The Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre is pictured, Friday, April 21, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige has successfully removed a judge from a case where an unnamed woman sued the controversial organization and its officials for allegedly engaging in forced marriages among minors as well as sex abuse.
Representatives of the Church of Scientology have been trying to get the case brought by the Jane Doe plaintiff funneled into the church’s internal arbitration process for some time, and when presiding Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Broadbelt tentatively denied that request on Monday, it was promptly followed by leader Miscavage’s motion for Broadbelt’s ouster the next day.
As Courthouse News Service reported, Broadbelt granted the request for a new judge Tuesday and the matter will now be reassigned to a different judge, though it is not yet clear who that will be.
This is the second time Miscavige has successfully removed a judge overseeing a case where he or the church is the defendant. He managed to oust Judge Randolph Hammock just last month from Leah Remini’s extensive and now trimmed down harassment case against the organization. The new judge in that matter, Holly Fujie, will hold a hearing on May 29, the Daily Journal reported.
Meanwhile, in the Doe case, Miscavage has reportedly not made a formal appearance. The motion to boot Broadbelt was made in person in the courthouse through his attorney on Tuesday. Miscavige attorney Jeffrey Riffer did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The Doe plaintiff says she was groomed by a Scientology recruiter, Gavin Potter, when she was just 16 years old and he was at least 26. Potter, her 2022 lawsuit contends, was “deputized, tasked, directed, deployed and ordered” by the Church of Scientology and Miscavige to recruit minor children and girls to become members of the Sea Organization, or Sea Org, a religious order for senior hierarchy. Prospects to Sea Org allegedly face forced marriage if they did not comply with rules to get in, or stay in. The plaintiff claimed in her lawsuit that the Sea Org branch targeted children as young as 12 or 13 years old to fold into its ranks.
Potter specifically used fear and flirtation, the plaintiff claimed, to recruit young women just like herself before abusing them. The defendants have denied any wrongdoing.
Broadbelt’s thinking when denying the request to move Doe’s lawsuit into the church’s internal arbitration was explained in his now moot order.
Arbitration is at minimum, meant to be mutual. The contract the church asked the young woman to sign in 2002 when she was 27 required Doe to “forever” abandon, surrender, waive and relinquish her right to sue or seek any legal recourse whatsoever against the church.
“The court finds that plaintiff established a high level of substantive unconscionability by showing that the arbitration provision set forth in the agreement lacks mutuality and is ‘so one-sided as to shock the conscience,”” Broadbelt wrote, citing another ruling in a separate arbitration matter.
Though under Broadbelt the plaintiff had met the criteria to avoid falling into the church’s internal arbitration procedures, all of that is now back to square one. A supplemental motion in support of the church’s bid to move the case into private arbitration was sealed prior to Broadbelt’s removal.
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