Lawsuits Update I: Laura DeCrescenzo

An appeal court ruling has put Laura DeCrescenzo’s lawsuit against Scientology back on track, while a case at the Supreme Court just might offer fresh hope for the Headleys.

A California appeal court has reinstated a lawsuit filed by Laura DeCrescenzo, who is suing Scientology for abuse she says she suffered during her time in the movement’s elite cadre, the Sea Org.

The Headleys, meanwhile, are appealing a district court judge’s dismissal of their lawsuits.

Their legal battle turns around the principle of the ministerial exception, which up until now has effectively exempted churches from respecting a range of laws regarding their staff.

But later this month, the U.S. Supreme Court will begin considering a case that effectively challenges how far this principle can be allowed to override employees’ rights.

Laura DeCrescenzo was appealing the dismissal of her case at district court level.

A former member of Scientology’s elite cadre, the Sea Org, she was so desperate to escape the movement that she swallowed bleach to convince them she was suicidal.

The original ruling said her case against Scientology fell because the statute of limitations for the alleged offences had already expired.

But on June 24, the appeal court accepted her argument that since Scientology had deceived her by telling her she had no legal recourse against them, the time limit for the alleged offences could be legitimately extended.

The ruling also accepted that harassment from Scientology had deterred her from filing suit earlier.

DeCrecenzo filed her original complaint back on April 2, 2009. In it, she described how she had started working for Scientology at the age of 10, effectively becoming their full-time employee at 10 and signing her first employment contract with them aged just 12.[1]

Married at 16, she became pregnant and the movement forced her to have an abortion at the age of 17, said the complaint.

During her time working for the Sea Org, between 1991 and 2004, she said “she was paid less than the minimum wage and worked under other illegal conditions,” the judgment noted.[2]

When she left in 2004 following her suicide attempt, she had little formal education and had been isolated from mainstream society for many years.

Her routing out process included a “coercive exit interview” during which she was required to sign documents intended to free Scientology of any legal liability for what she had experienced.

Her lawsuit contended that although these documents were illegal and unenforceable, the movement had told her she had no legal recourse against them. She was not given even copies.

In addition, Scientology said she owed them 120,000 dollars for training she had received while on staff: this is known inside the movement as a Freeloader’s Bill.

Fraud and deceit

DeCrescenzo’s original complaint applied to break the original contract between her and Scientology, which she was now arguing was unenforceable. It pursued the movement for:

·        unpaid wages;

·        discrimination and invasion of privacy;

·        human trafficking;

·        intentional inflicting of emotional distress;

·        obstruction of justice.

In an amended complaint filed in May 2009, she added fraud and deceit to the list.

Scientology got the case moved to a federal court and argued for it to be dismissed on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired. The court agreed.[3]

DeCrescenzo’s second amended complaint in February 2010 alleged offences under California state law:

·        forced abortion in violation of her right to privacy;

·        deprivation of liberty and false imprisonment (she spelt time in Scientology’s Rehabilitation Project Force)[4];

·        intentional infliction of emotional distress;

·        wage and hour violations;

·        unfair business practices.

The first two elements were listed as offences not just under California law, but the California constitution.[5]

This new version of the complaint added further allegations, detailing what it described as Scientology’s threats and intimidation between 2004, when she stopped working for the movement, up until July 2008, when she actually made the break from Scientology.

During this time, said the complaint:

…Plaintiff remained a loyal follower of the Church of Scientology. As a follower, Plaintiff was forbidden from reading or thinking anything negative about Scientology. Further, Plaintiff was threatened with rigorous sec [security] checks, and was threatened with being deemed a "Suppressive Person" if she in any way was perceived to be an enemy of Scientology. As a "Suppressive Person," Plaintiff would have been forbidden contact with her friends and family who remained at Defendants’ facilities and who continued practicing Scientology, and would have been subjected to harassment by Defendants. [6]

Since she was still inside the movement during this period, she was still under their influence and thus not fully aware off her rights, the complaint argued.

It was only after she listened to the concerns of her family – and read stories on the Internet from friends who had quit the movement and begun campaigning against Scientology – that she realized she might have a legal claim.

DeCrescenzo was arguing then, that since she had been misled about the legal validity of the exit document she had signed and had subsequently been subject to threats and intimidation, the statute of limitation could not be said to date from when she quit staff.

The district court accepted Scientology’s argument that the statute of limitations ruled out the amended complaint and dismissed the case.

But the appeal court accepted her arguments – reproducing her use of the term “brainwashing” to characterize the combination of deception, isolation and intimidation DeCrescenzo said she had endured.

“Plaintiff has further alleged that she was particularly vulnerable to defendants' influence, both during her formative years as a child and young adult, and after the time that she left the facility when she remained an adherent,” the court added.

