Copy of "The Battle Over Scientology: Part III"

I refrained from calling this the last Scientology post because I'm certain that new nonsense will spring up when the church collapses or David Miscavige suddenly dies or there is some sort of impossible coup and Miscavige flees to Honduras, because the merry-go-round of Scientology on Wikipedia isn't broken; they just flipped off a switch.

The Odd "Articles"

I could bring up the recent stupidity that happened on Reddit when somebody posted part two of this on a Wikipedia-criticism subforum ("subreddit"), but I will let that stand on its own. However, just for "Folsomdsf" and "willfe42" I will write this: NO, I am NOT a Scientologist; you two feebs couldn't point at a Scientologist if Chick Corea was humping your leg like a dog.

 Anyway, the "articles"....all of them are quasi-internal and they deal with Scientology, either subjects or Wikipedians. During 2010 through 2011, there was Neutrality in Scientology, a "short term views page" focused on pushing the "neutral point of view" on to all Scientology articles and BLPs ("biographies of living persons") of Scientologists. Some of the people involved were: SchuminWeb (Ben Schumin of Anonymous), FT2 (of "The Anvil email" fame), Scott MacDonald (once accidentally blocked himself), Youreallycan (as sock account Off2riorob; later blocked for nasty emails), Deirdresm (ex-Sci; thought Scott MacDonald was acting as a proxy for banned users), and finally Stanistani (William "Monty" Burns, the human link to Wikipediocracy.) Things done included deleting the Astra Woodcraft and Kendra Wiseman articles to lump them together into the Exscientologykids.com stub, while leaving the Jenna Miscavige Hill article by itself, even though Hill was also a founding member of the Ex-Scientology Kids website! They couldn't merge the Orientation: A Scientology Information Film stub into some other article, and Stanistani couldn't vaporize the Leipzig Human Rights Award article, even though the last time the award was given was 2003, to Andreas Heldal-Lund of Operation Clambake (aka xenu.net.)

Another "odd article" was Articles for deletion/Scientology Public Relations from 2006, the subject of which now redirects to the Office of Special Affairs article. Antaeus_Feldspar (Joseph Crowley) voted for its deletion, while Republitarian decided to have a fight with TheFarix and Orsini over the name of the guy who wrote the article, Lord Xenu (who has since vanished into oblivion.) The whole thing was idiotic and quickly buried.

Then there was the July-September 2007 Requests for arbitration/COFS mess. COFS was the original name of Shutterbug, and that was how she was forced to change names, by a committee made up such wonderful people as SheffieldSteel (real name unknown; possibly a sockpuppet, or a guy in Belgium posing as North Carolina college student; only on Wikipedia to harass people), Durova (Lise Broer), Lyncs (as Justanother), Misou (sock of Shutterbug?), Jehochman (Jonathan Hochman), Cirt (as Smee), and Lsi John (name unknown, all that remains is a page of animal photos.) The accusations were mostly conflict-of-interest editing. Following Wikipedian tradition, the block log at the bottom is full of other names blocked or banned: Shutterbug, Makoshack, and Misou banned from Scientology editing for 30 days in 2007; Anybody and Justahulk warned to avoid each other by Rlevse in 2008; Pieter Kuiper topic banned from Scientology for two weeks in 2010 by Tim Song (Wikipediocracy's Tryptich); finally, Courcelles giving Shutterbug the "indefinite ban" in September of that same year for sockpuppeting.

The article Church of Scientology editing on Wikipedia is a weird "hurrah for our team!" article talking about Virgil Griffith's WikiScanner software that discovered how many IPs were Church owned and how the Church can't edit pages about itself. The page history is interesting; begun by Chesdovi in late August of 2010, nominated for deletion by Robofish, worked on by Cirt from August to September of 2010, then handed over to a number of different people who gnomed it until 2015. Meanwhile Chesdovi decided to refrain from Wikipedia editing for a month in early 2012, and never returned (possibly hit by a Jerusalem bus.)

Lastly, there was a WikiProject Scientology, set up by David Gerard in 2005. It was supposed to do what the later Neutrality in Scientology page did, but as a WikiProject it was far flashier and easier to find, though that didn't stop it from becoming a ghost town after October 2014. When the WikiProject Soviet Union was founded the same year as the Scientology one, and that project is still going strong, something had to have gone horribly wrong with Gerard's baby.

