Church ordered to pay $30M
NZPA-Reuter Los Angeles A Los Angeles jury awarded SUS3O million ($55.8 million) yesterday to a former official of the Church of Scientology who said his 11-year membership in the organisation had left him emotionally and financially ruined.
The Superior Court jury found after eight days of deliberation that the church had caused Larry Wollersheim, aged 37, emotional distress and ordered it to pay SUS2S million in punitive damages and SUSS million in compensatory damages. Mr Wollersheim testified during a trial that church members had engaged in a pattern of lies, tricks and deception in efforts to keep him from disclosing how the organisation worked.
Scientologists, who profess self-redemption and a belief in a universal life force, had lied to him when they told him
church auditing, intense counselling, and confession sessions would bring him greater health, stability, and business success as well as supernatural powers.
Mr Wollersheim, who rose through Scientology's ranks to become a member of an elite church branch, the Sea Organisation, said he had spent about SUSIOO,OOO ($186,000) on church courses before he found the promises to be bogus. Lawyers for the church said Mr Wollersheim was a draft-evading hippie drop-out whose bad temper had led him to become a wife-beater and a malcontent. The church contended that he had had a history of mental illness before joining the group.
The church said that the case was a broadbased attack on the freedom of religion and that it should never have been allowed to go to trial.
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Press, 24 July 1986, Page 11
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255Church ordered to pay $30M Press, 24 July 1986, Page 11
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