The Cult Awareness Network (or CAN) was formerly a United States clearing-house for the provision of information on cults and purported cults. The group was found guilty in 1995 for their part in the kidnapping of a Pentacostal Christian to change his religious beliefs and fined $1,000,000. Subsequently forced into bankruptcy by legal action, it then became effectively a subsidiary organization of Scientology. It is run by an interfaith Board of Directors, headed by a Baptist Minister with a Buddhist as its corporate secretary. Today critics of the organizaton claim that is seen as little more than a front group for Scientology, as it exclusively promotes Scientology's point of view regarding "cults" and "deprogrammers." However, serious scholars recognize it as a resource for experts on new religions as evidenced by those listed on its website at.
CAN was founded in the wake of the Jonestown mass suicide, and it collected information on many controversial organizations and religious movements. Unfortunately, it also turned to criminal deprogrammers and those involved with the old CAN stopped funding it when it ceased to discontinue such associations.
In 1991, Time Magazine reported: "According to the Cult Awareness Network, whose 23 chapters monitor more than 200 'mind control' cults, no group prompts more telephone pleas for help than does Scientology. Says Cynthia Kisser, the network's Chicago-based executive director: 'Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen. No cult extracts more money from its members.'" (Time Magazine, May 6, 1991, "Scientology: The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power.") The Time Magazine article has since been largely debunked when it was learned that Eli Lilly prepaid for 750,000 copies of the magazine as part of its campaign to protect its highly controversial drug Prozac whose sales were plummeting under the public scrutiny of the deaths and suicides connected to Prozac - which as of October 2003 is currently be re-examined by the FDA. Kisser has since left the "anti-religious" movement, is no longer quoted and is not a credible source.
Especially since the old CAN's files became public, after its demise, and are now housed at the University of California, Berkeley campus, open to the public, and show that by far the majority of calls to the old CAN (according to their own records) were regarding Christian groups.
Around this time, the Church of Scientology struck back. In The American Lawyer, an article recounts: "Starting in 1991, CAN was forced to fend off some 50 civil suits filed by Scientologists around the country, many of them asserting carbon copy claims and many pressed by the same law firm, Los Angeles's Bowles & Moxon. Scientologists also filed dozens of discrimination complaints against CAN with state human rights commissions nationwide, requiring the services of still more lawyers. The avalanche of litigation staggered the network. By 1994 CAN, which ran on a budget of about $300,000 a year, had been dumped by its insurers and owed tens of thousands of dollars to attorneys." [1]
That the old CAN wasted over $600,000 in insurance settlements fighting lawsuits it could not win (as it was required by law to allow anyone to join its non-profit, tax exempt organization), it wasted its resources and subsequently allowed Scientologists to join, but had used up its funds.
After driving the Cult Awareness Network to bankruptcy, a Scientologist attorney appeared in bankruptcy court and managed to win the bidding for what remained of the organization. The Cult Awareness Network is now one of the hundreds of front companies run by the Church of Scientology, according to uninfirmed sources. [1]
In fact, it relies on religious experts, runs on a First Amendment agenda and has a published, well reviewed book on religious tolerance available on the web in 7 languages at www.toleranceforall.org.
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