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PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 29, 1995
FEDERAL JURY AWARDS $4,875,000 IN DAMAGES
AGAINST CULT AWARENESS NETWORK AND "DEPROGRAMMERS"
-- FBI Consultant during Waco to pay staggering $3.1 million --
In what may well be the most important civil trial victory ever for
an individual's right to religious freedom, a jury in Washington today
ordered the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) and three leading members --
including high-ranking spokesman and deprogrammer Rick Ross -- to pay
$4,875,000 in damages to a member of a Pentecostal church who was the
victim of a failed violent deprogramming by Ross in 1991. The court
found that in brutally kidnapping then 18-year-old Jason Scott and
holding him for five days against his will in an effort to force him to
leave his church, CAN, Ross and their accomplices Charles Simpson and
Mark Workman had conspired to violate Scott's civil rights to freedom of
religion.
Ross, from Phoenix, Arizona, was recommended to Scott's mother when
she sought advice over his membership in the Life Tabernacle Church from
Cult Awareness Network, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Ross, who
was praised by CAN's director, Cynthia Kisser, as "among the half-dozen
best deprogrammers in the country", carried out the deprogramming in
exchange for a package payment of $25,000 to him and his team.
Ross gained notoriety this summer after the BATF and FBI were
criticized for utilizing him as a "consultant" leading up to and during
the Waco stand-off in 1993. It was discovered that Ross had a prior
conviction for $100,000 of jewelery theft and a psychiatric history that
included being diagnosed as having "sociopathic inclinations." After
deprogramming Branch Davidian David Block at the house of leading CAN
official Priscilla Coates, Ross put Block in touch with the BATF. The
Treasury Department report on Waco found that false information provided
to the BATF by Block was a major factor in the BATF's decision to mount
a raid against the Davidians. When the Davidian compound burned to the
ground, Ross boasted on TV that he had also been in touch with the FBI
throughout the "long haul" that led up to the disaster.
Scott brought the case against Ross in January 1994 under a
Washington civil rights statute known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. The
outcome is the largest civil award rendered against any deprogrammer in
U.S. history.
Ross, who has admitted to more than 200 deprogrammings, was ordered
by the jury to pay more than $3.1 million in punitive and
compensatory damages to Scott. CAN has to pay Scott total damages in
excess of $1 million, while Workman and Simpson will pay more than a
quarter of a million dollars each.
After the trial in Seattle, Judge John C. Coughenour congratulated
the jury on the verdict, which he called "very reasonable."
During the week-long trial, the jury heard that while on a family
visit Scott was jumped by three men, led by Workman and Simpson. They
wrestled him to the ground and dragged him inside a nearby house.
Simpson fastened handcuffs on Scott's wrists so tightly they cut off his
circulation. In agony, Scott was dragged by his captors down a
stairway, through a living room and into a getaway van.
As a horrified jury listened, Scott told how he was pinned face
down in the van by one of his kidnappers and his ankles tied with a
nylon strap. A strip of 2 inch duct tape was wrapped around Jason's
face from ear to ear and he was told to "stop praying and shut up." When
he tried to look out of the window, he was forcibly held down.
The kidnappers drove Scott to Ocean Shores, Washington, where Rick
Ross, whose history includes a diagnosis as a sociopath by a prison
psychiatrist, began the deprogramming. For the next five days, Jason
was held in a remote location with nylon straps covering the windows and
two guards at each door to prevent him from escaping. Throughout his
ordeal, Ross harrassed and abused his prisoner in an effort to force him
to give up his Christian beliefs. When Scott tried to defend himself,
Ross threatened to tie him to the bedframe.
Finally, Scott was able to escape by pretending to his kidnappers
that he had decided to leave his church. Once away from his tormentors,
he called the police, who arrested the criminals.
Before jury members retired, the judge instructed them that an
element of conspiracy in the case was "intentional purpose to
discriminate against plaintiff's religion" and that punitive damages
could be awarded if the defendants' conduct had been in reckless
disregard of Scott's rights. In addition to upholding the conspiracy
charge and awarding substantial punitive damages against all defendants,
the jury also found Ross, Simpson and Workman guilty of "outrage." To
prove this charge, the judge told the jury that defendants' conduct
would have to be "atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized
community."
Despite his history of violent crime, CAN's executive director
Cynthia Kisser has publicly praised Ross. During congressional hearings
earlier this year, legislators expressed dismay when they learned that
Ross had played a role in advising the federal agencies whose actions
contributed to the Waco disaster.
In 1993, CAN's reputation as an agency for violent deprogrammers --
known by religious leaders as "kidnappers for hire" -- was confirmed
when its security chief, Galen Kelly, pleaded guilty to criminal
kidnapping-related charges and served a year in prison. Since 1990,
more than a dozen CAN deprogrammers have been prosecuted or convicted on
criminal charges. Kisser also incensed Christian leaders with a January
1994 statement that if Jesus were alive today, CAN would "take an
interest in him because of the great controversy surrounding his
fringe activities. ... And I'd send whatever we could find to
reporters."
The decision comes in the middle of Religious Freedom Week,
proclaimed annually by Congress.
Kendrick Moxon, the lawyer who represented Scott, called the
verdict "a clear message by American society to CAN and its
co-conspirators that anti-religious hate campaigns, breaking up families
and deprogramming are intolerable and considered outrageous conduct.
It's a victory for religious freedom. Hallejuhah!"
-ENDS-