By Joe Childs and Thomas C. Tobin, Times Staff Writers
Thursday, February 9, 2012
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Former Scientology executive Debbie Cook disclosed in court papers today that the church's worldwide leader David Miscavige ordered a staffer to smack her to the floor and another to break her finger in the weeks before she left the church's religious order in 2007.
Cook made that allegation and others in an e-mail to church officials last month. The e-mail was submitted to a Texas court today, where the church is suing Cook for violating a confidentiality agreement she signed upon her resignation.
The church did not immediately respond to Cook's charges.
In the e-mail, Cook insisted that a letter she wrote to fellow Scientologists on New Year's Eve had not violated the agreement or harmed the church. Cook told church leaders to stop harassing her.
"Think about what I could have done if my actual intentions were to cause real damage" to the church's reputation, she wrote.
She listed some of what she had seen:
• A manager, Mark Ginge Nelson, was made to lick a bathroom floor clean because "he dared to say he disagreed" with abusive treatment of other church officials.
• Church executives were held in mass confinement in a building that came to be known as "The Hole." As many as 100 top managers were held in the building at the church's 500-acre compound in the desert east of Los Angeles. Cook said the building had barred windows and round-the-clock security guards.
• She witnessed beatings at the compound, including Miscavige punching and wrestling long-time executive Marc Yager to the ground.
"I could go on and on but hopefully you get the point by now," Cook wrote to church officials. "There is plenty I could have exposed if I was out to damage the church. I am not."
Saying she denied several interview requests from the Tampa Bay Times and other media, Cook felt she had witnessed "a true horror story" and was part of "the biggest cover up in Scientology history."
Scientology has been in many legal fights in its 57-year history, but its face-off with Cook has the potential to be among the most dramatic and divisive. As captain of Scientology's spiritual headquarters in Clearwater for 17 years, Cook was widely respected and admired by church members worldwide.
Many people who have defected from the church in recent years descended on San Antonio on Thursday to attend a hearing in the church's lawsuit against Cook and her husband. The defectors have also contributed to a legal defense fund.
Cook, 50, and her husband, Wayne Baumgarten, resigned from the church's religious order, the Sea Org, in October 2007. Each signed a 10-page agreement provided by the church. They waived their First Amendment rights to free speech and said they would never, "in perpetuity," disclose any information about the church, its staff or former staff.
In exchange for signing, Cook and her husband each received $50,000.
But in an email on New Year's Eve sent to Scientologists, Cook said the church had deviated from the policies of founder L. Ron Hubbard. Calling herself a Scientologist in good standing, she urged fellow church members to stand up to Scientology's aggressive fundraising efforts and other practices that don't conform with Hubbard's writing.
Cook sent that e-mail six weeks after the Tampa Bay Times published "The Money Machine," a four-part series describing how Scientology pressures and intimidates parishioners to make donations and purchase church services.
The church sued Cook and Baumgarten in January, saying the e-mail breached the confidentiality agreement. The church asked the court to enjoin Cook from talking and to impose a $300,000 judgment.
That case is being heard in San Antonio, where Cook and Baumgarten moved after leaving the Sea Org.
The papers filed Wednesday argue that the nondisclosure agreement is not enforceable because Cook signed it under duress.
The church did not immediately respond to the filing, but it has said in court papers that Cook's public statements pose "substantial risk of imminent harm and irreparable injury" to the church.
Cook and Baumgarten said in the papers that the church held them against their will until they signed the agreements. They were kept under constant surveillance by church security and feared physical and mental abuse, they say.
"Such physical and mental abuse was commonly used by the Church of Scientology to secure obedience from church insiders," according to the court papers.
Cook said she was subjected to beatings, torture, mental and emotional abuse and was denied medical care. The papers don't say where this occurred.
Cook's health declined to the point where her "free agency was effectively destroyed," the papers say.
Cook and Baumgarten believed that if they left the church but did not sign the agreements, they would never be permitted to communicate with family members who remain in the church. Baumgarten's mother was in a church-funded nursing home.
"Simply stated, Ms. Cook and her husband would have signed anything they were required to in order to be free from their captivity and danger, and they were rendered powerless to resist signing the agreement," Cook's attorney, Ray Jeffrey of Bulverde, asserted in the court filing.
The pleadings indicate that beyond duress, there are several other reasons the nondisclosure agreement should be declared unenforceable. Cook and Baumgarten say the agreement is extreme and unreasonable in that it violates their freedom to practice their religion as Scientologists.