Raising the Anonymous Posters’ Consciousness on Rape: 60% of Rapes are Never Reported to Police

Well, actually what I wrote in the title is not possible since these are malicious smear campaigners who appear to lack any kind of conscience whatsoever when it comes to posting fabrications about me, but the purpose of this posting is to set the record straight and provide any readers who are unaware, with the facts about how often rape is not reported to police. The anonymous smear posters are now demanding documents including a police report for an incident that occurred nearly 40 years ago where I was raped while I was in Scientology. At first they were ignorantly misportraying this as a new revelation on my part. When I proved them wrong and pointed out I had written about this in 1989, they just brazenly moved on to more smears, which has been their usual and all too predictable practice. When I expose the lies or their ignorance, they just move on to something else hoping people will forget they have been exposed, typical behavior for a pathological liar.

Most shamefully, the smear campaigners are now misportraying my sexual victimization that I had therapy 22 years ago to address, as “sexual escapades”. No, rape is not a “sexual escapade” and their attempts to portray it as such only demonstrates how low the smear campaigners have sunk, accompanied by their disgusting fabrications about me. I was in therapy 22 years ago to deal with a rape, not “sexual escapades”.

Additionally, the reason I didn’t report it was not, contrary to the ignorant postings of the smear campaigners, because I had some kind of “OT” Scientology beliefs. At the time this occurred, I had not reached any advanced Scientology levels and even if I had, Scientologists do not believe they can literally turn back time and make things not happen. The term “erasure” refers to removal of the emotional charge from traumatic events, not literally wiping out the event itself and as for OT superpowers, that is only claimed for the ultimate OT level, which at the time I was in Scientology no one had reached. So no, I never had any beliefs that I held such superpowers. The claimed end phenomenon for the level I did reach was simply, “return of full self-determinism”, not any supernatural powers but at that time, I hadn’t even reached that yet. The reasons I did not report the rape to police were much more mundane and rather common for women in those days who were raped by someone they voluntarily went with.

These latest smear postings demanding proof for a rape that occurred nearly 40 years ago that I shared in a personal account of my experience, indicate a very antiquated awareness of the statistics on rape victims, especially those that occurred that long ago. The fact is that the vast majority of rapes are never reported to the police. Even today, 60% of rapes are not reported to police. This was especially so in the early 1970s when it wasn’t even considered rape if the woman voluntarily went into a room with a man. Actually that kind of rape was very common in those days. Thankfully nowadays for most people, consciousness on this topic has been raised and rape is rape, regardless of whether the woman initially went voluntarily somewhere with a man, although it seems that even in this day and age, some people have yet to learn this.

In my case, I did not report the rape because in those days, my report probably would have been dismissed. He could have claimed it was consensual and it would have been my word against his and in fact, for years I blamed myself for this until in the late 1980s, I had therapy and my therapist helped me to understand that this incident did, indeed qualify as rape. When I finally told my therapist about this during the late 1980s, I saw tears come to her eyes and she said, “You were an innocent. This was not your fault”. That was so true. I was a sheltered, very naive 19 year old who actually believed the guy was going to help get me a legitimate acting job in the movies and I went with him, believing the myth that people could get “discovered” in that way. One of the nasty postings called me a “professional victim”. No, disclosing this does not make me a “professional victim”. For one thing, I have never been paid for having been a victim of rape. I have noticed, however, that “professional victim” is a phrase that people who wish to intimidate victims from speaking out and blame victims, just love to use. Rest assured, it will not have that impact on me. Calling me by that name will only make my voice grow louder to demonstrate that I will not be shouted down on this or on any other topic I feel it is important to speak out on.

So no, I did not report the incident when it happened because like many woman in those days, at the time, I blamed myself for going with him in the first place and did not view it as a rape at the time. I actually shared this with a few other Scientologists at the time and they too blamed me, the victim, for falling for the scam (quite ironic, since we had all fallen for Scientology). It was my therapist, years later after I had been out of Scientology for 13 years, who made me aware that this was rape.  It was then, that I chose to write about it in that affidavit of 1989 and until now, no one has had the indecency to attempt to shame me for this in any way. Therapy taught me not to blame myself and not all the internet smear campaigns in the world are going to shame me or break me.

