Unification Church Dissolution in Japan: An In-Depth Analysis of a Wrong Decision. 3. Settlements and “Potential” Cases.
- info775148
- 7. 4.
- Minut čtení: 6
Absurdly, the court decided that among the grounds for dissolution also settlements, statements, and even hypothetical cases where no claims exist should be considered.
April 7, 2025
I continue the in-depth examination of the nine questions the Tokyo District Court answered in its March 25 decision pronouncing the dissolution of the Unification Church.
The fifth question the Court answered is whether only court decisions should be considered when deciding whether the number of cases was significant enough to support a dissolution decision or also settlements following a lawsuit and out-of-court settlements. The answer was positive, and the court engaged in mathematics summing up verdicts and settlement.
This is in itself objectionable. A settlement is intrinsically different from a verdict. In a settlement the parties, without conceding each other’s arguments, find a middle way to avoid protracted litigation. As any law school undergraduate would easily understand, equating settlements with court decisions simply does not make sense. The precedent will also encourage religious corporations never to settle civil cases in the future, lest the settlements will be used as ammunitions in future dissolution cases.
The court then proceeds to quantify the number of settlements, distinguishing between settlements following a lawsuit and out-of-court. It counts 100 settlements signed after a lawsuit, with 448 plaintiffs. Out-of-court settlements involved 971 plaintiffs.
The court admits that it came to these figures by adding up settlements where it was the Church that paid and others where payments were made by the already mentioned company Happy World or its legal representative, Sadao Koyanagi. Cases where Koyanagi or Happy World rather than the Church accepted responsibility for the settlements concern, the decision says, “281 out of the total of 448 people who reached a settlement in court (approximately 62%).” However, as discussed in the first article of this series, it was not clearly established that actions by Happy World can be attributed to the Church.
Concerning out-of-court settlements, interestingly the decision notes that all of them (971) “were concluded between May 22, 2002 and August 31, 2023,” meaning both cases of twenty years ago and settlements signed after the Abe assassination were included. The latter event created a climate in which the unwritten rule that “the ‘cult’ always loses in court” was elevated almost to a dogma, making it wiser for the Church to settle.
The sixth question the court answered is whether, in addition to settlements, statements submitted to the court by MEXT signed by ex-believers or relatives of devotees in cases that did not even lead to a settlement should be considered.
In fact, the court is aware that these statements are self-serving evidence and were not subject to the assessment of a court or law or the dialogue between the parties preceding a settlement. It seems that the court gives less weight to them with respect to other evidence.
However, they are mentioned and play a significant role in MEXT’s propaganda after the court decision.
As summed up by Patricia Duval in its dissolution request “MEXT relied on 500 written statements in total but those were made by 294 individuals, as some of them wrote several statements. Out of these 294 victims, 30 were relatives and 3 were two staff members of MEXT and one lawyer from the anti-Unification Church lawyers’ association, who were third parties to the accusation.” Also, one turned out to be a current member who once testified as a witness “for” the Church in a court case in Sapporo. The MEXT filed the transcript of her testimony claiming it was useful to prove how donations were made. Another statement was by a follower of another religious group, who misunderstood she had donated to the Unification Church although this was not true.
The evidentiary value of such statements should be regarded as minimal, not to mention the fact that both the Church’s attorneys and independent Japanese media raised doubts about how the MEXT collected them. In one case, a daughter told the media that the statement attributed to her elderly mother was false. In the rare instances in which defense attorneys were allowed to cross-examine the statements’ authors it came out that they had just signed texts written by the MEXT and only vaguely remembered the content. These suspicions were echoed even in the Japanese Parliament.
Seventh, and even if this may seem strange in other democratic countries, the Tokyo District Court seriously asked whether it should also consider hypothetical “potential” cases of which it had no evidence whatsoever, but it suspects existed.
In fact, the court distinguishes between three categories of cases that it calls (a), (b), and (c). Cases (a) are those where the court is aware of a legal decision or a settlement. Cases (b) concern settlements that went unreported, perhaps because they included a confidentiality clause. Cases (c) are those where the court may presume that believers were victimized and coerced to make donations. The court speculates that the sum of cases (b) and (c) should be “considerable.”
Cases (b) are theoretically possible. However, the court acknowledges that most settlements were concluded by lawyers of the anti-cult Network, whose stated aim is to obtain the dissolution of the Church. They are very quick in supplying information about the cases they settle not only to the authorities but to the media as well. It is hardly conceivable that they would accept keeping settlements confidential and refrain from using them for what is their main reason for operating. At any rate, the court’s statement that the number of undisclosed out-of-court settlements should be “considerable” is just speculation.
That the court also considers cases (c) is astonishing. I have followed court cases about religious minorities stigmatized as “cults” for more than forty years and have never encountered one where “hypothetical” damages suffered by “victims” who have never manifested themselves as “victims” have been mentioned as bases for a court decision. The court states that as devotees are victims of “psychological barriers” and other obstacles, “it is difficult to imagine that all those who have suffered damage due to illegal solicitation of donations, etc., will seek a resolution by hiring a lawyer, etc. It is not impossible to imagine that there are those who have suffered damage but do not complain about it… With this in mind, it should be said that it cannot be denied that there are other unexpressed damages caused by illegal solicitation of donations, etc., in addition to those asserted in out-of-court settlements and court settlements.”
Of course it can be denied. Courts of law should base their decisions on facts. These are not facts. The court does not have court decisions, settlements, not even statements by “victims.” Nothing. It just speculates that there may be a “considerable” number of believers that have suffered damages because of their donations and have not claimed them due to “psychological barriers.”
The court constantly confuses (as do the anti-cult lawyers) two distinct categories, “ex-members” and “apostates.” Sociologists since the past century have clarified that not all ex-members are apostates. “Apostate” is not an insult but a technical term indicating a person who has left a religious organization and militantly and publicly opposes it. Scholars have demonstrated that only a tiny percentage of ex-members become apostates. Most ex-members simply go on with their lives. If asked about their past experiences, they would mention both positive and negative features. They are certainly not interested in joining crusades against the group they have left nor in filing lawsuits. Claiming that all ex-members either file lawsuits or do not do so because of “psychological barriers” ignores the fundamental distinction between ordinary ex-members and apostates.
The court also does not consider that after the Abe assassination those who remain in the Church are discriminated and bullied in their workplaces and schools. Those who leave the Church, become apostates, and sue it are lionized by the media and celebrated as heroes. It is surely more rewarding in contemporary Japanese society to leave the Church and sue it than to remain a loyal member.
The decision creates another precedent with potentially devastating consequences for all religions, particularly those who have powerful opponents and are stigmatized as “cults.” In fact, it is part of the anti-cult ideology and has long been argued about the Unification Church by the Network lawyers that there are no free members of “cults.” They belong to two categories, those who slowly realize (or are deprogrammed to understand) they are manipulated and end up leaving the “cult” and suing it, and those who do not understand they are “victims” because they are in a situation of “psychological manipulation.” This is the old theory of brainwashing, which scholars and courts of law in the United States and Europe have declared pseudo-scientific and irrelevant to assess the activities of new religious movements.
This mythology allows the anti-cult Network and, it seems, the Tokyo District Court to extend ad libitum the number of “victims.” If they have sued the Church, settled, or filed a statement they are “victims.” If they didn’t and claim they are happy to remain in the Church and donate, this simply shows that in their case “brainwashing” is still all work. According to this faulty logic, all Church members are “victims.”
Source: bitterwinter.org
Comments