Narconon: French Parliamentary Report on Cults of 1995

French Parliamentary Report on Cults of 1995

(This excerpt is from the French Parliamentary Report on Cults of 1995)

The County Court of Dijon, in a judgement of January 9, 1987 (No 118-87), condemned the assistant-director of the Narconon ® center of Grangey-sur-Ource for lack of assistance to a person in danger. This center, created by the Church of Scientology, ® proposes cures of detoxication by applying the methods of Ron Hubbard, namely the "purification rundown", based mainly on several hours of sauna per day, "auditing" and a significant absorption of vitamins. In this case, the victim was a long time epileptic and had been addressed to this organization because she wished "to be released from the drugs". The center, without preliminary medical examination, placed her in a room of "weaning". However, the medical expertises showed that the death was due to "a state of epileptic seizures due to the absence of sufficient handling in its beginning and emergency treatment during the seizures." The judgement does not leave any doubt about the responsibility of the center:

"If Jocelyne Dorfmann had made the decision to reduce her medicamentous consumption, then to stop it with the risk of compromising her health, the defendants never warned her of the need for a medical examination for her admission, which would have probably made it possible to contra- indicate the cure of weaning; it is inconceivable that the victim could be accepted without this examination and a serious interview in spite of her declarations about her health and her epilepsy, whereas the defendants admitted knowing that in the event of serious illness, the medical handling was not to suffer any interruption;

"If at the time of the first crisis, the defendants could have been mistaken on its exact nature, the repetition of the crises and their increasing intensity were to evoke them an origin distinct from a state of withdrawal which, according to medical experts, cannot be confused with an epileptic state; They did not consider it useful to ask directly the victim, while she was still conscious, if these crises could correspond to the epileptic seizures to which she had referred or to call upon the nearest doctor (...) "