Parents ask $6 million in brainwashing suit

By S Lynn Walker
Times staff writer

A Tampa couple filed suit for more than $6 million today in Hillsborough Circuit Court against the Divine Light Mission alleging that its members brainwashed their 17-year-old daughter.

The suit filed by Naomi and Fred Katz of Bay Crest Park against the mission and its leader, Guru Maharaj Ji, alleges that their daughter, Stacie, was lured into the lectures about the philosophy of the religious leader and once there, "lost her ability to think independently."

Members of the mission, at 3803 Gray St., actively recruit 'new devotees' by inviting them to lectures about the guru, according to the suit. And in the spring of 1978, Stacie was invited to attend lectures and "satsangs, which were programs of songs and lectures regarding the philosophy and devotion to the Guru Maharaj Ji," the suit states.

The next step in the program, which was run in Tampa by Charles Lane, the "community leader" involved "sessions of excessive meditation … which were intended to cause the potential recruit to lose his or her ability to resist the teachings and demands of the Divine Light Mission."

In June 1978, Stacie received "the knowledge," and became a "premie," bound to work for the church and turned over all her income and property to its leaders, the suit alleges.

After she received "the knowledge," Stacie "withdrew from her family, repeatedly ran away from her home and the guidance of her family and underwent extreme psychological and emotional distress until June 1979," when she underwent deprogramming, according to the suit.

Stating that Stacey was "seriously, painfully and permanently injured," and "lost her ability to live life as a normal person," Naomi Katz asked for more than $3 million compensatory damages and in excess of $2 million in punitive damages.

To compensate the Katzes for Stacie's continuing psychiatric treatment and the expense of deprogramming her, the suit seeks more than $1.25 million.

Neither the Katzes nor representatives of the mission were available for comment this morning.

The Guru Maharaj Ji is the 19 year old leader of a quasi-religious group which teaches that all questions can be answered by meditation. The spiritual leader of more than 20,000,000 people around the world professes to be the "perfect master" and the "messiah."