Another statistic to be aware of is that about 50% of rape victims experience PTSD. That is a higher rate than veterans of war. However, I am in the fortunate 50% that did not develop PTSD. My therapy was mainly cognitive restructuring, meaning the therapist challenging my erroneous beliefs about the experience, such as blaming myself and this approach worked well for me. Even though I did not have PTSD, I did have residual feelings of self-blame and that is what therapy helped me to overcome. In the cases of people who are suffering from PTSD, however, they may need to have a therapy known as prolonged exposure therapy, which is a very well-supported therapy for PTSD, shown to be highly effective for people who have been traumatized by rape. Fortunately, there is help available and there are many compassionate, competent, caring and ethical therapists who can offer such help for PTSD or any other residual effects of trauma.

Every time I think the anonymous cyber smear campaigners cannot sink lower, they do. This attacking me for a rape that I wrote about that occurred nearly 40 years ago is indeed a new low, even for them.

So no, I don’t need to prove anything to anyone and anonymous cyber smear campaigners have no right to demand such proof. Their using this incident that I wrote about 22 years ago, to smear me makes them, not me, look very bad and a number of people have their own opinions as to who the circumstantial evidence indicates is behind all this. In any case, their ignorance on this topic is beyond belief.

Go here for some education on the topic.

60% of rapes/sexual assaults are not reported to the police, according to a statistical average of the past 5 years.² Those rapists, of course, never spend a day in prison. Factoring in unreported rapes, only about 6% of rapists ever serve a day in jail.

And this is 2011. In 1972, things were far worse.

Apparently the anonymous cyber smear campaigners are incapable of distinguishing what requires proof and what does not. Contrary to the recent straw man arguments being put forth by the anonymous smear campaigners, I have never, ever claimed that my PhD makes me immune to needing to prove things. If I was delivering interventions to children, I would indeed need to produce evidence to support what I was doing. However, they fail to make the distinction between what kinds of claims require proof and which do not. My claims about my own experiences in the distant past, are not provable and my inability to produce “documents” does not harm anyone.  No decent person would ever expect or demand proof of this.

This is very different from people such as Ronald Federici who are recommending interventions for internationally adopted children that recommend the use of prone restraint, which have no randomized controlled clinical trials to demonstrate their safety and efficacy. This is not a double standard. If Ronald Federici had chosen to write about personal experiences he had in the 1970s, I would not demand proof. If some associate of Federici’s was involved in a court case in the 1990s, I would not demand that he prove anything about it. What I do demand proof for is the claims he makes about his interventions for children.If I were delivering such interventions, I would also be obligated to provide evidence for them.

The anonymous posters attempt to equate apples and oranges. Needless to say, making unsupported claims about interventions being used on children is very different from making a claim about a personal experience that occurred nearly 40 years ago.  I am also not responsible to produce “evidence” for the postings of anonymous survivors of holding therapy, as that was never my blog, nor am I responsible to produce evidence involving long ago concluded voting machine cases that I had no involvement in whatsoever. Their attempt to equate these things fools no one but the true believers who attack me.

Moreover, anonymous cowards who use their anonymity to post malicious lies, have no right to make any demands of someone such as myself, who has always posted using my real name. If the anonymous cyber smear campaigners want to ask me something, let them reveal their identity first. I don’t respond to anonymous abusers, who have no intention other than twisting my words to attack me further, nor do I have anything to prove to them.