Given all this, in particular the “long subservient relationship with Scientology”, the defendants could not use statue of limitations argument to dismiss the case.

As for the issues of fact – the allegations of intimidation, threats and harassment – they should be tested at trial, the court ruled.[7]

It is difficult to assess to what extent this ruling might help the appeals lodged by the Headleys in their lawsuits.

They are seeking to overturn a California district judge’s rulings last August that dismissed their cases in summary judgments.

But a case coming before the U.S. Supreme Court this month could play a key role in cases of this kind.

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Scott Pilutik’s legal blog is back up after a brush with hackers: it provides analysis not just of Laura DeCrescenzo’s case but of the Headleys’ too.

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[1] Laura Ann DeCrescenzo, (née Dieckman) v. the Church of Scientology International, April 2, 2009, filed in the County of Los Angeles, California. You can see her original complaint here, which I wrote up for this site, here.

[2] In California, where DeCrescenzo was based, the minimum wage is currently eight dollars an hour: between 1991 and 2004, the period in question, it rose from $4.25 to $6.75 according to the California state government.

[3] The ruling stated that her cause of action for the federal offences of human trafficking and forced labour dated from 2004, when she quit the movement: but the four-year statute of limitations took the life of the case only to 2008. Since she had filed in 2009, she had filed too late so far as these federal offences were concerned, according the judgment.

[4] For more on the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF) see elsewhere on this site.

[5] Article One, Section One of the California Constitution states: All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.

[6] From the second amended complaint, a copy of which Larry Brennan has posted here.

[7] For a copy of the appeal judgment, see here. The appeal court ruling also rejected Scientology’s argument that the earlier federal ruling stopped her case from going forward: it pointed out that that ruling had applied to an earlier version of her complaint.

3 Saxton's letter II: in the US

While Scientology’s executives lived the good life, ordinary staff were over-worked, underfed and subject to arbitrary punishment, wrote Aaron Saxton in his letter to Senator Xenophon.

Aaron Saxton arrived at Clearwater in Florida towards the end of 1991, to take up a new post at what Scientologists called the Flag Land Base.

He was only 17 and the guardian he had been assigned to meet the legal requirements fulfilled the role on paper only.

Scientologists consider Flag to be one of the best centres for Scientology’s services anywhere. Saxton’s recollections however, give an altogether different view.

Saxton himself had been recruited to the Sea Org at the age of 15 in Australia, and was quickly alienated from his own family as he enforced Scientology’s harsh ethics policies against them.

In Florida, he disrupted family life among the staffers, forbidding parents to visit children during working hours on the grounds that it would effect production.

Most staff members did not get home before 11 at night, he noted. “This resulted in broken and dysfunctional families.”

Saxton also wrote about fabricating paperwork to fool the authorities that children based at Flag were being properly educated.

And in Los Angeles, when children as young as 13 were hired to work for the movement, they used a Scientologist to produce documents that falsified their educational qualifications – for a small fee.

Ordinary staff members in Scientology often live in overcrowded, sub-standard accommodation and live on a subsistence wage.

That was in stark contrast to what was laid on for the top brass, wrote Saxton.

More than a million dollars was spent building four villas for the movement’s top executives when they visited Clearwater.

Money was also siphoned off from the movement’s bank accounts to pay for luxuries for these same executives, he added.

In the year he was there, more than 100,000 dollars was spent on fine food, the best clothing, gym equipment and the rent or purchase of luxury cars for their use.

The officials responsible covered their tracks with false records, he added.

In his letter, Saxton named the main beneficiaries of this spending as the executives Marc Yaeger, Marc Ingber, Guillaume Lesevre and the movement’s current leader, David Miscavige.

While the executives were living it up, staff at Flag base could find themselves assigned a diet of rice and beans if they were not considered to be producing enough.

“We would disallow the purchase of other food items,” wrote Saxton – and this extended to the children too.

Saxton wrote that he ordered this punishment on at least three separate occasions, for periods of up to four weeks.

They placed guards at the entrances to the staff canteens to ensure no one was trying to buy other food to get round the punishment: up to five people were disciplined for trying to do just that, he recalled.

Ordinary staffers could also find themselves assigned to Scientology’s punishment camps, the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF), which included long hours of hard physical labour.

For a while, Saxton himself was the hatchet man. And most of those he sent to RPF went on trumped-up charges, he wrote.

“I assisted and oversaw the assignment of more than 30 people to the penal colony often without justification.”

“Church policy allowed us to ‘pick’ on someone and assign them there… the idea was to scare staff into producing better…

“No medical examinations were done to ensure they were capable of the gruelling work, and many suffered permanent mental and physical scars as a result.”[1]

Coerced abortions

Just as he had in Australia, Saxton was involved in pressuring Sea Org members who got pregnant to have abortions.