"Scientology is a UFO religion"

That statement shows the bone ignorance of the person who repeats it. If anything, Scientology is an "ancient astronauts" religion due to the Xenu story, except unlike most ancient astronaut theories (which have aliens building Stonehenge or carving the Nazca Lines of Peru) Hubbard's tale takes place before humans evolved on Earth. Due to the multilevel structure of Scientology, it takes years to get to read the "Operating Thetan III" materials or hear Hubbard recount the story of "Incident II" on the Ron's Journal 67 tape (recorded in 1967 on a Scientologist-run ship in some Mediterranean harbor.) Scientologists are told to not speak of the things they learn to "uninitiated" lower-level members or outsiders at all. L. Ron never claimed that he got his knowledge after being taken aboard a flying saucer; Excalibur was written after a laughing gas "trip" in a dentist's office in the late 1930s, while Dianetics was hammered together from that material and other readings in 1950, and Scientology grew from that.

Now there are UFO religions, like Raëlism (founded in France in 1974), or the Aetherius Society (founded in London, England in 1955), or Unarius Academy of Science (founded in Los Angeles in 1954, now in El Cajon, California); even that joke super-pastiche The Church of the SubGenius (founded in Dallas, Texas in 1979) has UFOs taking away the faithful on X-Day when the aliens come to destroy the planet. Weirder yet, the long-exposed hoax/"fiction" of UMMO has given birth to a "Daughters of UMMO" cult in Bolivia. The difference is that these groups were not founded by science-fiction writers (Ivan Stang, et. al. of the SubGenius Church are parodists, certainly, and the "Daughters of UMMO" are more of a syncretic group), but by people claiming to have had experiences they claim are genuine (whether they were or not is beyond the scope of this article, but I am not a member of any group listed.) Scientology, when it was Dianetics, was a form of abreaction therapy in combination with self-hypnosis; it began getting the "space opera" trappings when people claimed to enter memories of previous lives when hypnotically regressing to early childhood, and the past lives started becoming extraterrestrial when they went further back (whether that was due to Hubbard's direct or indirect influence or not I cannot say*.) Nothing of anything written within this section counts however, because Wikipedia has decided Scientology is a UFO religion, Google re-transmits that, and the press goes along. Just to screw with Google, Scientology is NOT a UFO religion.

How to Have a New-Age Article on Wikipedia Without the Mess

1. Be obscure. Do a search for "Rational Culture" or "Cultura Racional." You won't find anything. However, if you type in Universe in Disenchantment you will stumble across the article on Tim Maia, a Brazilian musician/national treasure, who had joined the Rational Culture cult for a short time in the 1970s, by reading their holy book Universe in Disenchantment. Ivan Stang clued me into this Brazilian religion in his 1988 book High Weirdness by Mail, where he wrote that the RC organization at the time was claiming their books were being dropped out of UFOs and that they had healing properties (!) because of that.

2. Have a fixer. If you look at older versions of the article on Prem Rawat, there is no clue he ran a cult (Divine Light Mission.) Why? Because of an employee of his, Jossi Fresco Benaim aka Jossifresco, who was made an administrator, and later thrown out (though allegedly still editing Rawat material under a sockpuppet.)

3. Be loved outside of Wikipedia. A good example would be Sri Chinmoy, the now-deceased weightlifting guru, though he had to have a number of fixers keep any of his darker elements from being on Wikipedia. People like: Fencingchamp, Vivvvek (a "single-purpose account"), Wiki9898zzz (another SPA), and Chotochele (ditto), among others kept the controversies away. So the article has expanded and contracted over, and over, and over, again. But notice we hear none of it, because the truly obnoxious users are elsewhere. Probably wearing Guy Fawkes masks.

***

*  The Research Council of the American Medical Association stated in 1985:
“....memories obtained under hypnotic interventions contain confabulations, pseudomemories and inaccuracies. Self-report, alone, cannot be used to determine the reliability of true from false memories.” (Quote taken from here.)

For the record, William Burns' nickname is not "Monty." I call him that because his actions resemble that of The Simpsons' Montgomery Burns character, though in truth, he is really Steven McGeady's Mr. Smithers.

 

Copy of "The Battle Over Scientology: Part II"

To paraphrase Alex in Kubrick's version of A Clockwork Orange: "This is the real boring and like nitpick-y part of the story beginning, O my brothers and only friends."

