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A year ago, after producing hundreds of shoe styles and billions of dollars together, Adidas broke with Kanye West as he made antisemitic and other offensive public comments. But Adidas had been tolerating his misconduct behind the scenes for nearly a decade. B35309 2015 AQ4832 AQ2659 AQ4830 AQ4831 AQ4829 AQ4828 AQ4836 AQ2660 BB1839 AQ2661 BB5350 […] More
Ms. Ormond also sued Creative Artists Agency, which represented her at the time, and Disney, which owned Mr. Weinstein’s Miramax.The actress Julia Ormond, known for “Legends of the Fall” and “Sabrina,” accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual battery in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in a New York court, claiming that the former film producer forced her to give him oral sex during a business meeting in 1995.Ms. Ormond also sued Creative Artists Agency, which represented her at the time, saying in the complaint that two of its senior agents cautioned her from speaking out — and informed her of the “going rate” for settlements paid to women who accused Mr. Weinstein of sex crimes. She said the sum was $100,000.Mr. Weinstein, now 71, was convicted in 2020 by a New York jury on charges of rape and criminal sexual assault and sentenced to 23 years in prison. He was later convicted of similar crimes in Los Angeles and sentenced to 16 years, to be served after his New York term. Mr. Weinstein has denied the claims against him, saying all encounters were consensual, and is appealing both convictions.“Harvey Weinstein categorically denies the allegations made against him by Julia Ormond, and he is prepared to vehemently defend himself,” Imran H. Ansari, a lawyer for Mr. Weinstein, said in a statement. Mr. Ansari added that her lawsuit was “yet another example of a complaint filed against Mr. Weinstein after the passing of decades.”CAA did not respond to requests for comment. Lawyers for Ms. Ormond said her complaint was the first to sue the powerful agency for what the suit claims was its role in covering up and enabling Mr. Weinstein’s behavior.Ms. Ormond’s complaint, filed in New York Supreme Court, also named the Walt Disney Company and Miramax, which Disney owned from 1993 to 2010. Ms. Ormond claimed the companies also knew about Mr. Weinstein’s predation and failed to protect her from him.Disney declined to comment. Miramax, now owned in part by Paramount Global, did not respond to requests for comment.According to the complaint, CAA secured a two-year production deal between Ms. Ormond and Miramax. She claims that Mr. Weinstein sexually assaulted her in 1995 after a business dinner. According to the suit, Mr. Weinstein said he would discuss a project she was interested in only at the apartment that Miramax had provided for Ms. Ormond as part of her deal.At the apartment, the suit said, Mr. Weinstein stripped naked and forced Ms. Ormond to give him oral sex.Afterward, Ms. Ormond told her agents, Bryan Lourd, now the chief executive of CAA, and Kevin Huvane, now a co-chairman of the agency, about what had occurred, according to the complaint.“Rather than take Ormond’s side and advocate for her interest, they suggested that if she reported Weinstein to the authorities, she would not be believed, and he would seriously damage her career,” the complaint said.Ms. Ormond did not pursue further action, the complaint said, but Mr. Weinstein terminated her contract at Miramax. CAA also transferred her to a younger, less experienced agent, diminishing her career potential, the lawsuit said.In a statement, Ms. Ormond said her lawsuit was a “way to shed light on how powerful people and institutions like my talent agents at CAA, Miramax and Disney enabled and provided cover for Weinstein to assault me and countless others.” More
A judge ended a nearly 20-year-old conservatorship that had given a couple broad authority over the affairs of the former N.F.L. player Michael Oher.A probate judge in Memphis ended an unusual legal arrangement on Friday between Michael Oher, a former National Football League player and the subject of the hit movie “The Blind Side,” and the people who took him in when he was a teenager, which had given them broad authority over Mr. Oher’s affairs.Mr. Oher, 37, filed a petition in August to terminate the nearly 20-year-old conservatorship, claiming that he had been tricked into signing away his decision-making powers under the pretense that he would be adopted. The petition stated that Leigh Anne Tuohy and Sean Tuohy, with whom Mr. Oher started staying when he was 16, were given power of attorney and access to his medical records, and that he could not bind himself to any contracts without their approval.The move by the judge was largely expected; the Tuohys had said at the time the petition was filed that they were happy to have the conservatorship end.Based on the book by Michael Lewis, “The Blind Side” is one of the most popular and highest-earning sports movies in American history, grossing more than $300 million upon its release in 2009 and earning Sandra Bullock an Academy Award for her portrayal of Ms. Tuohy. But it has also been criticized for perpetuating stereotypes about Black athletes like Mr. Oher needing help from white, wealthy