<div dir="ltr">
<h1><a href="http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/24/the-management-of-dissent-how-to-destroy-an-activist/" target="_blank">The
Management of Dissent: How to Destroy an Activist</a></h1>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span>By <a href="http://journal-neo.org/author/janet-phelan/" target="_blank">Janet
Phelan</a></span><span><br>
</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span></span><span lang="EN-US">While the West, and the United States in
particular, has repeatedly voiced criticism over human rights
abuses in other countries, the US’s own record in terms of
detaining and incarcerating dissidents is now becoming
conspicuous.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">In presenting a recent report on human rights
issues, US Secretary of State John Kerry stated: <i>“Here is
the truth, we believe: A government that fails to respect
human rights, no matter how lofty its pretentions, has very
little to boast about, to teach, and very little indeed in the
way of reaching its full <a href="http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2016/04/255799.htm" target="_blank">potential</a>.”<span> </span></i></span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify">This report itself is heavily
weighted in terms of naming Asian and Middle Eastern countries as
human rights abusers. Kerry reports that <i>“In every part of
the world, we see an accelerating trend by both state and
non-state actors to close the space for civil society, to stifle
media and Internet freedom, to marginalize opposition voices,
and in the most extreme cases, to kill people or drive them from
their <a href="http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/#wrapper" target="_blank">homes</a>.”<span> </span></i></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">The United States is not named in the report.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify">However, the US is itself a major
culpable actor in such abuses. Despite its continuing and
increasingly strained efforts to self-promote as a defender of
human rights, the US is now inhibiting media and internet freedom
as well as regularly imprisoning activists–often without trial.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">The world is already aware of the use of the
Espionage Act to imprison and otherwise intimidate
whistleblowers. The cases of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Manning" target="_blank">Bradley
Manning</a>, <a href="http://www.ethiogrio.com/news/world-news/16718-ex-cia-officer-jeffrey-sterline-is-convicted-of-leaking-secrets-to-new-york-times-reporter-james-risen.html%20" target="_blank">Jeffrey
Sterline</a>,<span> </span><a href="http://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2014/06/esp-act-overcharged/" target="_blank">James
Hitselberger</a>, <span> </span><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/229103-john-kiriakou-released-prison/" target="_blank">John
Kiriakou</a>, <span> </span>and
others have hit the <a href="http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/24/the-management-of-dissent-how-to-destroy-an-activist/.https://www.aclu.org/blog/leak-prosecutions-obama-takes-it-11-or-should-we-say-526" target="_blank">mainstream
press</a>.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify">What the world may not be aware of
is that non-CIA connected individuals, who are merely attempting
to correct and/ or broadcast injustices, are now facing jail time.</p>
<p style="text-align:center"><b>You Mean I Forgot to Tell You
About Your Trial?</b></p>
<p style="text-align:justify">Tim Lahrman is a name well known to
disability rights activists. A trained paralegal, Tim has been
volunteering his paralegal skills to a growing list of people who
are engaged in legal battles against guardians and lawyers.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">For those unacquainted with the
issues concerning adult guardianships, an overview reveals that
these guardianships constitute a legal loophole through which an
individual may be declared incompetent and then stripped of all
his assets and the lion’s share of his rights. In fact, upon the
initiation of such a guardianship, the alleged incapacitated
person may not even be allowed to hire a lawyer to defend against
the guardianship. The National Association to Stop Guardian
Abuse’s website has a compelling summary of what rights are lost
when one goes under a <a href="http://stopguardianabuse.org/" target="_blank">guardianship</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Robin Gibson, a Los Angeles woman, attributes Tim
Lahrman’s legal expertise to the successful resolution of an
ongoing legal conflict with the guardian for her mother.<span> </span>Recently,
the mother was released from a guardianship which Gibson states
