David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

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Re: David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

Postby liminalOyster » Mon Aug 01, 2022 7:47 pm

Wombaticus Rex » Mon Aug 01, 2022 7:07 pm wrote: cracker reparations full price of $250 ... White guilt is a hell of a drug.


<thread tangent> reminds me that the estimated monthly gross intake numbers from Augustus C Romain (Gazi Kodzo)'s fabled "Reparations Corps" were leaked on Twitter over the past few weeks. Have to look them up but fuck was it alot, relatively speaking.</thread tangent>
"It's not rocket surgery." - Elvis
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Re: David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Tue Aug 02, 2022 11:03 am

America is an alienated nation of seekers and suckers, verily. Building out my map of these informal peyote networks has been dubious work; so many of these people are just broken human debris trying to put their lives together, the same firewood any other cult (or political party) runs on. I don't think it's going to yield a lot of meaningful connections, especially because it's going to yield so many wholly incidental connections when that same 200 families are working for each other, marrying each other, and travelling through the same LDS / New Age circles. More noise than signal.

What's more, peyote is at least as effective as Scientology, because no small few of the names I am mapping have been rather successful since their 90's-00's crises. From Brett Bluth's testimony:

One year later I attend a ceremony with a Huichol medicine man. The ceremony was
outside at a wooded piece of land near Utah Lake. Dr. Hamblin was in attendance. I
was not made aware of this beforehand. This was my first encounter with him after the
abuse. The group engaged in an argument with Dr. Hamblin and disbanded. I
remained onsite with five other people. They were Dr. Hamblin, Jeff Kessner, Jeff
Kessner's girlfriend (who's name I do not know) and Shauna and Gaylen Nebeker.
As we sat in a circle, I asked Dr. Hamblin how his wife was and he answered to the entire
group stating "It's true, Brett and I had an Inappropriate sexual experience In my office-.
The group went quiet as this was not an answer to the question I had asked.
Dr. Hamblin started explaining the situation and suddenly David had convinced them all
to put their hands on my body as a healing act that would help me forgive him. My head
was in Dr. Hamblin's lap and his hands were on my head. The others put their hands on
my body and this continued for fifteen minutes or more. I did not want this contact. I felt
Instantly under Dr. Hamblins influence. I recall consciously choosing to shut down and
remain calm until the experience was over. Afterwards, Geoff Kessner shared that he
and his entire high school swim team had been sexually abused by their coach. He
shared that he had learned to forgive and that I should do the same for Dr. Hamblin. As
a group they all joined this effort of encouraging me to let this anger go.


Gaylen Nebeker is a successful video tech today, and as he told AP reporter Robert Gehrke in 2001, that is largely thanks to the magic cactus: "Gaylen Nebeker said peyote weaned him from cocaine and saved his marriage."

"This has brought me a lot closer to God. It has helped me to heal," said Nebekar. "The medicine is first in my life," he said. "If it's not here, then I will go where it is."


September Six member Lynne Whitesides was equally converted, and is currently working in the field of psychedelic therapy as a "general advisor" to Salt Lake City's SCPTR clinic which administers Ketamine in a controlled setting under the supervision of Parth Ghandi. She also has an active practice as a life coach. When the Salt Lake Tribune did a "where are they now?" retrospective on the S6 group, she said: "Being disfellowshipped from the LDS Church was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It opened up a world of spirituality I didn't even know was possible."

James Mooney smiling down from Seminole Heaven: "Told you so. I wish you and all of your loved ones much peace and love."

To bring it back to David Lee Hamblin, though -- surely worth doing at the top of every subsequent page as this thread marches on -- it's important to stipulate that peyote, for all its power and "truth serum" efficacy for inducing spontaneous confessions in barely controlled environments managed by financial, spiritual and sexual predators, is an adjunct, a supplement to Hamblin's primary expertise, hypnosis.

Despite our profligate technological advances and modern, rational, progressive weltanschauung engineering, the relationship of human beings with human language remains strangely obscured, occulted. Hypnosis is a noun that sits squarely in the middle of that tangled sephirot, encompassing many potent phenomena with disturbing implications: trance states, guided visualization, contact with nonhuman intelligence, mind-body connections, placebo and nocebo effects, and perhaps worst of all, the slippery sands of our own memory.

The is the double bind of the FMSF complex, after all: recovered memories are quite real, but so are false memories. And those spooks on their advisory board knew that damn well because they were engaged, for decades, in experiments to create them at the behest of their sponsors, public and private. This is what motivates my engagement with this case, not colorful Mormon ephemera. It slices to the heart of the role of screen memories in organized abuse and the scale here is small enough to glean some useful insights.
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Re: David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Tue Aug 02, 2022 4:13 pm

I've had a few people forward this to me now and seen it in the wilderness of forum sleuthing, but I realize I haven't addressed it here. There is a "David Hamblin" who shows up in news coverage of the Elizabeth Smart case as her Bishop, and this is not the same man. David Lee Hamblin was never a Bishop. Due to the twin turbine power of polygamy and generations of borderline incestuous intermarriage, the same first and last names show up a lot in Utah. (A lot: there are over a dozen David Hamblins in that state I have been able to find. So far.)

It all stems from this AP newswire report from March 17 2003:

At a Mormon church service Sunday, Elizabeth Smart's grandfather said her captors so sapped her of free will that she didn't try to escape even when left alone for a day.

"As a doctor, it's amazing to me that you can become so brainwashed that you identify with your captor," Charles Smart said.

Bishop David Hamblin said despite anything that may have happened during the ordeal, the teen is "pure before the Lord. People who are in the control of others are not accountable."