benefactors like the Tuohys.Mr. Oher is also seeking money that he has said he should have earned from the movie, an injunction preventing the Tuohys from using his name and likeness, and an accounting of all the times that the Tuohys enriched themselves from “the lie of Michael’s adoption,” the petition said.The judge did not dismiss the case. The deputy clerk of the court said that no date had been set for another hearing. Lawyers for Mr. Oher did not immediately return requests for comment. A spokesman for the Tuohys did not respond to a request for comment.The Tuohys have denied wrongdoing. They have said that they sought the conservatorship only so Mr. Oher would be able to attend their alma mater, the University of Mississippi, to play football. The aim, they said, was to appease the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which had been suspicious of the fact that the Tuohys were prominent boosters of the school and had taken Mr. Oher in.In a legal filing on Sept. 14, the Tuohys said that they had never intended to legally adopt Mr. Oher and that they never told Mr. Oher that they would adopt him. In a 2010 book they wrote, however, the Tuohys refer to adopting Mr. Oher, and they have publicly referred to him as their adopted son.Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy took Mr. Oher in when he was 16.Gerald Herbert/Associated PressSandra Bullock won an Academy Award for playing Ms. Tuohy, in the 2009 film “The Blind Side.”Ralph NelsonThe conservatorship was created under unusual circumstances. It was granted despite a finding that Mr. Oher had “no known physical or psychological disabilities.” In Tennessee, a conservatorship is designed to protect an individual “with a disability who lacks capacity to make decisions in one or more important areas.”On Friday, the judge in Memphis, Kathleen Gomes, said that she could not “believe it got done” and that she had never seen a conservatorship granted under such circumstances.The judge in the original petition for the arrangement, Robert Benham, told The New York Times last month that he disputed the idea that a conservatorship could be granted only under such circumstances. But he said he ultimately granted the conservatorship because there was no opposition to the arrangement from the people at the hearing, including the Tuohys, Mr. Oher, the lawyer filing the petition and Denise Oher, Michael’s mother.Ms. Oher said in a recent interview that she didn’t recall a conservatorship being discussed at the hearing. She said that she thought she was present only to approve a name change for Michael, whose birth name was Williams. More
The singer, who already faces one lawsuit alleging a hostile work environment, has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.A former wardrobe designer who worked briefly on Lizzo’s 2023 tour before being dismissed filed a lawsuit on Thursday alleging that the tour’s wardrobe manager had created a hostile work environment that tour management and Lizzo failed to address.In the complaint the plaintiff, Asha Daniels, who worked on the tour for less than a month, names Lizzo as a defendant, but does not accuse her directly of harassing behavior. In a news release accompanying the lawsuit, Ron Zambrano, her lawyer, said, “Lizzo is the boss so the buck stops with her.”The filing comes more than a month after three of Lizzo’s former dancers, who are also represented by Zambrano, sued the singer and her production company, accusing them of creating a hostile work environment. Lizzo has denied the allegations, and her lawyer has said she plans to countersue. On Thursday, a spokesman for Lizzo called the latest suit an “absurd publicity stunt” and noted that the singer had never met the plaintiff.In the court papers submitted on Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Daniels said she was asked to join the tour in early 2023 by the wardrobe manager, Amanda Nomura. The lawsuit alleges that throughout Daniels’s employment, Nomura had made “racist and fatphobic” comments and mocked both Lizzo and Lizzo’s background dancers “by doing an offensive stereotypical impression of a Black woman.”The lawsuit also alleged that a backstage manager on the tour sent a photo “graphically depicting male genitalia” to a group text message that included the plaintiff, tour management and other crew members; the lawsuit said the singer’s management failed to properly address the message, responding to it with humor in a way that encouraged an “unsafe, sexually charged workplace culture.”The plaintiff also said she was subjected to long hours and frequently denied breaks, alleging that Nomura required her to be on her feet all day despite an ankle injury.Attempts to reach Nomura on Thursday were not immediately successful.In response to the lawsuit, a spokesman for Lizzo, Stefan Friedman, said that Daniels never had any contact with the pop star during her time with the tour.“As Lizzo receives a humanitarian award tonight from the Black Music Action Coalition for the incredible charitable work she has done to lift up all people, an ambulance-chasing lawyer tries to sully this honor by recruiting someone to file a bogus, absurd publicity-stunt lawsuit,” Friedman said.He went on, “We will pay this as much attention as it deserves. None.” More
