Scientologists deny suicide link
The Church of Scientology defends its personality tests after a student commits suicide following negative results.
A judicial inquiry has been opened after a 20-year-old Norwegian student killed herself in Nice, apparently after getting a negative result from a Church of Scientology personality test.
Kaja Ballo threw herself to her death from the fourth-story window of her student accommodation.
She left a note to her parents, and in her room were the results of a personality test she had submitted to her local Church of Scientology in Nice in the Alpes-Maritimes.
The results of the test said Kaja, whose parents are both senior politicians in Norway, was “unstable” and “unbalanced”, according to newspaper reports.
The suicide, which has made headlines across Norway, has bought the Church of Scientology, founded by science fiction novelist Ron L Hubbard, under close scrutiny.
A spokesman for the church in Paris, however, said that the church was not responsible for her death.
Agnès Bron, of the Church of Scientology’s press office in Paris, said that if the test did indeed have any link to the suicide, it could only be a combination of a tragic misunderstanding of the test itself and Kaja’s own mental disposition at the time.
She said: “Her French was not perfect and the church in Nice did not have any of the questionnaires in Norwegian.
“It could be that she did not understand the questions and filled them in badly, hence results showing she was erratic.
“The answers she gave were not concordant, she was told she could not be given a complete result because of this, and this is something she obviously did not understand.
“Also, there is no such thing as a truly negative result. She did not understand the nuances of it and should have had someone explain them to her.”
Mrs Bron added that Kaja, who she says had a history of using antidepressants, was a part of growing statistic linking use of such drugs with rising suicide levels.
She denied there was any link between the test and the suicide.
An inquiry into Kaja’s death has been opened in Nice.
Photo: The front page of a Norwegian newspaper
