Hi Karen,
The problem I have with the use of religious cloaking and the IRS conferred status to explain how the abuse is possible, is that the abuse was occurring long before the granting of status in 1993.
501(c)3 tax exemption is not required to be a Church and to enjoy First Amendment religious protections. There are many churches that refuse to apply for 501(c)3 status as they do not want any government intrusion. CSI was incorporated and became the new mother Church on November 18, 1981 in Los Angeles. CSI took the position that it was a Church and thus paid no income taxes and claimed First Amendment protections. The abuses continued.
If they lost official government sanction as a religious organization then what is to keep them from continuing the same pattern of abuse as prior to 1993?
Scientology lost its tax exemption; it did not lose its "government sanction as a religious organization" because the US government cannot make any laws regarding the establishment of a religion per the First Amendment. Scientology only lost its tax exemption. This did not prevent the Church from continuing on as a religion with a tax protest against the IRS. David Miscavige misrepresented IRS tax exemption as the US Govt's "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" that Scn was a legitimate religion. This is false. IRS 501c3 approval is administrative only and does not mean that a group is good. The People's Temple had 501c3 exemption and yet conducted a mass murder and suicide of 912 of its members in Guyana.
As you state, the laws themselves must change and in this case it seems to me that it comes down to expanding the definition of stalking and intimidation and cracking down on the use of contracts to deny fundamental human rights.
The "ministerial exemption" in America exempts religious workers from most secular worker protections. Given religious protections, a church can use scammy religious contracts as does Scientology. The way to prevent stalking and intimidation by Scn is to resign in writing and withdraw your consent to be governed by Scientology's ecclesiastical rules. See:
https://scientologymoneyproject.com...d-harming-its-own-members-and-how-to-stop-it/
After you resign from Scn and withdraw your consent, report all Scn stalking and intimidation to the police, FBI, and the Civil Rights division of the US Dept of Justice. This assumes you're an American. The laws outside the US are different.
Further, in America, a person can sign away their civil and legal rights as a condition of joining a group, obtaining employment, etc. When I was a US Defense worker in the early 1980's, I signed away certain of my rights to privacy and search and seizure. I did this as condition of obtaining and holding Dept of Defense Secret and Top Secret security clearances.
However, I think the Church’s natural response to this would be to make their contracts and procedures even more iron clad.
The Church is trying to clamp down hard, particularly with non-disparagement contracts.
So if you have a witness, and they give you a copy it is now enforceable?
It depends. An illegal contract is not enforceable. The Church would also have to sue you and that is fraught with risks as David Miscavige is the managing agent of Scientology.
This means the future of Scientology will probably depend upon their increasing exploitation of less educated and more desperate people from undeveloped countries who don’t understand the nature of contracts and feel they have very little to lose and everything to gain.
Agreed. Exploiting Third World people is the present and future of the Church of Scientology. This staff of Dublin photo looks like a human trafficking map to me:
