Marin Independent Journal - Lifestyles
http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234~24409~2643959,00.html
FORD GREENE, ATTORNEY AT ODDS
By Tad Whitaker, IJ reporter
San Anselmo resident Ford Greene sounds like a typical Marin County
lawyer, what with his outspoken liberalism, scruffy hair and a white
Porsche in the garage. But this self-described "cult buster" is anything
but that.
Greene was in the spotlight recently for posting a large political sign
on the side of his office building along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard,
where commuters are faced with messages against the Iraq war and
President Bush, among other things. At one point, he flew the American
flag upside-down.
The high-profile public expressions, and the town of San Anselmo's
efforts to stop them, have resulted in a lengthy lawsuit that continues
to this day.
But the furor surrounding the sign doesn't compare with what's been
stirred up in Greene's professional life: He has been prosecuted for
kidnapping in Colorado and has won a landmark case before the California
Supreme Court against the Unification Church that enabled former
followers to sue for damages. Greene says he has de-programmed more than
100 followers - often called Moonies - of the church, which was founded
in 1954 by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
Those professional chops made Greene one of six finalists for the honor
of Trial Lawyer of Year in 2003 by the organization Trial Lawyers for
Public Justice. But his drive stems from an experience many people would
try to forget.
"I was a Moonie slave," he says. "The Moonies' nickname for me is a
special servant of Satan."
Greene's "cult-busting" and colorful past, however, have turned him into
a lightning rod for criticism for the organizations he targets.
"He's a wing nut," says Jeff Quiros, president of the Church of
Scientology of San Francisco. "He really is."
Aylesworth Crawford "Ford" Greene III, 52, comes from a family whose
Ross Valley roots can be traced to the 1880s. Natalie Coffin Greene Park
was named after his grandmother and, according to Greene, evidence
suggests that the family was partly responsible for planting the famous
elms that line Shady Lane.
Greene grew up the oldest of four privileged children who were raised
around San Anselmo and Ross. The nuclear family expanded when two
cousins needed a home after their mother died of cancer.
Greene's father was a successful corporate lawyer who attended Yale
University with former New York Sen. James L. Buckley, who became the
young Greene's godfather. His mother served as chairwoman of the
Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and was on an advisory commission
for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Greene attended Ross School before being sent to The Thatcher School in
Ojai, near Ventura, for high school. But he ran away during his freshman
year in 1969 and came home.
"I wanted to be a hippie at Redwood with my friends," he says.
Greene says he "terrorized" his parents while attending Redwood and
ultimately graduated from Woodside Priory in Portola Valley. He briefly
attended college in Southern California but left, depressed over a
difficult romantic relationship.
Back in Marin, Greene bucked hay, milked cows and unclogged sewers at
Straus Family Creamery before taking a backpacking trip in which he
climbed 16 14,000-foot peaks in three months. At about that time, his
sister Catherine, 18, disappeared.
Moonies expanding
The year was 1974 and the Rev. Moon was expanding his Unification Church
in the United States. Moon, who is from South Korea, was a wealthy but
controversial figure accused of brainwashing young people to support his
religious organization by selling flowers among other items.
Catherine - the second youngest child and closest in nature to Greene -
had joined the Unification Church and gone to a camp called New Ideal
City Ranch, outside Boonville in Mendocino County. When she finally
called her family, Greene says she had changed.
"It sounded like her loyalties were being split," he says. "She sounded
torn up."
Greene traveled to the Boonville camp a few days later to confront
Catherine, but it was difficult; she was surrounded by Moonies at all
times. A church leader invited Greene to return the following weekend
for a training session.
Greene drove home, still depressed and, he recalls, even suicidal
because of a difficult relationship with his father. He decided to hear
Moon speak in person at the San Francisco Opera House. Greene recalls
that Moon sounded Hitlerlike, "but there was a calmness afterward, and
that appealed to me."
Greene went to the training camp with two friends, but he says they were
separated and escorted everywhere - including the bathroom - by at least
one church member, a process he says the Moonies called love bombing.
