Former Church of Scientology Member Says It Forced Her to Have an Abortion

National   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Jan 29, 2018   |   8:02PM   |   Washington, DC

Scientologists asked a federal court last month to dismiss a lawsuit by a woman who claims they forced her to abort her unborn baby.

Former member Laura DeCrescenzo’s case has drawn international attention because of her accusations against the Church of Scientology. The Daily Mail reports DeCrescenzo and the religious group have been in an on-going legal battle for years, and the church asked a federal court to dismiss the entire case in December.

DeCrescenzo, now 39, said her parents were members of the group, and, starting at age 12, she left home and became a member of the Church of Scientology International Sea Org. While there, she alleged the church leaders forced her and other young people to work long hours in harsh conditions, and coerced several young women to abort their unborn babies.

DeCrescenzo said she married a fellow Scientologist when she was 16 and became pregnant at 17. Later, she said she was coerced into aborting her unborn baby.

“I was told by the commanding officer of my organization that, she immediately started telling me at this point the baby wasn’t a baby, it was just tissue,” DeCrescenzo said, previously. “I never agreed to have an abortion. Did I concede? Yes, I did. Does it kill me every day? Yes, it does.”

She accused Scientologists of forcing members to work 100 hours per week and issuing “severe punishments” to keep people under their power.

“There are two very different versions of Scientology. There is the Scientology as presented to the outside world and there is a different Scientology in which Plaintiff lived and worked for approximately 13 years,” her lawsuit states.

Here’s more from the report:

She claims that she was ‘blackmailed’ by the CSI and its agents who stored information on her and ‘interrogated [her] on a primitive lie detector known as an e-meter’ to keep her from leaving her staff position.

This practice of ‘security checking’ was followed up, her suit claims, with the threat that she would be ‘declared a suppressive person and an enemy of the church’ should she leave. She was also told she would be forced to ‘disconnect’ – cease all contact – from family and friends should she leave.

In 2004, DeCrescenzo said she faked a suicide attempt to escape.

The religious group continues to insist that DeCrescenzo’s claims are “meritless.”

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Her case is scheduled for court in August, unless the religious group succeeds in its dismissal request.

Other former Scientologists also have accused the group of forced or coerced abortions. In 2015, LifeNews reported former Scientologist Samantha Domingo said she and other women were treated like “criminals” when they became pregnant and wanted to keep their babies. She said the religious leaders eventually succeeded in manipulating and coercing her to abort her unborn child.

“I bought into it. I had an abortion to prove I wasn’t this evil person, this Satan that everybody was saying I was,” Domingo said.

Domingo said she can never forgive herself for killing her baby.

“I murdered a child, that’s the way I look at it, and it will forever live with me that I murdered a child. I will never forgive myself for that, I will never be able to rewrite it,” she said.

In 2016, former member Claire Headley told documentarian Leah Remini a similar story. Headley said she and other women she knew were forced or coerced into having abortions — and one woman had six. She and her husband, Marc, another former Scientologist, said they both were abused by the religious leaders and later left the religion.

“It’s a heavily guarded property, and a lot of secrecy and a lot of control.… You’re not allowed to make phone calls without permission or someone listening.… People would escape frequently,” she recalled.