I will, however, continue to demand proof from mental health professionals who are offering interventions for their clients that appear to be lacking in evidence and I would hold myself to that same standard, for any interventions I recommend to others. If the anonymous smear campaigners think my social work colleagues would in any way be sympathetic to their disgusting behavior of attacking someone who shared a highly personal experience of having been raped at the age of 19, they really don’t know the social work profession, as any decent social worker will be appalled at such postings attacking me for sharing an experience about having been raped. Actually, one Dean of a prominent school of social work, when I told her about some of the earlier postings, attempting to reassure me, let me know that no rational person would believe a word these anonymous smear campaigners wrote about me.

So keep it up, cyber smear campaigners. You only make yourselves and your gurus look very, very bad when you attack someone for sharing a personal experience of a rape, very different from making a claim about an intervention.

To the cyber smear campaigners: If you think you are going to break me down in any way emotionally by posting about this, think again. I had therapy for this issue more than 20 years ago and since that time have become a highly empowered survivor who will not be broken, nor will I back down in my activism against harmful practices with children. Attacks such as this only show your appalling ignorance on the topic.

Now, back to the topic at hand, where is the evidence that the interventions that Ronald Federici promotes for children, are safe and effective? No matter how many lies his followers post about me and no matter how hard they try to deflect from this topic by posting lies about me and irrelevant nonsense about voting machine cases I had no involvement in whatsoever, I will continue to ask that question, as I will continue to ask for evidence to support the claims of a number of other mental health professionals who are making claims on the internet and else where that lack proper evidence (i.e. studies published in peer reviewed journals) to support them. Every time lies and ugly smears are posted about me, I will bring the discussion back to the topic at hand, which is the reason why I am currently the target of this smear campaign. I have challenged therapy gurus who have followers who obviously do not like to have their unsupported claims challenged.

Cyberstalking Victims: Take Back The Internet

Rape victims, as consciousness was being raised have frequently staged what are know as Take Back The Night marches where they engage in a public demonstration to show their perpetrators that they will no longer allow themselves to be intimidated by them.

This blog is the cyber equivalent of Take Back The Night Marches. Victims of Cyber Abuse need to do, in essence, the same thing. The appropriate forum for this activism is where the abuse has occurred: On the internet. Posting is a valid form of activism.  Take Back The Internet and not allow ourselves to be intimidated or silenced from posting by disturbed, obsessed individuals who are intent on ruining their reputations and lives.

I hereby invite anyone else who has been a victim of cyber abuse, cyberstalking, cyber bullying or whatever you want to call it, to join me in taking back the internet. Start a blog. Start a Google Group. Put up a website. Raise people’s consciousness so they can learn about this phenomenon and stop blaming the victims and put the focus squarely where it belongs: on the perpetrators.

Cyberstalkers and bullies would like nothing better than to see the victim crawl away and silently endure the abuse. As the Take Back The Night organizers say, let’s shatter the silence.

The Google Groups Search Results Are Replicable: Anyone Can Search Google Groups and Find 1000s of Smear Postings About Monica Pignotti

The anonymous WordPress Bloggers responded to my posting of verifiable statistics of their over 1000 postings to internet newsgroups, as usual for them, by fabricating a dialogue that never occurred and focusing on the person who did the analysis. As is common for them, they raise a straw man argument. I never claimed this to be scholarly research. What it is, is a very simple search of Google Groups that one person took the time to do. What they are attempting to obscure is that these are verifiable statistics. Anyone who cares to take the time to do a search of Google Groups for postings about me under the pseudonyms listed and will find the same thing. It’s rather hypocritical for them to put an emphasis on the anonymity of the poster when they themselves are performing their smear campaign as anonymous individuals.

My “astonishing” number of postings (which even on the highest months, average only around 4 per day = about 15-20 minutes per day of my time) would not exist, were it not for 1000+ postings smearing me. Unlike my postings, the smear postings sometimes include fancy graphics and dredged up postings from more than a decade that would have taken the cyber smear campaigners much time to dredge up. It seems that attacking me is a full time job for someone. It only shows the extent of the smear campaign which is quite “astonishing” to borrow the ridiculous term used to describe my self-defense. Astonishing attacks call for astonishing responses rather than the victim sitting passively back and doing nothing. Once again, the anonymous WordPress posters have tried to blame the victim and failed.

