Cult Awareness Network

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Template:ScientologySeries The Cult Awareness Network (or CAN) is a cult-related organization now owned by associates of the Church of Scientology. It previously provided information on cults and referrals to deprogrammers.

It evolved out of the Citizens' Freedom Foundation which Ted Patrick was "the prime force in organizing". (New York Times, September 2, 1974).

In 1995, CAN, Rick Ross and two others were found guilty of conspiracy to violate the civil right to freedom of religion of Jason Scott of the Life Tabernacle Church. Ross was ordered to pay more than $3 million in damages; CAN was ordered to pay in excess of $1 million. Ross had been involved in hundreds of interventions with members of various religious groups over a 15-year period. Scott was allegedly violently and brutally kidnapped, and was forcibly confined for five days. The crippling damage award, plus a large number of additional civil cases brought against it by the Church of Scientology drove CAN into bankruptcy in 1996. Its assets, including records, name and phone number were sold at an auction for $20,000 to a Scientologist.

Supporters and detractors alike use the terms old CAN and new CAN to refer to the two periods of the organization's existence.

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Controversy

Opponents of the old CAN charge that it deliberately provided a distorted picture of the groups it tracked. They claimed it was "a Chicago-based national anticult organization claiming to be purely a tax-exempt informational clearinghouse on new religions". [1]

Opponents of the new CAN say it has become effectively a subsidiary organization of, and a front group for, Scientology, as it exclusively promotes Scientology's point of view regarding cults and deprogrammers.

CAN was founded in the wake of the Jonestown mass suicide, and it collected information on many controversial organizations and religious movements. It also, however, became the subject of considerable controversy. Galen Kelly and Donald Moore, both of whom were convicted in the course of carrying out "deprogramming", are linked to CAN by its detractors. [2]

In 1991, Time magazine reported:

According to the Cult Awareness Network, whose 23 chapters monitor more than 200 "mind control" cults, no group prompts more telephone pleas for help than does Scientology. Says Cynthia Kisser, the network's Chicago-based executive director: "Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen. No cult extracts more money from its members.'" (Time, May 6, 1991, "Scientology: The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power.")

Around this time, the Church of Scientology struck back. In The American Lawyer, an article recounts:

Starting in 1991, CAN was forced to fend off some 50 civil suits filed by Scientologists around the country, many of them asserting carbon copy claims and many pressed by the same law firm, Los Angeles's Bowles & Moxon. Scientologists also filed dozens of discrimination complaints against CAN with state human rights commissions nationwide, requiring the services of still more lawyers. The avalanche of litigation staggered the network. By 1994 CAN, which ran on a budget of about $300,000 a year, had been dumped by its insurers and owed tens of thousands of dollars to attorneys. [3]

After driving the Cult Awareness Network to bankruptcy, a Scientologist attorney appeared in bankruptcy court and managed to win the bidding for what remained of the organization. The 'Cult Awareness Network' is now one of the hundreds of front companies run by the Church of Scientology.[4]

On December 12, 1996, a usenet posting by "lah" (later revealed to be the account of one Sister Francis Michael of the Heaven's Gate cult) in the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology applauded Scientology for their "courageous action against the Cult Awareness Network" [5], which she blamed of "promoting all sort of lies" including "cult activities". A few weeks later, the Heaven's Gate members committed mass suicide.

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