Smart was kidnapped from Federal Heights, a tony suburb of Salt Lake City. Her bishop was David Curtis Hamblin, wife Charlotte, who spoke on camera to Larry King in 2003, as well. There is zero doubt this is a different person, especially considering David Lee Hamblin was already excommunicated from LDS by 2003. It would be an amazing connection if true, so I assume many conspiratainment fans will not allow the facts to get in the way of a juicy lead, but hey: just in case.
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Re: David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Wed Aug 03, 2022 9:24 am

Bringing it back to The Other David: I hadn't realized Mr. Leavitt's operation was tangentially involved in the latest round of Ukraine intrigue. I am unfamiliar with the prior work of Karen Garcia but she is certainly a capable writer with a fire in her belly, so that tends to bode well:

Pathocrats At Play

Even calling it a proxy war is starting to get a little bit precious. In case we needed any more evidence that the United States is simply using Ukrainian bodies and Ukrainian real estate for its war with Russia, no longer bothering to hide the fact that Ukraine is naught but its Cold War 2.0 vassal state, comes news that US Attorney General Merrick Garland personally traveled to Ukraine on Tuesday to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Russian war crimes.

Apparently, there is no official in Ukraine, either presidential, judicial or parliamentary, who is capable of appointing special prosecutors. The United States is in full charge and in full control of its puppet regimes.

...

Of course, the Ukraine prosecutor whom Garland is taking it upon himself to appoint has the requisite deep ties to the American security state and its NGO cutouts. What the Times doesn't report is that, before becoming the top cop in her own country, Irina Veneditkova was a faculty advisor at the Pennsylvania-based Leavitt Institute For International Development, which is funded by what it calls "private donations." In other words, it is very possibly a CIA front organization dedicated to regime change and capitalistic plunder.

Its founder, David Leavitt, is also currently Utah's Republican county attorney.

But just like Garland, Leavitt doesn't let his job fighting malfeasance in The Homeland take away from his ongoing work in Ukraine, to which he personally traveled earlier this year, ostensibly to find American homes for refugees, and otherwise "spreading democracy, ethics and the rule of law" to that country and its Eastern European neighbors.

He and other beneficiaries of the neoconservative/ liberal interventionist model of war are not spreading themselves too thin at all. They are simply spreading democracy in the form of suctioning up the wealth of nations to line their own bottomless pockets or those of their clients. Or as the glossy Leavitt website more delicately spins it:

"Organized in 2005 by David and Chealthlom Leavitt, TLI operates under the premise that seasoned legal professionals can share their experience and knowledge in order to help push democratic reforms.
TLI began with private donations from the Leavitt family and friends and a small handful of volunteers. Today, TLI operates in multiple cities in eastern Europe, teaching and shaping the minds of the next generation of leaders."


As part of its efforts, TLI involves some of the brightest international relations specialists and legal minds throughout the world to teach democratic principles, rule of law, and ethics. TLI teachers are experienced judges, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, and legal counselors from the United States and Canada. They lecture on a variety of subjects and make a lasting impression on the minds of their students.

Among the board of directors of TLI is Natalie Jaresko, an American who has previously worked with the State Department, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Treasury Department - in other words, the "Blob" - who was integral in the neoliberalization of the former Soviet Union. In other words, she was a player in the 90s "Harvard Boys" collective, enabling a group of oligarchs to impoverish the Russian people after the Soviet Union collapsed.

As Ukraine's US-installed finance minister, her mammoth task was imposing austerity on regular Ukrainians once the US-manufactured coup in 2014 was a done deal. Jaresko later brought her economic talents to the US territory of Puerto Rico with her management of the Oversight and Management Board and the subsequent imposition of crushing austerity programs for the regular residents of that particular territory.


It's a big club, as George Carlin used to say. You ain't in it, but Merrick Garland, David Leavitt, Natalie Jaresko and new US-appointed "war crimes prosecutor" Veneditkova certainly are. When you consider that they're all just part of the same big fat blob-club, then it doesn't seem so weird for Merrick Garland to be calling the legal shots in a foreign country. How could the US possibly be meddling in what is its own conquered territory? They are imperialists, after all, and it behooves them, for democracy appearance's sake, to utilize the requisite number of native experts to do their bidding.

...

Maybe the constant exposure of the pathocrats and their foul deeds by what remains of our free press will amount to a forced dietary intervention. As exhausting as this task is, giving up simply doesn't seem like the best option, not even in this, the terminal phase of civilization.


"Oh, but Ms. Garcia," sighs Pagliacci the Clown, "This *is* civilization!"

Merrick Garland might be a big deal in the Acela corridor, but his word doesn't seem to count for much in the Ukraine, and if he has to make a personal trip to impose picks, that's not exactly a sign of strength. Sure enough, shortly thereafter, Irina Veneditkova's career arc took a sharp nose dive:

Ukraine’s war effort is hobbled by spies, traitors – and corruption

Five months into Russia’s war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy sacked the two most powerful law enforcement officials in the nation, both of them handpicked by him despite criticism that they were chosen more for loyalty than competence. Parliament ratified the dismissals on July 19. The firings of Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, a university law professor, and Security Service of Ukraine head Ivan Bakanov, Zelensky’s friend since childhood, exposed more than incompetence.

Mr. Zelenskiy issued an extraordinary statement saying that hundreds of investigations have been opened into suspicions that prosecutors and members of the Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, collaborated with the Russian enemy. These are no ordinary agencies. They remain structured in much the same way as in Soviet times. They are bloated with personnel – at least 27,000 SBU agents and 10,000 prosecutors. Their reputations are for engaging in corruption rather than fighting it.

...

Many questions remain unanswered, including what Ms. Venediktova and Mr. Bakanov knew and did, why Mr. Zelenskiy did not act earlier, how deep the Russian infiltration runs and what is going on today that the world does not know about yet.


Among those questions, of course, is how much the recent rounds of accusations are actually about "Russian infiltration" and how much is about a Zelenskyy realizing he is surrounded by US operatives who are quite fine with the fact he's been set up to lose this war from the start. I do not mean to imply that poodle is a man of conscience, but he surely recognizes that his regime will have difficulty lasting into 2023 at this point. This is mere self-preservation from a veteran performer who sees a big bloody cane coming his way from stage left.

