Did Patrick Haeck, Lloyd Evans, and the Open Minds Foundation (OMF) Actually Silence a Story About JWs?

I’d like readers to please look at this video below, uploaded by Marc Latham in the UK. In it, he reads a letter directed to all elders in the congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses, telling them to conduct an “Audit of Files” and destroy personal notes made by elders during judicial committee meetings, among other items.

Marc reads this letter word-for-word, emphasizing certain points, and then notes the different investigations taking place in the UK, including the Goddard Inquiry, or IICSA.

 

 

As I bring out in this post, the IICSA or Goddard Inquiry has stipulated that organizations like Jehovah’s Witnesses not destroy anything when it comes to records related to their care of children. Doing so is a criminal matter. At the end of the video, Marc very accurately puts the question to the elders in the congregations if they’re ready to defy these legal orders, and in so doing, basically elevate the JWs and the religion above the process of protecting children.

Now look at this video, and the part I want you to note is at the very beginning, at about the 1:45 mark.

 

Notice how Marc refers to that first video above, and points out that a certain person wrote to a journalist and stopped her from talking to Marc and to “not bother” with the story at all. Marc refers to this person’s actions as a “cardinal sin” with activism; we should all have one aim and that aim should not be to “scupper” a story of any sort. As Marc said, this person was working against an entire team of activists and was doing this on the subject of child rape and molestation.

Marc is too much of a gentleman to state this person’s name publicly.

I don’t have that problem.

This story landed in my lap, and not by Marc himself, I might add. I was aware of this person and their actions and had a copy of that person’s email to the journalist sent to me many days before I was ever in dialogue with Marc; I have my own media sources when it comes to the Watchtower. I was told the person who sent this message to the journalist was Patrick Haeck, working in conjunction with Lloyd Evans aka John Cedars.

For those who don’t recognize the name, Haeck is a former JW elder (from Belgium I believe). Haeck was in the video that was once on the site JWsurvey.org, with Lloyd Evans aka John Cedars giving away copies of the book “Crisis of Conscience,” or COC, illegally printed from a PDF file with Cedars’ website logo added to the back, done without permission from the copyright owner.

Before you dismiss the gravity of Lloyd’s actions, note this site:

“When good or services appear to originate from a legitimate source but are in fact unauthorized reproductions, the crime of counterfeiting has likely been committed. The offense can include not only creating fraudulent documents and goods, but also altering legitimate items. Because trafficking counterfeit goods is an interstate and international business, it is a crime largely regulated by the federal government.”

Perhaps “altering” would include putting a website logo on the cover?

Also, note the word “trafficking,” which refers to the distribution of the goods, not just the production of them; no matter who creates unauthorized copies, distributing is also a crime.

Let me go over some background information as it’s been handed to me and readers can discern what they want from this story.

AAWA and the Open Minds Foundation (OMF)

Marc Latham was previously the Vice President of Advocates for Awareness of Watchtower Abuses (AAWA).

AAWA was giving financial support for the site JWsurvey, with the URL being in the name of John Hoyle, an officer of AAWA.

When Lloyd Evans had that video on the website advertising his COC book giveaway, Marc sent a message to the board of AAWA, asking about their potential legal liabilities. This was something he had the right and responsibility to do, as an officer of that company; if Lloyd Evans was indeed committing a crime, could AAWA lose their charitable status for giving financial support to his website?

I don’t know and Marc didn’t know, which is why he had the responsibility to ask the board and request they take it to their lawyer.

Marc then repeated some things that many, many people have been saying lately, including Richard Kelly, treasurer of AAWA, about Lloyd Evans, that he needs to work to support his family, that nobody wants to work with him outside the ex-JW community, that he needs to leave other activists alone, etc. I’ve heard this from Richard, Marc has heard it, we’ve all heard it, a lot of people have been saying it; Marc simply had the brass knobs enough to put it in writing.

This message was then “accidentally” forwarded to Lloyd by John Hoyle. Richard himself said in an email about the situation, “Lloyd read the information and responded much like Donald Trump and shared his unbridled feelings with his Facebook friends, all insulting rubbish about Marc Latham.”

Despite this acknowledgement of Lloyd’s bad behavior, there was no public statement from AAWA challenging the legalities of Lloyd sharing what he knew to be confidential business (not personal) correspondence, and no public apology to Marc for this gross breach of confidentiality.

