Scientologist under fire over cover-up claims
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Australian Broadcasting Corporation
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2904211.htm
Broadcast: 19/05/2010
Reporter: Steve Cannane
A senior figure in the Church of Scientology has been accused of trying to cover up the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl in Sydney.
Transcript
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Last night on Lateline we heard from Scarlett Hanna, the daughter of the president of the Church of Scientology in Australia. She describes Scientology as a toxic organisation and was particularly scathing about the treatment of children.
Well, tonight a special Lateline investigation raises allegations that the Church in Sydney was involved in covering up the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl.
Carmen Rainer alleges that one of the church's most senior figures internationally was involved in coaching her and her mother, both members of the Church of Scientology, to lie to police and community services.
Steve Cannane reports.
CARMEN RAINER, FORMER SCIENTOLOGIST: When I was 11-years-old I was with my friend Merinda down at the park and we were on the merry-go-round and we just happened to be talking and I told her that I had someone that touched me and she said that's not right.
MERINDA VOIGT, CARMEN'S FRIEND: And I remember at the time understanding it was such a big thing that she was telling me and how damaging this was for her and I asked her if I could tell my mother.
CARMEN RAINER: Between the age of about eight, seven to 11, he was molesting me.
LOUISE VOIGT, CEO, BARNADOS: I suppose why I was really, really worried...
STEVE CANNANE, REPORTER: Merinda Voight's mother, Louise, is the CEO of Barnardos. At the time she was working in child protection.
LOUISE VOIGT: Carmen came to see me, brought by my daughter. She gave me a fairly full disclosure of sexual interference by her step father which has been repeated over a considerable number of occasions. I said to her that I really needed to talk to her mum and that probably we would have to go to the Department of Community Services as it was then YACS (Youth and Community Services).
PHOEBE RAINER, CARMEN'S MOTHER: I went into shock. I didn't know how to react. I didn't know what to do and my first thought was well, I need to speak to somebody that will help me and my first thought was the chaplain in Scientology.
STEVE CANNANE: Phoebe Rainer brought her daughter here, to the Church of Scientology in Sydney.
A response that set off alarm bells for Louise Voigt.
LOUISE VOIGT: I phoned the Department of Community Services because I was so concerned because Carmen's mum said that she wouldn't go anywhere, she wouldn't seek any help, she would go to her church and she then told me it was the Church of Scientology.
STEVE CANNANE: And what was your reaction to that?
LOUISE VOIGT: I was horrified because I'd been a social worker at the Mental Health Association when it was targeted by the Church of Scientology.
STEVE CANNANE: Louise Voigt's concern was justified.
CARMEN RAINER: They told me it was my fault because I'd been bad in a past life. I'd probably done something bad in a past life so I pulled it in.
STEVE CANNANE: How did that feel as a girl who was a victim of abuse to be told that it was your fault from a past life?
CARMEN RAINER: I believed them. As a child I believed them. I was 11 and that's what I knew, I grew up believing what they believed and that's just how I saw things as well.
STEVE CANNANE: Not only was Carmen Rainer blamed for her abuse, she says she was told by a senior scientologist to lie to police and community services about what her then step father Robert Alexander Kerr, had done to her.
CARMEN RAINER: The church got involved then and then they sent Jan Eastgate over to drill me and to tell me what to say to the police and what to say to DOCS.
STEVE CANNANE: Carmen Rainer says Jan Eastgate told her to tell community services that her step father hadn't touched her on the genitals and to tell police she didn't want her step father to go to jail.
(to Carmen Rainer) Tell us what Jan Eastgate told you to say to the police.
CARMEN RAINER: Just say no. She kept repeating that, "just remember you can't tell them. Don't say yes because otherwise you will be taken away from your parents and you will never see your family again" because DOCS will take me and my brother away from my mum and that I needed to just say no.
STEVE CANNANE: Jan Eastgate was at the time the head of the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights in Australia, an organisation founded by the Church of Scientology that campaigns against psychiatry. Jan Eastgate is now the international head of the CCHR based in Los Angeles.
In the 1970s and '80s she helped expose the deaths of patients during deep sleep therapy at Chelmsford Hospital in Sydney.
JAN EASTGATE (1985): It wreaks or smacks of a cover up.
STEVE CANNANE: The Church of Scientology awarded Jan Eastgate the Freedom Medal in 1988 for her work in promoting human rights but now she's been accused of trampling on the rights of an 11-year-old victim of abuse and interfering with a police investigation.
