ruled that defense attorneys Tom Mesereau and Sharon Appelbaum sent discovery from Masterson’s criminal case to Church of Scientology lawyer Vicki Podberesky in violation of a court order and a law protecting victims’ personal info, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Podberesky is representing the church in a civil suit filed by Masterson’s victims, former members of the church who say they were threatened by the organization’s officials not to report their attacks.

The discovery materials contained sensitive information about the sexual assault victims, including their addresses and correspondence with police.

Masterson, a practicing Scientologist, was convicted last month of raping two of the women at his Los Angeles home in the early 2000s.

Keep reading

The Leader of the Gun Church That Worships With AR-15s Is Now a MAGA Rapper

The leader of a controversial religious sect that worships with AR-15s has been taking notes from the niche but growing music subgenre dubbed “MAGA Rap.” 

Pastor Hyung-Jin “Sean” Moon, the flamboyant figurehead of the Rod of Iron Ministries (also known as The Sanctuary Church) has a YouTube channel where he’s spinning his far-right sermons into rap videos. (YouTube removed the channel shortly after VICE News reached out for comment). 

Moon’s rap name is “King Bullethead,” and like others in the genre, he’s looking to spread far-right ideological positions through questionable rhymes and low-budget, bombastic music videos, often while taking aim at the LGBTQ community. 

In “Eggplant Emoji,” Moon appears in a rural setting, clad in camouflage, wearing reflective Oakley-esque sunglasses, a crown of gold bullets balanced atop his bald head. He wears skeleton gloves and waves around a gold-plated AR-15. 

A group of heavily-armed church members dressed in patriotic colors stand behind Moon, as he fast-raps about how children are being brainwashed into joining the LGBTQ community and praises conservative women who discriminate against trans women. “They got no shlong, ding dong, hot dog, johnny eggplant emoji/ they got no thang swinging between their legs and making them horny,” he raps. “Conservative women knows that only God can make ‘em man and women/ Love Jesus, family, guns, USA they be lovin’.”

In “Big MAGA 20,” Moon appears at the same desk where he usually delivers his rambling hours-long sermons (these days, they’re uploaded to Rumble since the church was kicked off YouTube years ago for spreading election and COVID-19 disinformation). 

“They can’t stop us so they silence, censor and act like Communists,” he raps. “Politicians lie to get their power and form their little cliques/Politics is a combination of the words ‘poly’ and ‘ticks’/‘Poly’ means more than one, a few, a group of cliques, and ticks are parasites that suck your blood until the very last drip.”

Keep reading