This is a story about a probation officer who thought he was above the law. It is a true story that occurred about 12 years ago. Most of the details are a matter of public record and I will be happy to provide any specifics by PM.
In the early 70’s, a young man applied for a job as a state probation officer- a position that involved supervising convicted felons after their release into society. He was perfect for the job. According to his resume, he met the minimum qualifications for the job-a college degree. After college he held a number of different jobs in the field of social services and worked with many under privileged youth. He was well dressed, friendly, outgoing and got along well with almost everyone. Of German decent, had lived during the third Reich he would be a poster boy for Hitler’s perfect Aryan-blond hair, piercing blue eyes, six foot muscular and athletic.
He was especially good with kids and took a special interest in those that were too damaged to fix-children that had been a burden to society long before they entered the adult courts. The products of poverty and broken homes, often the victims of severe neglect and physical and sexual abuse, these children could not be controlled by their parents, the schools, the police or the courts. He would work with the future career criminals-those that would, in the vast majority of cases, spend the bulk of their adult lives behind bars.
He rose quickly through the ranks. By the time I met him in the late 80’s, he was the chief probation officer in a rural, sparsely populated and poverty stricken county. He was active in politics and won a seat in at least one local election. He had a vast network of connections in the political and business community and accurately boasted that he could do anything from fixing a traffic infraction to obtaining hard to get tickets to major sporting and entertainment events. The judges and prosecutors respected his opinion and would, in giving an offender a second or third, or even forth or fifth chance, rely on his assurances that he could keep the offender under control.
It was an open secret that he was gay. To most people, it made no difference. This man had grown up in a time when this life style was not acceptable and he kept this aspect of his life private. He claimed to have three children but was never married. The oldest two had very little contact with him. His youngest, a son, was in his late teens when I first met him and was living with his father. At some point, I was introduced to a “younger brother” who began appearing with him in various social settings and would spend most weekends at his home. It later developed that he was his partner.
His sexual preferences caused some minor bumps in the road. Several of his co-workers had suspicions that something wasn’t quite right. They reported their suspicions to his superiors but were told in effect “dox or STFU”. In the early 90’s he was running for county sheriff. It was not a “law enforcement” position as such. The sheriff oversaw a staff that was responsible for serving court papers, was responsible for providing courthouse security as well as the transportation of prisoners to and from court. During the campaign (he came in third in a three way race), rumors began to surface of his unusual sexual proclivities. Slowly people began to distance themselves from this man.
Sometime in the mid 90’s his life was to change drastically. A young man was arrested in a neighboring state on a bench warrant issued out of our state. Although this man was barely 25, he had a lengthy criminal record. And was in serious trouble. At the time of his arrest, he was in possession of a handgun. As a convicted felon, he was facing state and federal firearm charges in addition to the charges he faced in this state. The handgun, it developed, was registered to the probation officer (I am not sure, but I believe it had not been reported stolen at that time).
When first questioned by the police, the young man told a strange tale. He claimed that he had been involved in an on and off sexual relationship with the probation officer for several years. He stated that he stole the weapon from the nightstand during one of these trysts. The police did not believe him but took his statement and forwarded it the authorities in this state. Several days later, the offender was returned to our jurisdiction to face the original charges. He promptly recanted his statement and claimed that he lied when he told the police he had sex with the probation officer. In that statement, he now claimed he had stopped by the officer’s house to speak about a pending case and stolen the hand gun at that time.
----
When questioned, the probation officer told the police a similar story. He said he was outside his house doing yard work. The young man was driving by and stopped to speak with him about some pending cases. The offender was not on probation at the time and was hoping that a that the probation officer would put in a good word for him. At some point, the kid had asked to use the head and he assumed the weapon had been stolen at that time. He denied that he had ever had any sexual relations with the young man. As he was telling me this story, he was confident that the police had believed his statement. He was disturbed, however, because the chief prosecutor in the county did not. According to the probation officer, the prosecutor directed the police to question as many of his probationers as possible. He indicated that he was not worried because he had spoken to most of these kids and they were not going to provide any derogatory information about him to the police.