Many of the staff there were Mexicans who had entered the United States on religious worker visas. In at least two cases, that was something they used as leverage against them.

Saxton and his colleagues told them that if they lost their staff status, their visas would be null and void and they would have to leave the country. “The result was they agreed to abort,” he wrote of two cases in which he was involved.

The obsession in the Sea Org about not having children got to the point that failing to use contraception became a disciplinary offence, he wrote.

Later, in Los Angeles, he was again involved in punishing Sea Org members who got pregnant who refused to have an abortion. Two Scientologists were put on a tough programme in the hope they would miscarry, he wrote.

Disconnection

And just as he had in Australia, Saxton also ordered staff members to disconnect from families considered hostile to the movement.

He oversaw a programme that required all correspondence from relatives to staff members to be reviewed.

Letters found to be too critical of Scientology, if they were not discarded or destroyed, were used to persuade the staff member to disconnect from the people concerned.

“Declare orders were done on those families and ordered disconnection,” wrote Saxton.

Scientology’s official line is still that no one is ever forced to disconnect: that when the decision is made, it is purely voluntary.

Abuse of auditing files

Several former members of Scientology have alleged that cameras were installed in some of the auditing, or counselling, room, to covertly record sessions, during which intimate secrets are often revealed.

Saxton wrote that he was personally involved in that project.

The official line, he said, was to make sure that the therapy was being correctly conducted. “In reality copies of these videos were sent off base and kept as… evidence of the person… admitting to illegal activities…

“On two occasions public Scientologists admitted to murders,” he added. Public Scientologists are those who pay for their services rather than working for the movement.

Executives kicked the people concerned out of the movement and when they tried to get their money back, threatened to turn their confessions over to the police. But the police were never informed of the confessions.

More dirty tricks

In 1992, after about a year in Clearwater, Saxton was transferred to Los Angeles to work for the Church of Scientology International.

There, he continued his career abusing his fellow Scientologists.

He culled the supposedly confidential counselling files for information he could to convinced disaffected Sea Org members to stay with the programme, “…including blackmail or threats to reveal personal information to family or friends…”

If the Sea Org member left anyway, they would be subject to a Committee of Evidence (or Comm Ev), Scientology’s version of a court martial.

“[T]he privileged information would be placed on staff notice boards for all to see…” he wrote.

When Saxton could not find embarrassing or compromising information, he just made it up.

“On no less than 15 separate occasions I declared staff suppressive [enemies of the movement, to be shunned by all Scientologists] and posted lies about what they had done so that the information could be spread outside of the church.”

In particularly important cases, they even hired private investigators to the relatives of a former member considered to be a threat, as a way of getting leverage on them. The investigators’ job was dig up material that could be used to blackmail the former members.

This was handled by Scientology’s Office of Special Affairs (OSA) – long be identified by critics as the movement’s covert operations and dirty tricks department.

The movement even had a list of former members considered of particular interest: a travel company run by Scientologists would keep track of these people, reporting their movements to the OSA. “Anywhere in the world they travelled, we would know, most of the time.”

And just as they had in Australia, they used they information they had to mess around with their lives: impersonating them so as to be able to cancel their flight reservations; even accessing their email accounts.

Nor were public Scientologists – those who paid for their services rather than working for the movement – immune from abuse.

Rich members found to have taken drugs after having started in Scientology were not always kicked out of the movement, which officially at least, is rabidly anti-drugs.

“Rather than be excommunicated they were allowed to stay as long as their donations to the Church increased,” wrote Saxton.

Several recent defectors from the Sea Org have complained that the demands made on them destroyed their family life. Saxton, in his letter, confirmed that this was in many case, deliberate policy.

He was involved in the separation of families who worked for the Sea Org. “The reasons were various, but all fundamentally designed to gain control over the person that was on staff,” he wrote.

On one occasion, executives transferred 80 members of the Sea Org from Los Angeles, California to Clearwater, Florida. They were told it would only be for four weeks.

“We instead kept them at the Flag Land Base in Florida and would not send their families.”

Anyone who tried to return home or who protested too much could find themselves comm-ev’d or sent to the RPF. Saxton even sent his own brother to the RPF.

Saxton also assisted in the beatings of some Scientologists and ordered the beatings of others.

Scientology processing was also ordered as an alternative to proper medical treatment for terminal illnesses.

Two members of staff diagnosed with cancer and suffering severe symptoms “were denied funds for treatment and… forced to take auditing as a solution.”

Saxton finished his Sea Org career at the age of 21 in January 1996.

