SCI
page 5 / 7
Armstrong was sued by the Church in 1982 for the theft of private documents. The "fair game" policy became an issue in court. Armstrong won the case, in part because the Judge ruled that Armstrong, as a Scientologist of long standing, knew that fair game was practiced, and had good reason to believe that possession of these papers would be necessary to defend himself against illegal persecution by the Church. In a scathing decision, Judge Paul Breckenridge wrote:
In addition to violating and abusing its own members' civil-rights, the organization over the years with its "fair game" doctrine has harassed and abused those persons not in the Church whom it perceives as enemies. [...] [Armstrong] was declared an enemy by the Church. He believed, reasonably, that he was subject to "fair game".
=== Latey judgment, 1984 ===
A child custody case in London's High Court examined the culture of Scientology to investigate the risks to children being raised within it. Stating his conclusions in a public hearing, Mr. Justice Latey read some of Scientology's internal documents into the record. Despite the alleged cancellation of "Fair game", he reported that, "Deprival of property, injury by any means, trickery, suing, lying or destruction have been pursued throughout and to this day with the fullest possible vigour." As an example, he cited the case of a doctor at Harvard Medical School who at one point was regarded as the Church's "Number One Enemy". The Church had persecuted him by stealing his employment records from a hospital, launching frivolous lawsuits against him and tracking down his patients and neighbors. The Citizens' Commission on Human Rights, which Latey described as "a Scientology 'front'", made multiple complaints of misconduct against the doctor.
=== Pat Broeker, 1989 ===
In 2009, the Tampa Bay Times reported that after Pat Broeker left the Church of Scientology in 1989 and moved to Colorado, David Miscavige hired private detectives for $32,000 a month. They followed him for the next two decades to Wyoming and ten years in Czech Republic, where he went to medical school and worked as an English teacher. In 2012, Paul Marrick and Greg Arnold, the two private detectives who followed Broeker for 25 years, sued the Church of Scientology for breach of contract when the organization stopped paying them for their investigations.
=== Pedro Lerma Gámez, 1990 ===
The Dominican cartoonist Pedro Lerma Gámez, known as Petrus, was successfully treated for his drug addiction at a Narconon center in Paris. The Church of Scientology considered that Lerma was not following the instructions of the organization and sent missions to try to redirect him. This included a smear campaign conducted against Lerma by "Judit" and "Greg" and a private detective and former National Police inspector, José Manuel Villarejo Pérez. During their fourth mission, Villarejo introduced a brother-in-law, (with the nickname el Pitrancas and codenamed Hero) to Narconon; the information Hero gathered there made it possible to include the detox center's clients in the smear campaign.
In April 1984 a fifth mission, headed by Rodolfo Sabanero, was aimed at getting Lerma incarcerated. Villarejo brainwashed Juan Carlos Borrallo Rebolledo, a drug addict with a criminal record for robberies who had been treated at Narconon. The plan consisted of Borrallo giving himself up to the authorities (for robbery) and then implicating Lerma in being accessory to a robbery at the Dianetics headquarters. On May 8, 1984, Borrallo appeared at a Madrid police station, admitting to two robberies that he had actually committed (to give credibility to the matter) and of a theft of several E-Meters at the Dianetics headquarters, saying that he was induced to steal them by Pedro Lerma. Another individual, named José Luis Díaz López, conveniently presented himself to police with the same deposition. Villarejo – still having friendly contacts within the police – influenced the development of the police investigation, resulting in Lerma being arraigned and entered in prison with bail being set at 800,000 pesetas. During proceedings, however, the presiding judge, José María Vázquez Honrubia, discovered the smear plot and Lerma was acquitted by the Sixteenth Section of the Madrid Court in 1990.
=== Richard Behar, 1991 ===
In 1991, investigative journalist Richard Behar wrote "The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power", a Time cover story on Scientology. The acclaimed article won several awards. The Church of Scientology brought several lawsuits over the article, all of which were eventually dismissed. While investigating the story, he experienced some of Scientology's "fair game" tactics:
I later learned, a copy of my personal credit report – with detailed information about my bank accounts, home mortgage, credit-card payments, home address and Social Security number – had been illegally retrieved from a national credit bureau called Trans Union. The sham company that received it, "Educational Funding Services" of Los Angeles, gave as its address a mail drop a few blocks from Scientology's headquarters. The owner of the mail drop is a private eye named Fred Wolfson, who admits that an Ingram associate retained him to retrieve credit reports on several individuals. Wolfson says he was told that Scientology's attorneys "had judgments against these people and were trying to collect on them." He says now, "These are vicious people. These are vipers." Ingram, through a lawyer, denies any involvement in the scam. [...] After that, however, an attorney subpoenaed me, while another falsely suggested that I might own shares in a company I was reporting about that had been taken over by Scientologists (he also threatened to contact the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission). A close friend in Los Angeles received a disturbing telephone call from a Scientology staff member seeking data about me – an indication that the cult may have illegally obtained my personal phone records. Two detectives contacted me, posing as a friend and a relative of a so-called cult victim, to elicit negative statements from me about Scientology. Some of my conversations with them were taped, transcribed and presented by the church in affidavits to Time's lawyers as "proof" of my bias against Scientology.