Twice in two years now, AAWA has seen a huge leak of confidential information that hurt someone personally, the first leak of course involving an AAWA volunteer “outing” a faded JW by posting her real name and address in a Facebook group, stating, “Do what you want with this information.” All of this with no public response from AAWA at all. (The hell goes on in your boardroom anyway, just darts and beer?)

Capture suits

Marc then resigned from AAWA due to this grossly unprofessional behavior, and because of resenting being told by Richard that he (Marc) “will need to take the high ground on this matter.” AAWA then also transferred the URL of JWsurvey into Lloyd’s name.

In that same email, Richard said that AAWA would be aligned with the Open Minds Foundation (OMF). Their website says that OMF is going to be this big organization of 150 experts on “undue influence” and would bring together doctors and counselors and lawyers and nurses and whomever, would educate the world on this problem, etc.; you know the grandiose claims I’m talking about. According to business paperwork filed in Richard’s home state of Arizona, Jim Atack (his brother Jon is the ex-Scientologist that many of us know) is the President of OMF and Patrick Haeck is the Vice President, and Richard is again the treasurer.

Caught up? No worries, let’s press on.

The Email

Before Marc’s resignation from AAWA, he had been in touch with a journalist about JW investigations in the UK, including the IICSA or Goddard Inquiry, and the Charity Commissions Inquiry.

After Marc resigned from AAWA, Haeck and Lloyd Evans then sent an email to that same journalist. Let me break down a few statements in that email, with my thoughts; note that this has been translated from Belgian (Dutch), so bear with the clunky English.

A. “Marc Latham gave his resignation for personal reasons within AAWA…”

I see nothing “personal” about Marc’s resignation at all. AAWA’s apparent lack of sound business practices is embarrassing, highly suspect, and now obscenely insulting to someone who has done nothing but work hard on behalf of the organization and activism in general. In my opinion, Marc was owed a public and private written apology, not a lecture about what ground HE would need to take.

Richard said in his email that Haeck called Lloyd and spoke to him on the phone after Lloyd posted that drivel on his Facebook wall, but it would have seemed appropriate to chastise Lloyd publicly, since he made the issue public himself.

Yet again, AAWA dropped the ball on all sides, probably just hoping it would all go away, and then, rather than taking an ounce of responsibility for this mess, and then hung Marc out to dry, deceptively saying that he resigned for “personal” reasons.

B. “You will understand that the use of ‘ half-truths ‘ would undermine our legal position heavily during the judicial investigation. Within the Belgian SAS (www.sas-sekten.be), AAWA (US), the Open Minds Foundation (US) we try especially with honest, truthful publications, letters and testimonials and people to work. Sometimes means also that we of certain people to say goodbye to because their emotions take over and they give in to a non-correct explination of the case…”

Haeck also stated, “A very reliable source of information about the abuses at JG [in Dutch, “Jehovah’s Witnesses” is “Jehovah’s Getuigen,” or JG rather than JW] you will find besides back on JWsurvey…” and “The man behind this website is Lloyd Evans, also a personal friend of mine.”

I would hope they weren’t talking about Marc using “half-truths,” since he read the letter regarding the Audit of Files verbatim, and I mean the whole letter, not “half” the letter. I would really like them to pinpoint when Marc has ever, ever given any “non-correct explanation” of anything.

This statement, that AAWA and OMF try to work with “honest” and “truthful” people, also isn’t quite correct, is it? Whether or not he can get this through his head, and no matter what his friends on Reddit might say (friends who are not attorneys, I assume), Lloyd Evans had absolutely no business distributing illegal, altered copies of COC. The fact that the copyright owner had to serve papers to his house, a fact he doesn’t dispute, demonstrates that.

Patrick Haeck, the Vice President of OMF, was in the video with Lloyd talking about his giveaway of these altered books. Haeck is seen endorsing or at least smiling at a copyright violation and potentially a criminal act; how is this “honest”?

It seems that AAWA recognized some culpability of Lloyd’s behavior because of finally putting the website in his name, but behind the scenes, OMF officers are still sending journalists to him and that site.

Also, this statement about saying goodbye because their “emotions take over”; if this was talking about Marc, I would think this is also incorrect, as it’s very trivial but Marc said goodbye to AAWA by resigning, not the other way around. Painting him as being overly emotional is unprofessional, childish, inflammatory, and just stupid beyond belief.