was draining her mother’s estate and wherein the guardian, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2005/nov/13/local/me-labow13%20" target="_blank">Frumeh
Labow</a>,<span> </span>had
virtually sequestered the older woman from contact with the
outside world.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><i>“<b>I owe this all to Tim,</b>“</i>
pronounced an exhilarated Robin Gibson in a recent interview. <i>“<b>I
have finally got my mother back.</b>“</i></p>
<p style="text-align:justify">Gibson is only one of many who have
benefited from Lahrman’s legal acumen and skills. And she may be
one of the last. For Tim Lahrman now sits in an Indiana jail cell,
held without bail on two seventeen year- old misdemeanor charges.</p>
<p style="text-align:justify">Candice Schwager, an attorney from
Texas, has this to say about Lahrman’s incarceration:<span> </span><i>“There
is an entirely different agenda behind this seventeen year old
persecution. It’s not even reasonable to think that Goshen keeps
misdemeanor cold case files and this was bad luck. This arrest
was retribution because Tim has brought up the crimes of a
clouted political figure.”</i></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Tim Lahrman was himself placed under a guardianship
in 1987. He was at that point in time in his twenties and an
owner of a thriving automotive business which was subsequently
ravaged through the guardianship proceedings.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Lahrman’s guardianship was never legally
terminated. After sacking his business, the guardian, Kenneth
Scheibenberger, “just sort of wandered off,” according to
Lahrman.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">This left Tim Lahrman in legal limbo. Neither his
rights nor his property were ever restored to him. He was left,
in essence, as a legal zero.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">As the law states, Lahrman thus could not have had
the “legal capacity” to commit the two misdemeanors with which
he was charged in 1999 —driving with a suspended license and
possession of a small amount of marijuana.</span></p>
<div style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Tim filed legal notice in the misdemeanor case of
his stated “lack of capacity.” The court took no notice and,
after oddly failing in its legal mandate to summon him for his
trial, held the trial without him present, found him guilty and
sentenced him to two years. He was not present at the hearing
and was not subsequently apprehended.</span></div>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Fast forward to 2016. Tim is not only assisting
others in their guardianship cases but has now filed a number of
lawsuits in his own <a href="http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/24/the-management-of-dissent-how-to-destroy-an-activist/.https://dockets.justia.com/docket/circuit-courts/ca7/08-3791" target="_blank">matter</a>.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Filed on January 20, 2015 in the U.S. District
Court for the Northern District of Indiana, South Bend Division,
Tim Lahrman also sued Elkhart County Superior Court No. 2
(Stephen R. Bowers, Judge), the Chief Judge of the Indiana Court
of Appeals, the State of Indiana, the Office of Indiana Attorney
General and the Indiana Supreme Court Division of State Court
Administration. Lahrman was picked up in March of this year on
the seventeen year- old stale and expired warrant, and is being
held in Elkhart County Jail without bail. His writ of Habeas
Corpus, filed with the court this past week, was reportedly
denied by Judge Bodie Stegelmann. According to reports, Judge
Stegelmann has ordered Lahrman into a psychiatric evaluation.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Attorney Schwager, who has filed notice in this
case, states that Tim was put into “the hole”—solitary
confinement—this past week after asking his public defender for
her name and also requesting the court file. The request
apparently frightened her. Schwager has <a href="http://elderlawadvocates.org/gotcha-state-of-indiana-caught-in-its-own-trap-tim-lahrman-story/" target="_blank">more</a> on
the case.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify">The public defender subsequently
withdrew and the judge has ordered Tim to appear pro se—without
legal counsel.</p>
<p style="text-align:center"><b><span lang="EN-US">I Don’t Know You But I Am Sure You Are
Incompetent</span></b></p>
<p style="text-align:justify">Another disability rights activist,
Cary Andrew Crittenden, is now being held in Santa Clara County
Jail, in Northern California, after being arrested on Christmas
Eve on “secret charges.”</p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">We can only term the charges “secret” because the
Santa Clara County Prosecutor’s office has consistently refused
to honor its legal responsibility to release the records
containing the factual circumstances surrounding Crittenden’s
