||||| Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: SPT-Wollersheim Case Settled From: gs1100g@hotmail.com (GS1100) Organization: ARSCC(wdne) X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.12c [mds] (x86 32bit) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.226.73.4 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.226.73.4 Message-ID: <3cdac909@news2.lightlink.com> Date: 9 May 2002 15:07:53 -0400 X-Trace: 9 May 2002 15:07:53 -0400, 209.226.73.4 X-Original-Trace: 9 May 2002 15:07:53 -0400, 209.226.73.4 Lines: 99 Path: news2.lightlink.com Xref: news2.lightlink.com alt.religion.scientology:1513565 Special to the St.Petersburg Tattler/Tribune May 9, 2002 Earl Camembert, reporting: It was a crushing and humiliating legal defeat for the cult that is infamous around the world for its outrageous litigation tactics. Over the past 22 years Scientology spent an estimated 140 million in and out of the court in its efforts to crush a former member, Lawrence Wollersheim, and his legal teams. The Wollersheim v. Church of Scientology of California (CSC) litigation wound its way though the LA Superior Court, the California Appellate and Supreme courts as well as the US Supreme court almost a half a dozen times. In the first landmark Wollersheim decision, Scientology's counseling practices were found to be dangerous in the first jury decision of the LA Superior Court. These dangerous counseling practices were also found to be the cause of Lawrence Wollersheim being driven to the brink of insanity. " The claim that Wollersheim was driven to the brink of insanity is completely bogus." said frequent fictional church spokesperson Myron Fenderhoft. "First of all, none of our members have cars. Or maps. Plus there's no such location in California." Thereafter, Scientology filed numerous malicious and tangential legal actions designed to inhibit Wollersheim right of due legal process and to exhaust his financial resources so that he could not carry on his case. The California court saw this new abuse and fined Scientology separately $500,000 in what is known as a SLAPP lawsuit (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.) This SLAPP fine was the highest fine ever paid for such a suit in California. "Ridiculous!" snorted Fenderhoft." We paid that money simply as a goodwill gesture. Plus, we wanted our name associated with the "highest" something. Normally, we're associated with the word "lowest."" In another ill-conceived effort to avoid paying the judgment, Scientology stripped an estimated 500 million dollars from the Church of Scientology of California and transferred its assets to other corporations in the Scientology corporate umbrella. "We had to...", said Fenderhoft. "In a complete and unrelated coincidence, the management in California just happened to discover a great big box of I.O.U's that had somehow been overlooked. Since we always pay our debts, we had no choice but to meet those commitments immediately. " When asked if we could look at these I.O.U's, we were told " Don't be stupid. After you pay off an I.O.U, you tear up the note!" On 9th May 2002, just before minutes before CSI and RTC were to appear in court Scientology hurriedly delivered an $8,674,643 cashiers check to the LAsuperior court clerk. This stopped having any additional evidence presented in court that could have exposed Scientology's lack of corporate integrity,and could have exposed Scientology's controversial IRS charitable tax exemption to review and potential repeal as well as stopped the very real risk that Scientology's top executives could soon being put in jail for corporate and asset fraud. " I must object to our management being associated with words like "fraud" and "criminal"", insisted Fenderhoft. " None of our members would be involved in such behavior." When questioned about the fraudulent activities of former reverend Reed Slatkin, who recently pleaded guilty to several counts of multi-million-dollar securities fraud, Fenderhoft said "See? FORMER members! As soon as we get wind of any criminal behavior of any of our members, we chuck them out straightaway. We also conduct a stringent review of all donations by such people, and if any of those donations are found to have come from criminal activity, we give the money right back! " I asked Mr. Fenderhoft if that had, in fact, ever happened. " So far, no parishioner has given us a check with the words "Proceeds of Criminal Activity" written on it. So, we feel we're pretty safe there." During the original 5-month jury trial in the LA Superior court in 1986 Scientology had almost 25,000 members picketing the courthouse carrying signs saying "Not one thin dime for Wollersheim" and "We will NEVER pay." David Miscavige, the cult's current leader and former executive in CSI and RTC at the time of the (CSC) transfers, as well as other top Scientology cult leaders repeatedly vowed to members that nothing could ever force them to pay the Wollersheim judgment and they would fight the judgment forever no matter how much it costs or what the sacrifice. "And that commitment still holds," Said Fenderhoft. "We want to point out that at no time was a dime ever given to Mr. Wollersheim. We gave him a check. And, come to think of it, we didn't give it to him, did we? We gave it to the Clerk of the Court! And, we expect our membership to continue to struggle and sacrifice for this case even though we have settled it. The world needs to know that we never give up the fight against religious persecution even after we've rolled over and been crushed in court. We will continue to speak ill of Mr. Wollersheim behind closed doors where he can't do anything about it. Just because we were proved criminally responsible in this case doesn't mean we feel we were criminally responsible in this case." At that point, I began to realize that further attempts to wrest any logical or reasonable responses from Mr. Fenderhoft were probably pointless. I handed him a dime and left.