C. “We had also with Marc Latham from AAWA a call. In some of his videos he did it come across like JW systematically all written documents related to paedophilia destroyed. This is not quite fair…”

Patrick Haeck said that Marc was coming across as if JWs systemically destroy all written notes, but Marc didn’t say that at all; he never used the word “systemically.” He read their instructions verbatim and emphasized certain points, and then asked very legitimate questions, but never did he add anything to that letter that wasn’t already there.

Another very important point is that even the BBC has come out and said that JWs are quite possibly criminally liable for this instruction (see this post); the BBC’s legal analyst said that JWs “have some explaining to do” when it comes to this document destruction. The BBC is in agreement with Marc; why would another “activist” disagree?

We’ve also seen and heard from the elders’ own mouths, when questioned by the Australian Royal Commission Inquiry, how they regularly destroy files so their stupid wives don’t get their stupid hands on them.

D. “There is so much to tell … This is actually a design for an investigative journalist … This is time consuming, requires diving into the sect world … and I take not blame you if you let this issue for what it is and … I understand you … This skepticism graced you as a journalist.”

Am I really reading a statement to a journalist saying that they are perhaps not qualified to write a story on the JW problem with child molestation, and the inquiries in the UK, because it’s “time consuming,” and better left to someone with more “investigative” skills?

Patrick Haeck’s and Lloyd Evan’s approach is not to offer whatever assistance she would need, but to say that they wouldn’t blame her if she dropped the story altogether? These men decided to insult the journalist and her skills, make assumptions as to her time, and hint that she might let it alone?

Are you fucking kidding me?

I’m sorry, I seem to have let my “emotions take over.” Let me rephrase that.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Yes, that was better.

The journalist decided to do just that; she sent this email back to Marc so he would know what was going on, and then bowed out.

I cannot fathom, just cannot wrap my head around why anyone would do or say this to a journalist. Is it because she’s a woman? Is it one of those, “either we get our names in the paper or no one gets their name in the paper” deals?

I don’t know, but whatever the reason and whatever really happened, the damage has been done. We lost a story. We lost a story. Do you have any idea how hard activists need to work to get journalists interested in a group as esoteric and insignificant as the Watchtower? Can you imagine how this would make child victims feel, seeing their chance to tell their story and their chance to have the world know what has happened to them, just go up in smoke like this?

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Editor’s Note, October 26, 2017: If anyone questions the information contained above, note this post on social media made by Lloyd Evans aka John Cedars himself, in September of 2017, repeating his claim that he and Patrick Haeck were “correcting wrong information” to a journalist.

This is despite the BBC’s story supporting the truthfulness and accuracy of Marc Latham’s information. (Now apparently Lloyd thinks the BBC doesn’t know what they’re talking about?)

Lloyd’s words also reinforce his connection to, and direct work with, OMF and their officers:

Note, too, that Patrick Haeck did apologize to Marc Latham earlier this year for his actions, and I give him full credit and respect for doing that, but this also reinforces the fact that this email was sent and Marc was lied about; otherwise, why would an apology be necessary?

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Marc and his wife Cora have been two of the best, most professional yet personable activists we’ve seen; they in no way earned this smear campaign and to have their reputations maligned for reasons I still cannot fathom. He deserved better, definitely.

If someone wants to get their name in the paper or direct attention back to their organization, more power to you, but you don’t do it off the back of another activist, and especially not someone who has worked so hard and so sincerely, without asking for anything in return.

As an update, you might also note the grotesque insults hurled at child sex abuse victim “BCG,” who testified at the Australian Royal Commission about her abuse, and who was maligned and harassed by Lloyd Evans and Daniel Walker, because BCG objected to her story being included in a book Daniel was writing. Lloyd Evans called her “irrational” and “unreasonable,” and accused me personally of “cynically exploiting” her as “emotional leverage,” as outlined in this blog post:

Activism Should Never Be at the Expense of the Victims

As of this update, I haven’t heard anything from AAWA or the Open Minds Foundation (OMF) about any of this, other than Lloyd’s social media statement and Patrick Haeck’s apology to Marc. Interesting that they’ve been officially silent about these messes; one of their volunteers “outs” someone by publishing her real name and address on Facebook, but AAWA says nothing. I had to clean up that mess for them.

Bo Juel, a member of AAWA’s advisory board, got viciously attacked online with obscene allegations, and they said nothing.

Marc got attacked and hung out to dry publicly, and they said nothing.

When I come out and call them up on the carpet, now will they say something?

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