arrest. The California Public Records Act, clarified by the
court case known as “Kusar” mandates the release of these
records.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Crittenden, who has launched an internet campaign
against corruption in Santa Clara County was previously arrested
in Santa Clara County for making online statements about public
officials which were deemed to be “<b>harassment</b>.”</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">An internal affairs complaint was filed on February
11 with the Prosecutor’s office concerning the refusal of
Assistant District Attorney David Angel to comply with the
records disclosure law, which is in place in order to guard
against “secret arrests.” This IA complaint appears to have gone
the way of the public’s rights to know—into the garbage can. No
action has been taken on the complaint.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">The recipient of the complaint, a Lt. Jorge Perez,
who states he is an investigator with the DA’s office, has
refused to even release the name of the individual who has been
assigned to investigate the complaint concerning ADA David
Angel’s refusal to comply with the law.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Recently, there was an attempt to have Crittenden
declared incompetent to stand trial. If an individual is so
deemed, he may be incarcerated indefinitely without ever having
his day in court. Sniffing this rat, Crittenden refused to
attend the psychiatric evaluation which the court had set up for
him.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">In a bizarre, Kafkaesque effort, a “doctor” –who
never saw or evaluated Cary Andrew Crittenden–trotted himself
into court. In a declaration that would have made any surrealist
proud, Dr. Burke, the “doc-in the pocket” of the court, intoned
that in his professional opinion, Crittenden, a man he had never
seen, was “incompetent to stand trial.”</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">The fact that Burke had never evaluated Crittenden
did not escape the attention of the court, however. Crittenden
was ordered into another evaluation, and the subsequent medical
professional reportedly determined that Crittenden was indeed
competent.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">The propensity for courts now to order activists
and dissidents into psychiatric evaluation is something that
deserves special attention. A person adjudicated incompetent by
a court may, in fact, never get a trial. He can be locked up
indefinitely on minor and potentially bogus charges and also be
court- ordered to be forcibly medicated with anti- psychotics,
which constitute a chemical strait jacket.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">If you think that the cases involving Lahrman and
Crittenden are the exception, you may rest assured that, for
cases involving guardianship activists, this is standard court
operating procedure. Rosanna Miller, who was attempting to
protect her father’s interests while he was under guardianship,
was arrested in 2014 for failure to pay court costs. The Ohio
Supreme Court, however, had issued a memo stating that an
individual cannot be arrested for failure to pay court costs.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Questions were raised about the possibility that
the Bellafontaine judge, Ann Beck, was involved in a number of
financial improprieties. Beck then quickly released Miller from
custody. Barbara Stone, a NY attorney whose mother, Helen, was
under a questionable guardianship in Florida, was arrested and
charged with “custody interference”—which mandates a potential
sentence of five years in prison—for allegedly taking her mother
to lunch.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:center"><b>If I
Can’t Get You, I’ll Get Your Kid</b></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">The psychiatric incarceration of John Rohrer raises
further questions about motives to detain this young man, and
detain him possibly indefinitely. Rohrer, who apparently
wandered into the wrong house while under the influence of a
hallucinogen, has now been detained over ten years, the last six
and a half years as an in-patient in a state psychiatric
facility. The case has been fraught with illegal maneuvers by
the prosecutors and judge, including denying him his right
multiple times to hearings to determine whether he meets the
state’s definition of being “mentally ill.” In fact, Rohrer has
never been deemed incompetent. Rohrer is now being held at
Appalachian Behavioral Healthcare, a State psychiatric hospital,
where he was forcibly drugged for years.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">It should be noted that the Ohio Supreme Court has
determined that a judge may not order forced drugging unless he
makes a finding that the individual lacks capacity to consent.
