Scientology operatives and attorneys trying to end a medical industry

Sunday, a lengthy piece we’ve been working on for quite a while came out in The Daily Beast. We had been tipped by one of our longtime readers that Scientology had been quietly focusing litigation against SigmaStim and Somatics, the two small manufacturers of the suitcase-sized devices used in electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

For decades Scientology has targeted the doctors who use ECT to treat people with very serious depression and catatonia, but there are hundreds of providers serving an estimated 100,000 Americans who receive the treatments every year (and many more around the world). Shutting down all those providers isn’t practical. But Scientology realized there was an easier target: If they could put the two small device manufacturers out of business, by federal regulation doctors could no longer use their machines.

The providers we spoke to, including the biggest names in the field at institutions like Columbia University, Stanford, and Duke, told us the situation was dire, and they were getting no help from the government.

We are grateful that they spoke to us, and we hope The Daily Beast article begins a conversation about Scientology’s attempt to end ECT treatments by filing lawsuits against the device manufacturers.

Although the article was lengthy, there was even more that we just didn’t have space to fit in, and so we wanted to include that material at the Bunker. And we thought our audience would be interested in this material because it features a figure our audience knows well: Scientology’s notorious in-house attorney, Kendrick Moxon…

Scientology has had other targets of intense litigation besides its focus on ECT device manufacturers. In the 1990s, it tried to squelch revelations about its secret processes that were coming out in the early Internet.

Those attacks on critics who were releasing information about the secretive church were often carried out by three Scientology attorneys who became synonymous with the 1990s war on the 'Net: Kendrick Moxon, Helena Kobrin, and Ava Paquette.

Moxon was especially noteworthy, because he had been named in the Snow White Program prosecutions of church figures after Scientology's infiltration of government agencies that was uncovered by the FBI in 1977.

When Department of Justice prosecutors asked for handwriting samples from Scientology figures following the FBI's raid of the church — the largest in FBI history to that time — Moxon was accused of turning over fake handwriting samples.

He was not charged, but he went on the government's list of unindicted co-conspirators, along with the founder of Scientology himself, L. Ron Hubbard.

By the late 1990s, Moxon was an in-house attorney for Scientology known for going after the church's online critics.

Then, in 2001, in one example of litigation against ECT device manufacturers, a federal lawsuit was filed against SigmaStim's predecessor, MECTA, on behalf of a man named Atze Akkerman who alleged that he had suffered permanent brain damage from the procedure.

The attorneys of record representing him? Kendrick Moxon, Helena Kobrin, and Ava Paquette.

It's just an example of how Scientology was filing litigation against the ECT device manufacturers as part of its open war on psychiatry.

Since 2002, however, that work has been taken up by another set of lawyers who work for a firm called Wisner Baum.

Brent Wisner and Michael Baum are both longtime OT Scientologists. (Scientologists who reach the upper levels of Hubbard's "Bridge to Total Freedom" gain access to the auditing levels that will make them "Operating Thetans," OTs, who can then gain greater control of themselves as thetans and unlock the powers lost on the Whole Track of existence, stretching back trillions of years.)

Wisner and Baum each did not respond to requests for an interview. But at the Wisner Baum website, there is a page dedicated to their litigation against ECT device manufacturers, with language that is very close to Scientology front group CCHR's own attacks.

"This looks like a page from the CCHR website. I cannot believe that they are posting blatant lies. I am flabbergasted that it is on a law firm's website," SigmaStim CEO Adrian Kettering said when she ran across it and sent over the link.

Kendrick Moxon also did not respond to multiple requests for comment, even though he is the lead attorney in a lawsuit filed in 2022, again with Atze Akkerman as one of its plaintiffs, against the Federal Drug Administration.

In 2021, the FDA downgraded the risk level of ECT devices from Class 3 to Class 2, a move that CCHR had fought bitterly for years.