An appeals court in California determined that lawsuits by two men who say Jackson molested them as children can proceed.Two men who have accused Michael Jackson of sexually abusing them as children are able to resume their lawsuits against companies owned by the singer, who died in 2009, a California appeals court ruled on Friday.The men, Wade Robson, 40, and James Safechuck, 45, have alleged that Mr. Jackson sexually abused them for years and that employees of the two companies — MJJ Productions Inc. and MJJ Ventures Inc. — were complicit, acting as his “co-conspirators, collaborators, facilitators and alter egos” for the abuse. The suits say that employees of the companies owed a “duty of care” to the boys and failed to take steps to prevent abuse.Mr. Robson’s and Mr. Safechuck’s stories were featured in the 2019 HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland,” in which the men accused Mr. Jackson of molesting them and cultivating relationships with their families to access the boys’ bodies.“Everybody wanted to meet Michael or be with Michael,” Mr. Safechuck said in the film. “He was already larger than life. And then he likes you.”The two companies are now owned by Mr. Jackson’s estate, which has repeatedly denied that he abused the boys.“We remain fully confident that Michael is innocent of these allegations, which are contrary to all credible evidence and independent corroboration, and which were only first made years after Michael’s death by men motivated solely by money,” Jonathan Steinsapir, a lawyer for Mr. Jackson’s estate, said in a statement after the decision.Vince Finaldi, a lawyer for Mr. Safechuck and Mr. Robson, said in a statement that the court had overturned “incorrect rulings in these cases, which were against California law and would have set a dangerous precedent that endangered children.”Mr. Robson and Mr. Safechuck filed their suits against the companies in 2013 and 2014, respectively, but both cases were dismissed in 2017 because they exceeded California’s statute of limitations. They were reopened in 2020 after a new state law provided plaintiffs in child sex abuse cases an additional period to file lawsuits.In October 2020 and April 2021, the suits were again dismissed when a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that the two corporations and their employees were not legally obligated to protect the men from Mr. Jackson.But on Friday, California’s Second District Court of Appeal ruled that “a corporation that facilitates the sexual abuse of children by one of its employees is not excused from an affirmative duty to protect those children merely because it is solely owned by the perpetrator of the abuse.”In a concurring opinion, Justice John Shepard Wiley Jr. said that for the purposes of civil liability, the corporations did the sole bidding of Mr. Jackson, who had a duty of care to Mr. Robson and Mr. Safechuck.“So did Jackson’s marionettes, because Jackson’s fingers held every string,” he said, adding, “These corporations could have taken cost-effective steps to reduce the risk of harm.”The cases, which were consolidated in the appeals court, will now go back to a trial court.In his lawsuit, Mr. Robson, who is now a choreographer and director, says that Mr. Jackson molested him from age 7 to 14. After meeting Mr. Jackson through a dance competition when he was 5, Mr. Robson performed in his music videos and released an album on his record label.According to his suit, the abuse started in 1990 when Mr. Jackson invited Mr. Robson and his family to stay at his Neverland Ranch in California. Mr. Robson and Mr. Jackson slept in the same bed and touched each other’s genitals, according to the suit. Over the next seven years, the suit said, they engaged in sexual acts including masturbation and oral sex.The suit says that employees of MJJ Productions witnessed the abuse and that employees of the two companies took steps to ensure that Mr. Jackson was alone with Mr. Robson and other children.Mr. Safechuck’s lawsuit says he was one of several children entrapped by the companies’ “child sexual abuse procurement and facilitation organization.” According to his suit, Mr. Safechuck met Mr. Jackson during filming for a Pepsi commercial in late 1986 or early 1987 and later became a dancer for Mr. Jackson.Mr. Jackson showed the 10-year-old boy how to masturbate while on tour in 1988, the suit alleges, and abused Mr. Safechuck hundreds of times over the next four years. The employees of MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures coordinated the visits, according to the suit.Before these lawsuits, Mr. Jackson twice faced criminal investigations into the possible sexual abuse of children.In 1994, the district attorneys for Los Angeles and Santa Barbara Counties decided not to proceed with charges that Mr. Jackson had molested three boys because the “primary alleged victim” decided not to testify. Mr. Jackson, who denied any wrongdoing, had reached a $20 million civil settlement with the boy’s family.In 2003, a Santa Barbara County district attorney charged Mr. Jackson with several counts of child molesting and serving alcohol to minors. After a 14-week trial in 2005, he was acquitted by a jury. More
