High Court to Hear Appeal of Suit Accusing Moon’s Church of Fraud

David Molko was waiting for a bus at the corner of Powell and Market streets one day in January, 1979, when he was approached by two casually attired and affable young men who said they were looking for a good coffee shop.

Molko, a 27-year-old law school graduate still uncertain about his future, conversed with the two for a while and, by his account, was invited to have dinner with a group called the Creative Community Project, which the men said liked to discuss world affairs.

What the two did not tell him, Molko now charges, is that they actually were recruiters for the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church and were hoping to eventually entice him and other young people into the church.

At dinner, Molko says, he was talked into going to a remote encampment near Boonville, Calif., where he began to succumb to sophisticated “mind-control” techniques that deprived him of the will to leave, even after he was told 12 days later that he was among Moon followers.

He ended up recruiting and raising funds for the church and donating $6,000 of his own before he was forcibly abducted by his parents and others and finally “deprogrammed.”

Along with two other former church members, Molko filed a lawsuit against the church alleging fraud. After lower courts refused to permit the litigation, the former church members appealed to the state Supreme Court.

Case to Be Heard

The high court has agreed to consider the appeals in a case that could lead to the newly constituted court’s first major ruling on the separation of church and state.

At issue is whether the recruitment techniques of a church are open to challenge in court or must be protected from judicial inquiry by the constitutional guarantees of free exercise of religion.

The case, scheduled for verbal argument Dec. 10, has emerged at the forefront of a variety of recent court actions in which church officials have been sued for millions of dollars for fraud, harassment, “clergy malpractice” and other alleged wrongdoing.

The thorny legal questions raised in the dispute have divided academics, professionals and religious organizations, fueling the debate over the activities of so-called cult groups.

Molko and his supporters argue that the church, like anyone else, can be sued for fraud and deceit. They contend that he should be allowed to prove his case by presenting expert opinion linking the church’s techniques to the indoctrination methods used by the Chinese during the Korean War.

“Lying and brainwashing are not the kind of conduct the Constitution is designed to protect,” said Molko’s attorney, Ford Greene of San Anselmo, Calif. “If a used car dealer had sold Molko an automobile the same way the Moonies sold him a religion, he’d be liable for fraud straight out. There’s no logical reason why they should be shielded from accountability for their conduct.”

The church’s lawyers and their backers counter that the plaintiffs, in effect, are asking the court to impose an unreasonable and impractical legal duty on all recruiters or missionaries to disclose their affiliation and intent to gain adherents at the outset of their contacts with others.

Allowing the suit to go forward would open the way for disenchanted former members of any faith to charge that they were “unduly influenced” into joining, participating or making contributions to a church, the attorneys say.

“This could really be devastating to many religions,” said Jeffrey S. Ross, a San Francisco lawyer representing the church. “Any religious experience could end up being scrutinized in court by psychiatric experts--whether it was prayer at Yom Kippur (a Jewish holy day) or a confession at a Catholic Church.”

Freely Joined

Ross said Molko and the others freely joined the church and that if the case ever goes to trial the church will vigorously contest the plaintiffs’ version of what occurred.

A state Court of Appeal that reviewed the case last year conceded that the Unification Church’s “beguiling” recruiting techniques might be objectionable. But where there was no force or threat of force, the First Amendment bars any inquiry into the “spiritual nature” of a church’s hold on its members, the panel said, ordering the suit dismissed.

“If liability could be imposed in such circumstances, any disaffected adherent of a religion could bring suit alleging that he had been ‘brainwashed’ by the religious organization, and courts would become entangled in determining which former adherents acted out of true faith and which were subject to ‘mind control,’ ” Appellate Justice J. Anthony Kline wrote for a unanimous three-member court.

Molko brought his suit in San Francisco Superior Court in July, 1980, seeking $1 million in damages for alleged fraud and deceit, infliction of emotional distress and false imprisonment, an allegation that has since been dropped from the case.

Two other former church members, Tracy Leal, then 19, of Santa Clara, Calif., and Barbara Dole, then 19, of Berkeley, also brought fraud suits, charging that they too had been victimized by mind-control techniques.

Criminal Laws

In the suit, Molko does not dispute that the Unification Church represents a religion, nor does he say that criminal laws were violated or that he was physically coerced by church followers.

