Yoder's lawyer had an agenda in his defense

To the editor:

Scott Moyers' column on the Rodney Yoder trial was an excellent piece and brought out some interesting points. Moyers commented that Yoder's attorney, Randy Kretchmar, was a Scientologist, and he wondered if Kretchmar was there to help Yoder or to further the Church of Scientology's anti-psychiatry agenda.

As a former Scientologist and one who has had some experience with Kretchmar, I can assure Moyers that he got it right. Kretchmar was using Yoder to attack psychiatry. L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, decreed that Scientology would eradicate "evil" psychiatry and take over the field of mental health.

Most Scientologists do not know that psychiatrists are highly trained medical doctors. They think they are some entity outside of medicine. Scientologists learn that all humans have clusters of invisible alien spirits attached to them, and these are the cause of all human problems, mental and physical. Scientologists are reluctant to share this information with the outside world and are forbidden to speak of it among themselves. If Kretchmar had presented Hubbard's cosmic discoveries to the jury and got them to see that invisible alien spirits were causing Yoder's behavior, the outcome could have been different.

Randy Kretchmar had a hidden agenda and was dishonest in his representation of Rodney Yoder.

JAMES BEEBE

Northbrook, Ill.