Michael Oher, whose life was depicted in the 2009 film, says in a lawsuit that he was never fully adopted by the family that took him in and was swindled into signing away his decision-making powers at 18.The former N.F.L. player Michael Oher, whose journey out of poverty and into football stardom was dramatized in the 2009 movie “The Blind Side,” asked a Tennessee court on Monday to formally end his legal relationship with the family who took him in, claiming that he had never actually been adopted and had been tricked into signing away his decision-making powers so the family could make millions of dollars off his life story.Oher, 37, is seeking a termination of the conservatorship that began when he was 18, plus money that he says he should have earned from the movie, as well as an injunction preventing Leigh Anne Tuohy and Sean Tuohy from using his name and likeness.The petition, filed in Shelby County in Tennessee, claims that when he thought he was being adopted, the Tuohys urged him to sign a conservatorship in which he relinquished his ability to enter into contracts. The lawsuit also claims that Oher, who started living with the Tuohys at age 16, unknowingly signed away the rights to his life story to 20th Century Fox in 2007.Oher’s lawyer, J. Gerard Stranch IV, declined to comment beyond what was stated in the lawsuit.For “The Blind Side,” the hit film that starred Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy, Tim McGraw as Sean Tuohy and Quinton Aaron as Oher, the Tuohys negotiated a contract of $225,000 plus 2.5 percent of future “defined net proceeds” for themselves and their biological children, the lawsuit said.Oher says in the lawsuit that he received nothing while the movie generated more than $300 million in revenue worldwide.The Tuohy family did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The New York Times. In an interview with The Daily Memphian on Monday, Sean Tuohy said that he had been “devastated” to hear about the lawsuit and that it was “upsetting to think we would make money off any of our children.” Tuohy said that he would be willing to end the conservatorship and that everybody in his family, including Oher, got an equal share from the movie, around $14,000.Sean Tuohy went on to say the conservatorship had been intended to allow Oher to play at the University of Mississippi, which he and his wife attended.Sean Tuohy Jr., the son of Leigh Anne and Sean, said in an interview with Barstool Sports on Monday that he made “60, 70 grand over the course of the last four, five years” from the movie.In Tennessee, a conservatorship is defined as an arrangement in which a court removes at least some “decision-making powers and duties” from “a person with a disability who lacks capacity to make decisions in one or more important areas” and grants those duties to a conservator or co-conservators. The 2004 order that granted Oher’s conservatorship to the Tuohys states that Oher appeared to have “no known physical or psychological disabilities.”According to the petition, Oher only recently found out — in February this year — that he had not been legally adopted. Oher agreed to enter into the conservatorship thinking that it was a required part of the adoption process, the lawsuit says.Oher, who retired from football in 2017, was selected with the No. 23 overall pick in the 2009 N.F.L. draft by the Baltimore Ravens and played eight N.F.L. seasons as an offensive tackle for the Ravens, the Tennessee Titans and the Carolina Panthers. He won the Super Bowl with the Ravens in 2013.He played college football from 2005 to 2009 at Mississippi, where he earned two first-team All-Southeastern Conference honors, in 2007 and 2008, and was named a consensus first-team all-American in 2008.“The Blind Side,” which was released in 2009 and was adapted from a 2006 book by Michael Lewis, depicts Oher as a poor teenager growing up in Memphis and looking after his mother, who was addicted to cocaine. The movie portrays Oher as a naturally talented athlete, at both basketball and football, who is spotted by a coach at a local private school, which later admits him. Oher comes to know Sean Tuohy Jr. before moving in with the family and earning a scholarship to Mississippi.But Oher seemed uncomfortable with the movie’s depiction of him, and what it meant for his career. In a 2015 interview, when he was playing for the Panthers, Oher said that the movie had portrayed him as less intelligent than he was and had influenced how people saw him within the sport.“People look at me and they take things away from me because of a movie,” Oher said. “They don’t really see the skills and the kind of player I am. That’s why I get downgraded so much, because of something off the field.” More
