A court in Paris today convicted the Church of Scientology in France of defrauding its followers, handing down fines to the organization and its leaders, with one of those leaders also receiving a suspended prison sentence.
The case against the French branch of the Church of Scientology resulted from complaints made by two women that the Church pressured them into buying products they did not want, such as vitamins, and enrolling in classes.
According to
France 24 one of the women was defrauded of more than €20,000 ($29,800) and the other of €49,500 ($73,700).
Bloomberg, which notes that the case against the Church was brought despite the Paris prosecutor advising that it should be dropped, quotes Olivier Morice, the lawyer for the complainants, as saying that for the “first time in France Scientology has been condemned as a legal entity”. Mr Morice added that “the organization now knows it is being watched”.
With regard to the fines and suspended prison sentence handed down by the Paris court, the Scientology Celebrity Center and a bookshop run by the Church, both of which are located in the French capital, were fined a total of €650,000 ($967,890).
Alain Rosenberg, the leading Scientologist in France, was given a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined €30,000 ($44,700), the suspension of the jail sentence apparently recognizing the “efforts by the association to change its practices”. The full name of the association referred to is the Spiritual Association of the Church of Scientology.
Significantly though Scientology has not found itself banned in France as a result of the court case, French law does not permit that course of action, although an amendment to the law means that future convictions may result in a ban being implemented.
France refuses to acknowledge that Scientology is a religion, classing it instead as a sect. Nevertheless, when speaking to
Bloomberg, Tommy Davis, a spokesman for the Church of Scientology International, said that “France is in the dark ages on the subject of religious freedoms”, adding that the court's ruling, against which an appeal will be launched, was "in violation with the European Declaration of Human Rights and the French constitution”.
With regard to the issue of human rights and religious freedom
Bloomberg confirms that Russia was recently fined €20,000 ($29,800) by the European Court of Human Rights after it prevented the registration of a local Church of Scientology.
Whereas in Germany a court has permitted the monitoring of the Church on the basis that it “wants to establish a society which disregards central constitutional guarantees like human dignity and equality”.
Scientology was founded in 1952 when American science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, building on a self-help system he had previously developed known as
Dianetics, produced a work which set out what he considered to be a new religious philosophy.
The first actual church established to enable followers of Scientology to practice their religion was in Los Angeles. It was set up in 1954.
Officially recognized as a religion in the U.S., yet still viewed as little more than a sect by many other countries besides France, Scientology has become the religion of choice of celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and Lisa Marie Presley.
