Jury Awards $1.7 Million to Ex-Follower of Rajneesh

For the second time in a week, a jury has given a large damage award to a former member of a controversial religious group, sparking accusations by one sect that Oregonians harbor religious prejudice.

A federal jury awarded $1.7 million Friday to a former follower of Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh who claimed that she was deceived into lending nearly $310,000 to the group in 1980.

The verdict came one week after a Multnomah County Circuit Court jury awarded $39 million in punitive damages to former Church of Scientology member Julie Christofferson Titchbourne of Portland.

Deliberated Two Hours

The federal jury of three men and three women deliberated for slightly more than two hours before deciding that Helen C. Byron of Santa Fe, N.M., had been deliberately deceived by Ma Anand Sheela, president of Rajneesh Foundation International and a spokeswoman for the guru.

Of the amount awarded by the jury, $1.25 million was for punitive damages. The rest of the award was a return of the loan and an $80,000 deposit Byron made in a bank at the Rajneeshee ashram in Poona, India.

Sheela had claimed that the money from Byron was an irrevocable donation and said the group would appeal the verdict.

“I think Oregonians basically are trying to bring their bigotry into the court, and until now they are doing pretty good,” Rajneesh spokeswoman Ma Prem Isabel said.

The award to Titchbourne followed a 10-week retrial of her suit against the Church of Scientology. A previous jury’s 1979 award of $2 million in damages was overturned by the Oregon Court of Appeals.

Titchbourne said she had paid for courses after Scientologists assured her that her sight and intelligence would be improved.

Church of Scientology attorneys filed a motion for a mistrial Friday, seeking to overturn the verdict.

The lawyers said a new trial should be granted in Multnomah County Circuit Court because at least two jurors disclosed after the verdict that they received threatening, anonymous telephone calls during the proceedings.

They also said the plaintiff’s counsel had been allowed to make a “flagrantly improper summation” and the judge had mistakenly allowed the jury to rule “piecemeal” on whether individual Scientology lessons were religious or secular in nature, rather than reviewing them in whole context of the religion.

Judge Donald H. Londer, who presided at the trial, scheduled a hearing on the motion Wednesday.