Scientology demands apology and threatens The Times newspaper after investigation uncovers UK child labour

The Church of Scientology has sent a threatening letter demanding the immediate retraction of an article published by The Times newspaper after an under cover reporter found children as young as 13 were working at their Edinburgh branch.

The investigation saw Times journalist Tom Ball join Scientology at the Hubbard Academy of Personal Independence (HAPI), the church’s branch in Edinburgh, and uncover a series of concerning practices including a teenager working as the ‘Medical Liaison Officer’ despite lacking any formal medical training and offering massage-like nerve assists on adults in private, unsupervised closed rooms. “A Times investigation has found that for the past two years the church has been engaging children as young as 13 to work alongside adults in administrative, training and recruitment roles” the article reads. “One teenage girl has a role which involves giving massages to adults, including male staff and members of the public. Scientology denies this.”

Amir Essalhi, who alerted The Times to the children working at Scientology’s Edinburgh branch shortly after leaving his role as an executive there earlier this year, told us “What I witnessed at the Hubbard Academy of Personal Independence was textbook child exploitation. Children were forced into gruelling 40+ hour workweeks as staff and Executives under coercive threats of Scientology’s ethics punishments and knowledge reports. Even more disturbing, and still practiced in Scientology today, 14 year old girls were locked in rooms with elderly men to administer nerve assists that involved intimate physical contact.”

“This child exploitation directly violates UK child employment laws and the Modern Slavery Act 2015, mirroring previous Victorian era factory abuse on a modern and global scale. When I reported this to Police Scotland, I was summarily dismissed, refused an investigation, and denied even an evidence link. I am speaking out so public outrage forces law enforcement worldwide to confront this international trafficking and abusive apparatus, protecting these children, and permanently shut down these operations”

The Times article describes how “the enrolment of children is believed to be the result of pressure from the movement’s global leadership to accelerate expansion.”

“There are about 25 “staff members” at Hapi, of which four are children below the age of 16.” It states. “Another girl, who recently turned 16, joined “staff” when she was 14. Two other children, aged 14, are also attending the church on a daily basis though are not believed to be on staff at present. With the exception of one girl, they are all registered by their parents as home-schooled, thereby allowing them to come to the church each day.  Three children under 16 are living apart from their parents who are 450 miles south in East Grinstead, West Sussex, where its UK headquarters are based. The other children are the sons and daughters of longstanding members of the community in Scotland.”

Now, Scientology have hit back in a scathing letter to Times Editor Tony Gallagher demanding the article is retracted. The newspaper, the church claims, has “crossed a serious line” and “must answer the question its own published record now makes unavoidable: What material fact of public interest did Tom Ball obtain through this elaborate deception that The Times did not already possess and which could not have been obtained by legitimate journalistic means? That requires an answer. Not an assertion that The Times “stands by” its journalism. Not a general invocation of public interest. An answer.”

Sending an under-cover reporter to their Edinburgh branch amounts to “deception” and “religious bigotry”, Scientology spokesperson Graeme Wilson writes. “Would The Times infiltrate a mosque under a fabricated identity and build a national exposé around teenagers helping there? Would it secretly record worshippers in a synagogue and portray Jewish teenagers undertaking responsibilities in their religious community as the objects of sinister “recruitment”? Would regular participation by young Catholics in parish life become an undercover investigation into children being drawn into Church “staff”? The Times made the religion of these young people the reason its readers were instructed to regard their participation with suspicion. That is not merely slanted journalism. It is religious bigotry.”

According to the Wilson, “Within hours of publication, the Church was vandalised. Police attended the premises, took a full statement and formally
recorded the vandalism as a police incident.” He then threatens the paper, “The Times is therefore now on formal notice that the hostility the Church feared has already materialised.”

Police Scotland has been contacted for comment.

“We therefore require The Times to immediately withdraw the principal article, Ball’s accompanying first-person account and the associated podcast from publication, and cease their further distribution and promotion.”

It seems The Times hit a nerve. You can read Scientology’s response in full, below: