Legal Turmoil Continues in Suit Against Krishnas

Marcia George searched for seven months before she found her runaway daughter, Robin, in a Hare Krishna temple in Canada--and she waited another six years to win a $32-million verdict from a jury which found that the Krishnas had brainwashed Robin.

A judge later reduced that award to $9.7 million. She still is waiting to collect.

The lengthy legal process is beginning to wear on George, 68, of Cypress, who sued the International Society of Krishna Consciousness of California on behalf of herself and her daughter in October, 1977. She has taken a part-time secretarial job because her Social Security benefits won’t cover the bills.

“We haven’t gotten a penny,” George said. “We’re just pouring more money into the appeal.”

The original lawsuit--which alleged that Robin George was captive of the Krishna sect from November, 1974, until November, 1975--has grown into two lawsuits, with appeals and other legal maneuvers that seem interminable to George and her daughter. The second suit is a battle over identifying property owned by the Hare Krishna society that could be used to pay off the $9.7-million award.

A decision by the state Court of Appeal in the massive case, involving battalions of lawyers, probably won’t come before 1988, the Georges’ attorneys say. Then comes the almost inevitable Supreme Court appeal.

Melvin Feldman, a trustee appointed to hold Krishna assets during the appeal, calls the case “a kind of interesting insight into the frustrations of the judicial system.”

“Nothing has gone easy,” Feldman said. “Whatever could go wrong has gone wrong.”

“It’s ridiculous,” said Neil Levy, a professor at Golden State University School of Law and one of the attorneys representing the Georges in the appellate courts. “You have a girl who is 14 or 15 at the time of the incident, and she may never see a penny before she’s 28 or 30.”

An Orange County Superior Court jury found in 1983 that members of the Krishna society had falsely imprisoned Robin George, that her father died as a result of his search for her and that Marcia George had suffered severe emotional distress.

Clinical psychologist Margaret Singer, who has been an expert witness in several cult cases, testified in the trial that although Robin was not physically restrained by the Krishnas and did not feel threatened, she was imprisoned by the Krishnas’ manipulation of psychological and social influences.

Court-Ordered Reduction

Jurors awarded more than $32.5 million to the plaintiffs, including damages for false imprisonment, emotional distress and wrongful death, as well as punitive damages. The Georges later accepted a court-ordered reduction of the award to $9.7 million.

The case entered its final stages last month when lawyers for the Krishna society, three other related organizations and two individuals filed appellate briefs in the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana.

The verdict cannot stand, Krishna lawyers argue, because the Orange County jury had to decide whether the society’s religious beliefs are genuine before they could judge whether the elements of belief and practice worked to brainwash Robin.

That, they argue, is a violation of the freedom-of-religion clause of the First Amendment.

The Georges’ lawyers say certain Krishna rituals were calculated to brainwash Robin and to prevent her from leaving the church, while the Krishnas’ lawyers say they are merely part of the religion practiced by members of the society.

Simple Wrongdoing

Attorney Levy maintains the case has nothing to do with the First Amendment. It deals with simple wrongdoing, he says, and is legally no different from a lawsuit for negligence against a Krishna member driving a church-owned car.

For Marcia George, however, the issues are much more complicated than lawyers on either side portray them.

The temporary loss of her daughter, the death of her husband, the financial burden of the case and the uncertainties of the appeal have taken their toll.

“I’m an older person--I don’t expect to live that long,” George said. “I’m surprised I’m still alive after all that trauma. You live with it. We constantly worry because we realize how the court system works today. There’s a chance we might lose everything.

“You just never know which way a judge is going to turn. We thought just getting to trial was a miracle. They told us it would get thrown right out the first day, but it wasn’t.”

The costs of the investigation before trial “just about broke me,” George said. Tracking down potential Krishna defendants was costly. “It took all our savings and everything I got from my husband’s insurance. Little by little, it just all disappeared.”

Second Mortgage

Midway through the trial, George took out a second mortgage. She refinanced the balloon note three years ago, and it will be 15 years before it is paid off. And she has taken the part-time job.

She declines to discuss her finances in detail, but George said her husband’s life insurance would have provided “a goodly return” and allowed her to retire without working.

Today, the lawyers in the case charge their bills against the expectation of winning the appeal, George said.

Krishna lawyers, arguing that the $9.7-million judgment should be overturned, point to a state appellate decision earlier this year in San Francisco. That decision upheld a judge who tossed out a brainwashing case involving the Unification Church.

Singer’s sworn statements were key in that case. The appellate court ruled that, despite her “scientific perspective,” her testimony would amount to a judgment on the authenticity and force of religious teachings, which would be unconstitutional.

For Stanley Friedman, the lawyer who won the case--now being reviewed by the state Supreme Court--it is like a heresy trial.

Authenticity of Religion

“Essentially, the issue boils down to whether you’re going to let some psychiatrist offer testimony that determines the authenticity of religion,” Friedman said. “Singer’s walking around and picking and choosing which are genuine.”

The Krishna society’s appellate brief says the lower court verdict “was intended to and may well be the death blow of an entire religion.”

“Permitted to pass on the value of Krishna consciousness, the jury decided, in effect, that it should be wiped out, that preaching reincarnation, karma, vegetarianism, chanting and the like is unhealthy and offends the community standards of Orange County,” the brief reads.

Krishna lawyers reserved their strongest attack for experts who “had no trouble dismissing Robin’s own testimony that she had sincerely adopted the beliefs of Krishna consciousness as delusional evidence of ‘mind control.’ ”

Attorneys for the Georges say the talk about freedom of religion misses the point.

“I don’t read the First Amendment as giving religion an immunity from tort liability,” Levy said.

Marcia George said, “We never sued them because of their religion. We sued them for kidnaping a child and keeping her from her parents. We sued to show what the cults were doing.

“We don’t feel we are suing a religion. We feel that if we quit the case, America won’t be a safe place to live. Any cult can come along and scoop your children up and take them away.”

Collecting the $9.7-million award depends not only on winning the heady constitutional battle in court but on finding Krishna assets to cover it. Tracking down property--the “other side” of the case, as one attorney put it--has occupied another battery of lawyers in California, Louisiana and New York for years.

The appellate court ordered the Krishna society to post a $15-million appeal bond or to surrender its assets to Feldman, the court-appointed receiver. Some assets have been turned over.

The receiver’s job is to let the Krishna society use its property, but to hold title as security against its ability to pay if it loses on appeal.

“It’s been a lot of detective work,” said Warren Haviland, the San Diego lawyer who heads the search for assets. “And a lot has been just holding their feet to fire to either pay the money or enroll (turn over) their assets.

20 Court Appearances

“It’s taken three years. You have to drag them kicking and screaming into court.”

Haviland said he and associates have made at least 20 court appearances since the verdict.

Earlier this month, lawyers were in court in Jackson, Miss., seeking to force two pieces of property into the receiver’s pot. One included a home known as “The Cedars,” built before the Civil War on a large estate.

Lawyers now are now seeking to prove that the assets of three more Krishna-related groups should be surrendered to the trustee.

“We ended up with perhaps about 7 or 8 million dollars worth of assets, primarily real estate,” Feldman said. “The bulk of it was the real estate comprising the Krishna community in Los Angeles and some in New York.”

For the present, George said she receives some financial help from Robin, who married last year and plans to attend college.

“She helps me out as much as she can,” George said. “I don’t expect her do any more than that. I hate to have them start out their marriage in the hole.

“Things are getting better. The trauma of the trial is behind us.

“Hopefully the courts won’t say we have to do go through it again because we couldn’t afford it, financially or emotionally.”