'Don't call it a cult...'

[Homicidalheathen]

In the latest chapter of an extraordinary exposé of the Church of Scientology, the St Petersburg Times has described the group's strenuous efforts to track down and bring back members who try to leave.

Former Scientology members have told the Florida newspaper of being pursued and detained, cut off from family and friends and subjected to months of interrogation, humiliation and manual labour. What is particularly damaging is that these allegations come from former high-ranking Scientology officials who allegedly coordinated the intelligence gathering and supervised the retrieval of staff at the behest of the church's leader, David Miscavige.

The latest instalment of the series – What Happened in Vegas – includes detailed allegations of a campaign to gather information on a group of high-level defectors.

According to the paper, two couples and a man who left in 1990 to set up a mortgage business in Las Vegas were infiltrated by a mole who would send reports on the group to the church's office of special affairs' (OSA) intelligence unit back in Hollywood.

The church's alleged interest in the group's activities had to do with the two women, who were sisters. Terri and Janis Gillham were two of the original four "messengers" for L Ron Hubbard, the pulp novelist who founded Scientology. As his messengers they fetched people for private audiences and carried his handwritten notes – bulletins in red ink and policy orders in green.

For the story, the St Peterburg Times interviewed high-ranking defectors, including Mike Rinder, the former director of OSA, and Marty Rathbun, the former inspector general of the Religious Technology Centre, the church's top ecclesiastical authority. A Scientology spokesman "categorically denied" that Miscavige knew about or was involved in the pursuit of runaways or spying on former members.

The Church of Scientology has been battered by negative publicity in the last few days. Last week one of the most high-profile members, Hollywood film-maker Paul Haggis, quit the organisation in protest at its stance on same-sex marriages. In an explosive letter of resignation, Haggis claimed he could no longer "be a member of an organisation where gay-bashing is tolerated".

On this side of the Atlantic two flagship branches of the church in France were ordered to pay fines of over €600,000 (£550,000) after being convicted of "fraud in an organised gang" by a court in Paris. The latest piece from the St Petersburg Times just piles on the bad publicity for the church founded by Hubbard in 1952.