Heiress Sues to Regain $6.6 Million From Sect

WORCESTER, Mass. —  An heiress who donated $6.6 million over two years to a fundamentalist sect called The Bible Speaks is taking the church to court in hope of getting back the money she says she was coerced into giving.

“What else can you do after you’ve been raped?” said 34-year-old Elizabeth Dovydenas.

But a lawyer for the church said the woman, whose father, Wallace Dayton, was a founder of a retail store empire, regretted her gift only after she was “brainwashed” by her husband and father into renouncing The Bible Speaks.

“The evidence indicates that everything she gave was a spiritual response, a prompting of the heart, uncoerced,” said lawyer Norman Roy Grutman. “The church filled an immense void in her life.”

Church, Pastor Accused

Dovydenas’ complaint accuses the church and pastor Carl H. Stevens of coercion and fraud, claiming that donations went to illegitimate activities and to the pastor’s personal use. The trial starts Monday in federal bankruptcy court here, where the church has filed for protection from creditors.

Grutman maintains that the heiress could wipe out the church if she succeeds in her request for the return of her money, plus interest and attorney fees.

He has tried in vain to block such evidence as pamphlets on The Bible Speaks doctrine, saying that seizing them would violate the church’s constitutional right to free exercise of religion.

“This touches upon the First Amendment: To what extent can an Indian-giving donor invade the privacy of the church and its members?” he asked.

First of Its Kind

Vern Countryman, a Harvard Law School professor who specializes in bankruptcy law, said the case is the first of its kind that he knows of that will be fought in bankruptcy court.

Both sides agree that the most important question facing the court is whether Dovydenas gave away millions of dollars of free will or made the gifts under pressure from Stevens, the founder of the church.

The Bible Speaks claims 16,000 members in 17 states and 31 countries, with about 1,300 members around Lenox, the affluent Berkshire Hills town where the church has had its headquarters for 10 years.

Stevens has told followers he was baptized by Christ in the early 1960s in “liquid waves of love” and was promised by that God his every message would be anointed, according to the Christian Research Institute Inc., a nonprofit cult watchdog group.

Grutman has also represented such clients as television evangelists Jim Bakker and Jerry Falwell.