That will not change the verifiable results that anyone with internet access can verify which conclusively shows that I am indeed the target and the victim of an anonymous internet smear campaign.

Perhaps this most recent flood of attacks on me and attempting to reverse things is deigned to distract from the legal documents I recently found regarding the conclusion of Federici v Pignotti et al. Why is it that Federici’s former lawyer who represented him in Federici v Pignotti et al was, according to what he stated in the filing,  unable, despite repeated attempts to reach him? Why did he state that he believed he could no longer ethically continue to represent him in any matter? Your guess is as good as mine, but obviously I have hit a nerve, in spite of the attempts of the anonymous smear bloggers to portray this (which involves a Federal case and order from a Federal judge) as well as my posting on the passage of important anti-SLAPP legislation in Washington DC as “legal trivia”. I can assure you that this is not “trivia” to those of us who have been hit with such lawsuits, nor is a federal case trivial.

This is only part of what I have uncovered in recent public records searches I have conducted.

In the meantime, the support I have received from the mental health profession and academic community shows that such people are not gullible enough to be fooled by this anonymous smear campaign, will not blame the victims and instead are calling the anonymous posters out on their antics.

To Date More than 1000 Postings by the Perpetrators of the Smear Campaign Against Monica Pignotti

Predictably, those other WordPress bloggers are at it again, in an  all too obvious attempt to reverse things, are attempting to reframe the smear campaign against me as some kind of internet obsession on my part. That is akin to calling the victim of rape, a sex addict. Here is an example of their propaganda tactics. Let’s see if we can identify what they leave out. They write:

She seems to post more less the same thing, a rather obsessive account of a lawsuit, to a fantastically diverse of discussion groups. Her topic is largely irrelevant to most of them, for example, she posts to groups about Scientology (she is a former Scientologist, but this court case has nothing to do with Scientology), children, cooking, skepticism, astronomy, revisionism, shortwave radio, law (here her posting may be relevant), the United States, and Pakistan.

This is not an attempt to justify what I do. I have no need to do so. Rather, my intent here is to set the record straight. What they neglect to mention is that these are all groups on which the internet smear campaigners have originated postings about me.  Someone recently did an informal analysis of these postings and found more than 1000 smear postings about me. The smear bloggers attempted to misportray this as a citation that requires some sort of statistical expertise. No, it does not require a PhD, a peer reviewed submission or any kind of complicated statistical knowledge. It is simply a Google Groups search that anyone can verify this by performing the same searches in Google Groups on the pseudonyms listed below. That’s what is really going on that the anonymous WordPress smear bloggers failed to mention. Those postings attacking me were, indeed on the “upswing”. Here is what was found. Remember, these are postings made by the perpetrators of the smear campaign:

The extent of the Usenet/google groups campaign against Monica Pignotti, is clearly extensive.

I have identified 1002 posts which may be attributed to the following posters/e-mail addresses.  There are undoubtedly more addresses from which postings take place, additional user names employed and further

postings by the user names identified in the following data which I have not detected.

The postings are predominantly, single thread headers, with no replies. My very rough calculations put this at above 90% of the posts I have encountered. The majority of posts which are replied to, are those made to the alt.religion.scientology group. Any person wishing to subject the following information to statistical analysis is free to do so.

Although there are a large number of groups to which postings are made, and some variations between different posters, there is a clear pattern of groups to which these posts are made. Those variations that  do exist, give the impression of the ‘elaborations of a bad liar’ to quote Clarice Starling.

The close co-relation between the groups, different user names have targeted, suggests strongly that there is a single agenda in the postings made.

The significance of this is that either the postings are made by one individual, or a relatively static group working within a single policy agenda.

Monica can not be said to be being targeted as a result of a widespread popular agenda. But ONLY, (I’d like to emphasise only more) as a part of a single focused attack.

