Scientology - A Question of Faith

Did A Mother's Faith Contribute To Her Murder?

(CBS) 

Elli Perkins traveled to the Renaissance Fair in upstate New York each year, where she sold her handmade glass art. Fellow artist Cookie Schoonmaker-Fransic says she was there every year.

Cookie has warm memories of Elli, her husband Don, and their kids Jeremy and Danielle, who were raised from birth as Scientologists.

Don and Elli spent much of their free time taking special Scientology courses which help members advance in the church. Those courses, says Kent, do cost money. "They can go from a few thousand dollars to in some cases, you know, $10,000 or so," he explains.

In 1979, Don and Elli achieved the state of spiritual advancement in the church called “Clear.” Elli learned to operate the E-Meter and became a respected auditor herself. In the 1980s, the family briefly moved to California, where Elli had the privilege of working at one of the church’s most prestigious facilities, the Celebrity Center in Los Angeles.

From the early years of the church, founder Hubbard made it official policy to recruit celebrities. "The hope is that the person will attribute, some would say misattribute, their success to the Scientology courses," Kent explains.

“I was a high level executive at the Celebrity Center. We’d go out and target certain celebrities," says Lawrence Wollersheim, a director of Factnet.org who spent 11 years in the church, and is now one of its most fierce and persistent critics.

Like Elli, Wollersheim climbed to higher states - beyond "Clear" - known in the church as “Operating Thetan” or “OT” levels. A Thetan is Scientology’s equivalent of the spirit, and advanced members are taught that these Thetans were originally brought to earth by a space alien named Xenu, where he exploded them in volcanoes.

“I know this story sounds crazy. But Scientologists believe it to the death," says Wollersheim. "It’s what the aliens did that is really screwing your life up. That’s what the secret levels of Scientology are all about."

Professor Kent says Scientologists are told that at the higher OT levels, members receive special powers. “Ability to control matter, energy, space and time, to be free from serious illness, to be exempt from tragedies, and so on,” he says.

Wollersheim claims that these secret, upper-level teachings pushed him over the edge. “At the OT3 level initiation you discover you’re not one person. You’re hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even a million aliens and they’re fighting for control of the body. You no longer know who you are anymore," he says. "I went completely nuts.”

Asked if he ended up getting psychiatric help, he says he eventually did.

Wollersheim sued the church. A California court found he had a bi-polar personality, and that the church “coerced Wollersheim into continuing 'auditing' although his sanity was repeatedly threatened by this practice.” After decades of appeals and countersuits, the church paid $8.6 million to end the case.

“Scientology. They are the worst example of mind control in a religious setting that has ever existed,” Wollersheim claims.

The church calls Wollersheim a liar and a fraud, and claims the vast majority of its members are happy and fulfilled.

Members like the Perkinses, who by the late 1980s were back in Buffalo. Jeremy eventually attended the respected Williamsville North High School.