The Electronic Telegraph 15 March 1995

Mother says sect has bewitched daughter

By John Steele, Courts Correspondent

A REUNION between scientologist Kathleen Wilson, 23, and her 63-year-old mother, who had not seen each other for more than two-and-a-half years, took place during the trial of Stephen Cooper.

Last Friday, Mrs Margaret Wilson and her daughter met in the well of the court and hugged briefly.

But rather than sharing an emotional moment, Mrs Wilson told her daughter she had been "brainwashed" by scientologists. Her daughter, in turn, accused "instigators and enemies of the "church"" of duping Mr Cooper into believing she needed to be rescued.

The mother and daughter did not see each other over the weekend - despite, Mrs Wilson said, her attempts to contact her daughter at the cult's headquarters at East Grinstead.

A saddened Mrs Wilson left court on Monday evening, planning to return to her Cleveland home early yesterday, not knowing if her daughter would keep her promise to visit her.

The exchanges between them were witnessed by Cooper, who said: "At least, if I haven't done anything else, I've brought them back together."

'You've been brainwashed. You don't know what you've put me through'

Mrs Wilson, who lives at Boosbeck, near Saltburn, told her daughter last Friday: "I haven't seen you for more than two years. You have been saying you will visit for two years. Why don't you come and see me?" Miss Wilson replied: "I will come home." As court officials, lawyers and reporters listened, Mrs Wilson said: "You have made me ill.

"Why don't you visit your father [Ian, 75, who is separated from Mrs Wilson]. He is ill through not seeing you. You've been brainwashed. You don't know what you've put me through.

"All the trouble. Don't you care?" Miss Wilson: "Of course I care." Mrs Wilson asked why she was accusing Mr Cooper of things he had not done.

Miss Wilson said it was not Cooper, but "the people beind him, who put him up to it". This echoed the claim of cult officials at the court that "apostates", renegade former scientologists, had stirred up Cooper.

But Mrs Wilson blamed the cult: "It is not good that they keep a daughter away from her mother. You were all I lived for and now I've got nothing.

You've thrown your life away. Why?"

Miss Wilson: "I have not."

She insisted that she would visit her mother if she would not be kidnapped.

Her mother retorted: "Who'd want to kidnap you? You're not a millionaire's daughter." Outside the courtroom, as Miss Wilson rejoined fellow cult members, her mother said: "I can't get through to her. She's been= brainwashed.

"She was quite easy-going as a child, but was easily led and gullible. I had to get her out of trouble at home."

After the acquittal of Cooper, Miss Wilson said the verdict could drive her and her mother further apart.

Why Kathy won't come home Independent Friday, March 31, 1995 By Tim Kelsey

At the garage on the road into East Grinstead, the cashier smiles.

"Scientologists?" he says. "You'll find them on the way into Turner's Hill. Just follow the road round. "It's a "religious" sect," he adds, politely. "Ah, yes," I say. "I'm afraid so," he replies.

It isn't far. Past a nursing home and some palatial private homes screened from the road by banks of flourishing rhododendrons, to the castle. Saint Hill castle is the European headquarters of the "Church" of Scientology. The "church" or cult, or sect - depending on your point of view - is American but it has a large following both here and on the Continent. Among non- Scientologists, the group is routinely demonised. Ten years ago, a British judge described it as "immoral, socially obnoxious, corrupt, sinister, and dangerous".

Two weeks ago, a jury at Lewes Crown Court acquitted a man of trying to abduct one of its members. The man said he was trying to rescue his friend, Kathleen Wilson, 23. He said she had been brainwashed and would have left if she had had any free will. The jury agreed: she had been brainwashed. The Scientologists have never suffered such a setback.

The castle is in the traditional English style, turreted, with crenelated walls. It was finished only five years ago. Walking towards the reception, you pass a bronze statue of a man holding an eternal flame and a shield. On the pedestal, there is a short epigram: "The Price of Freedom. Constant Alertness. Constant Willingness to Fight Back. There is no other price." This is attributed to L. Ron Hubbard, the "church"'s founder. The statue is dated 7 October, AD44. AD, in this context, stands for After Dianetics. Dianetics, the name coined when Hubbard published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health in 1950, and which formed the basis of his homespun ""religion"".

At reception, there is a young woman in uniform: blue blazer and trousers with navy-style trimmings. (Mr Hubbard was once in the American navy. Much of his "church" is navally themed.) The receptionist wears a badge on her chest: "What Are You Doing For the Next Billion Years?"

Soon after my arrival, Peter Mansell, the public relations officer, takes me into a conference room. We sit drinking coffee, with his colleague Margaret.

Seventeen years after coming across one of Mr Hubbard's books in a vegetable market, Mr Mansell is "clear" - which, in the language of the "church", means that he is some way along the path to eternal life. But there is still a long way to go. The ultimate achievement in Mr Hubbard's "church" is to become an "operating thetan". Mr Mansell has not started that journey.

Mr Mansell says he recalls some of his past lives - an important precursor to eternal self-knowledge for a Scientologist.

