At 10/28/09 06:20 AM, Ptcfast wrote:
France just won a battle?!
I will just realliterate for lazy people
The Church of Scientology has been convicted of fraud and fined nearly $1 million by a French court. The criminal conviction is an apparent first against the group, which benefits from constitutional protections in the United States but does not enjoy that sanctuary elsewhere in the world.
The French court, after a five-month trial, may have been inclined to ban the church entirely, but a change in the relevant law just before the trial began made that moot. As is, the court fined the secretive church some $900,000 (600,000 euros), and also handed down suspended jail sentences of up to two years and fines ranging as high as $45,000 to four leaders of the group's French branch, according to press reports.
The original charges were filed by two former members who said they felt coerced into spending tens of thousands of dollars on training, vitamins, personality tests and other things the church provides. That's a common complaint by critics of the church, who consider it nothing more than a cultish, moneymaking enterprise aided by some celebrity endorsements.
