The French Scientology Conviction: ‘Intelligent’ or ‘An Inquisition’?

[WSJ_law_blog]

To paraphrase Sam Cooke, we don’t know much about Scientology (We’ll probably never read Dianetics — though, wowza, someone’s sunk a lot of time into this Web site.) Nor do we know too much about the French criminal-justice system.

But the two got into faced off recently and today, we got the results: a solid — though not complete — victory for French prosecutors. Click here for the AP story; here for the NYT story.

A Paris court on Tuesday convicted the Church of Scientology of fraud and fined it more than half a million euros. The silver lining for Scientology: the court stopped short of banning the group as requested by prosecutors. Prosecutors had requested that the group be dissolved in France and be fined €2 million.

Investigators had said that the group pressured members into paying large sums of money for questionable financial gain and used “commercial harassment” against recruits. The original complaint in the case dates back more than a decade, when a young woman said she took out loans and spent the equivalent of €21,000 on books, courses and “purification packages” after being recruited in 1998.

When she sought reimbursement and tried to leave the group, its leadership refused. She was among three eventual plaintiffs.

In Tuesday’s ruling, the group was fined €400,000 ($600,000) and its library €200,000. Six of its leaders were convicted as well. Four were given suspended sentences of between 10 months and two years. The other two were given fines of €1,000 and €2,000.

The verdict is “an Inquisition of modern times,” said Scientology spokeswoman Agnes Bron.

The head of an association that helps victims of sects, Catherine Picard, called the verdict “intelligent.” “Scientology can no longer hide behind freedom of conscience,” she said.

Investigating judge Jean-Christophe Hullin spent years examining the group’s activities, and in his indictment criticized what he called the Scientologists’ “obsession” with financial gain and practices he said were aimed at plunging members into a “state of subjection.”

They say it is a sect not a religion, and frankly they may be right.