He overlooked the fact that he had, by his own admission, allowed an habitual criminal into his home. At a minimum, it demonstrated a colossal failure of judgment. Further, his contact with these additional probationers, I reminded him, could be construed as witness tampering. He acknowledged these facts but remained confident that nothing further would develop.Sure enough, within weeks he was suspended from his job. There had been a number of similar complaints concerning his socializing with former and current probationers. Coupled with the allegations of sexual impropriety, the probation department began termination proceedings. The probation officer saw the writing on the wall and submitted his retirement papers shortly thereafter. For the next nine months, he dropped off the face of the earth and was barely seen or heard from. Meanwhile the police were slowly and methodically sifting through the evidence. The probation department, fearing civil liability, refused to cooperate with the investigation and provided the files of his probationers only after the police had obtained a search warrant. When these records finally became available, they had been tampered and the most damaging portions had been removed. Despite this, the investigation continued.
As the probation officer predicted, most of his probationers initially gave him a glowing recommendation. A few, however, when questioned, corroborated the claims of sexual abuse. On learning this, defense lawyers came forward and related similar stories related to them by their clients. The lawyers had not come forward earlier because they doubted the stories and felt that repeating these unsubstantiated allegations would have dire consequences for their clients. Before long more and more of his former clients were coming forward and telling their stories. In all, over fifty people came forward and their stories, spanning a thirty-year period, painted a picture of a sexual psychopath run amuck. After being assigned their case, he would quickly gain their confidence and friendship only to betray it when they violated the conditions and faced incarceration. They would then remain out of prison only as long as they satisfied his animal urges. This would continue some times for years with him facilitating their criminal behavior by providing alcohol and drugs and ignoring serious and flagrant violations. When he was done with them, he would bring the violations to the prosecutors and courts and use them to send his victims to the prisons that serve as garbage dumps to the dregs of society.
Within a year of the initial complaint, the probation officer was arrested and charged with numerous counts of sexual assault based on the claims of a dozen victims. When he was brought into court he was unrecognizable. When he retired he was in his late 50’s but had maintained his youthful energy and good looks. Since he left his position, he had aged quickly and lost about thirty pounds. He was weak and frail and by all accounts a broken man. His lawyer was one of the best criminal lawyers in the state at the time. Most people expected a trial and only a few believed he would be convicted. These “victims” were, after all career criminals without a shred of credibility. He still had many supporters in the community and collectively they raised over a million dollars to post his bond. Additional victims came forward later and more charges were filed. The cases lingered and the probation officer remained free for several years before the case was called in for trial. To everyone’s surprise, he entered into a plea agreement and was sentenced to a lengthy prison term. Now in his 70’s, he remains in prison to this day and in all likelihood, will die there.
======
I have spent some time relating this story because I am hopeful that those who have come forward to report the abuses of the Co$ may find some comfort. This message is especially to my friends in Oz as they approach the upcoming legislative session and Senator Xenaphon’s historic call for an inquiry into this criminal organization. My message is that your voices have been heard and that there are people all over the world who care about you. While many may not agree with the choices you made, or what you did while under the influence of these people, they are more offended by what has been done to you. You are not alone and we support you.
This is also intended as a warning to those still under the spell of this criminal organization. Hubbard’s ideas and the church policies that authorize and even require its members to “silence critics” is criminal behavior. In fact, it is the type of activity that is the cornerstone of a criminal enterprise. Make no misstate, you are working for a pack of criminals.
The Co$, like the dinosaur, will soon be extinct. The scriptures that you study in minute detail leave no room for interpretation. LRH is considered source and no one is allowed to deviate in their thinking from his will as expressed in his printed word. You have no permission to disagree with anything that was written by a man that was a pathological liar and probably insane. While there will always be a group that claims there is a “kinder and gentler” scientology, the fact remains that they cannot pick and choose which of his policies to follow without first acknowledging the LRH was not source-an act that is considered heresy in the religion.
There have always been cracks in the judicial system that litigants can exploit to their advantage. The legal system however evolves and reacts to change. The above story is not unique in the annuls of American jurisprudence. Day after day, in court rooms across the country, juries are convicting criminal defendants based on the testimony of witnesses with serious credibility problems. Prosecutors and law enforcement continue to learn from their successes and failures and successful trial strategies have evolved for dealing with these types of cases. LRH’s brilliant yet cynical and anti-social policies towards the legal system allow for no such evolution. OSA operatives, in blind adherence to policies designed to “annihilate the credibility” of critics, do not recognize that this is strategy is backfiring and providing law enforcement with further evidence that this is a criminal organization. They will continue with this policy because they are required to do so by their religion.
It was not the testimony of any one victim that led to the downfall of this probation officer. It was the cumulative effect of hundreds of unrelated victims coming forward and substantiating the claims that others had made. It was the compilation of mountains of circumstantial evidence that substantiated other aspects of the claim. Most importantly, it was the evidence of the probation officer’s attempts to silence his accusers-evidence he ultimately could not deny.