Candidates include a ‘nut Job’ and, given her critical opinion of certain child treatment, and education styles favoured by the church of scientology, that church sits very definitely in the frame as a potential culprit.

Please note that in the following data each individual post will frequently have been posted in multiple groups.

POSTER SANDAU CHIROPRACTIC SERVICES

e-mail smilax_san…@yahoo.com

Known Posts re Monica Pignotti          3

Known Groups posted in re Monica Pignotti

alt.religion.scientology

re.radio.shortwave

alt.revisionism

POSTER DIDACTICDERIVAT…@YAHOO.COM

e-mail didacticderivat…@yahoo.com

Known Posts re Monica Pignotti          46

Known Groups posted in Monica Pignotti

alt.religion.scientology

alt.slack

misc.health.diabetes

rec.puzzles

sci.lang

sci.med

sci.med.diseases.hepatitis

sci.skeptic

soc.culture.indian

soc.culture.singapore

soc.culture.singapore

soc.culture.usa

soc.culture.usa

soc.men

talk.politics.misc

POSTER NOAUTH

e-mail a…@remailer.gabrix.ath.cx

Known Posts re Monica Pignotti          39

Known Groups posted in Monica Pignotti

alt.religion.scientology

soc.culture.usa

POSTER ANNE ONNIME

e-mail   anonym…@rip.ax.lt

Known Posts re Monica Pignotti          271

Known Groups posted in re Monica Pignotti

alt.adoption.issues

alt.conspiracy

alt.fraud

alt.politics

alt.politics.republicans

alt.religion.islam

alt.religion.scientology

alt.revisionism

alt.slack

comp.lang.java.security

misc.invest.futures

misc.invest.stocks

misc.legal

rec.crafts.marketplace

rec.food.cooking

rec.music.misc

rec.radio.shortwave

sci.astro

sci.electronics.components

sci.electronics.repair

sci.lang

sci.math

sci.psychology.misc

sci.skeptic

soc.culture.british

soc.culture.china

soc.culture.europe

soc.culture.french

soc.culture.german

soc.culture.greek

soc.culture.italian

soc.culture.japan

soc.culture.jewish

soc.culture.lebanon

soc.culture.nordic

soc.culture.pakistan

soc.culture.russian

soc.culture.taiwan

soc.culture.thai

sci.med

soc.culture.usa

POSTER  GEORGE ORWELL

e-mail nob…@mixmaster.it

Known Posts re Monica Pignotti          189

Known Groups posted in re Monica Pignotti

alt.conspiracy

alt.education

alt.magick

alt.recovery

alt.religion.mormon

alt.religion.scientology

alt.slack

misc.invest.futures

misc.legal

rec.arts.sf.written

rec.crafts.marketplace

rec.food.cooking

sci.electronics.repair

sci.skeptic

soc.culture.german

soc.culture.japan

soc.culture.pakistan

POSTER    ANONYMOUS

e-mail  cri…@ecn.org

Known Posts re Monica Pignotti          124

Known Groups posted in Monica Pignotti

alt.clearing.avatar

alt.religion.scientology

alt.slack

misc.invest.futures

misc.invest.options

misc.legal

rec.bicycles.misc

rec.crafts.marketplace

rec.food.cooking

sci.electronics.repair

sci.math

sci.skeptic

soc.culture.greek

soc.culture.pakistan

soc.culture.palestine

soc.culture.usa

POSTER  NOMEN NESCIO

e-mail  nob…@dizum.com

Known Posts re Monica Pignotti          261

Known Groups posted in re Monica Pignotti

Nomen Nescio

nob…@dizum.com

alt.baldspot

alt.clearing.avatar

alt.conspiracy

alt.fraud

alt.religion.islam

alt.religion.scientology

alt.revisionism

alt.slack

alt.support.depression.manic

alt.true-crime

ec.radio.shortwave

misc.invest.futures

misc.invest.stocks

rec.crafts.marketplace

rec.food.cooking

rec.music.misc

rec.radio.shortwave

sci.electronics.repair

sci.lang.japan

sci.math

sci.med

sci.skeptic

soc.culture.china

soc.culture.europe

soc.culture.french

soc.culture.german

soc.culture.greek

soc.culture.iranian

soc.culture.italian

soc.culture.japan

soc.culture.lebanon

soc.culture.pakistan

soc.culture.polish

soc.culture.turkish

uk.misc

POSTER  KULIN REMAILER

e-mail  remai…@reece.net.au

Known Posts re Monica Pignotti          69

Known Groups posted in Monica Pignotti

alt.conspiracy

alt.religion.scientology

alt.revisionism

alt.slack