The 2008-2009 Request for arbitration on Scientology

That is a document that screams to be seen, because it's part CYA exercise, part kangaroo court because anybody who spoke up for Scientology (or who was suspected of being pro-Scientology) was blocked or banned. The RfA began on December 11, 2008 and ran through to May 28, 2009. After all the decisions were made it was amended five times, mostly in 2012 (once on the same day - the First of June at 2:10 and 2:40AM!), with the last amendment on September 19, 2013.

To make it worse, all of the evidence has been "courtesy blanked" so you have to go into the article history to see all of this stuff, most of which would be laughed out of even an Albanian court when Enver Hoxha was leader:

Cirt's inability to edit in good faith alongside a Scientologist # 2

Xenu Xenu Xenu Xenu. There, I said Xenu. Cirt seems to think that Scientologists cannot say Xenu. What an odd concept and what a total misunderstanding of what Scientology is and how it works. And then to imply that a Scientologist that edits anything related to confidential materials must be an agent or something is just plain misleading and bad-faith. Here is the deal. Ex-Scientologists and critics assert that Xenu is mentioned in some upper-level Scientology materials and they use the Xenu story out-of-context to marginalize and ridicule Scientology. OK. That is true, they do assert that and do that. What is also true is that the upper levels are confidential and no Scientologist in good standing that has done these levels may discuss what they contain because that would be a breach of the confidentiality agreement. That does NOT mean that Scientologists cannot discuss how the alleged upper-level materials are already presented in reliable sources. That is all I personally ever do, make sure that articles correctly interpret reliable sources in an NPOV fashion. Do you get the difference? If I have done the levels (and I am not going to reveal personal information), I cannot discuss what they contain from my own first-hand knowledge but I can certainly discuss if a reliable source is being represented correctly and fairly. I do not need any "special permission" for that. Nor have I any. Nor do I "get in trouble" for what I do here on Wikipedia. Cirt proves again that s/he cannot edit in good faith alongside a Scientologist and now tries to get the lot of us barred. Sheesh.
(Lyncs as Justallofthem on Cirt, taken from here.)

The accounts originally involved in this fiasco were Durova (the filing party), Justallofthem (aka Lyncs), Cirt, Jayen466 (Andreas Kolbe), Jossi (later-banned sockpuppet of Jossi Fresco), Shutterbug (puppetmaster of Misou), Misou (sockpuppet), GoodDamon, Bravehartbear, Shrampes (another Shutterbug sockpuppet!) Once the ball was rolling, the list grew voluminously; there were four more Shutterbug sockpuppets (Derflipper, Grrilla, Su-Jada, TaborG); real people like Rick Ross (the cult deprogrammer/expert, not the rapper), Tory Christman (aka "Tory Magoo", an ex-Scientologist on YouTube), Hkhenson (Keith Henson the Scientology critic), Karin Spaink (Dutch journalist then involved with legal proceedings with the Church over posting the Fishman affidavit online), David Gerard (mentioned in the last post); also a number of people only known by Wikipedia handles, so around 45 accounts in all. It quickly turned into a melee worthy of a Shaw Brothers movie; Rick Ross and Jayen466 sniping over Ross' "biography of a living person", while
Ross accused Jayen466 of being a follower of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, GoodDamon hammering Shutterbug/Misou over "civility" while defending Cirt, etc.

One of the best statements made during the original process was by AndroidCat:

I certainly didn't want to participate in the annual time-suck, but having been named as a party to this event, listed among the guilty, perhaps I should leave a few words.


I doubt this will be much of a patch on a continually erupting problem. (One almost suspects this as gamesmanship as part of someone's plan.)

Even with the WikiHitThemWithSticksHitThemWithSticks! topic-banning of involved editors, the problem will continue.

Expecting that institutional socks will vanish and CHECKUSER requests will decrease after several institutional IP ranges are blocked is .. wow. If institutional editing is assumed, then this is an institution that is well known for setting up dummy ISP accounts to hide ownership.

Expecting that the articles will drift to some happy norm: That's not going to happen. It's a topic that polarizes even among academic circles.

Here's a heretical notion: the articles have been hugely improved by conflict. Is there a way to limit it and harness it?

