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Cult picket man's home
The East Grinstead Observer, Wednesday 23 March 1994
FOLLOWERS of the cult Church of Scientology have been picketing the house of a former member, who claims the church practices "mind control".
Scientologists bearing placards accusing John [should be Jon] Atack of breaking up families and owing the cult money, have demonstrated outside his Cranston Road home six times.
"They came on Saturday and the police told them that if they returned they would be arrested," Mr Atack told the Observer. Mr Atack left the cult in 1983, after being a member for nine years.
Since then he has counselled former members of the cult, and written books he says expose their methods of encouraging "fanaticism".
"I gave them a lot of money to damage my mind," said Mr Atack, who claims he has amassed a quarter of a million pages of documents proving the cult's founder L. Ron Hubbard is not the war hero and explorer he says he is.
Mr Atack has had no protesters since Saturday, and is relieved they have not returned, but says the cult has systematically put pressure on him for the past ten years.
"I am not anti-Scientologist. I want these people to come to me for help, but I am anti-Scientology itself," said Mr Atack.
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