Summarising his letter, he wrote: “At an International Management level, these incidents are the norm, not the exception…” At lower levels, he conceded, they would be exception.

“The fact is that Church policy is currently condoning illegal activities…” he added.

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[1] Saxton, in his letter, writes more about the abuse he inflicted than what he himself suffered. But in the caption to the photo above (1993 or '94) he noted it was taken after six days and nights without sleep. He is picture in full Sea Org uniform.

2 Aaron Saxton's letter I: Australia

Coerced abortions, chasing down runaways, disconnection orders: in his letter, Aaron Saxton described how, as well as suffering abuse, he dealt it out to other Scientologists – including members of his own family.

In his letter to Senator Xenophon, former Sea Org member Aaron Saxton detailed the abuse he had suffered during his time in the movement.

But he also described what he had inflicted on other Scientologists – including his own family.

Saxton worked for Scientology from August 1989, when he joined the Sea Organization at the age of just 15 (pictured here just after completing basic training).

Initially he worked for the movement in Australia until being transferred to the United States.

During his time in Australia, he wrote, he was involved in what he considered to be both illegal and immoral activities, he wrote: “…activities which were condoned under Church policy that is not released to the public, but physically exists.

“These policies violate the creed of the Church and are in direct conflict with the Church’s stated purposes,” he added.

In order to join the Sea Org at such a young age, Saxton had to travel from his home in Auckland, New Zealand, to Australia. To do that, his parents had to sign over legal guardianship to a Scientology official.

Scientology officials fabricated documents to say that his grandfather was dying in Australia and he needed to travel there to see him, wrote Saxton.

“My mother was threatened with expulsion from the Church if she did not sign the papers assigning [name deleted] as my legal guardian or allow me to join.”

When, just a few months later, in January 1990 a man attempted to rape him, Scientology officials ordered that the matter be hushed up and no report be filed to the police.

Medical neglect, coerced abortions

Scientology members of staff were denied adequate medical treatment while at the same time being forced to work more than 16 hours a day, seven days a week, wrote Saxton.

Staff received no medical benefits and there was no budget for medical needs. Spending requests for any medical needs other than for senior executives in Australia were simply rejected out of hand, he added.

But self-medication was also frowned upon, he wrote. “…[S]taff were ordered by myself and the medical officer to not take any medical drugs, this included even to relieve period pain… As a result, dental situations and personal health issues went past unchecked.”

That meant that several members of staff, himself included, had to extract their own teeth “without the aid of tools or painkillers,” he wrote.

This neglect even extended to stopping female employees from seeking preventive care: they were not allowed to leave the building to get the Pap smear tests used to detect cervical cancer “or any other tests to avoid cancers…” wrote Saxton.

He was also aware of several Sea Org members being pressured to have abortions.

“They were informed that getting pregnant was not in line with the Sea Org plans, and that their departure represented a failure for the greatest good and that they should abort.

“Arguments always erupted,” he added. But those concerned knew they might be kicked out of Scientology and disconnected from their family.

Sea Org members who insisted on having their child would be subject to disciplinary measures, wrote Saxton. When he was in charge of enforcing these disciplinary measures, he admitted, “it was always the hope that the person would miscarry the child or abort at a later date.”

One staff member even used a coat hanger to carry out an abortion because she feared being sent to “the penal colony” – presumably a reference to the Sea Org’s Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF).

“She was a new staff member… and was ‘released’ instantly. All her files were destroyed,” he wrote.

Health, safety and employment abuses

Health and safety violations were “flagrant and allowed to persist,” wrote Saxton.

Staff falsely declared fire sprinklers to be working to avoid having to invest in proper maintenance.

Sometimes, as part of the movement’s disciplinary system, staff members were even denied access to adequate food.

For if Scientology’s in Australia was considered to be underperforming – if their statistics were down – all members of staff there would be put on a diet of beans and rice for up to two weeks at a time.

“I ordered this on at least 10 separate occasions,” wrote Saxton. And anyone found buying food on the side would be punished, regardless of how badly they needed the food, he added.

When there were workplace accidents, he wrote, the lack of medical cover had serious consequences for members of staff.

On one occasion a staff members had lost part of her scalp in an accident during renovation work.

“There was concern that it could obviously be associated with the slave labour we performed,” he wrote.

“She was sent to the hospital and made to foot the bill of the medical expenses personally and lie about how the injury came about.”

And although staffers were, on paper, allowed several weeks off a year, “… we did not allow this to happen.

“A typical way I avoided granting liberty days or holidays to members of the Church was to order an interrogation of them. In every case, anything they had done was used as an excuse to avoid them taking any time off.”

Abduction, confinement, dirty tricks

In 1990, Saxton was made a security guard despite the fact that he was aged just 16 and, as he put it, “untrained and unlicensed.”