The singer’s family has asked the court to approve a legal arrangement that would govern her medical decisions and finances after relatives objected to the previous care by a longtime friend.A judge in Los Angeles is set to consider on Tuesday whether to establish a conservatorship for an 83-year-old former member of the Supremes, whose family has argued that her physical and mental frailties have made her vulnerable to undue influence for years.The singer, Cindy Birdsong, spent nearly a decade with the group after replacing one of its original members, Florence Ballard, in 1967, performing hits such as “Stop! In the Name of Love” and “I Hear a Symphony” as one-third of Motown’s marquee act.But after Birdsong left the Supremes in 1976, her finances fell apart — a situation she later attributed to a “bad closing deal” with Motown Records — and later on, several strokes left her unable to care for herself or manage her affairs, her family has said.Birdsong’s siblings have asked that the singer’s brother, Ronald Birdsong, serve as co-conservator alongside an entertainment business manager, Brad Herman. It was Herman, called in by a friend of Birdsong’s, who spearheaded the singer’s removal two years ago from an apartment where she lived with a longtime friend.The family has said the friend, Rochelle Lander, isolated them from Birdsong and withheld information about her ailing health. They have argued that a conservatorship is needed to ensure that her care and finances are being properly managed. Birdsong, who is not known to have retained significant music royalty rights, is currently in a California nursing facility where she is on a feeding tube, according to court papers.“Since I live outside of California, and since my sister has been unable to tend to her affairs herself,” Ronald Birdsong said in the conservatorship application, “I depend on Mr. Herman to keep me updated on Cindy’s well-being as well as helping to keep all of her affairs in order.”Last month, the judge assigned to the case, Lee R. Bogdanoff, referred it to the Office of the Public Guardian, indicating that he will consider whether a third-party conservator should step in to manage Birdsong’s affairs. His rationale for the decision was not made public, but he based it on the findings of a confidential report by a court investigator.Herman and Terri Birdsong, a sister of Cindy Birdsong’s, said they were working with a newly hired lawyer to fill in some of the information that was lacking in their initial conservatorship application, and that they expected the singer’s court-appointed lawyer to ask for a delay in the case while they did so.The court-appointed lawyer, John Alan Cohan, did not respond to requests for comment.It is unclear whether Lander, a former performer with whom Cindy Birdsong started a Christian ministry, is planning to challenge the family’s bid for a conservatorship. She has defended her care of the singer in the past, saying that she had been steadfastly dedicated to helping her over many years, and she has displayed a power of attorney that she said Birdsong signed more than a decade ago.The tensions between Birdsong’s siblings and Lander mounted a few years ago, during a visit to the singer’s Los Angeles apartment, where the family said it was stunned by how her condition had deteriorated, according to interviews with her three living siblings and a sister-in-law. The family ultimately reached out to the police, who enforced Birdsong’s removal from the apartment in 2021.In a video taken by Herman that night, Lander argued against the removal, citing her power of attorney papers.“She needs to have due process before you come in forcefully and think you’re going to take over her life,” Lander said in the video, as several police officers stood in the hallway of the apartment building.Lander has not agreed to an interview and did not respond to requests for comment about the court proceedings.Herman, who holds a power of attorney signed by the three siblings and sister-in-law, said the family wants the legal proceeding to help clarify how the singer’s money has been managed in recent years.“From the time I became power of attorney, I’ve been trying to get documents that tell me what rights, what royalties, what residuals are coming to Cindy,” Herman said in a recent interview. “Whatever monies have come in, where did they go?”Though it was well known that Birdsong had stopped performing and largely slipped from public view, the extent of her deterioration prompted an outpouring of concern several weeks ago, around when the family filed its conservatorship application.“Prayers for a lady who has meant so much to my life,” one fan wrote on a Facebook page dedicated to Birdsong.Some friends and associates of Birdsong, like Jim Saphin, who befriended the singer in the ’60s and ran a British fan club for Diana Ross and the Supremes, said they had been dismayed to hear of the singer’s condition.Steve Weaver, a record producer who lives in England and has worked with former Supremes, said he had spoken with close friends of Birdsong’s who had visited her in recent weeks and reported that she had not been able to speak.“But playing Supremes records really boosts her up,” Weaver said he had been told.Charlo Crossley-Fortier, a singer and actress who became friends with Birdsong after meeting her at church, and John Whyman, a friend since the ’70s who at one point invited the singer to live with him amid financial struggles, said they had become concerned over the years that Lander had been isolating Birdsong from other friends and family and had actively resisted her pursuit of any role in pop music.Weaver recalled that about a decade ago, he was set to record a track with Birdsong when Lander intervened and declared that Birdsong was “not recording any secular music now.” Birdsong, who often recalled how Christianity had lifted her out of serious depression after leaving the Supremes, once said in a television interview with “The 700 Club” that she didn’t “have a desire to sing rock ’n’ roll anymore,” preferring to sing religious music instead.Though Birdsong’s life took a sharp turn after leaving the Supremes, Crossley-Fortier said, “Cindy will forever be part of music history.” More