In the early 70’s, a young man applied for a job as a state probation officer- a position that involved supervising convicted felons after their release into society. He was perfect for the job. According to his resume, he met the minimum qualifications for the job-a college degree. After college he held a number of different jobs in the field of social services and worked with many under privileged youth. He was well dressed, friendly, outgoing and got along well with almost everyone. Of German decent, had lived during the third Reich he would be a poster boy for Hitler’s perfect Aryan-blond hair, piercing blue eyes, six foot muscular and athletic.
He was especially good with kids and took a special interest in those that were too damaged to fix-children that had been a burden to society long before they entered the adult courts. The products of poverty and broken homes, often the victims of severe neglect and physical and sexual abuse, these children could not be controlled by their parents, the schools, the police or the courts. He would work with the future career criminals-those that would, in the vast majority of cases, spend the bulk of their adult lives behind bars.
He rose quickly through the ranks. By the time I met him in the late 80’s, he was the chief probation officer in a rural, sparsely populated and poverty stricken county. He was active in politics and won a seat in at least one local election. He had a vast network of connections in the political and business community and accurately boasted that he could do anything from fixing a traffic infraction to obtaining hard to get tickets to major sporting and entertainment events. The judges and prosecutors respected his opinion and would, in giving an offender a second or third, or even forth or fifth chance, rely on his assurances that he could keep the offender under control.
It was an open secret that he was gay. To most people, it made no difference. This man had grown up in a time when this life style was not acceptable and he kept this aspect of his life private. He claimed to have three children but was never married. The oldest two had very little contact with him. His youngest, a son, was in his late teens when I first met him and was living with his father. At some point, I was introduced to a “younger brother” who began appearing with him in various social settings and would spend most weekends at his home. It later developed that he was his partner.
His sexual preferences caused some minor bumps in the road. Several of his co-workers had suspicions that something wasn’t quite right. They reported their suspicions to his superiors but were told in effect “dox or STFU”. In the early 90’s he was running for county sheriff. It was not a “law enforcement” position as such. The sheriff oversaw a staff that was responsible for serving court papers, was responsible for providing courthouse security as well as the transportation of prisoners to and from court. During the campaign (he came in third in a three way race), rumors began to surface of his unusual sexual proclivities. Slowly people began to distance themselves from this man.
Sometime in the mid 90’s his life was to change drastically. A young man was arrested in a neighboring state on a bench warrant issued out of our state. Although this man was barely 25, he had a lengthy criminal record. And was in serious trouble. At the time of his arrest, he was in possession of a handgun. As a convicted felon, he was facing state and federal firearm charges in addition to the charges he faced in this state. The handgun, it developed, was registered to the probation officer (I am not sure, but I believe it had not been reported stolen at that time).
When first questioned by the police, the young man told a strange tale. He claimed that he had been involved in an on and off sexual relationship with the probation officer for several years. He stated that he stole the weapon from the nightstand during one of these trysts. The police did not believe him but took his statement and forwarded it the authorities in this state. Several days later, the offender was returned to our jurisdiction to face the original charges. He promptly recanted his statement and claimed that he lied when he told the police he had sex with the probation officer. In that statement, he now claimed he had stopped by the officer’s house to speak about a pending case and stolen the hand gun at that time.
----
When questioned, the probation officer told the police a similar story. He said he was outside his house doing yard work. The young man was driving by and stopped to speak with him about some pending cases. The offender was not on probation at the time and was hoping that a that the probation officer would put in a good word for him. At some point, the kid had asked to use the head and he assumed the weapon had been stolen at that time. He denied that he had ever had any sexual relations with the young man. As he was telling me this story, he was confident that the police had believed his statement. He was disturbed, however, because the chief prosecutor in the county did not. According to the probation officer, the prosecutor directed the police to question as many of his probationers as possible. He indicated that he was not worried because he had spoken to most of these kids and they were not going to provide any derogatory information about him to the police.
He overlooked the fact that he had, by his own admission, allowed an habitual criminal into his home. At a minimum, it demonstrated a colossal failure of judgment. Further, his contact with these additional probationers, I reminded him, could be construed as witness tampering. He acknowledged these facts but remained confident that nothing further would develop.Sure enough, within weeks he was suspended from his job. There had been a number of similar complaints concerning his socializing with former and current probationers. Coupled with the allegations of sexual impropriety, the probation department began termination proceedings. The probation officer saw the writing on the wall and submitted his retirement papers shortly thereafter. For the next nine months, he dropped off the face of the earth and was barely seen or heard from. Meanwhile the police were slowly and methodically sifting through the evidence. The probation department, fearing civil liability, refused to cooperate with the investigation and provided the files of his probationers only after the police had obtained a search warrant. When these records finally became available, they had been tampered and the most damaging portions had been removed. Despite this, the investigation continued.
