The last we heard in Laura DeCrescenzo’s four-year lawsuit against the Church of Scientology, the church lost an appeal to the California Supreme Court and had until July 2 to turn over Laura’s confidential confessional files — thousands of pages that she believes will bolster her case that she suffered abuse (including a forced abortion) as an employee of Scientology’s “Sea Org.”
Now, the church has filed a new motion, saying that it intends to appeal yet again — this time to the US Supreme Court — and even if it does ultimately give up Laura’s documents, it wants a protective order to keep Laura or her attorneys from sharing them with us — the public.
The church claims that Laura’s attorneys had previously agreed to a protective order but then changed their minds, and in order to prove that point, they attached an August 2012 letter from one of Laura’s attorneys, Kathryn Saldana, which contains these lines…
We are more than willing to work with you on a protective order that would ensure certain protections to CSI [the Church of Scientology International] and provide Ms. DeCrescenzo with the opportunity to fully prepare for her case. However, we cannot stand by and allow CSI to produce only the documents that benefit its position while refusing to produce the documents that do not benefit its position.
However, the rest of that letter rips apart the church’s various arguments for keeping these documents secret, and we wonder if it was really smart of the church to make it public by including it in this filing. We have the documents, below.
A hearing for this motion is scheduled on July 1. As soon as we hear more about the church’s US Supreme Court appeal, we’ll bring it to you.
First, here’s the motion for protective custody itself…
DeCrescenzo Lawsuit: Motion for Protective Order
Here’s the declaration of Scientology attorney Nicholas Daum, which includes as an attachment the letter from Kathryn Saldana.
And here are the declarations and other documents that the church supplies to argue the religious nature of the documents.
Declaration of Allan Cartwright
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Posted by Tony Ortega on June 12, 2013 at 15:00
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