I came across this on the STAND website. As with everything they ever utter, it is laced with falsehoods.
What is the Scientology position regarding litigation?
During the history of the Church, some individuals sought to make money from unfounded allegations, but the Church successfully defended against those claims.
Well, not exactly. Julie Christofferson won a massive judgment, so did Larry Wollersheim. The family of Lisa McPherson extracted a lrge settlement, so did many victims of Narconon.
Litigation involving Churches of Scientology in America is virtually nonexistent today.
Only if you pretend the following lawsuits don’t exist:
Masterson victims
Baxters and Valeska Paris
Valerie Haney
Leah Remini
Whitney Mills
Litigation is not and never was a purpose of Scientology. The practice and expansion of the Scientology religion is the Church’s purpose.
Unless you ignore what Hubbard said (this is just one quote — there are plenty of others):
The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease.
And you also ignore the numerous lawsuits filed by scientology against the media (the last of which was the catastrophic loss after suing Time magazine), the many suits filed against people who posted material on the internet, or the last civil lawsuit they filed — against Debbie Cook — resulting in them paying a significant settlement to extricate themselves from the suit they filed.
The last piece of the true litigation picture is HOW they conduct it. Hubbard said to make litigation punishing for the opposition. Scientology brings in many more lawyers than are needed, Private Investigators and tactics that border on vexatious. They have rightly earned a reputation for extremely aggressive tactics — not what the benign sounding statements on their website convey
I wonder what the statute of limitations is on ineffective auditing – I wonder if everyone who ever paid for auditing and did not get the “results” filed how many that would be. If you did not achieve the “super” powers from clear & the OT levels. If everyone who went through Narconon and did not achieve the “desired” result filed. If every family that suffers from “disconnection” filed for “alienation of affection” or whatever it would be. If every friend filed for “disconnection”. If every business that paid for WISE filed for fraud…. the possibilities are endless. No lawyers would take such cases – the chances of winning are low & the costs high. Maybe some of us need to pass the bar JUST so we can file such cases as a hobby.
BTs and clusters and service facsimiles
Long trips to ethics and routes to infinity
Hubbard’s mad ramblings, the lies that he brings
These are a few of my least favorite things
As the chits mount and I lose count
When my world looks sad
I simply remember I’m not in the cult
And then I don’t feel so bad!
Well said brother, you’re are dead on.
Every PR release by the cult is a carefully crafted deception operation. It’s made of spin, slant and misdirections. We need a new word for something that comes as close as possible to being a lie, without actually becoming legally actionable. Unfortunately, the mainstream media usually buys it.
I’ll posit that the only reason scientology (and dianetics before it) ever got into legal trouble is because they have never been able to deliver what they promise. The problems all started back in the early 50s when DMSMH made the scene as a best seller. It might have been a best seller, but no ‘clears’ were ever made. Auditors then and now audit pre-clears and only pre-clears and always will because they have yet to produce a ‘clear’.
Anyone who has been in the cult and sat in front of a reg knows with clarity what kinds of promises are made. These promises are made and never fulfilled. The promises get wilder and wilder as 2:00pm approaches every Thursday.
The only reason that there aren’t more lawsuits filed against the cult is because of their ‘ethics’ system. Auditing files are supposedly confidential even though everyone who has ever been involved knows they are not. However, ethics files are most definitely NOT confidential. Most of us have some nasty little revelations in there that we don’t want aired in public. Hence the relatively small number of lawsuits filed against the cult. Most of us would rather take our lumps, walk away and get on with our lives happy to be cult-free. A lawsuit might be nice to win, but what is more valuable by a long shot is freedom. I’ll take freedom over money any day. And let’s face it, the cult is most definitely lawyered up better than most of us can afford. It’s sad, but at least in the US, whoever has the best lawyer usually wins. So much for the myth of justice.
How true. I’ve seen often regs and tech terminals and even with FSMs would go through the auditing and ethics folders looking for weaknesses or perversions to use to extort money to sell big packages.
Obviously the prospect would get really pissed off when he realized it. Always.
But the justification was that this was the ‘greatest good’. The truth instead was always the income stat being down.
Excellent point. As a staff member, I saw this kind of fuckery first hand.
It was NORMAL, it was s.o.p.
The “greatest good”…for Miss Savage’s offshore accounts…
Mark so true. A truly disgusting thing. In SO even in some cases things said in a confessional were made public during meetings. From there on the guy’s hours where numbered.
It was like using castor oil in the fascist period in Italy to ridicule and subdue anyone who was even blatantly against the regime. And one could be considered against it even without doing anything, it was enough just a report .
Yes, in El Bong Tughard’s cult, evil is ubiquitous, oppressive, and banal. Non-stop sociopathic skullduggery and gas-lighting.
So glad to be done with that shit!
It seems as if Mormonism is borrowing a page from Scientology’s playbook. The church wants to build one of its temples in Fairview, Texas outside of Dallas/Fort Worth but the town council is denying the request because the building’s proposed size exceeds specifications allowed by town law. Simply alter the design so that it meets local specs and construction can proceed. Simple enough. But nooooooooo! The Mormon Church is vowing to take the matter all the way to the Supreme Court. The case will be that since the church can’t build the temple the way they want it then their religious beliefs are being discriminated against since temple size is part of their religion despite the teachings of church leaders to the contrary.
Yes, and they pay for all those lawsuits, PI ops, etc, etc, etc, with tax free money because the cult beat the government to a pulp. And that took decades of litigation and other tactics which further backs up what you wrote Mike.
Yep, the cult is all lies. That’s the only truth.
Ah the Debbie Cook example. After THAT famous email (that sent shockwaves thro’ Kultland like nothing ever had before), the kult takes her to court where her testimony becomes an international news story. And media around the planet are queueing up to try to get her to talk on screen to them.
I watched it all as more than an interested observer and loved how Debbie and Wayne went off and publicly started a wonderful life while they decompressed. Blogging about living in an island paradise painting pictures and putting them up for us all to admire. Perfect.
Showed anybody who went looking that one could take on the cancerous little gnome and truly win. Bet Demented Maggot still has nightmares over that one. Of course, His decisions were the reason it failed soooo badly but He’d never ever contemplate that – not when there’s minions around He can blame.
Thanks for the reminder of a very telling turning point, Mike. It’s a great way to start a sunny Sunday.