Paulette Cooper

Cooper's birth parents were Chaim and Ruchla (née Minkowski) Bucholc, Polish Jews who immigrated to Antwerp, Belgium, in the late 1920s.

Paulette Cooper (born July 26, 1942) is an American author and journalist whose writing against the Church of Scientology resulted in harassment from Scientologists.

Paula "Paulette" was born on July 26, 1942, during the Nazi occupation of Belgium.

Chaim, a skilled leatherworker, was arrested four days before her birth; Ruchla was arrested that October.

Both perished that year at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Family friends kept Paula and her older sister Sarah in hiding for months, but Nazi troops eventually found them.

Just before they were to be sent to Auschwitz in the summer of 1943, friends of Chaim's and other benefactors secured their release by bribing Nazi officials.

Paulette and Sarah spent years in various orphanages in Belgium.

Sarah (later known as "Suzy") was eventually adopted by an aunt who could not afford to support both sisters.

An American Jewish couple, Ted and Stella (née Toepfer) Cooper, arranged for Paulette to come live with them in New York City in 1948.

The adoption was formalized in 1950, at which time Paulette was also naturalized.

Though she spoke only French when she arrived in the United States, Cooper adopted English quickly, reading voraciously and writing by age 8.

When the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) raided the Washington, D.C., church in 1963, agents and police seized thousands of pages of documents, from which Cooper gleaned additional insights.

She graduated from Brandeis University with a psychology degree in 1964, having also completed a summer course in comparative religion at Harvard.

After graduation she returned to Harvard for several months to work on a schizophrenia study.

She later earned a master's degree from The City College of New York.

Early in her career, Cooper distinguished herself in her work for advertising agencies, including the prestigious BBDO.

She enjoyed the challenge of working in the field of copywriting.

However, she soon began to pursue magazine writing and the colorful lifestyle surrounding it.

By age 26, she had already sold stories to TV Guide, Cosmopolitan, and The Washington Post.

As a freelancer, she was always on the lookout for new and interesting subjects for her writing.

In 1970, her writing about her adventure as "the first female stowaway" on a cruise liner caught the attention of several major media outlets.

Cooper's interest in Scientology began with a disturbing visit from a former BBDO colleague.

The man told her that through his involvement with Scientology, he had learned he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

After that he announced, "God has decided to rape you," but Cooper managed to get him out of her apartment without incident.

She called a former boyfriend who had himself experimented with Scientology and told him about the visitor's claim that he was Jesus.

"Maybe he really is," the ex-boyfriend said.

Cooper, thinking she may have stumbled on an intriguing story subject, signed up for an introductory "Communication Course" at the local Scientology "org".

Between sessions she explored the facility, asking questions and even taking several documents from an office.

One document listed people deemed "suppressive persons" enemies of Scientology.

She began work on a Scientology article in earnest.

She later said of her motivation to write about Scientology: "I had a master’s degree in psychology and had studied comparative religion at Harvard for a summer and what I learned during my research about the group founded by L. Ron Hubbard was both fascinating and frightening. The story cried out to be told."

Through interviews with former church members, Cooper learned much about the organization's internal methods of control and the harassment of those who left.

An early critic of the church, she published The Scandal of Scientology in 1971.

She endured many years of attacks from church leadership and their agents, including lawsuits, smear campaigns, overt and covert surveillance, outright threats, and even a criminal frame-up.

Church founder and leader L. Ron Hubbard was reportedly obsessed with her and personally plotted against her.

The Church of Scientology instituted a total of nineteen lawsuits against Cooper from all over the world.

She countersued them three times before finally settling with the church in 1985.

Cooper has authored or co-authored nearly two dozen books, covering a wide range of topics including travel, missing persons, psychics, and pets, in addition to Scientology.

Her books have sold close to half a million copies in total.