Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

health services. ('We could have had a ball and put psychiatry on trial for murder, mercy killing,
sterilization, torture and sex practices and could have wiped out psychiatry's good name.')
Unfortunately, because of bungling somewhere along the line, the inquiry had been narrowed to
Scientology only, 'so it was a mess'.
He laid out the procedure to be followed if there were further official inquiries into Scientology. The
first step was to identify the antagonists, next investigate them 'for felonies or worse' and then start
feeding 'lurid, blood sex crime actual evidence on the attackers' to the press. 'Don't ever tamely
submit to an investigation of us,' he warned. 'Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way.'[7]
Hubbard soon showed he was prepared to take the lead. The storm caused by the Anderson report
was not merely restricted to ephemeral headlines: it provoked further and continuing media
investigation into Scientology and prodded governments into taking punitive measures against the
church. The reaction, sociologist Roy Wallis noted, was comparable to an international moral
panic: 'The former conception of the movement as a relatively harmless, if cranky, health and selfimprovement
cult, was transformed into one which portrayed it as evil, dangerous, a form of
hypnosis (with all the overtones of Svengali in the layman's mind), and brainwashing.'[8]
The Australian government was first to act: in December 1965, the State of Victoria passed the
Psychological Practices Act which effectively outlawed Scientology and empowered the Attorney
General to seize and destroy all Scientology documents and recordings. Then the country playing
host to the 'evil Dr Hubbard' could hardly be expected to ignore the Anderson report and on 7
February 1966, Lord Balniel, MP, then chairman of the National Association for Mental Health, stood
up in the House of Commons and asked the Minister of Health to initiate an inquiry into Scientology
in Britain.
Two days later, Hubbard issued an instruction from Saint Hill Manor: 'Get a detective on that Lord's
past to unearth the titbits. They're there.'[9] On 17 February he set up a 'Public Investigation Section'
to be staffed by professional private detectives. Its function was to 'help LRH [Hubbard became
known in Scientology by his initials] investigate public matters and individuals which seem to
impede human liberty' and 'furnish intelligence'. The first private investigator hired to head the
section was told to find at least one bad mark ('a murder, an assault, or a rape') on every
psychiatrist in Britain, starting with Lord Balniel. Unfortunately for Hubbard, the gallant detective
promptly scuttled off and sold his story to a Sunday newspaper, creating more unfavourable
publicity for Scientology.[10]
Scientology's 'official' reply to the Anderson report was a forty-eight-page document, bound in black
and gold, and titled 'Kangaroo Court. An investigation into the conduct of the Board of Inquiry into
Scientology.' It was hardly designed to win the hearts and minds of the average Australian. 'Only a
society founded by criminals, organized by criminals and devoted to making people criminals,
could come to such a conclusion [about Scientology] . . .' the introduction declared. 'The foundation
of Victoria consists of the riff-raff of London's slums - robbers, murderers, prostitutes, fences,
thieves - the scourings of Newgate and Bedlam . . . the niceties of truth and fairness, of hearing
witnesses and weighing evidence, are not for men whose ancestry is lost in the promiscuity of the
prison ships of transportation . . .'
After airing the manifold grievances of the church, 'Kangaroo Court' returned to its initial theme: 'The
insane attack on Scientology in the State of Victoria, can best be understood if Victoria is seen for
what it is - a very primitive community, somewhat barbaric, with a rudimentary knowledge of the
physical sciences.' There followed a defiant quote from L. Ron Hubbard: 'The future of Scientology
in Australia is bright and shiny. We will continue to grow and progress. No vested interests or