And, fuck him. If there's any justice, his role will end on camera: the death of a born entertainer.

As for Leavitt, though, his family is still rich, still powerful, and his Eastern European network is becoming more valuable than ever. Falling back from public office was, all in all, a blessing, a stroke of luck. As the "500 Families" stunt proved, he still has freedom of movement and connections in every oblast that ain't occupied by Russian tanks. Now that the "war" has decisively shifted to a stalemate and territorial loss, now that Atlantic Council mouthpieces are floating outright Gladio messaging as the strategy for the next phase of this meat grinder forever war, David Okerlund Leavitt is too big to fail.
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Re: David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Thu Aug 04, 2022 4:54 pm

Unrelated to this case but a relevant examination of the LDS "Help Line" system for covering up child sexual abuse in their own ranks. Heavily excerpted version follows, read the whole story here.

The father, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and an admitted pornography addict, was in counseling with his bishop when he revealed the abuse. The bishop, who was also a family physician, followed church policy and called what church officials have dubbed the “help line” for guidance.

But the call offered little help for MJ. Lawyers for the church, widely known as the Mormon church, who staff the help line around the clock told Bishop John Herrod not to call police or child welfare officials. Instead he kept the abuse secret.

“They said, ‘You absolutely can do nothing,’” Herrod said in a recorded interview with law enforcement.


Herrod continued to counsel MJ’s father, Paul Douglas Adams, for another year, and brought in Adams’ wife, Leizza Adams, in hopes she would do something to protect the children. She didn’t. Herrod later told a second bishop, who also kept the matter secret after consulting with church officials who maintain that the bishops were excused from reporting the abuse to police under the state’s so-called clergy-penitent privilege.

...

He frequently recorded the abuse on video and posted the video on the internet.

Adams was finally arrested by Homeland Security agents in 2017 with no help from the church, after law enforcement officials in New Zealand discovered one of the videos. He died by suicide in custody before he could stand trial.


The father in question was, of course, a Border Patrol agent.

Later in the piece, another reflexive evasion gets discussed that is familiar from the testimony of Brett Bluth: no matter how recent, all trauma is shunted off into "the past," and of course, the best way to process it is to forgive it. The goal is redemption, not justice.

William Maledon, an Arizona attorney representing the bishops and the church in a lawsuit filed by three of the Adams’ six children, told the AP last month that the bishops were not required to report the abuse.

“These bishops did nothing wrong. They didn’t violate the law, and therefore they can’t be held liable,” he said. Maledon referred to the suit as “a money grab.”

In his AP interview, Maledon also insisted Herrod did not know that Adams was continuing to sexually assault his daughter after learning of the abuse in a single counseling session.

But in the recorded interview with the agent obtained by the AP, Herrod said he asked Leizza Adams in multiple sessions if the abuse was ongoing and asked her, “What are we going to do to stop it?”

“At least for a period of time I assumed they had stopped things, but — and then I never asked if they picked up again.”


"Therapists" with no training and no mandatory reporter status; one hell of a useful buffer. As even the AP must concede, morally reprehensible as it is, there is a legal standing for a clergy exemption.

Herrod later told Homeland Security agent Robert Edwards he knew from the start that Leizza Adams was unlikely to stop her husband, after he called her into the counseling sessions. The bishop, who was also Leizza’s personal physician, said she seemed “pretty emotionally dead” when her husband recounted his abuse of their daughter. The bishop also recognized the harm being done to MJ. “I doubt (she) will ever do well,” he said in his recorded interview with Homeland Security agents.

Herrod also told Edwards that when he called the help line, church officials told him the state’s clergy-penitent privilege required him to keep Adams’s abuse confidential.

But the law required no such thing.

Arizona’s child sex abuse reporting law, and similar laws in more than 20 states that require clergy to report child sex abuse and neglect, says that clergy, physicians, nurses, or anyone caring for a child who “reasonably believes” a child has been abused or neglected has a legal obligation to report the information to police or the state Department of Child Safety. But it also says that clergy who receive information about child neglect or sexual abuse during spiritual confessions “may withhold” that information from authorities if the clergy determine it is “reasonable and necessary” under church doctrine.


The next passage is Extremely David Hamblin:

In 2012, when Herrod rotated out of his position as bishop of the Bisbee ward — a Mormon jurisdiction similar to a Catholic parish — he told incoming Bishop Robert “Kim” Mauzy about the abuse in the Adams household. Instead of rescuing MJ by reporting the abuse to authorities, Mauzy also kept the information within the church.

In a separate recorded interview with federal agents obtained by the AP, Mauzy said church officials told him he should convene a confidential disciplinary hearing for Adams, after which Adams was ex-communicated in 2013. Mauzy and other church leaders still didn’t report Adams to the police.

...

The revelation that Mormon officials may have directed an effort to conceal years of abuse in the Adams household sparked a criminal investigation of the church by Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre, and the civil lawsuit by three of the Adams children.

“Who’s really responsible for Herrod not disclosing?” McIntyre asked in an AP interview. “Is it Herrod,” who says he followed the church lawyers’ instruction not to report the abuse to authorities? “Or is it the people who gave him that advice?”

When it comes to child sexual abuse, the Mormon church says “the first responsibility of the church in abuse cases is to help those who have been abused and protect those who may be vulnerable to future abuse,” according to its 2010 handbook for church leaders. The handbook also says, “Abuse cannot be tolerated in any form.”

But church officials, from the bishops in the Bisbee ward to officials in Salt Lake City, tolerated abuse in the Adams family for years.