Joined by new recruits from all over the Bay Area, he attended a group
session at which he explained that he'd come to rescue his sister. But
then everyone turned toward him and began singing about how much they
loved him.
"Holding hands and singing with 200 people felt really good to me," he
recalls. "My programming had begun."
Greene's friends left the camp after the weekend, but he stayed behind
to listen to lectures, singing groups and discussions about personal
experiences. Although images of Hitler Youth kept popping into his mind,
he says church leaders poured on the love when he confronted them about
the program - a strategy that helped reinforce the power structure and
created self-doubt. After all, says Greene bluntly, "You're being an
a--hole to someone who's being nice to you."
Still unable to fully believe what he was being told - that Moon was the
second coming of Christ- Greene went to a nearby creek to pray. But
later that afternoon, Greene says he received an affirmation from God.
Faith begins wavering
Greene moved back to the Bay Area to live in Unification Church dorm
houses in Berkeley and San Francisco, where members were expected to
share toothbrushes stored in a bucket and hand over the keys to their
cars. He took a job at a church-owned gas station on Market Street and,
when his faith wavered, he returned to the ranch for re-education.
The re-education periods reinforced a belief that anyone against the
church was Satan, he says, but it also gave him some perspective on what
was happening. He remembers seeing new recruits arrive with doubts but
eventually snapping under the pressure, turning their minds over to the
church. It provided him with a guilty pleasure that they, too, had been
unable to resist.
"That bothered me a lot," he recalls.
It took Greene three attempts to leave the church before he was
successful. In July 1975, he drove his BMW back to his parents' house in
Ross and began working with his mother, who was an outspoken critic of
the Unification Church and supporter of deprogramming.
"She was a one-woman clearinghouse," he says.
Testifying before Senate
At the request of his godfather, he testified about cults at a U.S.
Senate subcommittee in 1976. On that day, he says, about 50 Unification
members - wearing matching blue suits with red flowers in the lapels -
walked into the Senate chambers to listen.
"It was hairy," he says.
Greene says he never worked with a deprogrammer. Using therapy, he
deprogrammed himself. "It was an experience that hurt me but I was able
to overcome," he says.
Throughout his time in the Unification Church, Greene says he rarely saw
Catherine. While he was working at the church-owned gas station, he says
the church put her youthful good looks to work as part of a team that
traveled the country raising money and bringing in new recruits.
"She could make a $1,000 a day selling flowers," he says.
From 1976 to '78, Greene says he deprogrammed Moonies, including the
Prince of Tahiti with the cooperation of the royal family. He was even
mentioned in journalist Josh Freed's book "Moonwebs."
One of his biggest failures, however, was an attempt to deprogram his
own sister.
Greene set up a plan, using his mother as bait, to capture Catherine.
Handcuffed and blindfolded, Catherine was taken by family members to a
boarded-up house in Lucas Valley. But deprogramming his own sister
proved harder than deprogramming strangers, with whom he could be
tougher, he says.
He eventually let Catherine go after she intentionally cut her hand and
had to be hospitalized. By then, Moonies were picketing his father's law
office in San Francisco and pressing the Marin County District Attorney
to file kidnapping charges against the family.
No charges were ever brought against the family, but Catherine returned
to the church and filed a $5.2 million lawsuit against Greene, his
parents and others who helped with the abduction.
"It was horrible," he says. "The experience is that they're dead but you
can't put them in the ground."
In 1977, Greene says he was hired by Colorado authorities to kidnap and
deprogram a man who tried to sign over the family farm to the
Unification Church. Greene worked with police officers and private
investigators, but was arrested and prosecuted for kidnapping after the
man ran away and returned to the church. He successfully fought the
kidnapping charge because he was acting under a court order.
Off to law school
Although he never earned a bachelor's degree, Greene was enrolled in the
New College of California Law School in 1978. During that time he
started getting death threats, but he was determined to go after Moon.
"This man is no different than Adolf Hitler and, as an American, I had
to do something," he says. "To play in that arena, you had to be a
lawyer and I went to law school."