The forced drugging must also be in the patient’s “best
interests” and there must not be any alternatives deemed to be
as effective as the drugging. In the Rohrer case, Judge Corzine
made none of these findings, and in fact stated on the record
that Rohrer appeared “pretty lucid today.”</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Nevertheless, Corzine ordered the forced drugging
of John Rohrer.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">According to reports, during a brief 2007 exposure
to Risperdal, Rohrer, who was at that time 27 years old,
suffered a cardiac event, but this did not stop it from being
chosen as the primary drug to forcibly inject.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Medical and legal malpractice complaints were filed
November 24, 2014 in the Ohio Court of Claims and November 28,
2014 in the Franklin County Common Pleas Court by the attorney
for John Rohrer. The complaint states that Rohrer was forcibly
injected with Risperdal for more than 3 ½ years although the
drug is known to cause irreversible brain damage. In addition,
the complaint states that Rohrer’s rights to a fair hearing have
been repeatedly violated.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">The activist in the Rohrer case is actually his
mother. Attorney and talk show host Katherine Hine founded the
advocacy group Stop Child Abuse Now in Oklahoma and advised a
group of foster mothers who were outraged at the involvement of
judges and lawyers in the murder of 2 year old Ryan Luke in
1995. She is the Executive Director of the Ross County Network
for Children in Ohio, an organization with a strong history of
conflict with the Ross County Prosecutors, surrounding two child
murderers that the County had not wanted prosecuted back in the
1990’s.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US"><span></span>Hine is
now with WJLA radio hosting a two weekly broadcasts—one exposing
illegalities of forced psychiatry and another exposing the
consequences of the lack of judicial accountability. She also is
a contributor to The Columbus Free Press.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">The Ross County Prosecutor’s office has made it
clear that they despise her. Now, they are the ones making sure
John Rohrer stays locked up.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Hine has faced three disciplinary actions.<span> </span>She
writes, “My first discipline was in Oklahoma in like 1981 or
1982 when my soon to be ex grabbed by children in violation of
an Oklahoma custody order giving their temporary custody to me.”
According to Hine, “He claimed he wasn’t served.” She reports
that “I got a private reprimand – where you go into an office
and they yell at you about 15 minutes.<span> </span>Told
me what a disgrace to the profession I was and how ashamed they
all were of being in the bar association with me.”<br>
<span></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">She was subsequently</span><span lang="EN-US"> reprimanded by the Oklahoma Bar in 1997 for
communicating with a judge concerning a matter involving a
suspected case of child abuse, in which she did not represent a
<a href="http://law.justia.com/cases/oklahoma/supreme-court/1997/20438.html" target="_blank">party</a>.</span><span lang="EN-US"> In fact, Hine had signed a letter along with seven
other individuals who were concerned that the judge had
authorized supervised visitation of a child with a sexual
predator and that the supervision stipulation was being ignored.
In other words, the child was allowed to be alone with the
predator. There was another attempt at discipline when she was
accused of ghost writing for a pro se litigant, but Hine invoked
confidentiality and the complaint evaporated.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Concerning the lengthy incarceration of her son,
Katherine Hine has this to say: “These people are like the Cosa
Nostra. They launch intergenerational vendettas and will go
after your family.”</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">According to Hine, John Rohrer is no longer allowed
online. He had previously set up websites with his music and
poetry but the public awareness of his situation had launched
protests among his readers and as a result, he is now barred by
the hospital from going onto the internet.</span></p>
<p style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">Recent articles have discussed the increasing
incidence of suspension and disciplinary actions taken against
attorneys who are attempting to protect the <a href="http://journal-neo.org/2014/03/28/us-moves-to-crush-internal-dissent/%20" target="_blank">rights
of individuals</a>. If the current trend continues, we may see
anyone standing up for the rights of another individual escorted
into jail and, from there, potentially into a rubber room.</span></p>
<i><b><i><b>Janet
C. Phelan, investigative journalist and human rights
defender that has traveled pretty extensively over the
Asian region, an author of a tell-all book <a href="http://www.thebookpatch.com/BookStore/exile/a02d07e3-82ae-4dab-942b-bed32f224566?isbn=9781620309575" target="_blank">EXILE</a>, exclusively for the online
magazine “<a href="http://journal-neo.org/" target="_blank">New Eastern Outlook</a><a href="http://journal-neo.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">”</a><a href="http://journal-neo.org/" target="_blank">.<span><br>
</span></a><a href="http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/24/the-management-of-dissent-how-to-destroy-an-activist/" target="_blank"></a></b></i></b></i></div>