“They just let it keep happening,” said MJ, in her AP interview. “They just said, ‘Hey, let’s excommunicate her father.’ It didn’t stop. ‘Let’s have them do therapy.’ It didn’t stop. ‘Hey, let’s forgive and forget and all this will go away.’ It didn’t go away.”

A similar dynamic played out in West Virginia, where church leaders were accused of covering up the crimes committed by a young abuser from a prominent Mormon family even after he’d been convicted on child sex abuse charges in Utah. The abuser, Michael Jensen, today is serving a 35- to 75-year prison sentence for abusing two children in West Virginia. Their family, along with others, sued the church and settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

“The failure to prevent or report abuse was part of the policy of the defendants, which was to block public disclosure to avoid scandals, to avoid the disclosure of their tolerance of child sexual molestation and assault, to preserve a false appearance of propriety, and to avoid investigation and action by public authority, including law enforcement,” the suit alleges. “Plaintiffs are informed and believe that such actions were motivated by a desire to protect the reputation of the defendants.”

Very few of the scores of lawsuits against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints mention the help line, in part because details of its operations have been a closely guarded secret. The documents in the sealed court records show how it works.


That comes as a bit of a surprise to me since I was able to access a number of source documents regarding how the incoming calls get processed, thanks to the same "Mormonleaks" effort that helped me connect the founder of the Sundance festival and convicted child molester Sterling Van Wagenen to David Lee Hamblin.

And it's especially odd that decades of suits would avoid the subject when it has been a public fact since the mid-90's. Nobody thought to try and force discovery on that? Surely there's some baseline legal principle I don't know about at work here. It's also a known known that all the allegations get forwarded to longtime LDS fixers on retainer Kirton McConkie, who have been on that beat since before the Bountiful and Lehi SRA allegations started hitting the public in the 90's.

The sealed records say calls to the help line are answered by social workers or professional counselors who determine whether the information they receive is serious enough to be referred to an attorney with Kirton McConkie, a Salt Lake City firm that represents the church.

A document with the heading “Protocol for abuse help line calls,” which was among the sealed records obtained by the AP, laid out the questions social workers were to ask before determining whether the calls should be referred to the lawyers.

Mormon officials in the West Virginia case said they did not recognize the Protocol and could not authenticate it. But a ranking church official in a separate sex abuse lawsuit in Oregon confirmed that those answering the help line used a “written protocol” to guide them.

“There would be a page containing various topics to discuss and handle,” said Harold C. Brown, then director of the church’s Welfare Services Department.


The AP then helpfully offers an obscure "collage" version of the document. You get a legible version right here. It was first posted in 2018.

Note that it specifically mentions "Boy Scouts." LDS was one of the largest donors keeping that sorry institutions afloat, and they had to pay out $250m in the recent class action settlement.

The Protocol instructs those staffing the help line to tell callers they are to use first names only. “No identifying information should be given.” Under the heading “High Risk Cases,” it also instructs staffers to ask a series of questions, including whether calls concerned possible abuse by a church leader, an employee, or abuse at “a church-sponsored activity.”

The protocol advises those taking the calls to instruct a “priesthood leader,” which includes bishops and stake presidents, to encourage the perpetrator, the victim, or others who know of the abuse to report it. But it also says, in capital letters, that those taking the calls “should never advise a priesthood leader to report abuse. Counsel of this nature should come only from legal counsel.”


That counsel comes from attorneys from Kirton McConkie, which represents the church.

Joseph Osmond, one of the Kirton McConkie lawyers assigned to take help line calls, said in a sealed deposition that he’s always ready to deal with sex abuse complaints.

“Wherever I am. The call comes to my cell phone,” he said. He then acknowledged that he did not refer calls to a social worker and wouldn’t know how to do so.

Maledon, the attorney for the church in the Adams lawsuit, said church clergy or church attorneys have made “hundreds of reports” of child abuse to civil authorities in Arizona over an unspecified number of years. But he could not say how many calls to the help line were not referred to police or child welfare officials and could not provide a referral rate.

Two church practices, identified in the sealed records, work together to ensure that the contents of all help lines calls remain confidential. First, all records of calls to the help line are routinely destroyed. “Those notes are destroyed by the end of every day,” said Roger Van Komen, the church’s director of Family Services, in an affidavit included in the sealed records.

Second, church officials say that all calls referred to Kirton McConkie lawyers are covered by attorney-client privilege and remain out of the reach of prosecutors and victims’ attorneys. “The church has always regarded those communications between its lawyers and local leaders as attorney-client privileged,” said Paul Rytting, the director of Risk Management, in a sealed affidavit.

Mormon leaders established the help line in 1995 and it operated not within its Department of Family Services, but instead in its Office of Risk Management, whose role is to protect the church and members from injury and liability in an array of circumstances, including fires, explosions, hazardous chemical spills and severe weather. The department ultimately reports to the First Presidency, the three officials at the very top of the church hierarchy, according to records in the sealed documents.

Risk management also tracks all sex abuse lawsuits against the church, according to a sealed affidavit by Dwayne Liddell, a past director of the department who helped establish the help line. He said members of the church’s First Presidency knew the details of the help line.


...

But one affidavit in the sealed records which repeatedly says the church condemns child sexual abuse, also suggests the church is more concerned about the spiritual well-being of perpetrators than the physical and emotional well-being of young victims, who also may be members of the faith.

“Disciplinary proceedings are subject to the highest confidentiality possible,” said Rytting. “If members had any concerns that their disciplinary files could be read by a secular judge or attorneys or be presented to a jury as evidence in a public trial, their willingness to confess and repent and for their souls to be saved would be seriously compromised.”


The case is ongoing and I'll be watching it closely:

In a recent filing asking a Superior Court judge to dismiss the case, Maledon and other lawyers for the church said the case “hinges entirely on whether Arizona’s child abuse reporting statute required two church bishops ... to report to authorities confidential confessions made to them by plaintiffs’ father.”