During that time, he wrote, he issued disconnection orders to the families of half a dozen staff members who were hostile to the movement – including his own family.

“During my tenure in Security I tried to get my mother to join, and when this did not work and she began to protest at the lack of medical assistance I was receiving I ordered an ‘enturbulation’ order on her…”

This meant that if she created any problems she would be thrown out of Scientology and neither he nor any other Scientologist would be able to have any contact with her.

“This was successful in turning me against all of my family,” he wrote.

Saxton also admitted to having been involved in the “forced confinement and torture of [name deleted] a public Scientologist doing the [advanced] OT levels,” he wrote. The person involved had gone “insane and started screaming outside the building.”

He and others got her in a room and kept her there until another Scientologist took her out to a farm in the country where, held against her will, she was subjected to Scientology auditing.

After a month she escaped and again paraded outside the AOSH ANZO (Advanced Organization Saint Hill for Australia, New Zealand and Oceania) in Sydney, one of the main centres for Scientology in the region.

He again took her inside the building, he wrote. “From there two other staff took control of the situation and she was forced into a car and taken from the premises. I never heard of her or about her again.”

During his time as a security guard he was involved in a number of run-ins with anti-Scientology protesters, including some former members. He was regularly told not to report these clashes to the police.

When the police arrived after one such incident turned violent, he was ordered to remove his security jacket and pose as an ordinary member of staff.

Although he had been attacked and injured, he was not allowed to report this to the police, he wrote. “Instead, [name deleted] pretended that it was him and that had been chased and attacked and he filed the police report against the assailants.”

On one occasion, as he returned home early one morning he was chased by a man wielding a large butcher’s knife, a critic of the movement who had a grievance against its intelligence division, the Office of Special Affairs (OSA).

“He told me I would be killed in retaliation. I outran him and made it to safety,” wrote Saxton.

When he told his superiors the next day, he was not only forbidden to report the incident to police but was disciplined for “allowing it to happen.”

His work as a security officer also involved him in tracking down more than 10 members who had fled the organisation.

Working with the OSA and his commanding officer, he would go through their files to find information that would help them track them down. On some occasions that included the auditing files, which are meant to be strictly confidential.

“We used the information to call banks and cancel credit cards,” he wrote. They used the same deceptive techniques – impersonating the person concerned – to cancel their call airlines and cancel their reservations.

They would also contact the families of the runaway and use the information culled from the files to try to disrupt their relations with the former member.

Saxton was also involved in chasing several runaways through the streets of Sydney in a bid to get them back. If they tracked them down, they would try to intimidate them into returning, he wrote. “If this failed we would use physical force to bring them in.”

The only time this failed was when the person concerned was strong enough to fight free and escape.

Saxton also wrote that he had knowledge of an operation run by the OSA in which two Scientologists were issued with phoney suppressive declares expelling them from the movement. This allowed them to successfully infiltrate anti-Scientology groups and steal documents from them, which they then handed over to the OSA.

On another occasion, he was ordered to go through the files of a person who had committed suicide, though in what circumstances he did not know. Some files were sent to the OSA; others he was ordered to destroy.

Hard sell

On another occasion he was ordered to get a professional in to bug the offices of the registrars in Sydney – the sales staff. His superiors wanted to know if they were siphoning off money into their own pockets.

The tapes revealed illegal or unethical activities including:

• Arranging for false cheques to be made out to Scientology;
• forging the signatures of a client’s spouse;
• advice on how to get the most money from spouses while divorcing them because of their hostility to Scientology;
• advice on getting hold of money set aside for other needs, such as school fees or holidays, for spending on Scientology;

Registrars also often advised clients that Scientology processing could replace conventional medical treatment and health care, he wrote.

Clients were told that “cancer and any other related illness could all be avoided by paying for scientology service. It was sold as a fraudulent replacement for justified and required medical treatment.”

When Saxton reported back to the OSA they told him to stop the recordings but did not act to stop the actions by the sales staff.

They were not concerned that the registrars were cheating their clients, or helping them cheat their families, wrote Saxton: they only wanted to know if the registrars were cheating Scientology.

On an earlier occasion, when a member of staff defrauded Scientology funds from clients’ credit cards, he was told not to report it and to delete compromising telephone records to hamper any police investigation.

Then in late 1991 he was transferred to work for Scientology in the United States.

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14 Laura DeCrescenzo's Lawsuit

Another former Sea Org member is suing Scientology: recruited at the age of 12, she eventually became so desperate to escape she swallowed bleach to get herself thrown out.

Laura at the 2010 LA press event

Another veteran of Scientology's Sea Organization, who was just 12 years old when she was recruited, is suing the movement.

