12 Facts About Karin Spaink

Karin Spaink was born on 20 December 1957 and is a Dutch journalist, writer and feminist.

Karin Spaink is a free speech advocate and social critic, who has criticized New Age writers and the Church of Scientology.

Karin Spaink wrote a regular column for Het Parool and previously wrote for De Groene Amsterdammer.

In 2015, Karin Spaink was named Freethinker of the Year by De Vrije Gedachte.

Karin Spaink gave the 2018 Mosse Lecture, titled Tussen Grewel en Fortuyn: Identiteit, herzuiling, privilege en verschil.

Karin Spaink first came into the national limelight by accusing such New Age writers as Louise Hay and Bernie Siegel of oversimplifying physical ailments by reducing them to a purely psychological phenomenon.

Karin Spaink was one of many to put up pages containing the Fishman Affidavit in criticism of the church, and Scientology responded by suing Spaink, internet service provider XS4ALL, and 20 other ISPs in the Netherlands for copyright infringement, raiding the offices of XS4ALL to seize servers.

Karin Spaink replaced the contested documents with an analysis of the documents, quoting liberally, but not too liberally from them; Dutch copyright law does not have a fair-use provision, but allows quotation for purposes of scientific dissemination.

However, any claims that Karin Spaink was breaking the church's copyright were deemed unfounded, because Spaink had reworked her homepage as soon as she had discovered that the church indeed had valid claims to portions of the documents on that homepage.

The court held it proven that Scientology is an organisation that tries to undermine democracy, and ruled that Karin Spaink had the right to quote the Church in her expose.

Karin Spaink has continued to criticize Scientology, and actively participates in Project Chanology's monthly pickets against the organization.

Karin Spaink is involved in the Right to Die movement; she hosts a website which offers access to information concerning methods of suicide.