Whatever moral or public policy arguments one could make that the church should have told authorities that Paul Adams was raping his daughters are irrelevant, the lawyers argued. “Arizona’s reporting statute broadly exempts confidential communications with clergy, as determined by the clergyman himself,” according to the church motion to dismiss the case. “Reasonable people can debate whether this is the best public policy choice. But that is not an issue for a jury or this court.”

Bishop Herrod, in his recorded interview, said church officials told him he had to keep what Adams told him confidential or he could be sued if he went to authorities.

But McIntyre, the Cochise County attorney, said that’s false, noting the Arizona reporting law says that anyone reporting a belief that child sex abuse occurred “is immune from any civil or criminal liability.”


Aside from the legal arguments over whether Bishops Herrod and Mauzy were excused from their reporting obligations under the clergy-penitent privilege, critics of the inaction by the two bishops and the broader church have raised ethical issues.

Gerard Moretz, a seasoned child sex abuse investigator for the Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff’s Department and an expert witness for the Adams children, is one of them.

“What aspect of your religious practice are you advancing if you don’t report something like this?” he asked.


Well, ask Brigham Young about that one.
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Re: David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sat Aug 06, 2022 4:13 pm

I've located a few other groups of people who claim to be victims of Hamblin and I am inclined to believe them. It is horrifying how many lives the man was able to impact, as well as how long he was able to operate -- basically his entire adult life, right up until today.

It is important to make a case and get a conviction because his MO is deliberately designed to be slippery, deniable. Establishing a public precedent profiling the abuse of hypnosis in order to render victims into unreliable and unbelievable witnesses matters because this kind of behavior is hardly unique to Hamblin.

At the very least, UCSO is currently talking to the two small groups I've mentioned, as well as the orbit around Anne Mecham Gregorson and Lynne Whitesides informal peyote group that Mooney was involved with. One of the most striking aspects of the Bluth testimony was how often other victims of Hamblin were casually popping up: "a total of five women" just in that group alone, and Hamblin continued to operate:

2011
I Learned that David Hamblin had become a medicine man after losing his license. He
had a strong following of people that were seeing him. I had heard that the same
aspects of ritual abuse and sexual predation were continuing.


Later, he offers up more details that sound exactly like the AP investigation, indeed, like pretty much every other fucking case of unimpeded and protected sexual abuse in LDS circles:

-May 24, 2013 -

I send an email to Conrad Gottfredson expressing how painful It has been for me these
past years that he did not believe me nor was he able to support me In confronting Dr.
Hamblin. I received a very sincere email response from Conrad several days later. I
have saved our email interaction.

He apologized for not attending the meeting to confront Dr. Hamblin but wanted me to
know that he did believe me. After my phone call to him In 1997, he pulled his daughter
out of therapy with Dr. Hamblin. He also informed me that he pulled a sister from the
ward from Dr. Hamblin's care and learned that she was sexually abused with the same
tactics.
He also at that time called Dr. Hamblln's stake president and informed him of
David's abusive behaviors and that he would testify against Dr. Hamblin If it was needed
(as mentioned above) Dr. Hamblin was excommunicated from the Mormon church. I
do not know why the church authorities did not report Dr. Hamblln's activity to the
authorities. I believe that bishop Conrad Gottfredsen sent many members of our ward to
See Dr. Hamblin. I know of three families in the Alpine area that have been broken
through both accusation of abuses as well as those who believe they were victimized by
abuse.
I believe these families were all patients of Dr. David Hamblin.


Bear in mind that he confirms earlier that Angie Fenton showed up at Hamblin's door per the advice of Bishop Conrad Gottfredson.

Speaking of knowing complicity, Bluth closes out his statement indicating that Oklevueha NAC was keeping Hamblin in business as a franchisee:

June 1, 2013
...I learn that David Hamblin has been running peyote ceremonies since losing his license.
The supplier of the peyote Dr. Hamblin was giving to his followers was the same supplier
that was giving the peyote to me, In 1996 - 1998. James Warren Mooney.

I was Informed by Brooke that the person administering the Peyote at Dr. Hamblin's
circles was Linda Mooney, wife of James Warren Mooney.
James Mooney was charged
with illegal distribution of peyote in the late 90's. His wife Linda Mooney Is Caucasian with
no Indian decent.

I am not concerned with the legality of peyote use but am concerned that James and
Lynda Mooney are the founders of Oklevueha, a recognized and registered NAC church
and had knowledge of the sexual abuses performed by Dr. Hamblin on his patients and
did not inform the authorities.


So, we're into the dozens and this is likely only the surface. We have seen that Hamblin is prolific, relentless, and harbors sad delusions of grandeur that leave him unconcerned with law enforcement or consequences in general. It is easy to believe the man has hundreds of victims in the Utah County area alone; hopefully I am way off base on that estimate.

The big question from here is how much LDS will continue to provide cover for Hamblin in order to protect their own policies, reputation and assets.
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Re: David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Tue Aug 16, 2022 2:00 pm

Per the docket for American Fork's 4th District, prolific abuser David Lee Hamblin will be in court today ... in order to get some of his charges expunged from his days with Oklevueha Native American Church. That's speculation on my part, past the fact it is undeniably an "expungement hearing" for a felony charge leveled by the state of Utah.

I missed the fact there was a streaming link and regret that.

ROGER W GRIFFIN August 16, 2022
Courtrm 1, 3rd Floor Tuesday
10:30 AM 28 EXPUNGEMENT HEARING
PRO 121101477 State Felony
STATE OF UTAH ATTY: BUHMAN, JEFFREY
VS.
HAMBLIN, DAVID LEE ATTY: FRAZIER, STEPHEN
OTN: 38386520 DOB: 09/18/1954


(That DOB contradicts other information I have gathered but I will defer to the court system on that one, presumably they know better than me.)
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Re: David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Wed Aug 17, 2022 5:42 pm

Props to Herbets for keeping the pressure on. For legal reasons they're still not naming Hamblin but they're not making it hard to figure out who he is, either. Also, he is mentioned as "one of the suspects," not the focus of the investigation. That may not turn out to be accurate, but still, interesting.

