The other court challenge that year involved Julie Christofferson Titchbourne, a young defector who had spent her college savings on Scientology counseling. She argued that the church had falsely claimed that Scientology would improve her intelligence, creativity, communication skills, and even her eyesight. For the first time, much of Hubbard’s biography came under attack. The litigant said that Hubbard had been portrayed as a nuclear physicist and civil engineer. The evidence showed that he attended George Washington University but never graduated. In response to Hubbard’s claim that he had cured himself of his injuries in the Second World War, the evidence showed he had never been wounded. Other embarrassing revelations came to light. The church stated that Hubbard was paid less than the average Scientology staff member—at the time, about fifteen dollars a week—but witnesses for the plaintiff testified that in one six-month period in 1982, about $34 million had been transferred from the church into Hubbard’s personal bank from a Liberian corporation.4 One former Scientologist described training sessions in which members were hectored and teased over sensitive issues until they were desensitized and would no longer react. In two such instances of “bull-baiting,” Christofferson Titchbourne saw the eight-year-old son of the registrar repeatedly put his hands down the front of a woman student’s dress and a female coach unzipping the pants of a male student and fondling his genitals. The jury seemed most disturbed by testimony that members of the Guardian’s Office had culled the auditing files of members, looking for salacious material that could be used to blackmail potential defectors. Christofferson Titchbourne had originally sought a $30,000 refund from the church. The jury awarded her $39 million. At the time, that sum could have bankrupted Scientology.
That evening, Miscavige and other members of the church hierarchy had a gloomy meeting in a condo in Portland, Oregon. One of the executives vowed that Christofferson Titchbourne would never collect because he was going to kill her. “I don’t care if I get the chair,” he said. “It’s only one lifetime.” There was a lengthy silence, and then Miscavige said, “No, here’s what we’re going to do.” And on the spot, he came up with the Portland crusade.
As many as 12,000 Scientologists came from all over the world in May and June 1985 to protest the judgment in what they called the Battle of Portland. Day after day they marched around the Multnomah County courthouse, shouting “Religious freedom now!” and carrying banners reading WE SHALL OVERCOME! Chick Corea flew in from Japan to play a concert, along with other musicians affiliated with the church, including Al Jarreau, Stanley Clarke, and Edgar Winter. Stevie Wonder phoned in and sang “I Just Called to Say I Love You” as the crowd cheered.
The most notable presence in Portland was John Travolta. It was a decisive moment in his relationship with the religion. The church had made enormous efforts to persuade him to attend. Two years before the Portland crusade, Travolta had told Rolling Stone that although he still believed in Scientology, he had not had any auditing for the past year and a half. When asked if he was being exploited by the church to promote its cause, he responded, “I’ve been something of an ostrich about how it’s used me, because I haven’t investigated exactly what the organization’s done. One part of me says that if somebody gets some good out of it, maybe it’s all right. The other part of me says that I hope it uses some taste and discretion. I wish I could defend Scientology better, but I don’t think it even deserves to be defended, in a sense.”
But here he was in Portland, unshaven and exhausted, having flown his own plane in at midnight for a two-hour visit. “Once in a while you have to stand up for what you believe in, and I’m here tonight, I’ve had counseling, I give counseling, and I don’t want to lose that,” he declared. “And it’s as simple as that.”
The Portland march was one of the greatest triumphs in Scientology’s history, capped by the judge’s declaration of a mistrial. He ruled that Christofferson Titchbourne’s lawyers had presented prejudicial arguments to the jury by saying that Hubbard was a sociopath and that Scientology was not a religion but a terrorist organization. Church members who had been in Portland would always feel an ecstatic sense of kinship. (A year and a half later, the church settled with Christofferson Titchbourne for an undisclosed sum.)
FOR YEARS, Hubbard’s declining health was a secret known to few in the upper levels of the church. Only a handful of his closest followers were allowed to see him. He had made no clear arrangements for a successor, nor was there any open talk of it. There was an unstated belief that Operating Thetans did not grow frail or lose their mental faculties. Old age and illness were embarrassing refutations of Scientology’s core beliefs.