As the probation officer predicted, most of his probationers initially gave him a glowing recommendation. A few, however, when questioned, corroborated the claims of sexual abuse. On learning this, defense lawyers came forward and related similar stories related to them by their clients. The lawyers had not come forward earlier because they doubted the stories and felt that repeating these unsubstantiated allegations would have dire consequences for their clients. Before long more and more of his former clients were coming forward and telling their stories. In all, over fifty people came forward and their stories, spanning a thirty-year period, painted a picture of a sexual psychopath run amuck. After being assigned their case, he would quickly gain their confidence and friendship only to betray it when they violated the conditions and faced incarceration. They would then remain out of prison only as long as they satisfied his animal urges. This would continue some times for years with him facilitating their criminal behavior by providing alcohol and drugs and ignoring serious and flagrant violations. When he was done with them, he would bring the violations to the prosecutors and courts and use them to send his victims to the prisons that serve as garbage dumps to the dregs of society.
Within a year of the initial complaint, the probation officer was arrested and charged with numerous counts of sexual assault based on the claims of a dozen victims. When he was brought into court he was unrecognizable. When he retired he was in his late 50’s but had maintained his youthful energy and good looks. Since he left his position, he had aged quickly and lost about thirty pounds. He was weak and frail and by all accounts a broken man. His lawyer was one of the best criminal lawyers in the state at the time. Most people expected a trial and only a few believed he would be convicted. These “victims” were, after all career criminals without a shred of credibility. He still had many supporters in the community and collectively they raised over a million dollars to post his bond. Additional victims came forward later and more charges were filed. The cases lingered and the probation officer remained free for several years before the case was called in for trial. To everyone’s surprise, he entered into a plea agreement and was sentenced to a lengthy prison term. Now in his 70’s, he remains in prison to this day and in all likelihood, will die there.
======
I have spent some time relating this story because I am hopeful that those who have come forward to report the abuses of the Co$ may find some comfort. This message is especially to my friends in Oz as they approach the upcoming legislative session and Senator Xenaphon’s historic call for an inquiry into this criminal organization. My message is that your voices have been heard and that there are people all over the world who care about you. While many may not agree with the choices you made, or what you did while under the influence of these people, they are more offended by what has been done to you. You are not alone and we support you.
This is also intended as a warning to those still under the spell of this criminal organization. Hubbard’s ideas and the church policies that authorize and even require its members to “silence critics” is criminal behavior. In fact, it is the type of activity that is the cornerstone of a criminal enterprise. Make no misstate, you are working for a pack of criminals.
The Co$, like the dinosaur, will soon be extinct. The scriptures that you study in minute detail leave no room for interpretation. LRH is considered source and no one is allowed to deviate in their thinking from his will as expressed in his printed word. You have no permission to disagree with anything that was written by a man that was a pathological liar and probably insane. While there will always be a group that claims there is a “kinder and gentler” scientology, the fact remains that they cannot pick and choose which of his policies to follow without first acknowledging the LRH was not source-an act that is considered heresy in the religion.
There have always been cracks in the judicial system that litigants can exploit to their advantage. The legal system however evolves and reacts to change. The above story is not unique in the annuls of American jurisprudence. Day after day, in court rooms across the country, juries are convicting criminal defendants based on the testimony of witnesses with serious credibility problems. Prosecutors and law enforcement continue to learn from their successes and failures and successful trial strategies have evolved for dealing with these types of cases. LRH’s brilliant yet cynical and anti-social policies towards the legal system allow for no such evolution. OSA operatives, in blind adherence to policies designed to “annihilate the credibility” of critics, do not recognize that this is strategy is backfiring and providing law enforcement with further evidence that this is a criminal organization. They will continue with this policy because they are required to do so by their religion.
It was not the testimony of any one victim that led to the downfall of this probation officer. It was the cumulative effect of hundreds of unrelated victims coming forward and substantiating the claims that others had made. It was the compilation of mountains of circumstantial evidence that substantiated other aspects of the claim. Most importantly, it was the evidence of the probation officer’s attempts to silence his accusers-evidence he ultimately could not deny.
Well done.