"Yeah, I remembered a moment from the Spanish Inquisition," he says. "I was being tortured, basically. I thought I must have seen this on a movie. But by the time I had finished describing it, I knew that it was real. It was enjoyable. I was laughing all the time I was talking about it."

"But who were you?"

"I was the person accused of being heretic. You know," he says thoughtfully, "I don't remember the language they were speaking. I was describing it in English. He died in the end."

"Who died? You died?"

"I guess I was exhausted. I don't know what the autopsy was.

Torture, being beaten, exhausted."

Kathleen Wilson then enters. She is quite unlike the others, much less comfortable in her uniform. She speaks with a broad accent.

She was brought up in Cleveland. Was she brainwashed? "The verdict?" she says. "I was outraged. I just listened to it, cringing. It was false information. I'm not brainwashed."

Her main anger is reserved for her mother, who appeared at the trial, much to Kathleen's annoyance. She seems to have played a role in Kathleen's journey into the "church". "I tried to get along with her - but everything I did she would criticise. We had this big piano. I tried to learn. All she said was: 'You're doing it all wrong.' " Her father, a bricklayer, had left home when she was 11.

"She used to control everything - the clothes, everything. Even my money. But everybody has to have something.

"I didn't want to argue. I told her I would move. I went when I was 19. I went with my friend, Lorna. I packed a suitcase and went to Bognor Regis. We rented a room in a house."

It was Lorna's boyfriend, Stephen, who later tried to remove her.

Briefly, the three of them had shared a house. The friends eventually went their different ways and Kathleen went to Chichester, where she found work as a sales assistant in a shoe shop.

"In the shoe shop, I was doing the same thing - day in, day out," Kathleen says. "I wasn't happy with the job. I wanted to do more in life." She came across Scientology by accident. "There used to be somebody giving out leaflets on the street and I saw one of them and it said: 'We only use 10 per cent of our mental potential.' They were Scientologists. I sent it off and I got the book. I then went in to the office for a personality test. There's a graph and it tells you parts you need to improve. It said I was shy."

A year later, she moved to Saint Hill to work full time for the cult. She had finally found a place in which she seemed to fit.

"They were helping people. I wanted to take the challenge on and lots of opportunities. There were chances to travel and they told me I could study art and design - which is always what I wanted to do." She pauses. "I mean I haven't actually done art and design yet, and I haven't travelled but you could do it."

Like the 250 others who work here, she receives pounds 33 per week.

Food and uniforms are free.

Kathleen is always smiling. She has shining eyes. She seems happy, if a little withdrawn when it comes to talking about herself. There is an unnerving breezy, cheery evenness about the way she talks, even about the visit from Stephen three years ago. That was the last time she saw anyone from her old life, until the trial.

"It's horrible not having your family," she says, still smiling. "I just want them to accept what I'm doing." Her mother visited the castle one Christmas. The visit was not a success. "She said she thought it was all right but she was still acting strange and wanted me to go home," Kathleen recalls.

This was the real surprise of the trial for Kathleen. After years of silence, her mother travelled unexpectedly to the courtroom to follow the proceedings. "I was shocked," Kathleen says. "I looked twice. I just wanted to talk to her. She said: 'Why haven't you come home?' I kept saying you'll put me in an institution. She kept denying it."

Her mother says that when she arrived at the court, her daughter was surrounded by members of the sect. "They said she didn't dare come home because she was frightened she would be put in an institution - as if I would do such a thing to my only child.

Besides, she is already in an institution, as far as I'm concerned - being brainwashed."

I am taken on a tour of the site, to the Great Hall adorned with its life-size portrait of Mr Hubbard, in a tuxedo, standing with his palm spread on a waist-high globe of the world.

On the other side of the castle are two long corridors which house the "audit" rooms - small cubicles in which Scientologists make their equivalent of confession. In each room is a small machine which looks like a video games console, except that it has a dial instead of a TV screen. This is the "e-meter". It is supposed to measure emotions. The subject holds a metal cylinder in each hand that is wired to the machine.

Hubbard borrowed the idea from the old lie detectors. Science suggests that the machine measures moisture levels on the palms - the idea being that you sweat when you lie. They say it measures tiny electrical charges generated by thoughts themselves.

After a trip around the nearby Hubbard Mansion, where the great founder lived, I ask Kathy if she will ever go home. "My mother won't accept what I'm doing," she replies. "She thinks I'm being kept prisoner. I miss her. I don't like not being able to speak to her or see her."

Then I ask how she is getting on in Scientology. She says she is a slow learner. She has been here three years and should have been some way along the route to eternal life. But she is not. Margaret says she has not yet been allowed to take part in what they call the "Purification Rundown", during which the student eats vast quantities of vitamins and spends long periods in a sauna. Margaret says it cleanses the body so that the mind can study.

"I take a little longer than the others," says Kathleen.

"What does Scientology mean for you?" I ask.

"It means knowing how to know, and you learn different things in life. There are courses for artists and business people and students. It improves different parts of your life."

"Have you remembered any of your past lives?" I ask.

"No," she says. "Not yet."

Go Back