WHOA: Jane Doe 2 and Jane Doe 3 now represented by David Boies firm for their ‘rights’

[David Boies]

For a couple of years now, we’ve been taking it upon ourselves to bring something up with other news organizations.

We know it’s not necessarily in our job description, but we’ve traded messages with top editors at places like the Associated Press and the Daily Mail, pointing out that, like pretty much all legitimate news organizations, they have policies against naming sexual assault victims.

For some reason, however, because partial names of the Jane Does are being used in court in the Danny Masterson case (even before the trial), some news organizations have been using those partial names, which is leading to more and more exposure of the real identities of these women online.

We can tell you that it horrifies these women that news organizations are doing that.

And when we pointed this out to the AP and the Daily Mail and some others, they agreed. And if you look at their stories now, they use the monikers Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2. (Jane Doe 3 is a slightly different case. She felt forced to go public with her real name after Danny Masterson’s publicist gave it out after our story of the investigation first broke in 2017. But lately we’ve gone back to using Jane Doe 3 as a rule.)

Judge Charlaine Olmedo has explained that using the partial names in court is required by statute. But we don’t understand why news organizations that have policies against naming rape victims then use those partial names seemingly in blatant violation of their own policies.

Anyway, after taking this upon ourselves to bring this up with numerous news organizations, we gave up as the trial began. There were just too many journalists using the names, and we didn’t have the time to try and reach them all.

But the reason we’re bringing this up now is not only that some news orgs are still using the names (such as the Los Angeles Times, which is otherwise doing very good coverage of the trial), but just recently we learned that someone else has taken up the task of trying to reach these journalists to get them to use the “Jane Doe” designations.

And when we realized who it was that was doing this, we knew it was a pretty big story.

We need to take another step back. You may remember that besides the criminal trial going on, there’s a civil lawsuit that the three women, as well as Jane Doe 3’s husband, and a fourth woman, Bobette Riales, filed in August 2019, before criminal charges were actually filed against Masterson.

That civil lawsuit was filed against Masterson and the Church of Scientology, alleging that these five people have been harassed and stalked ever since the women came forward to the LAPD in 2016. The civil lawsuit is about that harassment, not the rapes themselves. And the five plaintiffs were originally represented by a high-flying national legal team out of Philadelphia.

From the beginning we told you that there were some issues with the Philly team and their handling of the lawsuit, and that two other suits they filed at that time, one on behalf of Valerie Haney, and another on behalf of a Jane Doe in Miami, had some problems.

And in February, we told you that Jane Doe 1 had decided to go her own way and find different representation, hiring a Florida attorney, Brad Edwards, who was known for his long pursuit of Jeffrey Epstein on behalf of some of the billionaire predator’s victims.

We can tell you now that around that time, in February, it reached us that as Jane Doe 1 was jumping ship and hiring a new attorney, a legendary litigator in New York City was also reportedly interested in the case.

We’re talking about David Boies, who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore and who’s been described as a “legal Goliath.” Like Edwards, he’s represented victims of Jeffrey Epstein, including Virginia Roberts Giuffre, and many other high-profile clients. And he’s not a man without issues.

As far as we knew, however, after Jane Doe 1 jumped ship, Jane Doe 2 and Jane Doe 3 and the others were sticking with the Philly team, and nothing had come of the interest from Boies.

Well, now we will bring you back to the story we started out with today.

It has come to our attention that someone has been reaching out to journalists, trying to get them to stop using the partial names and to use the Jane Doe 2 and Jane Doe 3 designations for those women in the trial.

And yesterday, we confirmed with the Boies firm that they were, in fact, behind it.

“We currently represent them pro bono for purposes of their testimony and rights involved in the criminal trial only,” Alison Anderson of the Boies Schiller Flexner firm said to us in an email last night.

Um, wow.

It turns out that not only was it true that Boies had an interest in the case, but that his firm is now actively representing Jane Doe 2 and Jane Doe 3 as far as their “rights” in the criminal trial, and they are trying to get journalists to stop using the partial names in their stories.

We don’t know if this means that Boies also has an interest in representing them in the civil case (which for now is on hold while the criminal trial is going on), but we figure it has to get David Miscavige’s attention that one of the country’s most famous litigators is getting involved, at least in a limited way, in maybe the most important trial to involve Scientology in many years.

Welcome to the party, Mr. Boies.

Trial continues today with additional prosecution witnesses. We’ll be sending reports from the court at the breaks as we always do.

And as for yesterday’s video report at the end of the day, here’s what went out to subscribers…

---

Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:

Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain

Here’s the link to today’s post at tonyortega.org

And whatever you do, subscribe to this Substack so you get our breaking stories and daily features right to your email inbox every morning…