After 13 years inside the group, Laura DeCrescenzo became so desperate to escape that she swallowed bleach to get herself kicked out, says the lawsuit. Scientology “stole Plaintiff’s youth and that of many others,” it argues.

DeCrescenzo (née Dieckman) worked in Los Angeles for the Sea Org, which the movement describes as its elite cadre, between 1991 and 2004.

Married at 16, she fell pregnant when she was 17. But her employers forced her to have an abortion because of the ban on Sea Org members having children, the lawsuit alleges.

DeCrescenzo also spent time on Scientology’s punishment programme, the Rehabilitation Project Force, or RPF.

“There are two very different versions of Scientology,” says the lawsuit. “There is the Scientology as presented to the outside world and there is a different Scientology in which Plaintiff lived and worked for approximately thirteen years.

“In the Scientology world Plaintiff experienced, twelve year old children are taken from their homes, asked to sign employment contracts and put to work. Pregnant women are coerced to have abortions.

“Employees work 100-hour weeks in the business ventures of Scientology at far less than minimum wage. There are no contributions to Social Security or employee pensions, although there is plenty of money to pay Scientology’s Chairman of the Board [David Miscavige], private investigators and lawyers.

“Personal freedoms are restricted and severe punishments are used to keep employees in line… That is the context of this litigation.”

Laura DeCrescenzo joins Claire and Marc Headley, two other former staffers, who filed lawsuits earlier this year against the Church of Scientology International (CSI).

Attorney Barry van Sickle, who is acting for all three plaintiffs, filed the new lawsuit in the Los Angeles courts Thursday (April 2, 2009).

In addition to the grounds listed in the earlier lawsuits this complaint develops fresh lines of attack:

• it challenges Scientology’s practice of using what it calls a “primitive lie detector” to interrogate its employees in security checks;

• it questions the legal validity of the Sea Org employment contracts, as well as the waiver forms and other documents it says they are required to sign if ever they leave;

• and it accuses Scientology officials of trying to discourage potential witnesses in the lawsuits through bribery and intimidation.

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Laura DeCrescenzo – or Dieckman as she then was – was born into Scientology. Both her parents were members and she grew up going to Scientology schools.

By the age of nine, she was already working on staff at one of the movement’s centres, says the lawsuit. “She obtained a work permit and became effectively a full-time employee of Scientology from age ten.”

In 1991, at the age of 12, she was persuaded to sign the billion-year Sea Organization contract. Leaving her family behind in New Mexico, she flew to Los Angeles to start work for them there. She spent the next 13 years working for the Sea Org.

DeCrescenzo’s Sea Org recruiter had promised her she would be able to visit her parents and eventually have children of her own and raise a family.

These promises were never fully honoured, says the complaint.

“Once in, it was all work and little else. Plaintiff discovered she had almost no personal freedom. Planned visits to family were restricted, delayed and cut short. She was 12 – 13 years old and not allowed unrestricted access to her parents.

“She could not visit her parents without special permission and being ‘sec checked’. She would be ‘sec checked’ again upon her return.”

A “sec check” or security check, is when an employee is questioned to ensure that they are still loyal to Scientology. It is carried out using the device Scientologists usually use in their therapy, or auditing, sessions: an electropsychometer, or e-meter.

DeCrescenzo married a fellow Scientologist when she was 16. In 1996, when she was 17, she became pregnant.

“Having children was against the dictates of top management at Scientology,” says the complaint.

“Plaintiff had been working for far less than minimum wage, had no money, no car, no place to call her own, and no medical insurance or coverage. Plaintiff felt trapped and without viable options.”

To remain in good standing with her employers, she had an abortion, it adds. “Plaintiff has knowledge of other female employees ordered to have abortions.” (For more on abortions inside the Sea Org, see Section 11.)

During her time in the Sea Org, DeCrescenzo performed mainly clerical or administrative work. But for a period, she was assigned to the Rehabilitation Project Force.

Scientology characterises the RPF as a chance for members who have slipped from the movement’s high ethical standards to redeem themselves. But the DeCrescenzo lawsuit describes it as a highly abusive process.

“Work on the RPF is designed to control, coerce, punish, inflict emotional distress and break the will of the victim,” it says.

“The working conditions are severely harsh. Personal liberty is non-existent. Plaintiff worked on the RPF for over two years, which caused her significant emotional distress.” (For more on the RFP, see Section 10.)

The bleach incident was partly due to DeCrescenzo’s determination to quit the Sea Org after having failed to win her release from the RFP.

“Plaintiff spent over two years on the RPF and was headed back to the RPF when she escaped by swallowing bleach and pretending to be suicidal,” says the lawsuit.