PHOEBE RAINER: Jan Eastgate coached both of us actually. And she was, she came to us with DOCS, they weren't called DOCS back then, but she came with us to the interview and she basically told me what to say and Carmen what to say and she also told Carmen to lie to the police and I lied to the police as well because of that.
STEVE CANNANE: Jan Eastgate has declined to talk to Lateline either on the phone or on camera. In an email to Lateline she described the allegations by Carmen and Phoebe Rainer as egregiously false.
But Carmel Underwood, a former director of Church of Scientology in Sydney, said she walked in on Jan Eastgate coaching Carmen Rainer.
CARMEL UNDERWOOD: Well I walked into the office, went through the hallway and I was at the doorway and I saw Jan there across from Carmen and Phoebe and Jan put her hand up, a gesture to Carmen and her mother to stop talking, and I was asked to leave and by that stage I had gathered what was going on.
I knew that Carmen was being coached on what to say to the Department of Community Services and to the police so I challenged them on that and we had a bit of an argument and I was told it was none of my business and to get out of there and I didn't want to get out of there because I wanted to stop what was going on but I was escorted out of there.
STEVE CANNANE: Carmel Underwood says she was disciplined by the church soon after this exchange.
Scientology has its own internal justice system. They refer to the Australian legal system as wog justice. According to Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, there are four classes of crimes and offences within Scientology - errors, misdemeanours, crimes and high crimes.
What Scientology calls seducing a minor is listed as a crime, the same category as committing a problem or heckling a scientology instructor or lecturer.
Sexually perverted conduct is considered a high crime, as is making public statements against Scientology.
SHEILA HUBER, FORMER SCIENTOLOGIST: You're not supposed to do anything that makes Scientology look bad and these are high crimes.
STEVE CANNANE: Sheila Huber is a former executive establishment officer at the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles.
SHEILA HUBER: A good scientologist believes that if they don't do L. Ron Hubbard's scientology that they will permanently die when they die this lifetime and go into some dwindling cycle of getting worse and worse and worse and the only way through freedom is through L. Ron Hubbard. So you're holding eternity over somebody.
STEVE CANNANE: Phoebe Rainer says it was indoctrination that led her to agree to protect the Church of Scientology instead of her daughter. An act that has led to a strained relationship.
PHOEBE RAINER: Well, it would be hard for an outsider to understand why it would be done but you are so totally brain washed by their beliefs, by anything and then you get told that if you go this particular way you're going to lose everything, you're going to lose your future.
STEVE CANNANE: Jan Eastgate denies there was any pressure from her to get involved in Carmen Rainer's case. In an email to Lateline Jan Eastgate says:
EXCERPT OF JAN EASTGATE EMAIL: The family asked for my help to attend their meeting with Youth and Community Services specifically because they did not want anyone involved to be forced to undergo psychiatric treatment. It had nothing to do with the merit of potential criminal charges.
STEVE CANNANE: Jan Eastgate and the Church of Scientology assert that Robert Kerr went to the police in 1999 at the church's insistence.
PHOEBE RAINER: Yeah, that's 13 years later, that's after I started legal proceedings, yeah, but not at the time.
STEVE CANNANE: Phoebe Rainer says Robert Kerr was told by senior scientologists he had to go to the police only after she'd written to the church threatening legal action.
Lateline has obtained a copy of Robert Kerr's police statement from 1999. In it he admits to multiple acts of indecent assault and talks about how he avoided charges at the time of the initial investigation.
EXCERPT FROM ROBERT KERR'S POLICE STATEMENT (1999): The police officer said to me "I was very lucky" or something along those lines and he left. I was never told what was said to the police but I presume that Phoebe and Carmen somehow minimised the number of events or some such thing.
STEVE CANNANE: In 2001 Carmen Rainer made her own statement to police, 18 months after Robert Kerr had made his. Kerr pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting Carmen Rainer and was given a good behaviour bond.
CARMEN RAINER: Yeah. Yeah.
NICK XENOPHON, INDEPENDENT SENATOR: Got your statement?
CARMEN RAINER: Got my statement.
STEVE CANNANE: Recently Carmen Rainer returned to Balmain police station accompanied by Independent Senator Nick Xenophon who is now calling for a judicial inquiry into Scientology. Carmen Rainer made a statement to police outlining the allegations against Jan Eastgate. Police are now investigating the matter.
PHEOBE RAINER: I try to block it out most of the time because it's not right and you shouldn't have to do that. And it's ruined Carmen's life.
STEVE CANNANE: The Church of Scientology would not answer questions on camera about these allegations. In a statement they said they were untrue and defamatory.
