Rocky Mountain News	(Denver, Colorado, USA)
Tuesday, September 19,1995	Page 16A

SCIENTOLOGISTS LOSE APPEAL OF COMPUTER CASE

By Karen Abbott, Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

  The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Monday refused to let the 
Church of Scientology keep computers and doucments belonging to 
critic Larry Wollersheim.

  A Scientology spokeswoman in Los Angeles said Denver federal 
judges are prejudiced against the church and treat it the way blacks
once were treated in the South.

  The church has accused Wollersheim, a former member, of disclosing
secret beliefs in violation of copyright and trade secrets laws.
Last month, church officials, armed with a court order, seized the
computers and documents Wollersheim uses in his Boulder-based non-profit
corporation, FACTNet.  It distributes information on the Internet about
Scientology and other organizations Wollersheim views as dangerous.

  Denver U.S. District Judge John Kane Jr. ordered the church to
return the materials to Wollersheim while the church's civil case
against him is pending.  The church appealed.

  "What the appeals court judges failed to see is that Judge Kane's
decision is fraught with prejudice..." church spokeswoman Gail
Armstrong said.

  "We're now in the same disadvantaged position as the blacks of
the South were until MArtin Luther King and other honest individuals
ended the injustice."

  She said she didn't know whether the church would return Wollersheim's
materials.

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