TTSOML #45: Citation By Mt. Angel Police, Over "Virgin Mary Cherry Pie"

I think I told one of the guys from the Abbey that I didn't know how long I was going to protest, and that maybe I would do it for months. His eyes bugged out and he turned to walk back up the hill to the Abbey. To give them his report I guess.

So it was on the next day, day three, that I was approached, while sitting peacefully in my chair, by an officer who said, "Ms. Garrett, you are being cited for harassment." I was stunned. "What? This is LEGAL," I said. The officer said to me, yelling and spitting, "I could take you to jail RIGHT NOW." I asked him what I was doing that amounted to "harassment". He said I had sent the Abbey a "fax" that was offensive.

Now that I'm thinking back about when I sent the fax, I can't recall if I sent it right after I was given the runaround and harassed for months by the Abbot and Human Resource person, or if I sent it after finding out they had reported me to police. I actually think it was after I found out they had put me under surveillance, because Scott had admitted I hadn't done anything wrong and they had no evidence of the kind, because I hadn't. So if that's the case, which I think it is, I guess more than one week elapsed between the time I found out I had been placed under surveillance and the day I first protested. It may have been one month instead of one week, inbetween my discovery of slander to police and my first day of protest.

I'm quite sure, and will back it up with dates, but I recall this now, because I asked the officer, "Why am I being given a citation for that fax NOW when it was almost a month ago that I sent it?" I told the officer that if I had done something wrong, which amounted to harassment, why was I just now being given a citation, right in the middle of my protest. I told him I viewed this as intimidation and a violation of my civil right to protest, by punishing me with citations.

The officer asked me if I had sent the fax. I said yes, I had, and that it was tongue in cheek, and not "harassment". I had sent one fax, in response to an ad I saw placed by Mt. Angel Abbey, in the Oregonian, for a new cook. I drafted a proposed "menu" quickly, in the style of an elementary school hot lunch menu, and faxed it to them. On my sample menu I had listed:

Pope Applesauce
St. Paul's Hot Cross Buns
Turkey
Virgin Mary Cherry Pie
Mother's Milk

And I think I listed a few other things, some which were funnier, and I remember distinctly that the Cherry Pie was the most "inflammatory" item on the list.

The officer yelled at me: "Did you write, "VIRGIN MARY CHERRY PIE?!!!" I said yes, but that it wasn't "harassment", it was satire, and it was the only thing I'd sent them and no one had ever asked me not to fax them or not to write. I repeated, "Why is the Abbey telling you to press charges against me NOW? in the middle of my protest? It seems like a violation of free speech..."

So the officer went across the street and started talking on a cell phone, to the Abbey, telling them what I'd just said, and asking them what to do now. He was telling them he didn't think he could give me a citation, but after consultation with them, he came back to me, handed me the citation and said, "YOU offend my CHURCH."

So he was Catholic. Evidently.