Steve Cannane, Lateline.
Print Email
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2904211.htm
Broadcast: 19/05/2010
Reporter: Steve Cannane
A senior figure in the Church of Scientology has been accused of trying to cover up the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl in Sydney.
Transcript
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Last night on Lateline we heard from Scarlett Hanna, the daughter of the president of the Church of Scientology in Australia. She describes Scientology as a toxic organisation and was particularly scathing about the treatment of children.
Well, tonight a special Lateline investigation raises allegations that the Church in Sydney was involved in covering up the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl.
Carmen Rainer alleges that one of the church's most senior figures internationally was involved in coaching her and her mother, both members of the Church of Scientology, to lie to police and community services.
Steve Cannane reports.
CARMEN RAINER, FORMER SCIENTOLOGIST: When I was 11-years-old I was with my friend Merinda down at the park and we were on the merry-go-round and we just happened to be talking and I told her that I had someone that touched me and she said that's not right.
MERINDA VOIGT, CARMEN'S FRIEND: And I remember at the time understanding it was such a big thing that she was telling me and how damaging this was for her and I asked her if I could tell my mother.
CARMEN RAINER: Between the age of about eight, seven to 11, he was molesting me.
LOUISE VOIGT, CEO, BARNADOS: I suppose why I was really, really worried...
STEVE CANNANE, REPORTER: Merinda Voight's mother, Louise, is the CEO of Barnardos. At the time she was working in child protection.
LOUISE VOIGT: Carmen came to see me, brought by my daughter. She gave me a fairly full disclosure of sexual interference by her step father which has been repeated over a considerable number of occasions. I said to her that I really needed to talk to her mum and that probably we would have to go to the Department of Community Services as it was then YACS (Youth and Community Services).
PHOEBE RAINER, CARMEN'S MOTHER: I went into shock. I didn't know how to react. I didn't know what to do and my first thought was well, I need to speak to somebody that will help me and my first thought was the chaplain in Scientology.
STEVE CANNANE: Phoebe Rainer brought her daughter here, to the Church of Scientology in Sydney.
A response that set off alarm bells for Louise Voigt.
LOUISE VOIGT: I phoned the Department of Community Services because I was so concerned because Carmen's mum said that she wouldn't go anywhere, she wouldn't seek any help, she would go to her church and she then told me it was the Church of Scientology.
STEVE CANNANE: And what was your reaction to that?
LOUISE VOIGT: I was horrified because I'd been a social worker at the Mental Health Association when it was targeted by the Church of Scientology.
STEVE CANNANE: Louise Voigt's concern was justified.
CARMEN RAINER: They told me it was my fault because I'd been bad in a past life. I'd probably done something bad in a past life so I pulled it in.
STEVE CANNANE: How did that feel as a girl who was a victim of abuse to be told that it was your fault from a past life?
CARMEN RAINER: I believed them. As a child I believed them. I was 11 and that's what I knew, I grew up believing what they believed and that's just how I saw things as well.
STEVE CANNANE: Not only was Carmen Rainer blamed for her abuse, she says she was told by a senior scientologist to lie to police and community services about what her then step father Robert Alexander Kerr, had done to her.
CARMEN RAINER: The church got involved then and then they sent Jan Eastgate over to drill me and to tell me what to say to the police and what to say to DOCS.
STEVE CANNANE: Carmen Rainer says Jan Eastgate told her to tell community services that her step father hadn't touched her on the genitals and to tell police she didn't want her step father to go to jail.
(to Carmen Rainer) Tell us what Jan Eastgate told you to say to the police.
CARMEN RAINER: Just say no. She kept repeating that, "just remember you can't tell them. Don't say yes because otherwise you will be taken away from your parents and you will never see your family again" because DOCS will take me and my brother away from my mum and that I needed to just say no.
STEVE CANNANE: Jan Eastgate was at the time the head of the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights in Australia, an organisation founded by the Church of Scientology that campaigns against psychiatry. Jan Eastgate is now the international head of the CCHR based in Los Angeles.
In the 1970s and '80s she helped expose the deaths of patients during deep sleep therapy at Chelmsford Hospital in Sydney.
JAN EASTGATE (1985): It wreaks or smacks of a cover up.
STEVE CANNANE: The Church of Scientology awarded Jan Eastgate the Freedom Medal in 1988 for her work in promoting human rights but now she's been accused of trampling on the rights of an 11-year-old victim of abuse and interfering with a police investigation.