Umm... The arbitrator discussion seem to be giving the impression that Jossi has just stepped out for a smoke or something, and when he returns, he'll have to get back in line. Aren't we talking about rather severe warping of Wikipedia policies, guidelines and articles going back over several years? Almost.. even.. a dreaded.. Single Purpose Account? (Sorry if this has all been previously discussed privately on secret channels, I like candor, transparency, and honesty, and hope this is properly addressed out in the open.)
  
Metz, Cade (2008-02-06). "Wikipedia ruled by 'Lord of the Universe'". The Register.  
Metz, Cade (2009-01-09). "'Lord of the Universe' disciple exits Wikipedia". The Register.

My general impression is that this RFAR is a side-line for some sort of Wikipedia political faction maneuvering. brb, popcorn. AndroidCat (talk) 06:41, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

***

Being cool about it didn't help; AndroidCat was topic-banned from Scientology.

Wikipedia Hackery vs. the Scientology Spinoffs

One of the issues not really discussed by the Scientology critics are the ex-Scientologists who go into business for themselves. According to Kristi Wachter the Scientology-watcher, 65% of Scientologists go inactive one year after achieving the level of Clear. She also estimates there have been 15,013 Clears from 1976 to 2004 based on figures printed in Auditor, a Scientology magazine.

Look at the Wikipedia article on Eckankar; no mention that Paul Twitchell, the group's creator, was an ex-Scientologist. He was, and his article is a monument of bad Wikipedia writing.

In Berkeley, California, there is the Berkeley Psychic Institute, founded by Lewis S. Bostwick in 1973; group is also called the Church of Divine Man. Not a word in the Wikipedia about Bostwick's time in Scientology, nor his modifications of "the Tech." The fact that the article is nothing more then a large stub with links doesn't help.

The article on est, now called Landmark Worldwide (and no longer owned by Werner Erhard) mentions nothing about Erhard's connection to Scientology, though his BLP does.

The Wikipedia article on Adi Da actually mentions his time in Scientology and is pretty balanced, proof that you can write a decent article on Wikipedia if you put your mind to it.

Finally we should mention the article on The Process Church of the Final Judgement, which began in 1964 as "Compulsions Analysis", a fact left out by the article. The Process Church quickly created a new orientation and theology after L. Ron Hubbard declared them a "Squirrel Group" (i.e. a group "unlawfully" using "the Tech") in 1965. Christ, Satan, Lucifer and Jehovah took the place of going Clear (Xenu hadn't appeared yet in Scientology.) Co-founder Robert DeGrimston's quasi-Biblical writings are out there for the reading, all 520 pages of them.

In 1970 Hubbard published a list of so-called "Squirrel Groups" and that any Scientologist who had been a part of those groups at any time was out. They were:

Abilitism – USA
The American College Propriotary Ltd. – Australia
Amprinistics – USA, Aus. [,] New Zealand, UK
The Assoc. of Int’l Dianologists – USA
The Aus. Center of Applied Psychology – Aus
Balanced Determinism – USA
The Brotherhood – USA
Calif. Assoc. of Dianetic Auditors – USA
Calif. Dianetic Fdn. – USA
Church of the final Judgement – USA, UK, EU, Mex.
Church of Satan – USA, UK, EU, Mex.
Christan [sic] Spiritual Alliance – USA
Dianology – USA
E-Therapy – USA
Eumentics – UK
Harmonistics – USA
Institute of Ability – USA
Int’l Awareness Center – USA
New Principles – USA, UK
Personal Creative Fdn. – USA
The Process – USA, UK, EU, Mex.
Reform Church of Scientology – USA
Sciognostics – USA
Self-Realization – UK, USA
Trichotomy – USA
Trinitology – USA
Triology – USA
Vacuum Cleaning Procedure – USA
World Society for Everyman’s Freedom – USA

Notice that the Process Church is on the list twice, because Hubbard hated them that much. Later four names were added:

Eductivism – USA
Anderson Research Fdn – USA
Defense or Thought – USA
Erhart [sic] Seminar Training (EST) – USA

Very few of these groups have been mentioned by Wikipedia, and Wikipedia still lacks a page for Scientology offshoots.

***

We will finish our look at Scientology on Wikipedia by examining some bizarro articles ("Neutrality in Scientology", the AfD on "Scientology Public Relations"), and how other cults control their articles. After that an article on Howard Keith Henson, and we can finally discuss the LaRouche war.