comp.lang.java.security

misc.invest.stocks

misc.kids

misc.legal

rec.food.cooking

rec.music.misc

rec.radio.shortwave

sci.astro

sci.electronics.components

sci.skeptic

soc.culture.british

soc.culture.french

soc.culture.german

soc.culture.greek

soc.culture.indonesia

soc.culture.israel

soc.culture.lebanon

soc.culture.malaysia

soc.culture.pakistan

soc.culture.usa

Now come again, who is obsessed?

I had the choice of sitting passively by and allowing this to happen or fighting back. Just as rape victims of the past were told to be passive and submit or that the rape is their fault (still true in some countries even today), victims of cyber smear campaigns are also told this even sometimes by people who should know better. I tried silence and not responding for several months and it did not work. The smear campaign continued, so I decided to fight back. The smear campaign has been constant against others such as Larry Sarner and he has remained silent, showing that his silence failed to stop the abuse of his name. My responses were my way to point people to information that refutes this disinformation campaign, so when some unsuspecting person comes upon them on an internet search, they can at least be referred to information on why this smear campaign is occurring. It is the smear campaigners that “seem to post on the same thing” about me so of course, my responses are repetitive. There is nothing wrong with repetition to refute a smear campaign.

Perhaps the most ludicrous statement is the claim I am “obsessed” with lawsuits and “legal trivia”. I am not the one who has sued multiple parties repeatedly. I have never sued anyone in my life. Just check into Ronald Federici’s history of suing people and decide for yourselves who is obsessed. Interesting that they would characterize this lawsuit as “legal trivia” when before it was dismissed, for months before the lawsuit was ever filed, the Anonymous WordPress bloggers were calling it a History Making Lawsuit, had a WordPress blog by that title and have failed to update that blog to show that it was dismissed and upon what grounds (jurisdiction and failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted for Pignotti & Mercer). Instead, interrogatories and subpoenas that were never served for depositions that never occurred because the case was dismissed prior to that phase, remain posted last I checked, which was today. How dishonest is that? Obviously the bloggers did not consider it a trivial matter — until the case was dismissed, it would seem. Then, all of a sudden “history” was rewritten and it became a trivial matter. Talk about revisionism. I can assure you that it is not considered “trivial” for those who see it as an injustice that people have to pay thousands to defend themselves from such lawsuits and in states without anti-SLAPP legislation, have very little, if any, chance of being reimbursed for thousands in legal expenses just to get it dismissed at an early stage.

While I am not a fan of adding yet more categories of pathology to the DSM and I am not intending this as a diagnosis for anyone in particular (they have more than enough already) if I were, I might suggest as new category, Litigation Addiction, for people who seem to be compelled to repeatedly sue others. Now that would make an interesting reality show Dr. Drew Pinsky might want to consider doing: Celebrity Rehab: Litigation Addiction. Just as the drug-addicted celebrities were ordered to delete all drug contacts from their cell phones and stay away from bars, litigation-addicted participants could be ordered to delete the names of all lawyers from their cell phones and stay away from courtrooms. How about it, Dr. Drew? [I’m being facetious, of course, but some people do seem to be using the legal system as a hoped-for solution to many of their interpersonal conflicts or a way to shut up anyone who criticizes them.]