For the second time this month, attorneys for Church of Scientology International and its leader David Miscavige Tuesday convinced a judge to step aside in a lawsuit filed against both defendants, in this case brought by a woman who maintains she is a self-professed former friend of the late Lisa Marie Presley.
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Tuesday's ruling by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert B. Broadbelt means that the case filed by a plaintiff identified only as Jane Doe will be turned over to Judge Michael Small for further hearings. Doe alleges she was forced into marriage as a minor and sexually abused by her then-husband before and after they were wed.
Miscavige is a co-defendant in the suit along with the church and its Religious Technology Center, which was founded in 1982 by the church to control and oversee the use of all of Scientology trademarks and symbols as well as Scientology and Dianetics texts.
Miscavige's attorneys, in court papers brought before Tuesday's hearing on Doe's case, cited a section of the Code of Civil Procedure in which they claimed Broadbelt was prejudiced against their client, but did not require them to explain how.
"The court reviews the ... challenge filed by (Miscavige) ... and finds that it was timely filed, in proper format and is accepted," the judge's clerk wrote in a minute order.
Earlier this month, Judge Randolph M. Hammock stepped down from actress Leah Remini's civil suit against the church and Miscavige after the church leader filed a similar motion. Remini's case is now before Judge Holly J. Fujie.
The new judge, on a date to be determined, will now be asked to rule on the church attorneys' motion to send the case to an internal church arbitrator rather than a jury. The same lawyers maintain that Doe's own writings show she "enthusiastically" married her husband, that she loved the man and that she did not make claims of non-consensual sex against him until she filed her lawsuit.
Doe was 27 when in 2002 she signed an agreement stating that any dispute she may have with any Scientology organization was subject to binding religious arbitration, the church lawyers further maintain in their court papers.
In her suit filed in December 2022, Doe says she was a Scientology member from birth and that she was recruited in 1989 at age 14 into the faith's Sea Organization, which is responsible for advancing the faith's research and operations.
A Sea Organization recruiter 10 years older than Doe supervised her and allegedly sexually assaulted her repeatedly while she was still a minor, the suit states.
Doe was "devastated" by the alleged abuses, but Scientology policies forbade her from going to the police, the suit alleges.
Doe and her supervisor were reprimanded by the church and told to either marry or be sent to Scientology's labor camp as punishment, according to Doe's suit, which further states she and the man were wed in Las Vegas when she was 17 years old.
After the alleged forced marriage, Doe was "coerced and compelled" to have repeated sexual intercourse with the man, became pregnant at age 19 and divorced her husband in 1997, the suit states.
In 2002, Doe, along with her 7-year-old daughter, accompanied her "good friend" and fellow Scientologist, Lisa Marie Presley, to FLAG, a Scientology spiritual and training center in Clearwater, Florida, and to Disney World for a birthday celebration, the suit states.
FLAG is Scientology's primary training center and visits to it usually required both advance permission as well as the transfer of auditing files from the Scientology member's home base -- Los Angeles in Doe's case -- so that the visitor can partake in FLAG activities, Doe says in a sworn declaration.
"Because Lisa Marie was a celebrity, the FLAG visitation requirements were overlooked for her, and initially for me," Doe says. "However, after I had been at FLAG for several weeks, I was told I had to sign a FLAG agreement or be banned from the base."
Doe further states she did not know that a FLAG agreement she felt coerced to sign contained an alleged arbitration agreement.
"It is the policy of Scientology to force signatures on documents without review by the signer, much less a lawyer," Doe says. "I knew review was not allowed because I had been forced to sign documents previously before I was allowed to read them."
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