List of "Wikipedia Sucks! (And So Do Its Critics.)" Posts

	FLOP: Why Wikipedia Criticism Will Always Be A Waste Of Time		Strelnikov		3Comment count	234View count	9/25/15
	The Infamous "Not Censored" IRC chat, January 2012		Strelnikov		0Comment count	120View count	9/22/15
	Addendum: Who the Major Players of the LaRouche Edit War Were		Strelnikov		1Comment count	78View count	9/17/15
	The Lyndon LaRouche Edit War, 2003-2007		Strelnikov		1Comment count	164View count	9/11/15
	The Greasy World of Howard Keith Henson		Strelnikov		0Comment count	147View count	9/5/15
	A List of Administrators Who Blocked Themselves, 2010		Strelnikov		1Comment count	281View count	9/3/15
	Wikipedia Lost 300 Million Views This Year and Nobody's Talking About It....		Strelnikov		6Comment count	455View count	8/31/15
	The Battle Over Scientology: Part III		Strelnikov		0Comment count	466View count	8/30/15
	Jimbo and Larry Lessig "Start" the Presidential Campaign Trail - on Reddit		Strelnikov		15Comment count	190View count	8/26/15
	Guest Post: Why Wikipedia Will Fail		Strelnikov		12Comment count	372View count	8/25/15
	The Battle Over Scientology: Part II		Strelnikov		2Comment count	211View count	8/20/15
	Stuff That Has Nothing to Do with Wikipedia: "Communism Kills" of Tumblr		Strelnikov		1Comment count	440View count	8/11/15
	The Battle Over Scientology: Part I		Strelnikov	+2	5Comment count	361View count	8/8/15
	The Cults That Screwed Up Wikipedia; Future Tumblr Nonsense		Strelnikov		1Comment count	63View count	7/22/15
	Reddit: Probably Screwed Anyway		Strelnikov		0Comment count	70View count	7/14/15
	A Fluffernutter-Ironholds IRC Fragment, 2011		Strelnikov		4Comment count	184View count	7/9/15
	Wikiscuttlebutt: SlimVirgin and Others		Strelnikov		0Comment count	248View count	7/5/15
	Stuff that has Nothing to Do With Wikipedia: "You just got logic'd" of Tumblr		Strelnikov		1Comment count	1208View count	6/30/15
	Vaoverland and Vegaswikian: Dead Administrators Self-Promote while Living Ones Promote Las Vegas		Strelnikov		3Comment count	188View count	6/29/15
	Is Vigilant of Wikipedia/Wikipediocracy actually Alan P. Petrofsky?		Strelnikov		2Comment count	257View count	6/17/15
	Wikipediocracy's Messageboard Reduced to Flaming Lake of Shit		Strelnikov		7Comment count	140View count	6/3/15
	Wiki-Douchebaggery: Beyond My Ken as an Example		Strelnikov		1Comment count	314View count	5/31/15
	A Short, Open Post to the Administration of Wikipediocracy's Messageboard		Strelnikov		3Comment count	63View count	5/14/15
	The Beyond My Ken Video, embedded		Strelnikov		0Comment count	19View count	5/11/15
	Paid Editing as a Hobby: the Beyond My Ken story		Strelnikov		2Comment count	667View count	5/6/15
	The Weakest Link of a Badly-Rusted Chain: the BLP		Strelnikov		1Comment count	48View count	4/12/15
	The Paid Editing Clusterfuck of Wifione		Strelnikov		1Comment count	119View count	3/20/15
	Despite Appearences.....		Strelnikov		0Comment count	39View count	3/19/15
	January Grab-Bag		Strelnikov		1Comment count	91View count	1/12/15
	Some last-minute sucker punches.....Averted!		Strelnikov		0Comment count	43View count	12/31/14
	Wikipedia Tags and Eastern European Politics		Strelnikov		0Comment count	26View count	12/25/14
	Before Wikipedia: Search Bastard and 3Apes		Strelnikov		0Comment count	316View count	12/23/14
	Roshuk asks: "Was Wikipedia Ever Meant to be Transparent?"		Strelnikov		0Comment count	62View count	12/14/14
	As above, so below....		Strelnikov		17Comment count	247View count	12/9/14
	"Operation Swill" and TGI Friday's - or: Don't Go To New Jersey, And Don't Look It Up On Wikipedia		Strelnikov		5Comment count	143View count	11/12/14
	A Guest Post on Jimmy Wales		Strelnikov		3Comment count	159View count	11/6/14
	Addendum to the last post...		Strelnikov		0Comment count	85View count	10/27/14
	The Things Wikipedists and Wikipediocratists Don't Seem to Understand.....		Strelnikov		0Comment count	133View count	10/26/14
	Why This Blog?		Strelnikov		0Comment count	86View count	10/18/14

