From the Cult Awareness Network REFORM GROUP HOME PAGE.

FEDERAL JURY AWARDS $4,875,000 DAMAGES AGAINST CAN AND "DEPROGRAMMERS"

-- FBI Consultant during Waco to pay staggering $3.1 million --

Ross, from Phoenix, Arizona, was recommended to Scott's mother when she sought advice over his membership in the Life Tabernacle Church from Cult Awareness Network, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Ross, who was praised by CAN's director, Cynthia Kisser, as "among the half-dozen best deprogrammers in the country", carried out the deprogramming in exchange for a package payment of $25,000 to him and his team.

Ross gained notoriety this summer after the BATF and FBI were criticized for utilizing him as a "consultant" leading up to and during the Waco stand-off in 1993. It was discovered that Ross had a prior conviction for $100,000 of jewelery theft and a psychiatric history that included being diagnosed as having "sociopathic inclinations." After deprogramming Branch Davidian David Block at the house of leading CAN official Priscilla Coates, Ross put Block in touch with the BATF. The Treasury Department report on Waco found that false information provided to the BATF by Block was a major factor in the BATF's decision to mount a raid against the Davidians. When the Davidian compound burned to the ground, Ross boasted on TV that he had also been in touch with the FBI throughout the "long haul" that led up to the disaster.

Scott brought the case against Ross in January 1994 under a Washington civil rights statute known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. The outcome is the largest civil award rendered against any deprogrammer in U.S. history.

Ross, who has admitted to more than 200 deprogrammings, was ordered by the jury to pay more than $3.1 million in punitive and compensatory damages to Scott. CAN has to pay Scott total damages in excess of $1 million, while Workman and Simpson will pay more than a quarter of a million dollars each.

After the trial in Seattle, Judge John C. Coughenour congratulated the jury on the verdict, which he called "very reasonable."

During the week-long trial, the jury heard that while on a family visit Scott was jumped by three men, led by Workman and Simpson. They wrestled him to the ground and dragged him inside a nearby house. Simpson fastened handcuffs on Scott's wrists so tightly they cut off his circulation. In agony, Scott was dragged by his captors down a stairway, through a living room and into a getaway van.

As a horrified jury listened, Scott told how he was pinned face down in the van by one of his kidnappers and his ankles tied with a nylon strap. A strip of 2 inch duct tape was wrapped around Jason's face from ear to ear and he was told to "stop praying and shut up." When he tried to look out of the window, he was forcibly held down.

The kidnappers drove Scott to Ocean Shores, Washington, where Rick Ross, whose history includes a diagnosis as a sociopath by a prison psychiatrist, began the deprogramming. For the next five days, Jason was held in a remote location with nylon straps covering the windows and two guards at each door to prevent him from escaping. Throughout his ordeal, Ross harrassed and abused his prisoner in an effort to force him to give up his Christian beliefs. When Scott tried to defend himself, Ross threatened to tie him to the bedframe.

Finally, Scott was able to escape by pretending to his kidnappers that he had decided to leave his church. Once away from his tormentors, he called the police, who arrested the criminals.

Before jury members retired, the judge instructed them that an element of conspiracy in the case was "intentional purpose to discriminate against plaintiff's religion" and that punitive damages could be awarded if the defendants' conduct had been in reckless disregard of Scott's rights. In addition to upholding the conspiracy charge and awarding substantial punitive damages against all defendants, the jury also found Ross, Simpson and Workman guilty of "outrage." To prove this charge, the judge told the jury that defendants' conduct would have to be "atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community."

Despite his history of violent crime, CAN's executive director Cynthia Kisser has publicly praised Ross. During congressional hearings earlier this year, legislators expressed dismay when they learned that Ross had played a role in advising the federal agencies whose actions contributed to the Waco disaster.

In 1993, CAN's reputation as an agency for violent deprogrammers -- known by religious leaders as "kidnappers for hire" -- was confirmed when its security chief, Galen Kelly, pleaded guilty to criminal kidnapping-related charges and served a year in prison. Since 1990, more than a dozen CAN deprogrammers have been prosecuted or convicted on criminal charges. Kisser also incensed Christian leaders with a January 1994 statement that if Jesus were alive today, CAN would "take an interest in him because of the great controversy surrounding his fringe activities. ... And I'd send whatever we could find to reporters."

The decision comes in the middle of Religious Freedom Week, proclaimed annually by Congress.

Kendrick Moxon, the lawyer who represented Scott, called the verdict "a clear message by American society to CAN and its co-conspirators that anti-religious hate campaigns, breaking up families and deprogramming are intolerable and considered outrageous conduct. It's a victory for religious freedom. Hallejuhah!"