The lawsuit, which alleges a pattern of harassment and defamation, is a culmination of a decade of criticism of Scientology by Ms. Remini, an actress, since she broke publicly with the church.The actress Leah Remini, a former longtime member of the Church of Scientology who has been highly critical of the organization since leaving it in 2013, filed suit against the church this week seeking to end what she said were the “mob-style tactics” it had used to harass and defame her.The lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday in Superior Court in Los Angeles County, lists the church as a defendant along with its Religious Technology Center, which the church describes as an organization formed to preserve, maintain and protect the religion; and David Miscavige, the chairman of the center’s board and the leader of the church.“For 17 years, Scientology and David Miscavige have subjected me to what I believe to be psychological torture, defamation, surveillance, harassment, and intimidation, significantly impacting my life and career,” Ms. Remini said in a statement on social media announcing the lawsuit. “I believe I am not the first person targeted by Scientology and its operations, but I intend to be the last.”The lawsuit says that she has been “under constant threat and assault” as a result of her public departure from Scientology. She is seeking a jury trial and unspecified damages for economic and psychological harm.In a statement, the church called the lawsuit “ludicrous and the allegations pure lunacy,” and described the move as Ms. Remini’s “latest act of blatant harassment and attempt to prevent truthful free speech.”During her three-decade acting career, Ms. Remini, 53, has appeared in dozens of TV shows, most notably as Carrie Heffernan in nine seasons of the CBS sitcom “The King of Queens.”The lawsuit is a culmination of a decade of criticism of Scientology by Ms. Remini, who has used her platforms to expose what she and many other former members say are the darker sides of the church, including the disappearance from public view of her friend Shelly Miscavige, Mr. Miscavige’s wife.Ms. Remini published “Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology,” a book about her experiences, in 2015, and hosted and produced an Emmy Award-winning documentary TV series “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath,” which ran for three seasons starting in 2016.The lawsuit details the decades that Ms. Remini spent in Scientology and the events that led to her departure after what she says was a yearslong period of abuse. When she was 8, she “effectively lost” her mother to Scientology, the lawsuit says. When she was 13, she was forced to join the Sea Organization, or Sea Org, the corps of members who keep the church running, the lawsuit said.She was forced to sign a billion-year contract, in keeping with the church’s belief that Scientologists are immortal, and to perform manual labor, study the teachings of the church’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and undergo training that included “verbally, physically, and sexually abusive” practices, the lawsuit says.Some of the allegations involved a process known as a “truth rundown” that is meant to erase a Scientologist’s memories and implant new ones. The lawsuit says that Ms. Remini was sent to a facility in Florida for a truth rundown and that, “after months of psychological torture,” she was “nearing the point of psychotic breakdown.”After reporting an abuse allegation at a Scientology studio in Riverside, Calif., she left the organization in 2013.Shortly after she left the church, Ms. Remini filed a missing persons report about Ms. Miscavige, who has not been seen in public since 2007, the lawsuit said. The Los Angeles Police Department closed that investigation in 2014, saying that detectives had “personally made contact” with Ms. Miscavige and her lawyer.The lawsuit said that Ms. Remini was designated a “suppressive person,” or someone who leaves the church and is deemed its enemy by seeking to damage the church or Scientologists. That could include reporting crimes committed by Scientologists to civil authorities, the lawsuit said.The lawsuit says that, in addition to physical stalking and harassment, the church and the other defendants had conducted a decade-long “mass coordinated social media effort” against Ms. Remini, using hundreds of Scientology-run websites and social media accounts “to spread false and malicious information about her.”“People who share what they’ve experienced in Scientology, and those who tell their stories and advocate for them,” Ms. Remini wrote on Twitter, “should be free to do so without fearing retaliation from a cult with tax exemption and billions in assets.” More
