Free The Church of Fear: Inside The Weird World of Scientology by John Sweeney

his package looking for me had never thought to knock on my door. How very odd.
    Back at Plant City, Tommy moved away from where I lived to what he called my partially unveiled attack on his religion, my disingenuousness and my twisting of what he was telling me.
    ‘It is wholly absurd,’ I replied. ‘The question is: is your organisation an honest and open organization? Can the word of the Church of Scientology be trusted? And the answer is well they are very strange. They are actually a little bit creepy because they come along to my hotel…’
    ‘I am creepy?’ asked Tommy, incredulous.
    ‘As I said…’
    ‘I am strange and creepy?’ Tommy’s incredulity thickened like gravy after stirring.
    ‘You came to my hotel at midnight, that’s creepy.’
    ‘People who sit down with you and talk to you about my religious belief is something like…’
    Ding-Ding, Round Nine.
    ‘But some people say,’ I said, ‘it is a sinister cult. Now L Ron Hubbard? Some people say he is a fantasist and a liar.’
    This got to Tommy. ‘I would just like…I would just like to, and I hope somebody is shooting this, OK, good…’
    We were heading for a video shoot-out in the OK Corral. I counted five cameras: Bill with his big camera, Mole with a second smaller one, just in case, and three separate Scientology cameras. I set out to list them: ‘To be fair, there is one camera from the BBC, one camera from your…’
    ‘Now you listen to me for a second,’ snapped Tommy, his anger rising by the second, his face etched with aggression, my face reflected in his dark glasses.
    ‘You have no right whatsoever to say what and what isn’t a religion. The constitution of the United States of America guarantees one’s right to practice and believe freely in this country. And the definition of religion is very clear, and it is not defined by John Sweeney. And for you to repeatedly refer to my faith in those terms is so derogatory, so offensive and so bigoted – and the reason you keep repeating it is because you wanted to get a reaction like you are getting right now. Well buddy, you got it, right here, right now. I am angry. Real angry.’
    We were nose to nose. Had I puckered my lips I could have kissed him. He announced that we were done.
    ‘We are not done,’ I said. From the age of five to ten I lived in Manchester. While riled, my vowel sounds flatten. ‘We are not done,’ I repeated, as if an extra on Coronation Street , up for a fight with Tony Gordon.
    ‘If you use that term one more time about my religion…’
    ‘We are not done because…’
    ‘I can’t be responsible for my actions…’
    ‘Now my friend it is your turn to listen to me. I am a British subject, not an American citizen and in my country we have freedom of speech. We have a freedom to speak and we have exercised that freedom for centuries. And, if people say to me that they think your…what you claim to be a religion is in fact a cult, I have a right to report that. I have got a right to report that Tommy…’
    He trotted away, past a road works thingy, and jogged across the main road. I lumbered after him, a rhinoceros picking up speed. He called me a bigot, four, five times. That bounced off the rhino’s hide. I was holding up, so far.

CHAPTER FOUR
     

One man against the crowd
     
     
    T hat afternoon we headed back to Scientology town – Clearwater – to meet one man who stood apart from L Ron’s crowd. He was a fruitcake, a loner, a weirdo and a brave man, all rolled into one. His name was Shawn Lonsdale. Originally from New England, Shawn had been in the US Navy and while still a youngish man he had settled in Clearwater. Years before, he’d been caught by the police having consenting sex with men. Later, at a local council meeting, he had clashed with a Scientologist and suddenly they were on his case.
    People who don’t like Scientology leave Clearwater. For example, in the late nineties Patricia Greenway, the Vice President of the