Investigators demonstrate confidence in evidence of Utah ritualistic child sex abuse

UTAH COUNTY — Police and prosecutors are demonstrating a high level of confidence in the evidence they've gathered so far in an ongoing ritualistic child sex abuse and human trafficking investigation.

One of the suspects, a therapist, was in court on Tuesday attempting to get his record expunged.

According to documents obtained by FOX 13 News, the man had previously confessed on an undercover recording to sexually assaulting at least one of the alleged victims. The Utah County Attorney’s Office previously dismissed the charges without prejudice.

FOX 13 News has chosen not to identify the therapist at this time.

“I think (the case) may be politically motivated,” said Stephen Frazier, an attorney representing the therapist.

...

The Utah County Sheriff’s Office sent out a vague press release on May 31, 2022, seeking tips related to the investigation. The department said it opened the investigation in April 2021 after discovering other victims had previously reported similar incidents that took place in Utah County, Juab County, and Sanpete County from 1990 to 2010.

The next day, Leavitt publicly named himself as a suspect – announcing he is not a murderer, a cannibal, or a child sex abuser.

“I really want to call out FOX 13. Are they here?” Leavitt asked at the news conference. “Shame on your news station. Shame on Adam Herbets.”

Leavitt stated that he does in fact have ties to the therapist, but he felt questions about the allegations against him were unfair. He also expressed that he believed information about the case was only being publicized because of his upcoming bid for reelection.

“There is no organized ring of abuse. It was debunked more than 10 years ago,” Leavitt said in June. “The allegations that are there are so outlandish and so crazy that – yeah, they’re just not true... That this all occurs less than one week before ballots drop in an election in which I am participating causes me tremendous concern.”

Statements being made by Leavitt’s own high-level employees now contradict their boss.

“I would take exception to the suggestion that this is politically motivated,” said Criminal Division Chief Chad Grunander of the Utah County Attorney’s Office. “This is about trying to do the right thing for this investigation.”

“It is sensitive given the election that this office just went through,” he continued. “Your Honor, my boss, the current county attorney, made some statements – some public statements – that touches on this case, and somewhat of a firestorm was created.”


When deciding whether to grant the therapist’s expungement, Judge Roger W. Griffin removed the Utah County Attorney’s Office from the case due to a conflict of interest. He ultimately agreed to revisit the expungement request in six months, especially if charges are not filed against the therapist.

Leavitt described his relationship with the therapist in June, emphasizing that he previously prosecuted the man.

“When I was in law school, this therapist was my elder’s quorum president for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” Leavitt said. “He was my neighbor. I had a family connection.”

Craig Barlow, a director with the Utah Attorney General’s Office, emphasized to Judge Griffin that the ongoing investigation is firmly progressing. For example, the investigation never stopped when Leavitt lost his bid for reelection.

“Your Honor, this is the investigative file,” Barlow said, holding up a binder. “There’s about 1,000 pages of information there.”

According to UCSO, more than 130 people have called in tips related to the investigation – plus nearly a dozen others who initially planned to talk but suddenly chose not to.


So based on that reporting -- as well as the fact Barlow was both there and brought a binder for a compelling visual aid -- the expungement hearing was not related to Hamblin's ONAC days, but the 2012 charges. Kind of a bold strategy to seek expungement for charges related to the same crimes you're currently under investigation for, but I as I have noted repeatedly, that's just the kind of smug asshole Hamblin is.

The breadth and velocity of the investigation definitely helps explain why most of the people I have contacted have either politely Glomar'd me or outright stonewalled. Also makes me appreciate those who were willing to talk all the more; there is much concern that Hamblin is going to walk again, especially after the AP investigation upthread which has put LDS back on war footing to protect their sacred underwear rep.

Note that Judge Roger W. Griffin is putting some un-subtle pressure on the UCSO to file some charges by next March.
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Re: David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Wed Sep 14, 2022 4:59 pm

Wombaticus Rex » Wed Aug 03, 2022 8:24 am wrote:David Okerlund Leavitt is too big to fail.


Perhaps predictably, ol' boy is rebranding as a QAnon victim and poster boy for the new Satanic Panic, courtesy of NBC's "extremism and the internet" reporter.

Satanic panic is making a comeback, fueled by QAnon believers and GOP influencers
Baseless accusations are branding people as satanist pedophiles at the speed of the internet — just ask a GOP prosecutor who recently lost re-election.

PROVO, Utah — On June 1, David Leavitt, the prosecuting attorney for Utah County, stood behind a lectern in his windowless Provo office before a gaggle of reporters. Wearing a gray suit and an exasperated look, he wanted to make something categorically clear: Neither he nor his wife were guilty of murdering or cannibalizing young children.

It was, by all accounts, a strange declaration from the progressive Republican prosecutor, a Mormon and younger brother of a former Utah governor, Mike Leavitt, who had earned a name for himself by prosecuting a well-known polygamist in 2001. But David Leavitt was up for re-election, Utah County voters would start casting ballots the next week, and the allegations, ridiculous as they may have sounded, had started to spread online and throughout the community.

Some of Leavitt’s most high-profile political opponents were willing to at least wink at the allegations against him: Utahns for Safer Communities, a political action committee opposing Leavitt’s re-election, posted his news conference to YouTube with the caption, “Wethinks He Doth Protest Too Much,” and on their website, the group wrote that Leavitt “seems to know more than he says.”

Leavitt lost the election, most likely not just because of the allegations against him but because of his liberal style of prosecution in a deeply conservative county where opponents labeled him as “soft on crime.” But the allegations’ impact on Leavitt was clear. After decades of serving as a city and county attorney with grander plans for public office, Leavitt now doesn’t think he’ll run again.