Instead, he claims that he was subjected to a process of subtle psychological suggestion, manipulation and isolation that impaired his ability to think for himself.

He says he was purposely kept away from the outside world at remote church camps; was required to participate in an unrelenting daily regimen of lectures, testimonials and other church activities, and was constantly accompanied by a church member, even when he went to the bathroom.

When he reacted positively to church teachings, he was praised. But when he reacted negatively, he was ostracized, he said. Any time he expressed a desire to return to San Francisco, he was pressured to stay and was advised that the only bus back to the city left Boonville at 3 a.m.

Later, Molko moved on to another church camp where he learned that his associates were Moon followers. Nonetheless, he stayed at the camp for another five weeks before returning to San Francisco to help raise funds and recruit new members into the church, he says. At the time he was kidnaped by his family, he believed he was under “total mind control” of the church.

Support Claims

In support of his claims, Molko sought to present testimony from Dr. Margaret Singer, a psychologist, and Dr. Samuel Benson, a psychiatrist, both experts on brainwashing and cult groups.

In a pretrial declaration, Singer said she had interviewed about 260 people who had been connected with the Unification Church and had found a striking resemblance between the techniques used by recruiters and those used on some Americans imprisoned during the Korean War, whom she had interviewed. Benson, in his declaration, said he had also noted that similarity.

Both Singer and Benson said that their examinations of Molko indicated that he had been made incapable of exercising his own free will and judgment by the time he had learned his recruiters were followers of Moon.

Molko currently works in a family operated business in Florida and prefers not to comment on the case, according to his attorney.

The church sought and won a summary dismissal of the suit by Superior Court Judge Stuart R. Pollak, who cited a 1977 state Court of Appeal ruling in another “brainwashing” case filed against the Unification Church by parents of young adult members.

Judicial Inquiry

In that case, the appeal court barred a judicial inquiry into church recruiting techniques unless there was evidence that the recruits had been rendered “gravely disabled” or unable to care for themselves because of a mental disorder.

Now that the the Molko case is before the state Supreme Court, it is being watched closely by participants in other cases raising similar issues that are pending in lower courts.

In one well-publicized case, lawyers for the Church of Scientology are appealing a $30-million damage award by a Los Angeles Superior Court jury to former Scientologist Larry Wollersheim, who contended that he had been defrauded and harassed by the organization and suffered “psychological manipulation” through a church practice known as auditing.

Church attorneys said a ruling by the state high court barring Molko’s suit on constitutional grounds could prove conclusive in their bid to have Wollersheim’s claims invalidated on constitutional grounds.

“There’s a long and honorable tradition that says the state may not interfere with religious practices that might otherwise be subjected to governmental scrutiny,” said Michael Lee Hertzburg of New York, the attorney for the Scientologists. “We’ll be watching the Molko case with a great deal of interest.”

Raises Question

Another case waiting in the wings that also raises the question of government intervention in religious activities is a so-called “clergy malpractice” claim in which the parents of Kenneth Nally of Tujunga are suing ministers of the Grace Community Church of Sun Valley. They say the ministers negligently counseled their son before he committed suicide. A state Court of Appeal ruled in September that the case could go to trial.

Meanwhile, the Molko case has attracted an array of “friend-of-the-court” briefs on both sides of the dispute.

A brief filed in behalf of several “cult awareness” groups, including one sponsored by the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, argues that the lower courts were wrong in protecting “the intentionally fraudulent and coercive recruitment practices” of the Unification Church from judicial scrutiny.

An inquiry into whether Molko and the others were incapable of holding sincere religious beliefs because their mental states were altered by fraudulent recruiting practices would not require an evaluation of the religious tenets of the church, and thus would not violate the Constitution, the brief contends.

Other Side

On the other side, a brief filed on behalf of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and other groups backs the Unification Church, arguing that if Molko prevails, the decision would invite courts to “regulate” evangelical practices and the religious conversion process.

Another brief filed by a group of 23 sociologists, psychiatrists, religion professors and other academics and professionals from around the country contends that the “coercive persuasion” theories offered in behalf of Molko by Drs. Singer and Benson have been rejected by the scientific community and should not be admitted as evidence in court.

Only in extreme cases should a church be held liable for its religious conversion processes, the academics and professionals say.

“Had the legal standards plaintiffs advocate been applied to an emergent Christianity, the creeds by which most Americans abide might never have grown to fruition,” the brief says.