OAKLAND, Calif. -- A man who harbored Patricia Hearst while she was a fugitive filed a $7 million libel suit Tuesday against the newspaper heiress, charging her book wrongly associates him with the terrorist Symbionese Liberation Army.
In a Superior Court suit, Jack Scott, a sports world figure, denied he was 'an eager volunteer' in the SLA. The suit said he agreed to drive Miss Hearst across the country twice in order to give her a chance to flee the group which kidnapped her Feb. 4, 1974.
Attorney Dennis Roberts said Scott met Miss Hearst in 1974 two weeks after six SLA members died in a fire and shootout with Los Angeles police. Scott agreed to transport Hearst, as well as Bill and Emily Harris, for fear that a similar shootout would result if authorities located them, the lawyer said.
According to Roberts, Scott's father and mother, John and Louise Scott, who accompanied their son and Ms. Hearst, also provided numerous chances for Miss Hearst to separate herself from the SLA.
In one instance when this was specifically suggested, Roberts said Ms. Hearst told Scott to take her where he was supposed to take her or 'you'll be dead.'
'Jack is not ashamed -- or Micki (his wife) -- of the role they played,' the attorney told a news conference.
Scott did not turn Miss Hearstover to police, Roberts said, because 'Jack Scott's not a pig, he's not a cop. He gave her that option, but the Scotts are not coercive people.'
Miss Hearst's book was said to have maliciously portrayed the Scotts as agents of terrorists and 'Dr. Scott as one who would defame his parents.'
The complaint challenged assertions of Miss Hearst in her recently released memoir, 'Every Secret Thing,' that Scott's parents had a history of helping revolutionaries, that Scott ever expressed a desire to help finance the SLA's 'revolution,' and that he ever claimed to run 'an underground railroad for revolutionary fugitives.
Scott, who has a doctorate degree, currently has offices in Portland, Ore., and Berkeley, Calif., to treat stress tension and other physical problems experienced by sports figures. Roberts said Micki Scott, a teacher, was recently appointed to run a day care center in Portland where the couple now lives but after the book was released, the job was denied her.
In her book, Miss Hearst said she remained with the SLA out of fear that authorities would kill her if she surrendered.
Miss Hearst, now 27 and married, currently lives with her husband and infant daughter in a San Francisco suburb.
