THE Church of Scientology has obtained a British High Court injunction against members of the Fortune family from Co Wexford to stop them entering any of the sect's properties in Britain.
The family, which says its son Odhran (24), has been brainwashed by the Scientologists, yesterday mounted a picket on the sect's Dublin office with about 25 friends and neighbours.
In a telephone interview on RTE's Pat Keany Show, Mr Odhran Fortune said he had left the family home in Gorey without warning nine days ago because he felt detained by his family, who "were threatening to sue the church and that they would go to the media".
He had been with his family for five months after spending the previous three and a half years with the Scientologists in Britain and Denmark.
He said that while in Gorey several antiScientology "deprogrammers" had come to his home to make his family "afraid of the church" and to try to make him cut off all contact with it.
He said he left so suddenly, in the company of two Scientologists from Dublin, because he was "desperate to get back to the life I wanted to lead". He is believed to be staying at a property owned by the sect in southeast England.
At the picket in Dublin yesterday, Mr Fortune's brother Diarmuid said that he, together with his father, mother, another brother and other relatives, had visited the sect's headquarters last Friday in a vain search for Odhran. Eventually they had been allowed by the Scientologists to have brief meetings with him in the toilet and corridor of the High Court in London, he said.
Asked by Pat Kenny why they had met in the High Court, Odhran said it was because it was "a secure area, with security at each door". He gave a similar answer - "I don't feel secure enough to meet you" - when asked why he would not do an interview with Pat Kenny or an RTE reporter at a neutral venue.
Mr Diarmuid Fortune said the family wanted their brother to know they loved him and were "always here for him". Noting that at their meetings in London Odhran kept asking them to "call off the media", he went on: "My brother needs the media to expose the truth about Scientology and keep the pressure up until he is sent back."
The High Court injunction forbids five named members of the Fortune family, including his mother and father, from entering the sect's Sussex headquarters, coming within 200 metres of it, or entering any other premises owned by the Scientologists.
In a press statement, the Church of Scientology said members of the Fortune family had "pushed their way" into the Scientology church at East Grinstead, and disrupted religious services before being escorted off the premises by the police.