PHOEBE RAINER: Jan Eastgate coached both of us actually. And she was, she came to us with DOCS, they weren't called DOCS back then, but she came with us to the interview and she basically told me what to say and Carmen what to say and she also told Carmen to lie to the police and I lied to the police as well because of that.
STEVE CANNANE: Jan Eastgate has declined to talk to Lateline either on the phone or on camera. In an email to Lateline she described the allegations by Carmen and Phoebe Rainer as egregiously false.
But Carmel Underwood, a former director of Church of Scientology in Sydney, said she walked in on Jan Eastgate coaching Carmen Rainer.
CARMEL UNDERWOOD: Well I walked into the office, went through the hallway and I was at the doorway and I saw Jan there across from Carmen and Phoebe and Jan put her hand up, a gesture to Carmen and her mother to stop talking, and I was asked to leave and by that stage I had gathered what was going on.
I knew that Carmen was being coached on what to say to the Department of Community Services and to the police so I challenged them on that and we had a bit of an argument and I was told it was none of my business and to get out of there and I didn't want to get out of there because I wanted to stop what was going on but I was escorted out of there.
STEVE CANNANE: Carmel Underwood says she was disciplined by the church soon after this exchange.
Scientology has its own internal justice system. They refer to the Australian legal system as wog justice. According to Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, there are four classes of crimes and offences within Scientology - errors, misdemeanours, crimes and high crimes.
What Scientology calls seducing a minor is listed as a crime, the same category as committing a problem or heckling a scientology instructor or lecturer.
Sexually perverted conduct is considered a high crime, as is making public statements against Scientology.
SHEILA HUBER, FORMER SCIENTOLOGIST: You're not supposed to do anything that makes Scientology look bad and these are high crimes.
STEVE CANNANE: Sheila Huber is a former executive establishment officer at the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles.
SHEILA HUBER: A good scientologist believes that if they don't do L. Ron Hubbard's scientology that they will permanently die when they die this lifetime and go into some dwindling cycle of getting worse and worse and worse and the only way through freedom is through L. Ron Hubbard. So you're holding eternity over somebody.
STEVE CANNANE: Phoebe Rainer says it was indoctrination that led her to agree to protect the Church of Scientology instead of her daughter. An act that has led to a strained relationship.
PHOEBE RAINER: Well, it would be hard for an outsider to understand why it would be done but you are so totally brain washed by their beliefs, by anything and then you get told that if you go this particular way you're going to lose everything, you're going to lose your future.
STEVE CANNANE: Jan Eastgate denies there was any pressure from her to get involved in Carmen Rainer's case. In an email to Lateline Jan Eastgate says:
EXCERPT OF JAN EASTGATE EMAIL: The family asked for my help to attend their meeting with Youth and Community Services specifically because they did not want anyone involved to be forced to undergo psychiatric treatment. It had nothing to do with the merit of potential criminal charges.
STEVE CANNANE: Jan Eastgate and the Church of Scientology assert that Robert Kerr went to the police in 1999 at the church's insistence.
PHOEBE RAINER: Yeah, that's 13 years later, that's after I started legal proceedings, yeah, but not at the time.
STEVE CANNANE: Phoebe Rainer says Robert Kerr was told by senior scientologists he had to go to the police only after she'd written to the church threatening legal action.
Lateline has obtained a copy of Robert Kerr's police statement from 1999. In it he admits to multiple acts of indecent assault and talks about how he avoided charges at the time of the initial investigation.
EXCERPT FROM ROBERT KERR'S POLICE STATEMENT (1999): The police officer said to me "I was very lucky" or something along those lines and he left. I was never told what was said to the police but I presume that Phoebe and Carmen somehow minimised the number of events or some such thing.
STEVE CANNANE: In 2001 Carmen Rainer made her own statement to police, 18 months after Robert Kerr had made his. Kerr pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting Carmen Rainer and was given a good behaviour bond.
CARMEN RAINER: Yeah. Yeah.
NICK XENOPHON, INDEPENDENT SENATOR: Got your statement?
CARMEN RAINER: Got my statement.
STEVE CANNANE: Recently Carmen Rainer returned to Balmain police station accompanied by Independent Senator Nick Xenophon who is now calling for a judicial inquiry into Scientology. Carmen Rainer made a statement to police outlining the allegations against Jan Eastgate. Police are now investigating the matter.
PHEOBE RAINER: I try to block it out most of the time because it's not right and you shouldn't have to do that. And it's ruined Carmen's life.
STEVE CANNANE: The Church of Scientology would not answer questions on camera about these allegations. In a statement they said they were untrue and defamatory.
Steve Cannane, Lateline.
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