Scientology bankrolled elder abuse case

An anti-Scientology protestor was cleared on Friday on elder abuse charges against a plaintiff whose case was revealed to be bankrolled by the church over a five-day bench trial.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Shelley Kaufman ruled that respondent William Gude's harsh words against petitioner Joseph Ekers during anti-Scientology demonstrations were protected by the First Amendment and denied Ekers' request for a restraining order.

Sole practitioner Matthew D. Strugar, who represented Gude, said the court examined video footage of multiple interactions between the two parties before Kaufman delivered her oral ruling. Gude was also represented by Dorothy M. Gibbons-White, who was lead counsel.

"The court and the oral ruling on Friday went through each of the five or six interactions, date by date, and said, 'What happened on this date, that's protected by the First Amendment,'" Strugar said in a phone call on Monday. "You can say kind of disparaging things that somebody might find very subjectively upsetting."

Ekers was represented by M. Anthony Brown of Spertus Landes & Josephs LLP in Los Angeles.

"We're disappointed that the court would not protect an elder from multiple incidents of abuse that were captured on video," Brown said of the verdict in an email on Monday.

Ekers obtained a restraining order against Gude in January after the two clashed verbally at multiple anti-Scientology protests last year, Strugar said.

"My client would argue back, would take great objection to the petitioner trying to disrupt their protests repeatedly, but would also resort to name calling and mockery and those kinds of things," Strugar said.

In challenging the restraining order, Gude claimed that Ekers, despite his claims to the contrary, was working as a plant or an agent of the Church of Scientology. Ekers v. Gude, 24STRO00463 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Jan. 19, 2024).

Ekers' counsel pushed back in a supplemental brief filed last Tuesday, contending that Gude had failed to provide proof of Ekers' Scientology affiliation.

The brief also provided examples of threatening statements Gude allegedly made to Ekers on one occasion, including: "I'm going to ruin your fucking life," "You can go whine to [the police] all you want, there's nothing they can do," and, "I hope you fucking suffer."

"Gude's claim that Ekers is a 'plant' is just a fiction concocted to try to wrap Gude's abuse of Ekers in the mantle of the First Amendment," the brief read. "His abuse of Ekers is just abuse."

On the stand, however, Ekers told a different story, according to Gibbons-White.

"During the trial and in his moving papers, Mr. Ekers repeatedly claimed he had no connection to Scientology, but as soon as Mr. Ekers was on the stand and required to answer my question --"Do you have a personal arrangement with the Church of Scientology to pay your legal fees in this matter?" -- it was clear that Mr. Ekers was simply advancing the interests of the Church of Scientology," Gibbons-White wrote in an email.

"In addition, Mr. Ekers offered no credible evidence that Mr. Gude actually caused him any mental suffering as is required by the code, and both the undisputed video evidence and additional impeachment evidence confirmed that he was not in fear of Mr. Gude," she added.

Strugar recounted, "We asked, 'Is Scientology paying your legal bills?' And his counsel had a lot of objections, and the judge wanted to think about it for a little while, but ultimately, she overruled the objections and said, 'Yeah, you can answer that question.' And he just said, 'Yes.'"

"This wasn't the case of some elderly man who's abused on the sidewalk for no reason," Strugar continued. "He was being used as a pawn."

Strugar further noted that Gude's anti-Scientology stance had gained publicity in media outlets including Rolling Stone and the Los Angeles Times.

"Not trying to puff up my client or anything, but he's sort of, I think, viewed as kind of the charismatic leader of these protests," Strugar said. "He's got a lot of followers on social media. He's somebody that the other protesters look up to.

"I think they thought they could try to cut the legs out from under the protests -- when I say they, I mean the church -- by going after the person who they saw as the leader, and I think they were using the petitioner in this case to make that point or to serve that end," he continued.

Gibbons-White said that the verdict meant her client could continue to "protest and exercise his First Amendment rights."

"The Elder Abuse and Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act was enacted to protect our most vulnerable citizens. It is an abuse of process for the Church of Scientology to use a senior citizen, as they have used Mr. Ekers, as a proxy to bring a meritless Elder Abuse Restraining Order request to silence First Amendment activity that the Church does not like," she wrote. "Financed by the Church of Scientology, Mr. Ekers brought this case for the purpose of silencing Mr. Gude, because Mr. Gude is a well known, charismatic, and especially effective activist in these protests."

Kaufman relied on the U.S. Supreme Court case of Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U. S. 443, 453, where members of the Westboro Baptist Church were not held liable for picketing the funeral of a deceased Marine, Strugar said.

"The Supreme Court said it's awful, but just because it's awful doesn't mean it's not protected," he said. "So, the ultimate ruling was based on the First Amendment."

This article has been updated to include comments from Dorothy M. Gibbons-White.