Anti-cult activists have condemned the possible look of Hollywood actor and well-known Scientologist Tom Cruise on the Paris Olympics closing ceremony on Sunday.
While his attendance has not been confirmed, the “Mission Impossible” star is extensively anticipated to be a part of the Games’ closing present, angering a French umbrella group for cult victims.
“The simple fact that we are talking about his presence is an insult to victims,” stated Catherine Katz, a former French decide who heads UNADFI, a gaggle devoted to defending victims of cults. “It really is a bad message.”
Charline Delporte, the president of victims’ affiliation Caffes, known as it “a disgrace”.
Anti-cult activists like Katz and Delporte accused Scientologist of recruiting exterior Olympic venues, together with the Stade de France north of Paris, which can host the closing ceremony.
“They are very present at the big sporting events, they will no doubt reach many young people, I am very worried,” Delporte stated.
The motion describes itself as a faith however is taken into account a cult in France.
Miviludes, a French authorities company tasked with coping with cult actions, stated it had acquired stories of Scientology-linked “No to drugs” brochures being handed out throughout Paris.
While the 30-page leaflets don’t explicitly point out the Church of Scientology, the marketing campaign is linked to it through a Scientology-sponsored group, Foundation For a Drug-Free World, Katz stated.
“They are sock puppets,” he advised AFP. “If you don’t know who they are, you can fall for their grand values. They say they’re here to help drug addicts, but in fact it enables indoctrination.”
Miviludes stated the flyers even turned up in some Parisian pharmacies.
“We worry that this could be a proselytizing approach that has nothing to do with prevention,” its chief Donatien Le Vaillant advised AFP.
The company warned towards the “risks of psychological destabilization, exorbitant financial expectations” and folks being break up from their households and mates related to Scientology, whose members have beforehand been convicted of fraud in France.
The motion opened a middle in Saint-Denis, the place the Stade de France is situated, in April.
The Church of Scientology, which was based by American author L. Ron Hubbard within the early Nineteen Fifties and counts Cruise and John Travolta amongst its members, is well-established in Hollywood and Los Angeles, the place it owns a number of sprawling properties.
It claims between 40,000 and 45,000 members in France, however one knowledgeable estimated the determine was extra prone to be within the a whole bunch.
Hubbard was sentenced in his absence to 4 years in jail for fraud in France in 1978, in line with Miviludes.
Two of the motion’s predominant constructions in France had been additionally convicted of fraud, extortion and racketeering in 2013.
AFP tried to contact the Church of Scientology’s European head for remark.
© 2024 AFP