“The cost is too high,” he said recently in an interview from his home.

Leavitt’s experience is one of a spate of recent examples in which individuals have been targeted with accusations of Satanism or so-called ritualistic abuse, marking what some see as a modern day version of the moral panic of the 1980s, when hysteria and hypervigilance over protecting children led to false allegations, wrongful imprisonments, decimated communities and wasted resources to the neglect of actual cases of abuse.

While the current obsession with Satan was boosted in part by the QAnon community, partisan media and conservative politicians have been instrumental in spreading newfound fears over the so-called ritualistic abuse of children that the devil supposedly inspires, sometimes weaving the allegations together with other culture war issues such as LGBTQ rights. Those fears are powering fresh accusations of ritual abuse online, which are amplified on social media and by partisan media, and can mobilize mobs to seek vigilante justice.

Witch hunts have traditionally been associated with courts — even the kangaroo kind — but today, the accused can be branded satanist pedophiles at the speed of the internet. Online accusers can bypass police, therapists and the traditional media and out their alleged abusers straight to audiences of millions.

“The ʼ80s and ʼ90s were terrifying and they ruined people’s lives, but they were constrained in certain ways by network technologies,” said Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor in the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication and co-author of the book, “You Are Here: A Field Guide for Navigating Polarized Speech, Conspiracy Theories, and Our Polluted Media Landscape.”

Consider how things unfolded for the Leavitts.

The rumors started on YouTube when Nicholas Rossi, an American who has been accused of faking his death and escaping to Scotland to evade rape charges in Utah, posted videos in which he accused Leavitt and his wife of leading a “ritual sex abuse cult.” Leavitt was overseeing an effort to extradite and prosecute Rossi.

As evidence for his claims, Rossi posted a 151-page statement, made a decade ago by an unnamed woman as part of a criminal case against a therapist that was later dismissed. That statement — which NBC News obtained via public records request to the Provo police department — included gory allegations of sexual abuse and mass murder from the 1980s and ʼ90s perpetrated not just by the therapist, but by more than a dozen other members of the Provo community, including David Leavitt and his wife. In a phone interview, Rossi, who posted the document to his now-defunct website, Zeus News Now, declined to share how he learned about or obtained the document.

The accusations were part of a new case from Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith. Smith, who backed Leavitt’s opponent, had just announced he was opening an investigation into “ritualistic child sexual abuse from as far back as 1990.” (Smith declined an interview with NBC News but publicly denied Leavitt’s claim that the Utah County Sheriff’s office had somehow been involved with the leak of the document. The still-open investigation has netted more than 130 tips from the public, according to a sheriff spokesperson, Sgt. Spencer Cannon.)

A local reporter for KSTU, Salt Lake City's FOX affiliate, chasing a story on the investigation texted the Utah County Attorney’s office — did Leavitt have any comment on this 151-page document?

In lieu of a comment, Leavitt held his news conference.

What upset Leavitt most, he said, holding back tears, was how the accusations had harmed his wife.

Leavitt’s wife, Chelom, a soft-spoken attorney-turned-academic who researches “mindfulness and healthy sex,” described the impact in an interview from her office at Brigham Young University, where she is an assistant professor. The document had been posted to several conspiracy theory news websites and Telegram forums with tens of thousands of followers. Soon after, people began emailing BYU’s dean, calling for Chelom’s firing, citing new, confusing allegations tying her to the Clinton family, satanic pizza parlors and worldwide human trafficking organizations. They called her a demon.

Even her friends had questions. A woman she had known well for years texted asking whether there was “anything to the rumors.”

“That someone who knows me could think that there’s a seed of truth in this — that’s tough to digest,” Chelom Leavitt said.


Yeah, that is pretty wild. Remember, when video of David Okerlund Leavitt discussing his "strategy" for adopting a native child off a reservation in exchange for a deal exporting buffalo meat to Ukraine, it was added to an existing and ongoing Homeland Security investigation: "Noel Engels, a former analyst with Homeland Security Investigations, confirmed his team had been investigating sexual allegations against Leavitt for several years."

The belief that devil-worshippers disguised as trusted members of the community are stalking neighborhood children to abuse and sacrifice them in secret satanic rituals is more prevalent than one might imagine.

“This was a widespread belief back in the ʼ80s,” said Joseph Uscinski, a political science professor at the University of Miami, who studies conspiracy theories. “And when the satanic panic disappeared, it just disappeared. It wasn’t like there was a reckoning.”

Uscinski’s work includes nationwide polls to measure belief in particular conspiracy theories. A survey of 2,000 U.S. residents conducted in June by Uscinksi and a colleague through the University of Miami revealed fears over satanic rituals and child sexual abuse are pervasive.

One-third of respondents agreed with the statement, “members of Satanic cults secretly abuse thousands of children every year.” One quarter agreed that “Satanic ritual sex abuse is widespread in this country,” and 21% agreed that “numerous preschools and public schools secretly engage in Satanic practices.”

As Uscinski’s survey seems to be the first of its kind, it’s difficult to say whether people are now more obsessed with Satan or if it just feels that way.

Discussion about satanism and satanic abuse has increased in recent years, according to data provided to NBC News by Zignal Labs, which analyzes social media conversations. From 2007 to 2014, mentions of satanism on Twitter increased steadily year over year until 2016, when mentions spiked 37%, during a presidential election and at the height of “pizzagate,” an online conspiracy theory rooted in the false belief that a ritualistic child sex ring was run out of a Washington pizza parlor.

The trend continued until it peaked in 2020, during the next presidential election and at the height of QAnon’s popularity. It remains elevated, according to Zignal Labs data.

The rise in conversation surely has much to do with the kind of people fixated on the devil.

“A lot of national and local politicians are engaging in satanic panic rhetoric,” Uscinski said.

