Church Universal Ruined Successful Architect, Suit Says

A Westlake Village man, formerly a successful architect, was reduced to foraging for food in a supermarket Dumpster and was done permanent harm by the Calabasas-based Church Universal and Triumphant, an attorney for the ex-church member said Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

“They reeled him in like a hooked fish,” an attorney for Gregory Mull told a jury in opening statements in a civil trial expected to shed light on the beliefs and practices of the publicity-shy church, which has an estimated membership of 100,000 worldwide.

Mull, 64, formerly an architect at Camelot, the church’s 128-acre compound in Calabasas, countersued after the church sued him in 1981. Church Universal and Triumphant alleges that Mull owes the church $30,000 he borrowed in 1979.

Letter Allegedly Revealed

Among Mull’s allegations is that the church violated its obligation to keep his confessions to his spiritual leader secret by revealing the contents of a letter he wrote when he joined the church. In that letter, Mull said in an interview, he confided that he had had homosexual experiences.

Mull signed promissory notes held by the church but said in the interview that the money was for expenses the church had agreed to pay.

Although the teachings of the church are not at issue in the case, many of its key figures are expected to testify about its daily life and practices.

Mull said that, when he lived there in 1979, about 150 people lived, worked and worshiped at Camelot, once the estate of razor blade magnate King C. Gillette. The property is also the campus for the church’s Summit University.

Among those scheduled to testify is Elizabeth Clare Prophet, 46, spiritual leader of the group, who is known as “Guru Ma” to her followers.

Teaches Reincarnation

Prophet, who shuns interviews, teaches that she is in direct contact with Jesus, Buddha and other “ascended masters” who dictate their wisdom and wishes to her. She also teaches reincarnation and says that she was once Queen Guinevere, according to church literature.

She became spiritual leader of the church in 1973 after the death of its founder and her husband, Mark L. Prophet.

Randall King, who became president of the church after he married the widowed Prophet, is also expected to testify. King, a San Fernando Valley resident who left the group several years ago, has become a vocal critic of Prophet and her church. The couple are now divorced.

In interviews and court documents, King has said that Prophet and other church leaders identified and courted individuals they believed could enrich the church. He said the church controls its members by such means as sleep deprivation, fasting and a type of rapid-fire prayer called “decreeing.”

King has also filed a suit against the leaders of the church, which he described as a multimillion-dollar enterprise despite its nonprofit status. King’s suit, which alleges that he was defrauded, has not been heard.

As Prophet listened, wearing pearls and dressed in the bright blue and magenta that are among the favored colors of the church, Mull’s attorney, Lawrence Levy, on Monday described him as “both a religious and spiritual man.”

Mull was cynically recruited by the group, financially ruined and eventually emotionally broken by the church’s exclusion of him in 1979, Levy said.

‘Stroke-Like Incident’

The church conditioned Mull to be so dependent on Prophet, whom he believed to be capable of condemning him to “the outer darkness” after his death, that he could no longer exercise his free will, Levy said.

“These people were only after two things from Mr. Mull--his professional skill and his money,” Levy told the court. The expulsion from Camelot and the church’s conduct was so traumatic for Mull, Levy said, that he may have suffered “a stroke-like incident” as a result.

Mull, whose speech is slurred and walk is hesitant, required extensive counseling and psychological therapy because of his experience with the church, Levy said. Mull was so poor at the time he left the church, his attorney said, that “he found sustenance out of the Dumpster behind Vons.”

Mull, who said he is suffering from multiple sclerosis, no longer works, Levy said.

The church’s attorney countered that Mull was the exploiter in the case.

‘Bitter Man’

Ken Klein, counsel for the church, said in his opening statement that Mull is a “bitter man” who has not paid, and did not intend to pay, a legitimate debt. “It was Mr. Mull that took advantage of the church and not the other way around,” Klein said.

Klein said Mull was eager at first to offer his services to the church, with which he became affiliated in 1974. Klein speculated that Mull hoped at first to find the fame and fortune that had previously eluded him by becoming the church’s architect.

Mull became disillusioned when he realized he wasn’t going to become famous as the creator of any “great cathedrals,” Klein said.