This is the Fishman Affidavit

This homepage has been legally approved of.

It has thereby become the world's first legal Fishman Homepage. See the verdict of the lawsuit I was put through on account of this homepage.

This is the famous Fishman Affidavit. To explain why is has become so famous, I'll give you some more information. And please take a look at the articles, letters, subpoena, defense &c concerning the Dutch Protest as well. And while you're at it, you might also care to take a look at Steven Fishman's own homepage too.

The Church of Scientology (or: CoS; or: Cof$ as some of their opponents call it) sells its followers expensive courses which, if students study them carefully, are supposed to set them free ('clear' them). A former CoS-follower, Fishman, was brought before court because he commited several crimes in order to get the money to pay for these courses. Scientology urged him to get the money any which way he could. They also assigned him to kill somebody, and failing that, ordered him to commit suicide.

When Fishman had to testify in court, he used parts of Scientology-documents to prove he had been brainwashed by the Church. These Scientology documents thereby became public material: anybody could go to the court library and read them. The Church, fearing that its sacred secrets would be revealed, had some of their people going to the library every day to lend these documents, thereby preventing other people (read: non-Scientologists) to read them. Nevertheless, the Fishman Affidavit got copied (it was also available through the clerk of the court, for a mere $36.50) and has been travelling on Internet ever since.

The funny thing is, when you read the document, you'll just see a bunch of gibberish. Apart from the instructions of how to treat non-Scientologists - almost every means is allowed to silence them; lying is common sense; cheating is part and parcel - there's just this silly and badly written science-fiction tale about Xenu who controls all of us people; except (of course) the few Scientologist who managed to 'clear' themselves. Well, L. Ron Hubbard was an sf-author, but not a very good one (and jeez, I happen to like the genre).

But the real story is that Scientology does not want their followers to know what's in store for them: they forbid everybody to read this material until they've done lots of courses, stating that it would kill those who are not yet ready for it; but more probably because people may stop believing Scientology once they've read this lousy sf stuff. Also, according to CoS, their followers may never what's in store for them. And of course Scientlogy asks their followers massive amounts of money for the privilege of reading this.

To the best of my knowledge, the files here contains nothing but a court-document. Indeed it does include some material that is copyrighted by RTC; but as that was included in the court-document, they may be published as part of that document. In case somebody shows me that I included non-court materials (preferably by sending me a court-stamped copy of the original document), I will most certainly remove those parts of the material presented here.
Of course I would never want to publish copyrighted material of RTC other than that made public by the court. I am am thoroughly aware of the importance of copyright and copyright laws, and I do respect them.

Scientology does not argue with people who do not agree with them. They prefer to harass, start crazy lawsuits, have people followed by private detectives, and generally intimidate them. They do not sue in order to win; they sue in order to intimidate and harass. (See especially Exhibit B in the Fisman Affidavit: On Control and Lying) Currently, they are waging a war against Internet: trying to remove newsgroups, cancelling messages, forging messages, raiding providers. Their motto is: 'Never defend, always attack' and they are bent on ruining people who criticize them.

Scientology has ordered various raids on providers or computersystems from which documents exposing Scientology were available; most notably FactNet, a group of people who are putting together an on-line archive about Scientology. In Holland they raided XS4ALL (where one of the users, Fonss, had a copy of the Fishman Affidavit on his homepage) and ordered XS4ALL to remove it. XS4ALL refused to do so, stating that the content of people's homepage is of no concern to them and that they are not responsible for what their client put there. Fonss voluntarily (well, what would you do if you knew the Church was after you?) removed the Fishman Affidavit but provided a link on his page to another place where it could be obtained.

Ever since, the Fishman Affidavit is popping up everywhere. It's a dragon: when you cut one head of, it grows seven new ones. I hereby present another copy of this dragon.

Since mid September, reports on the Dutch Protest have been posted to the Internet-newsgroup that is devoted to discussion of CoS. Steven Fishman has sent me some letters on what he thought about this Dutch protest. Concerning the subpoena Scientology presented me with and my subsequent defense for the court, please click here for the Dutch version and here for the English version. Other articles I wrote on Scientology and the Dutch protest are here.

For everybody who wants to know more about Scientology, please refer to:
Information on Scientology's raid on XS4all, which has many newspaper-articles about the case (both in Dutch and in English);
Fonss homepage on Scientology, which includes among many other things the FactNet-kit, which is even more famous than the Fishman Affidavit. You can still download it from there;
Ron Newman, who maintains a magnificent archive on the Church of Scientology;
or The Electronic Frontier Foundation, who have amassed a collection of legal cases of Scientology vs. the Net.