Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Sunday 25 October
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, once defined the religion as being in service of ‘a civilisation without insanity, without criminals and without war, where the able can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where man is free to rise to greater heights’.
Almost 60 years since its foundation, though, Scientology has become a uniquely contentious phenomenon – with many questioning its status as a religion, cult or business, and with a reputation for fiercely defensive, litigious and coercive reactions to criticism. One of the first to feel the Church’s wrath was Paulette Cooper – whose 1971 book, The Scandal of Scientology, saw her become the target of an elaborate plot which set out to destroy her credibility, frame her and land her with a 15 year prison sentence. Codenamed ‘Miss Lovely’ by Church operatives, Cooper is now the subject of investigative journalist Tony Ortega’s book, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely.
Ortega is a long-time chronicler of Scientology, and one of its leading scrutineers. Featured in Alex Gibney’s HBO documentary Going Clear, he’s the executive editor of TheLipTV and former editor-in-chief of The Village Voice. He visits Melbourne – where the world’s first inquiry into Scientology was held in 1963, and Scientology was first banned in 1965 – for a chat with Steve Cannane, who’s currently writing a book on Scientology’s history in Australia.
Featuring
Tony Ortega
Tony Ortega is the executive editor of TheLipTV. From 2007 to 2012, he was editor in chief of The Village Voice, and he's been investigating and writing about Scientology since 1995, when he was a reporter for the Phoenix New Times. He also wrote for or edited weekly newspapers in Los Angeles, Kansas City, and Fort Lauderdale. Originally from Los Angeles, he lives in New York and maintains a breaking news website about Scientology news, The Underground Bunker. He is also featured in Going Clear, Alex Gibney's documentary about Scientology, which first aired on HBO in March.
In 1971, a New York magazine freelancer named Paulette Cooper published The Scandal of Scientology, one of the first books to give the public a view into this secretive organization. She nearly paid for it with her life. What even Paulette didn't know at the time was the extent that Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, would go to destroy someone it perceived as an enemy. By 1973, Paulette had been framed in an elaborate plot involving fake bomb-threat letters, and she faced 15 years in federal prison if convicted. Newly unearthed documents show that by that time, Scientology had kept her under tight surveillance for several years and proposed many ways to destroy her reputation and life. She was finally exonerated after the FBI raided Scientology in 1977 and found many of those documents, which referred to her by the code name "Miss Lovely." Eleven top Scientology officials went to prison after that raid, but more than 30 years later, Scientology is still around -- and so is Paulette.
In his new, and first, book, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely, journalist Tony Ortega tells Paulette's story in full for the first time, with eyewitness accounts and new documents which describe the full extent of her ordeal -- and her continued fight against a group now seriously in decline. The book also describes her childhood survival of the Holocaust, and her much calmer life in Florida today with her husband Paul, as well as the latest developments in the controversies facing Scientology today.
Steve Cannane
Steve Cannane is a senior reporter and occasional presenter for Lateline. He also shares hosting duties of The Drum. Steve has worked as a reporter, producer and presenter for ABC TV and radio. He was the founding presenter of Triple J's current affairs program Hack. In 2006 he won a Walkley Award for Broadcast Interviewing. In 2008 Steve presented The Hack Half Hour on ABC2 and in 2009 he fronted the ABC documentary series Whatever - The Science of Teenage. Steve’s book, First Tests: Great Australian Cricketers and the Backyards That Made Them was published in 2009. You can follow him on Twitter at: @SteveCannane