Scientology's religious freedom defence is irrelevant, the lawyer for
counter-cult group UNADFI argued, as the state prosecutor denounced the movement as a
“villainous enterprise”.
Now
it was the turn of Claire Waquet for UNADFI, the alliance of
counter-cult groups.
In
theory, UNADFI was there to try overturn the appeal court's decision to
refuse it plaintiff status in the case.
In fact, Waquet spent most of her time attacking the defence built up
by Scientology's three lawyers.
She
started with a rhetorical flourish.
“Every
religion is totalitarian,” she said: just like an ideology such as
communism. “Its aim is to apply rules to every aspect of a person's
life.”
The
French republic was secular, not atheist, and it had a responsibility
to ensure freedom of religion. “But it sets rules that should not
be broken,” she added.
So
when the state applied those laws against an organisation that did
not respect them, it did not have to decide if that organisation was
a religion or not.
“Obviously,
a religion should not carry out crimes such as murder,” she added.
“But why stop there?” A religion had no right to commit fraud
either.
“You
have the right to finance your church, but not by fraudulent means. I
don't care if you are a religion or not.”
The
role of the court, she said, was to establish if the facts of the
case fit the crime on the charge sheet. “It is not about issues of
society: do the facts fit the crime?”
So
the court was not assembled to swap quotes from the philosophers: the
issue of whether Scientology was a religion was neither here nor
there.
“That
is not the question,” she insisted. The question was, had the law
been broken or not?
Religious
freedom was something precious, something to be protected, she
continued. But religion could not be offered either as a
justification or an excuse for criminal activity. There was no
“religious cloak of invisibility”.
Having
said that, she noted that even the term “Church of Scientology”
was confusing: was it a church or a science?
This
was a question that had confused the courts in the past, she said,
referring to an old controversy over a 1997 appeal court ruling in
the conviction of several Scientologists in Lyon.
Scientology
had often played on this ambiguity between its scientific and
religious claims, she noted. “But that is not going to work today.”
Turning
to the personality tests at the core of the fraud convictions, Waquet
noted the Court of Appeal's ruling that they had been organised to
give poor results in most cases to encourage people to buy courses.
“The
tests were fixed. They were designed to find your 'ruins',” she
said, borrowing a term from Scientology. That made it easier for the
Scientologists to persuade newcomers to take a course.
Waquet
turned to the matter of the defence lawyers' walk-out from the appeal
trial.
Rousseau,
for Scientology, had earlier suggested that this had not been
intended as a complete break with the court. Waquet, however, did not accept
his claim that the defence had not been given a proper
hearing.
It was the
Scientologists, after all, who had taken up so much court time with
procedural issues; it was they who had chosen to stage their
walk-out, she argued. And this had
happened just as the court was about to review the facts of the case.
“When
they got to the meat of the case, there was no one in court from
their side. They did not even tell their clients to stay in court.
For me, I call that a tactic.
“I
do not think there was a violation of the rights of the defence,”
she concluded.
She
reserved her final few minutes to put the case for her client,
UNADFI, to be accepted as plaintiffs in the case.
“They refused the debate”
Michel Gauthier summed up
for the prosecution.
He started with the
walk-out staged by the defence lawyers and their clients during the
trial on appeal.
The defence lawyers had
complained that the Court of Appeal had not followed the proper
procudure, he noted – but that needed to be put in its proper
context.
“The Scientologists
spent six of the [appeal] hearings on procedural matters that were
repeatedly rejected,” he reminded the court.
They had even gone so far
as to demand that the court produce documents that had been filed
eight months earlier, sparking a courtroom shouting match that
required the intervention of the batônnier, the lawyer who
mediates such disputes.
But when the time came to
examine the facts of the case, he noted, they had walked out – and
their clients, the defendants had accompanied them. “If they
chose to quit the court, this did not damage their rights,” he
insisted.
He
dismissed the suggestion from the defence that the appeal court
should have suspended proceedings to allow the defendants time to
appoint new lawyers.
“The
Court of Appeal cannot suspend proceedings on the possibility that
there might be another lawyer appointed to replace the others,” he
said.
“They
deserted the courtroom.”
He
gave short shrift too to the notion that a ministry of justice
circular released shortly before the trial had somehow tainted the
judicial waters.
They
had had an impartial trial on appeal and Scientology's lawyers had
established no link between the circular and their own case. (The circular, which reviewed the legal territory regarding cults and the legal remedies available to the courts, did not mention
Scientology by name.)
Judges
had a duty of impartiality, he said, and there was nothing to suggest
that this circular had undermined it. “If we had to consider every
case on this basis we woud judge nobody,” he concluded, with a
trace of exasperation.
As
for the convictions for organised fraud, said Gauthier: “They
refused the debate.”
He
recapped the main points of the appeal court findings:
the
Personality Test had been devoid of scientific value and had sought
to exploit people's weak points, their “ruins” in Scientology
terminology;
the
hard-sell tactics used against the plaintiffs involved pressure to
buy courses that extended to calls at home and at the workplace;
the
exorbitant cost of membership of the International Association of
Scientologists;
the
electropsychometer, the device used in Scientology auditing, which
was manufactured for a fraction of its sale price, which ran to
thousands of euros.
“When
you examine the facts, they add up to fraud and to organised fraud,”
he concluded. The Court of Appeal convictions had met the necessary
criteria under the law.
As far as the illegal practice for pharmacy was concerned, Fabre had been
involved in dispensing the products used for the Purification
Rundown.
Was
it still necessary, in discussing this enterprise
crapuleuse – this villainous
outfit – to ask questions about freedom of religion? He did not
think so.
“We
heard very little defence on the basis of criminal law,” he noted.
Ever
since the investigation had begun in this case, the defendants had
protested that their rights to freedom of religion were being
violated, he said.
But
he insisted: “The convictions did not involve any judgment on
their religious beliefs,” he said.
He
spoke of the movement's “captive followers” and of the
multi-million-euro turnover of the Celebrity Centre, which was
registered as a non-profit association.
What did all this have to do with freedom of religion?
Winding up, he said he agreed with the Court of Appeal finding that had
refused UNADFI's bid for plaintiff status.
But he did not think that the Court of Appeal order to pay the plaintiff
Aude-Claire Malton damages should stand, given that she had pulled
out of both the civil and criminal proceedings before the start of
the trial on appeal.
That
was the only point on which he disagreed with the Court of Appeal's
judgment.
After
hearing some brief responses from Scientology's lawyers, the court
announced it would hand down its judgment on Wednesday, October 16.
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