She made sure her action was witnessed to ensure she would be kicked off staff. The plan worked, but her employers still wanted to ensure that she left on their terms, the complaint adds.

“After being deemed a suicide risk for swallowing bleach, Plaintiff was brought into a room to sign her ‘exit’ papers. Plaintiff was under extreme duress and just wanted to get out without having to undergo hours or days of emotional abuse.”

DeCrescenzo was required to sign a series of documents before she was allowed to leave, says the complaint. “The papers contained a list of her ‘crimes’ and confidential matters revealed in the ‘sec checking’ procedure described above.” She was not given copies of those documents.

During her exit interview DeCrescenzo was told not just that she had no legal recourse against Scientology but that she owed the movement about 120,000 dollars for the training she had received since the age of 12.

This debt is known as a Freeloader’s Bill in Scientology. A freeloader, according to the definition in one Scientology dictionary, is “any person who has failed to complete a staff contract at a Sea Org or Scn [Scientology] org or mission.”

DeCrescenzo initially paid off 10,000 dollars of this debt: having spent years under Scientology’s “undue influence”, she believed it to be her legal obligation, says the complaint.

“Plaintiff had little formal education or sophistication as she had been effectively isolated from mainstream society and culture.” She is now seeking a refund of what the lawsuit describes as an unenforceable debt.

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This is the third lawsuit that van Sickle has filed on behalf of a former Sea Org member since the beginning of the year. But this new complaint introduces several new elements.

Van Sickle focuses on the security checks carried out on employees using the Scientology e-meter. The lawsuit describes the e-meter as a primitive lie detector, echoing the conclusion reached by several court-appointed experts and official reports.

Scientology’s founder L. Ron Hubbard attributed almost supernatural properties to the device in his 1952 operator’s manual: “It sees all, knows all. It is never wrong.”

In a 1960 policy letter (“Interrogation: how to use an E-meter on a silent subject”), he even suggested the device could be used to question criminals and terrorists. “Don’t use guns, use E-meters to make a country safe,” he wrote.

But the lawsuit argues that by obliging DeCrescenzo and other employees to submit to this kind of questioning, Scientology was flouting state and federal laws against the use of lie detectors in this context.

“The sec checking procedure constitutes a gross invasion of privacy and is used to gather embarrassing data on employees,” Van Sickle argues.

“The threat of using confidential and embarrassing information collected and recorded in the ‘sec check’ process is used to control employees. This practice borders on blackmail.”

The lawsuit also accuses Scientology of deceiving its employees by telling them they have no rights.

“[Decrescenzo] was not told of her rights to be paid a proper wage for her labor or of her right not to be subjected to physical punishment, sexual discrimination, coercion, intimidation and forced labor,” van Sickle argues.

Since she signed her departure documents under duress, they should be set aside as invalid, he adds. “[She] did not freely consent to the unconscionable and unlawful terms of her termination papers.”

Finally, the new lawsuit accuses Scientology officials of having contacted former members to dissuade them from backing the legal actions against the movement.

The Church of Scientology International (CSI) and its operatives “have gone on a ‘mission’ to silence and buy off witnesses and potential plaintiffs” says the lawsuit.

“In addition to buying silence with the purported debt forgiveness, Defendant CSI has used threats of punishing friends and family as the currency with which to buy off potential witnesses and claimants.

“Defendant’s efforts to silence witnesses by threats, coercion, forgiveness of alleged ‘Freeloader Debt’ and threats of breaking up families, constitutes obstruction of justice, witness tampering and illegal retaliation…” the lawsuit alleges.

DeCrescenzo is seeking her back pay, damages, the formal cancellation of any illegal documents she signed while on staff and an injunction against Scientology to prevent them either bribing or intimidating potential witnesses in her case.

You can see the full text of the complaint here. For exhaustive and up-to-date coverage of this case, see Tony Ortega's extensive reporting at The Underground Bunker.

11 Claire Headley's lawsuit

A former Scientologist has filed a lawsuit alleging that members of the movement’s Sea Org were put under unreasonable pressure to have abortions.

Claire Headley is suing Scientology alleging that she and others were pressured into having abortions they did not want while members of the movement’s Sea Org.

In most respects, her lawsuit echoes the allegations made by her husband Marc in the lawsuit he filed on January 5 against the Church of Scientology International (CSI) – the entity at the top of the movement’s corporate structure.

She alleges that Sea Org members regularly worked seven days a week (more than 100 hours) for far less than the minimum wage; and that employees were subject to “intimidation, threat and menace.”

But she also alleges: “In addition to suffering illegal working conditions and wages, Plaintiff was ordered and coerced to have abortions by Defendants’ management.”

Claire Headley worked for the Sea Org between 1991 and 2005, work that the lawsuit describes as “clerical, commercial or secular” in nature.