List of San Diego Scientology Missions, Churches (Orgs), Schools, Front Groups 1970-2015

San Diego is an interesting case in Scientology because it is less than 200 miles from Los Angeles, the West Coast hub of the religion, and yet today that religion is barely existent in San Diego county, which is larger than Delaware and Rhode Island put together.

Missions

A Scientology Mission is a storefront to sell Hubbard books, along with being a low-level auditing and training center (people usually go from "life repair" to preclear before moving on to the local Org.) Usually Missions are the first Scientology outlets in an area, and San Diego followed that pattern.

As far as we can tell the first Scientology Mission in San Diego was at 1052 10th Avenue, in a single-story building that has since been demolished (it's now a parking lot.) This Mission was part of a series of Missions run by a man named Carl Barney in Los Angeles; the four LA Missions were allegedly incorporated as the "Church of Scientology of Los Angeles" and all five were called Scientology Coordinated Services. In order to keep ordinary people coming in (prices were rising in the 1970s), Barney ran this odd usury scam involving a front corporation called the Nationwide Acceptance Company, which would defray costs through loans to the public members. Barney was found out by the "mother church" in 1979 and was forced to sign over his Missions and declared a Suppressive Person (an antisocial person wrecking Scientology), and kicked out. It is unknown if Carl Barney founded the San Diego Mission or bought it out, and we do not know when it was founded. A former staff member, Howard Dickman wrote about his involvement in Scientology, which lasted from 1972 to 1977; according to him, Scientology grew so fast in San Diego that by 1973 they had moved around the corner to 926 C Street (property has also since been demolished.) It should be noted that the area in question is in downtown San Diego, which has been going through radical changes in development since the early 1980s. In any case, 926 C Street was the first true San Diego Church of Scientology.

The next organization was the Mission of La Jolla. La Jolla is a beach community slightly north of downtown San Diego and part of the county. We do no know where the Mission was, but we know incorporation papers were drawn up in April of 1971 by Robert H. Fell II and Janet and Gary Lawrence; the papers were filed on April 13, 1971. The Mission lasted until 1973 when it was merged with the San Diego Mission. The State of California records claim that the Mission of South Lake Tahoe (now defunct) was the agent for the La Jolla Mission, but that may have been after Carl Barney was thrown out.

Around 1973 two Missions formed: the Mission of Encinitas and the Mission of Adams Avenue. As with the La Jolla Mission, the address of the place in Encinitas is unknown to us. We do know it did not survive the 1970s, because it is not on this 1979 list of organizations (taken from the appendix of What is Scientology?, a Church-published reference book.) Encinitas itself is a beach city north of La Jolla and next to the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base. The Mission of Adams Avenue was far more important because it boasted such excellent auditors as Enid Vien (d. 2012), and was still raved about by former Scientologists years later as an excellent Mission. The place began at 3201 Adams Avenue (now the "El Zarape" restaurant), then moved to 6911 El Cajon Boulevard (at the time an abandoned supermarket in a strip mall - now a "Papa John's" pizzeria in the same strip mall.) According to this I have it backwards, that the Adams Avenue Mission ended in March of 1989 and became the Mission of Encinitas the same month, so the Mission moved east and then went north. Either way, both are defunct.

Chula Vista had two Missions, separated by thirty years of time. The first time they were at 192 Landis Avenue at least during 1978-79; then they were at 311 F Street, suite 103 from January, 2008 to October, 2010. They had a website for the 2008 version, but I can't find it now; that small storefront (today a computer repair place) was the last Mission the Church ran. None of the same people were involved as far as I know.

Escondido also had a Mission from July of 1987 to July of 1994, and like the Encinitas location I know nothing about it. This claims they changed names in 1994 to the "Church of Scientology Mission of Coast Mission", but that is a typo or wishful thinking because I can't find that place. Escondido itself is a few mile east of Encinitas, yet another inland Southern Californian town.