After passing the California State Bar exam, Greene worked as a criminal
defense attorney with San Anselmo attorney Carl Shapiro, who had
developed a reputation for working with families to reclaim family
members who joined cults.
With Shapiro's help, Greene argued and won a case in 1988 before the
California Supreme Court that opened the door for former Moonies to sue
the Unification Church for damages and, he says, "put cult-busting on
the legal map."
In 1989, Greene says he sued the Church of Scientology on behalf of the
church's head of worldwide security and his wife.
In 2002, Greene celebrated his biggest victory against Scientology, when
he and two other lawyers received an $8.7 million judgment in another
case.
For Greene, religious organizations must be held accountable for any
socially destructive conduct that exploits the best in people. "In my
book there isn't anything worse than that," he says.
But Scientologists say Greene's crusade against them isn't very
effective.
One-man campaign
Quiros, of the church's San Francisco branch, likens Greene to someone
shooting Scientologists in the back with a BB gun. Greene may be a
hassle, Quiros says, but he represents nothing in the grand scheme of
things for an organization that has 8 million members worldwide.
"This is a one-man campaign to discredit the fastest-growing church in
the world," Quiros says.
Quiros likes to direct people to a Web site -
www.friendsofsananselmo.org - that seeks to discredit Greene. Posted on
the site are Greene's run-ins with the law, ranging from shoplifting to
kidnapping to stalking, along with a host of other critiques.
According to internic.net, an Internet domain name information site,
www.friendsofsan
anselmo.org is registered to Allen Long at a private postal box at 10
Liberty Ship Way in Sausalito. Long did not answer requests for an
interview sent via e-mail or in a note left at the postal box.
Web site counterattack
Quiros says Scientology has nothing to do with the Web site, although he
appreciates what it brings to light. "That is a great summary of Ford
Greene," he says. "He's a nut case. I'm trying to think of a better word
but there isn't one."
Greene eagerly and openly explains every claim on the Web site. He says
he was guilty of shoplifting a set of sheets in college, pleaded guilty
to trespassing over a dispute with a former girlfriend he handled
poorly, was never charged with burglary or stalking, and a driving under
the influence conviction listed on the Web site is actually his
father's.
"It's all a big smear," he says.
Reached at a Unification Church site, Catherine - who was married during
a mass wedding of 1,275 couples and is now Catherine Ono - says although
Greene may continue thinking she's brainwashed and not in control of her
mind, she still cares for her brother. "To me it's like, come on," she
says. "That's old."
Ono, who remains a Unification Church member, lives in Somerville,
Mass., with her husband and their two daughters. The couple will
celebrate their 16th wedding anniversary next week.
Ono says she didn't see her family between 1977 and '83 because she
feared they would try to kidnap her again. She says she began seeing
them again after Greene and her parents apologized - a claim Greene
disputes - and visited Greene with her daughters last August.
"The aftermath was pretty devastating," she says. "They realized they
had betrayed my trust."
But Greene says the entire family rarely speaks with Ono anymore and
that he never apologized for the kidnapping, and his mother didn't
either. "Catherine may be nice, but she makes me sick," he says with a
laugh.
Although he says it was good to see her last summer, he can't relate to
her because her entire world view is defined by Moon's ideology.
"Catherine thinks I'm Satanic at the core," he says.
In his San Anselmo office, Greene has created a Scientology war room
lined with volumes of books, stacks of promotional and instructional
videos and an enormous flow chart that illustrates the command structure
of Scientology. Asked whether he is just going after Scientology's
money, Greene makes no qualms about it. "I have every intention of
trying," he says.
Even though he was once a devoted member of an organization he calls a
cult, Greene says he isn't worried about surrounding himself with
information about Scientology and other organizations he targets.
"I'm confident in my instincts and I trust them," he says.
Tad Whitaker can be reached at twhitaker@marinij.com.
---
Stop Elmer Fudd web site: http://www.ElmerFudd.US/
Covert text file server: http://www.notserver.com/
Scientology crooks: http://sf.irk.ru/www/ot3/otiii-gif.html
.
|
