TTSOML #64: Warning Prior To Willamette Week Publication

Amy Roe asked me several times if I was currently represented by a lawyer. I now think it was to find out how much she might be able to get away with.

I told her I HAD been represented by Dan Gatti and she came back to me and said they wouldn't confirm this at all. So I called and asked Gatti why not. Then, Gatti called later and said he was warning me that Roe had talked to the Mt. Angel city mayor or whatever, and had asked about me. She checked the police reports which were filed by the Abbey, against me. The mayor actually called Gatti, Gatti said, and told him he thought Roe was out to "smear" me. So the Mt. Angel mayor had such a bad feeling about it, he asked Gatti to let me know her intentions were not good.

At that point, I got nervous. I had gone to the town of Mt. Angel with the Willamette Week photographer, Basil, and he had wanted me to stand holding a protest sign. I said it woldn't be representative of me because I never held a sign. So they had asked if they could have just a profile shot and I agreed. While in the car with Basil, I remember getting a bad feeling when he asked what I thought the absolute worst thing would be from doing the article. He said he wanted to know my fears and what would bother me the most. I said what would bother me most would be to have the civil rights elements of my story erased, so that the elements were no longer fitting the torts. Basically, to minimize my story to make it sound like nothing really wrong or illegal had happened, and that the police involvement wasn't an issue. He asked me this after getting on the phone with John Schragg, who Amy Roe later blamed for wanting to make me "look bad". She was equally to blame however, as after she published the article about me, she said in response to my tears, "I'm Catholic."

Everything I didn't want to happen, they did purposefully. I specifically said I didn't want my name used, or my face on the front page, and when the article came out, both my full name and a huge close-up of my face was on the front page. I even had people question how the story was newsworthy and why my entire name was used, as if I was a celebrity or something.

When I read the article, I burst into tears. It was so false, I was stunned. She had put words in my mouth, and had distorted the timeline, and wrote that I had been cited for crime and harassment, and trespassing, which wasn't true. And I knew it was done intentionally. She had done a favor for Mt. Angel Abbey.

Prior to the publication, I faxed over a bunch of documents because I wanted the correct story to go out and to have proof she had received the correct story. She anxiously asked me to stop faxing the documents. She also did a little discovery work for the Abbey, asking me what kinds of emails and evidence I had on the monks, and wanting to know if I still had copies of the tickets or citations issued by the Mt. Angel police (for things I didn't do, which were never filed and dismissed).

In the next posts, I'm going to copy and paste the article and insert my comments at all the places where lies or distortions were made. But this will probably be later today or tomorrow, because I am ready to crash.