Churches (aka Orgs)

 A church is not where Scientologists go every Sunday; it's where they go for auditing (psychology while holding E-meter cans), and training to Clear and the "Operating Theatan" (OT) levels, which run from OT I to OT VIII. There are also side levels and self-auditing, so you can spend the rest of your adult life doing Scientology courses. As with the Missions, they also sell the Hubbard books, CDs (formerly open-reel and cassette tapes), DVDs, along with E-meters and other paraphernalia. The term "Org" is short for "organization", which is what they called these places before Hubbard went all religious in the 1960s-1970s to dodge taxes (at one point "ministers"*, including the President of Scientology International Heber Jentzsch, wore Catholic-style clerical collars.) As with most places, San Diego had far fewer Churches than Missions.

We wrote about the first San Diego Scientology Church above; that organization lasted until around 1980 in that large two-story building.....but it gets slightly complicated. According to the State's records, in December of 1975, a "Greater San Diego Scientology Church" was incorporated. The mailing address for this Church was 3956 Texas Street, Room 9, San Diego, which may have been the address of the agent (that seemed to be the case for some of the Missions.) If it was a re-name of an existing Org, it only lasted five years because they changed.....

Into the same name but a different address: 2559 C Street, San Diego. The agent was Linda Schive. What I have heard from ex-Scientologists is that in the '70s people preferred to get auditing at the Adams Avenue Mission rather than deal with the Church of Scientology San Diego, "Greater" or not. They were at that address from 1980 to 1994. The building at 2559 C Street was demolished and the lot rebuilt into yet another obnoxious condo complex.

The last and present Church of Scientology, San Diego was incorporated in December of 1994 by its current (the last we have heard) President David A. Meyer. 1330 4th Avenue has been the address since it was incorporated. For a period they were trying to sell the building, then rent it out while working on their failed Ideal Org project on Parkway Drive in La Mesa (more discussion on that later.) At the present time, the Church on 4th Avenue is the only outlet for adult Scientologists in San Diego County.

Scientology Schools

Scientology was one of the first to copy the Rudolf Steiner "Waldorf Schools" and push for a private education system built on Scientology ideas. San Diego has seen secular private schools, Fundamentalist Christian private schools, Waldorf Schools, military schools, and also the Scientology schools.

Apple School: this was the first Scientology school in San Diego County. Based on a school run by Bonnie Bishop in the mid-1970s when she took over the Los Feliz "Midtown School" and turned it into the "Apple School", this school was run out of storefront at 4616 Avocado Boulevard in La Mesa near the El Cajon city line, and was open to non-Scientologists. The school ran from Kindergarten to 6th grade in two long separate rooms and most of the instruction was self-directed. I've heard rumors that the school originally started in a former Catholic nunnery in Chula Vista, one person online** claimed they had been part of a prototype version of the school somewhere in El Cajon or Del Mar which was just a large house with a trailer in a backyard. Apple School La Mesa lasted about a year, or a year and a half, from 1982 to 1983 or early 1984. Afterwards the location cycled through a number of businesses and is a gym (Crossfit La Mesa) today.

Delphi Academy: Based on the Scientology education ("Study Tech") at the Delphian School in Oregon, the one in San Diego was in La Jolla at 7527 Cuvier Street, and it was dead by 2011. There was also the Delphi Academy of San Marcos (134 Woodland Parkway) which was run on the same site as the Old Richland Schoolhouse which was used for wedding receptions. The owner of the school was Jonathan ben Gerson, and his back rent problems sunk the school and caused the venue to shut down for a period.

Applied Scholastics: The main difference between this and Delphi is.....not much. The Applied Scholastics Academy of San Diego was just the Delphi Academy in La Jolla (7527 Cuvier Street) working out of the same building rented from a Methodist church, and the school is now defunct. Ben Gerson's San Marcos Delphi Academy also became an Applied Scholastics school.  Speaking of which, he also ran a tiny AS school in a mall in La Mesa. The school was at 5911 Severin Drive, though the school itself overlooked Amaya Drive. The La Mesa school died with the San Marcos one, in 2011....coincidentally, the school was near a 7-11 convenience store, mirroring how Apple School was next door to a 7-11. Finally, the one school that still exists is Applied Scholastics Academy North County (800 West Mission Road, San Marcos.) As with the La Jolla school they are renting space from a Methodist church. So out of five schools in thirty years, only one is operating. [2018 update: Applied Scholastics Academy North County has been dead since 2016.]

