The actress Leah Remini, a former longtime member of the Church of Scientology who has been extremely crucial of the group since leaving it in 2013, filed go well with in opposition to the church this week in search of to finish what she stated have been the “mob-style tactics” it had used to harass and defame her.
The lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday in Superior Court in Los Angeles County, lists the church as a defendant together with its Religious Technology Center, which the church describes as a company shaped to protect, preserve and shield the faith; and David Miscavige, the chairman of the middle’s board and the chief of the church.
“For 17 years, Scientology and David Miscavige have subjected me to what I believe to be psychological torture, defamation, surveillance, harassment, and intimidation, significantly impacting my life and career,” Ms. Remini stated in a assertion on social media asserting the lawsuit. “I believe I am not the first person targeted by Scientology and its operations, but I intend to be the last.”
The lawsuit says that she has been “under constant threat and assault” on account of her public departure from Scientology. She is in search of a jury trial and unspecified damages for financial and psychological hurt.
In an announcement, the church known as the lawsuit “ludicrous and the allegations pure lunacy,” and described the transfer as Ms. Remini’s “latest act of blatant harassment and attempt to prevent truthful free speech.”
During her three-decade performing profession, Ms. Remini, 53, has appeared in dozens of TV reveals, most notably as Carrie Heffernan in 9 seasons of the CBS sitcom “The King of Queens.”
The lawsuit is a fruits of a decade of criticism of Scientology by Ms. Remini, who has used her platforms to show what she and plenty of different former members say are the darker sides of the church, together with the disappearance from public view of her pal Shelly Miscavige, Mr. Miscavige’s spouse.
Ms. Remini printed “Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology,” a e book about her experiences, in 2015, and hosted and produced an Emmy Award-winning documentary TV collection “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath,” which ran for 3 seasons beginning in 2016.
The lawsuit particulars the a long time that Ms. Remini spent in Scientology and the occasions that led to her departure after what she says was a yearslong interval of abuse. When she was 8, she “effectively lost” her mom to Scientology, the lawsuit says. When she was 13, she was pressured to hitch the Sea Organization, or Sea Org, the corps of members who preserve the church operating, the lawsuit stated.
She was pressured to signal a billion-year contract, in step with the church’s perception that Scientologists are immortal, and to carry out handbook labor, examine the teachings of the church’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and bear coaching that included “verbally, physically, and sexually abusive” practices, the lawsuit says.
Some of the allegations concerned a course of often known as a “truth rundown” that’s meant to erase a Scientologist’s reminiscences and implant new ones. The lawsuit says that Ms. Remini was despatched to a facility in Florida for a fact rundown and that, “after months of psychological torture,” she was “nearing the point of psychotic breakdown.”
After reporting an abuse allegation at a Scientology studio in Riverside, Calif., she left the group in 2013.
Shortly after she left the church, Ms. Remini filed a lacking individuals report about Ms. Miscavige, who has not been seen in public since 2007, the lawsuit stated. The Los Angeles Police Department closed that investigation in 2014, saying that detectives had “personally made contact” with Ms. Miscavige and her lawyer.
The lawsuit stated that Ms. Remini was designated a “suppressive person,” or somebody who leaves the church and is deemed its enemy by in search of to wreck the church or Scientologists. That might embrace reporting crimes dedicated by Scientologists to civil authorities, the lawsuit stated.
The lawsuit says that, along with bodily stalking and harassment, the church and the opposite defendants had carried out a decade-long “mass coordinated social media effort” in opposition to Ms. Remini, utilizing tons of of Scientology-run web sites and social media accounts “to spread false and malicious information about her.”
“People who share what they’ve experienced in Scientology, and those who tell their stories and advocate for them,” Ms. Remini wrote on Twitter, “should be free to do so without fearing retaliation from a cult with tax exemption and billions in assets.”
Source: www.nytimes.com