Like her husband, she was based at the International Base, in Hemet, also known as Gold Base, where Scientology’s leader David Miscavige works.

“During this time, Plaintiff became pregnant on two occasions. Plaintiff was ordered to terminate these pregnancies by forced abortions,” the complaint continues.

“Plaintiff is aware that this was a relatively common practice at Gold Base. Plaintiff has knowledge of approximately 20 other female employees ordered to have abortions.”

As with the allegations of physical abuse and intimidation in Marc Headley’s case, Claire Headley’s allegations find an echo in the claims made by past defectors from the movement.

Mary Tabayoyon served in Scientology’s Sea Org between 1971 and 1992 – and she spent the last eight years at the International Base.

Her 1994 affidavit refers to a special order that was issued on the subject of children in the Sea Org in 1986.

Flag Order 3905 was issued in September 1986 – just months after the death of Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard. A 1991 reissue of this document has been leaked on to the Internet.

“The ultimate responsibility to clear [save] this planet lays with the Sea Org,” the two-page document declares.

“This is a huge task and a very large responsibility. It requires complete dedication and determination from its staff. Therefore Sea Org members who have new children will not be allowed to remain on duty in Sea Org units.”

Anyone who disobeyed the order would be transferred out of the Sea Org to a more junior posting until such time as the child had reached the age of six, the document adds.

For a dedicated Scientologist, being cast out of the Sea Org is a devastating fall from grace: Tabayoyon, in her affidavit, described such an expulsion as “a severe punishment.”

According to her account, practical implementation of Flag Order 3905 was not simply to transfer women who fell pregnant out of the Sea Org.

“Some of these women went through extensive pressure methods to convince them to have an abortion … I myself got pregnant in 1993 and gave up my child due to my greatly misguided obligation and dedication to the Sea Org …

“Although I would have dearly loved to have had my child and the idea of abortion is abhorrent to me, I did not dare to say it would be nice to keep my baby.”

Since it was considered “Out-Ethics” – unethical – for her to have got pregnant in the first place, she was expected to pay for the abortion herself.

Her senior also told her that when she went to the clinic she was not to let on that she worked at the International Base “because there were too many going there from the base for abortions” and it was considered bad public relations.

But the story did get out, in a 1997 German WDR television documentary, “The Dark Side of Scientology”. They interviewed Janet Honn-Alex of the Planned Parenthood Center in Riverside California, not far from International Base.

Staff there had been puzzled that so many women, regardless of the individual circumstances, had made the decision to have an abortion, said Honn-Alex. “We found that almost unbelievable. And when we started asking more questions, in order to find out their individual motives, because we were suspicious, they stopped coming to us altogether, for any services.”

Another former Sea Org member, Astra Woodcraft told in a 2001 affidavit how she faced the same pressure at the International Base when she fell pregnant.

Woodcraft says that when she was recruited at the age of 14, in 1992, she was told that she would be allowed to have children if she wanted them when she was older.

When she did fall pregnant, in 1998, she quit the movement rather than come under pressure to have an abortion.

“Approximately 1½ years before I left, a new rule came out stating that if you got pregnant, you had to either get an abortion, which was heavily pushed, or leave,” she wrote.

“The rule had previously been that if you got pregnant, you had to get an abortion or be sent to a small and failing lower organization where you had to fend for yourself and your baby.

“I had to handle any staff that disagreed with this new rule. I myself disagreed with it because I wanted children and was told I would be able to have them when I was first recruited.”

Woodcraft had a baby girl and went on to rebuild her life outside Scientology. In 2008, she was one of the cofounders of Ex Scientology Kids website.

In an early posting to the ESK forum, she clarified her position: “I personally am pro-choice despite what people may assume. I do not think abortion is a good thing, I just believe in a woman's right to choose what to do with her body … Being coerced into having an abortion is neither pro-life, nor pro-choice.”

Other former Sea Org members have also spoken of the pressure they were subjected when they – or their partner – fell pregnant.

Headley’s lawsuit implicitly raises questions about the movement’s description of itself as “non-denominational” – or even “all-denominational” – suggesting that its beliefs are somehow compatible with all other religions.

Leaving aside the question of coercion, for Scientologists to even sanction abortion would appear to undermine this position.

Claire Headley filed suit on January 20, 2009, just over two weeks after her husband Marc filed against the CSI. But her lawsuit also targets the Religious Technology Centre (RTC), which handles the movement’s copyright and trademarks.

Chairman of the Board of the RTC is David Miscavige, acknowledged as the overall leader of the movement.

For a legal analysis of Claire Headley’s lawsuit, see Scott Pilutik’s blog here.

Next: Scientology v the Internet