Scientologist Tom Cruise too controversial for French anti-cult groups

Activists have warned against the worrying message Cruise's presence will send to cult victims

PARIS:

Anti-cult activists have condemned the likely appearance of Hollywood actor and well-known Scientologist Tom Cruise at the Paris Olympics closing ceremony on Sunday. While his attendance has not been confirmed, the Mission Impossible star is widely expected to be part of the Games' final show, angering a French umbrella group for cult victims.

"The simple fact that we are talking about his presence is an insult to victims," said Catherine Katz, a former French judge who heads UNADFI, a group dedicated to defending victims of cults. "It really is a bad message."

Charline Delporte, the president of victims' association Caffes, called it "a disgrace".

Anti-cult activists like Katz and Delporte accused Scientologists of recruiting outside Olympic venues, including the Stade de France north of Paris, which will 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 said.

The movement describes itself as a religion but is considered a cult in France.

'Sock puppets'

Miviludes, a French government agency tasked with dealing with cult movements, said it had received reports of Scientology-linked "No to drugs" brochures being handed out across Paris.

While the 30-page leaflets do not explicitly mention the Church of Scientology, the campaign is connected to it via a Scientology-sponsored organisation, Foundation For a Drug-Free World, Katz said.

"They are sock puppets," he told 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 said the flyers even turned up in some Parisian pharmacies.

"We worry that this could be a proselytising approach that has nothing to do with prevention," its chief Donatien Le Vaillant told AFP.

The agency warned against the "risks of psychological destabilisation, exorbitant financial expectations" and people being split from their families and friends associated with Scientology, whose members have previously been convicted of fraud in France. The movement opened a centre in Saint-Denis, where the Stade de France is located, in April.

The Church of Scientology, which was founded by American writer L. Ron Hubbard in the early 1950s and counts Cruise and John Travolta among its members, is well-established in Hollywood and Los Angeles, where it owns multiple sprawling properties. It claims between 40,000 and 45,000 members in France, but one expert estimated the figure was more likely to be in the hundreds.

Hubbard was sentenced in his absence to four years in prison for fraud in France in 1978, according to Miviludes. Two of the movement's main structures in France were also convicted of fraud, extortion and racketeering in 2013.

AFP attempted to contact the Church of Scientology's European head for comment.

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