SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
(名誉毀損裁判記事)
DATE: Friday, June 28, 1985
PAGE: 1B
EDITION: Stock Final
SECTION: Local
LENGTH: 14 in. Medium
SOURCE: By MICHAEL DORGAN
Mercury News Oakland Bureau
Church wins $11.9 million libel award
An Oakland judge has issued an $11.9 million judgment against a Berkeley author and his Swiss publisher for describing an evangelical Christian group as a ''cult'' filled with ''moral dwarfs.'' In a 33-page decision issued Thursday in Alameda County Superior Court, Pro Tem Judge Leon Seyranian said the book, ''The God-Men, An Inquiry Into Witness Lee and the Local Church,'' by Neil T. Duddy, is a gross and deliberate misrepresentation of the church and its founder.
Lee, who migrated to the United States from Taiwan in the 1960s, heads an Anaheim-based evangelical network that claims 600 churches and more than 75,000 members worldwide. Lee was portrayed in the book as a despot who regulates all aspects of his church members' lives through ''brainwashing'' and other means of manipulation, but Seyranian said that characterization is ''in all major respects false, defamatory and unprivileged, and therefore libelous.''
Duddy, who did not show up for the trial and who is believed to be in Europe, wrote the book while he was a researcher for the Berkeley-based Spiritual Counterfeits Project, which was named in the suit until it filed bankruptcy March 4, the day the trial was scheduled to begin. That left Duddy and his Swiss publisher, Schwengeler-Verlag. Both went unrepresented at the five days of testimony in May.
Seyranian ordered that Duddy and Schwengeler-Verlag pay compensatory damages of $5 million to Witness Lee, $3 million to his Church of Anaheim and $500,000 to church member William Freeman, a church elder the book accused of deceit. In addition, the defendants were ordered to pay punitive damages of $2 million to Lee,$1 million to the Church of Anaheim and $400,000 to Freeman.
''From all the testimony, it is clear that the traditional use of the word 'cult' has changed so that we now have, since the middle 1970s, a new meaning of the word,'' Seyranian wrote. ''It is now understood to mean 'brainwashing of members,' deceitful recruiting, a mischievous group that is evil and ready to control you and take your money, harmful to their members, undermining American values.''
Quoting trial witness Dr. J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religions, the judge said that ''to call someone a Cult is . . . the equivalent of labeling them a Pinko in the days of McCarthyism.'' Seyranian said the book, published in 1979, has exposed the 80-year-old Lee to hatred and contempt and has ''severely and irreparably harmed'' his standing as a minister.
Church elder Dan Towln said he was pleased by the judge's decision and ''happy that the truth will finally be made known of the church.'' Towln said the church had not pursued the 4-year-old legal case for a monetary award. In fact, he said, throughout the initial proceedings, it had offered to drop the suit in exchange for a retraction. Nonetheless, he added, the monetary awards are welcomed.
KEYWORDS: TRIAL BOOK RELIGION JUDGE VERDICT AWARD OAKLAND
ALAMEDA-COUNTY