Front Groups

Before there was Narconon or WISE (World Institute of Scientology Enterprises), there were a number of national front groups Scientology created in the 1960s-70s and San Diego had a number of them. 

National Commission on Law Enforcement and Social Justice:  Group founded in 1974 claiming to be about human-rights promotion and government record-keeping has allegedly been used to attack Interpol (or so says Arnaldo Lerma's Lermanet website.) In 1979 their HQ was at....926 C Street, the San Diego Church of Scientology.

Committee On Public Health and Safety: Also credited as Committee on Health and Public Safety. This was the way Hubbard got back at the American Medical Association for the heavy interference they gave him in the early 1950s, and also how they forced the Church to put stickers on the E-meters claiming that it wasn't a medical or scientific device. COPHS heavily promoted alternative therapies, pointed out how expensive American medicine was/is. In 1979 their address was at 321 20th Street, San Diego.

Citizens Council on Human Rights: This is the one most people know, thanks to their LA anti-psychiatric,"house of horrors" museum on Sunset Boulevard. Founded in 1969, this is the anti-psychiatry wing of Scientology front groups. When R.D. Laing and Thomas Szasz were popular, these guys promoted them (and Szasz co-founded CCHR.) In 1979 their address was.....321 20th Street, San Diego.

Committee to Re-Involve Ex-Offenders: An ex-convict's group allegedly designed to get former prisoners into Scientology. As with the other two, the 1979 location was 321 20th Street.

All of the 20th Street organizations shared the same telephone number, a good indication they all worked out of one room. The building on the location looks too new for the time period. None of these groups seem to be operating in San Diego today.

The failed Ideal Org

This is a long, complicated story involving Jonathan ben Gerson, David Meyer, Gerri Fischman (the actual head of the CofS-SD), and David Miscavige's demand that all Orgs become "Ideal Orgs" (a Hubbard term for an Org that is running well, but twisted by Miscavige to mean "a nice-looking, big building full of expensive Scientology-made furnishings, which the Church owns outright.") It also involved Proposition 8, a failed attempt to get La Mesa to approve an anti-hate-speech ordinance, the SD Church begging its members for cash, the purchase of the abandoned Coleman College campus (formerly a bowling alley at 7380 Parkway Drive in La Mesa) right when the commercial market went south in 2008, their failure to make enough money to please Miscavige and start construction on a new building, and the final selling off to a developer so that the property could be converted to ugly shitbox townhomes is a story that deserves a book chapter unto itself. Supposedly the San Diego Church has only 20 full-time "publics" left, because all the begging went nowhere and infuriated the rest.

The TL;DR Section

After decades of existence, Scientology only has one working Org and one working Applied Scholastics school. Seven Missions, two Churches, five Schools, come and gone. San Diego is less than two-hundred miles from Los Angeles, the hub of West Coast Scientology, and this is as good as it got.


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*  Ministers are hard to define inside Scientology; today there are "Volunteer Ministers", but those are just staff members in yellow jackets sent to natural disasters. In the past people would appear for the press cameras dressed like this (another Lermanet photo, unfortunately; Heber Jentzsch is on the right.) Or this (Yvonne Gillham Jentzsch, Heber's first wife, possibly a file photograph.)


** From a former version of the ExScientologyKids.com messageboard, when it was locked and the only messages allowed were on a test forum. I also heard from a former parent user of the Apple School itself; she told me that the school had closed with no warning. Possibly the members were accused of "squirrling" the "Tech", of doing things without Hubbard's sanction; or the money behind Apple School was a Missionholder hit in the 1983 Missionholder's Conference, where the people who owned high-performing Missions were forced to sign them back to the Church. Either way Apple School died harder that some of the San Diego private schools I've heard of, such as St. Albans (collapsed in 1985 after a "parent strike" over allegedly poor teaching); or Fairhaven's Christian (imploded dramatically in 2000-2001 after the pastor of the mother church admitted an affair, let other people run the organization for six months, then tried to commit a coup. Rather than deal with a crazy man, the church and school shut down, and sold the site to another church. That pastor is still out there, and somehow still at a pulpit. His name is Preston Bunnell.)