Leah Remini is suing the Church of Scientology, accusing the group of harassment, stalking, and emotional misery

• Leah Remini has filed a lawsuit towards the Church of Scientology and its chief David Miscavige.
• The “King of Queens” actress has accused the church of stalking, harassment, and defamation. 
• Remini was a member of the church for many years, however reduce ties with the group in 2013.

Emmy award-winning actress and producer Leah Remini filed a lawsuit on Wednesday towards the Church of Scientology, accusing the controversial non secular group of stalking, harassment, defamation, and infliction of emotional misery, amongst different prices. 

Remini was a member of the church for almost 4 a long time starting from age 9, earlier than she left the establishment in 2013 and have become a vocal opponent of the group. 

Within the bombshell 60-page lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court docket, Remini outlined a sample of “coordinated and malicious assaults” she stated she endured after her departure, together with claims that she was abusive towards her mom and daughter and that she had made racist statements. 

In keeping with the lawsuit, these claims have been posted to devoted web sites by the church, meant to defame Remini.

Requests for remark from representatives for the Church of Scientology weren’t instantly returned by Insider on Wednesday.

The “King of Queens” star alleged within the lawsuit that the Church of Scientology and its chief David Miscavige had “undertaken a marketing campaign to damage and destroy” the 53-year-old’s “life and livelihood.”

The lawsuit says that for the final 10 years, Remini has been “stalked, surveilled, harassed, threatened, intimidated, and, furthermore, has been the sufferer of intentional malicious and fraudulent rumors by way of lots of of Scientology-controlled and -coordinated social media accounts that exist solely to intimidate and unfold misinformation.”

The swimsuit additionally alleges that the Church of Scientology has “incessantly harassed, threatened, intimidated, and embarrassed Ms. Remini’s members of the family, mates, colleagues, and enterprise associates, inflicting her to lose private relationships, enterprise contracts, and different enterprise alternatives.”

Attorneys for Remini alleged within the lawsuit that the church has brought on her “important and ongoing financial hurt and “pressured her to endure a brand new however never-normal life wherein Scientology’s surveillance, abuse, and lies are the punishing, inescapable, every day value of exercising her First Modification proper and ethical responsibility to talk out about Scientology’s conduct.”

The actor’s attorneys alleged that her life has been “below fixed menace and assault” by the defendants ever since she publicly reduce ties with the church. 

Remini is looking for to get well “compensatory and punitive damages for the big financial and psychological hurt” that she alleges the church inflicted on her and to “remediate the hurt that has been brought on, and to punish and deter Defendants from persevering with their illegal marketing campaign of harassment and intimidation,” the lawsuit states. 

In an announcement posted to her Substack account on Tuesday, Remini stated: “For 17 years, Scientology and David Miscavige have subjected me to what I imagine to be psychological torture, defamation, surveillance, harassment, and intimidation, considerably impacting my life and profession.”

“I imagine I’m not the primary individual focused by Scientology and its operations, however I intend to be the final,” she wrote. 

Remini added, “With this lawsuit, I hope to guard my rights as afforded by the Structure of the USA to talk the reality and report the info about Scientology. I really feel strongly that the banner of non secular freedom doesn’t give anybody license to intimidate, harass, and abuse those that train their First Modification rights.”

After splitting from the church in 2013, Remini gave different former Scientologists a platform together with her A&E docuseries “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.”