Moxon, with Akkerman and numerous other plaintiffs, sued the FDA for making the change. The FDA responded by filing a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in October, and in April the court found for the defendants and dismissed Moxon’s lawsuit with prejudice.

While the legal figures leading the litigation battles against SigmaStim and Somatics were unwilling to say anything publicly about their campaign, Scientology's anti-psychiatry arm, CCHR, continues to make plenty of noise.

At the American Psychiatric Association's annual convention in New York in May, CCHR paid to have an airplane fly a banner over the Hudson River that read, "PSYCHIATRY KILLS: BAN ELECTROSHOCK."

According to its legal documents, CCHR is led by two women, Fran Andrews and Jan Eastgate, both longtime Scientologists.

Andrews is married to Russell Andrews, an equally longtime Scientologist who is known for working for the organization's shadowy secret service, the Office of Special Affairs.

Ten years ago, former top church official Mike Rinder (author of the bestselling memoir A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology) revealed that Andrews had long been relied on for some of Scientology's most covert operations:

“For many years Russ has been the 'go-to' guy to get phone and financial records and run plates and get criminal record checks done. Nobody ever wants to know how this is accomplished, but it is a well-known fact that there are people who cultivate ‘friends’ in the phone companies and banks who like to make a little extra cash. This is how the church tracks down a lot of connections — finding out what numbers someone has been calling or receiving calls from tells you a lot. And of course, financial information can be a goldmine," Rinder wrote.

Jan Eastgate is an Australian Scientologist who is listed as CCHR's international president. (She also did not respond to a request for an interview.)

Eastgate was arrested in 2011 in Sydney over allegations that in 1985 she had coached a 10-year-old girl to lie to police about being molested by her Scientologist father — a crime the man admitted to.

When the girl, Carmen Rainer, grew up, she and her mother complained to police about Eastgate's role in the matter, and Eastgate was arrested and faced charges. But before she could be tried, prosecutors realized they had charged Eastgate under a 1990 law that did not exist when the alleged crime occurred, and it compromised the case. The charges were dropped, and Eastgate insisted that the they had been "egregiously false."

Both Fran Andrews and Jan Eastgate appear in CCHR's film, Therapy or Torture: The Truth About Electroshock, as if they were experts on ECT, and not Scientologists dedicated to a religious crusade.

After our article about ECT appeared in The Daily Beast, we received a remarkable email from an attorney, who agreed when we asked if we could publish his message. But he asked that we remove his name, for fear of retaliation from Scientology. Here’s what he sent us:

I had multiple ECT treatments for acute and unremitting depression back around the year 2000. I had given up my law career, lost my family, exhausted all attempts to obtain relief from anti-depressants, undergone years of therapy and been committed to mental health facilities multiple times. After the course of ECT treatments, I gradually came out of the fog of depression and have had a pretty successful legal career since. If these idiots at Scientology succeed, indeed there will be a lot of dead people as a result.

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Canadian reporting results in investigation

It was great to hear from Gaétan Pouliot yesterday that a program he helped present on Radio Canada TV last November has now resulted in a government investigation.

During the undercover investigation, a man calling himself Pierre was told by Scientologist car mechanic Doris Sanfaçon (pictured) that his bipolar diagnosis was an “invented” disease, and he should stop taking his medication and instead take vitamins recommended by L. Ron Hubbard that he had for sale.

Gaétan writes that Sanfaçon is now facing a possible $88,000 fine for illegally practicing medicine…

The College of Physicians is calling for a fine higher than the minimum sentence, due to the seriousness of the offense and the long period of time over which it took place.

A trial could take place to resolve this matter.

Neither Doris Sanfaçon nor the Church of Scientology responded to messages from Radio-Canada, which offered to comment on the affair.

Last year, the mechanic defended his practice. “There is no bad intention in this. It's help,” he replied, adding that, “Scientology is unassailable.”

We heartily congratulate Gaétan that the show has resulted in action from the Quebec government, and we look forward to future reports on the case.

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Chris Shelton is going Straight Up and Vertical

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