“These are the worst things that you can accuse someone of. There’s no redemption. So they make great cudgels to beat your political opponents with.”

The daily invocations of Satan by the biggest players in conservative politics and media are too numerous to catalog in full.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Ga., credited the devil with whispering to women who choose to have abortions and controlling churches who aid undocumented immigrants. In June, she tweeted a video of a man dressed as the devil, stating that the mythical creature would be the next witness called by the House Jan. 6 committee. “They all know him, they all love him, and some even worship him,” she wrote.

Charlie Kirk, the president of one of the largest conservative groups in the country, Turning Point USA, recently opined that Republicans should “use the law to shut down Satanism.” Last year, Fox News host Tucker Carlson expressed his opinion on trans people, telling his viewers, “When you say you can change your own gender by wishing it, you’re saying you’re God, and that is satanic.” The Republican nominee for Missouri’s St. Louis County executive, the top job in the local government, is currently suing her former employer over its mask mandates, citing their use in “satanic ritual abuse.”

And after President Joe Biden’s recent speech on the threat that “MAGA Republicans” pose to democracy, the very subjects of his warnings framed the president’s address as “satanic,” because of the red lights illuminating the backdrop of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.

Popular culture and social media have also ferried ideas about satanism and widespread child abuse from fringe to the mainstream.

The music video for Lil Nas X’s song “Montero (Call Me by Your Name),” which featured the artist giving the devil a lap dance, and a related limited edition sneaker, “Satan shoes,” which contained a drop of blood, invited shocked coverage from Fox News and condemnation from political leaders.

Conspiracy theories similarly engulfed the tragedy in Houston at the Astroworld music festival in November, in which 10 people were crushed to death as the rapper Travis Scott performed on stage. Social media sleuths gathered livestreams of the performance and pieced them together to come to an otherworldly conclusion: that the concert was actually a satanic ritual. The videos weren’t widely shared by devoted conspiracy theorists or religious zealots, but by mainstream Gen Z and millennial users.

This kind of participatory ferreting out of Satan from the popular culture and “raising awareness” of myriad threats to children — real and imagined — were a hallmark of the 1980s’ panic, said Sarah Hughes, author of “American Tabloid Media and the Satanic Panic.”

The public service announcements, after-school programs, sitcoms, round-the-clock news networks, courtroom coverage and new “infotainment” specials hosted by news-adjacent hosts like Geraldo Rivera and Oprah Winfrey all fueled the hysteria, Hughes said.

As issues surrounding children gained national attention, an emerging section of 1980’s media obsessed over child safety issues, including kidnapping, pedophilia, child abuse and cult membership.

“People just ate it up,” she said. “The threats were inflated to a level that was just completely outside the parameters of what was real. There was an assumption that ‘we have to protect these innocent vessels who are the prey of the devil,’ and everything becomes geared toward, ‘Something is coming to get your child.’”

The modern-day equivalent of those hypervigilant PSAs and daytime talk shows is found online: in posts and videos urging “awareness” for dangers like random white vans and other child-trafficking urban legends. These amateur PSAs are seen immediately by millions, with the option to share them across communities.

That rhetoric is not without consequence. People and places perceived as satanic have been the target of harassment, threats and worse in recent months.

Last year, a child in North Wales was kidnapped while abductors held his foster mother at knifepoint. Wilfred Wong, an evangelical Christian and long-time activist behind the group Coalition Against Satanist Ritual Abuse, whose goal is “to increase public awareness and action regarding satanist ritual abuse,” was sentenced to 17 years in prison for his role in the abduction. Wong and a group of five others said they were trying to rescue the child from his father, whom they believed to be a satanist and pedophile.

In the U.S., a Republican candidate for governor in Georgia, Kandiss Taylor, campaigned on demolishing the Georgia Guidestones, a tourist attraction known by some as American Stonehenge. When the mysterious monument — made up of massive granite slabs etched with innocuous rules for living — was blown up in July, Taylor seemed to celebrate, calling them “satanic.”

The Satanic Temple, a nationwide religious organization known for its legal challenges against what it sees as an encroaching Christian theocracy in the U.S., has also become a target, in part for its advocacy of LGBTQ rights and reproductive rights.

In June, the annual pride parade in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, became the subject of attention from the far right after a flyer circulated that featured more than 60 sponsors including the ACLU of Idaho, the Idaho State Police and the Idaho chapter of The Satanic Temple.

“‘Family friendly drag dance party’ being promoted by the Satanic Temple in Idaho. We are living in hell,” tweeted Libs of TikTok, a popular conservative Twitter account that often draws negative attention to LGBTQ events and drag shows.

That tweet, and the resulting media frenzy and ensuing harassment it inspired, caused the Idaho Satanic Temple to drop out of the event. Even so, multiple anti-LGBTQ and white nationalist groups descended on the park, carrying long guns and banners that read “Groomers are not welcome in Idaho,” invoking the term that has bridged anti-LGBTQ activism and the more generic panic over child trafficking and abuse. (Anti-LGBTQ politicians and activists have equated LGBTQ people with predators who abuse children as part of a “gay agenda,” the well-worn panic that the gay rights movement’s true motivation is recruitment. LGBTQ groups have rejected those accusations as homophobic tropes.) Thirty-one members of the white power group Patriot Front were arrested on charges of conspiracy to riot.

The night before Pride in the Park, a doorbell camera captured video of a man wearing a T-shirt with the word “God” written across the front setting ablaze the front porch of the Satanic Temple headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts. In a backpack left at the scene, police found a copy of the Constitution and a bible. At a hearing where he was detained, Daniel Damien Lucey, 42, pleaded not guilty to arson, but reiterated what he had apparently told police: that he would “be OK” with people inside the headquarters getting hurt as long as they were “devil worshippers.” Lucey was indicted this month by an Essex County grand jury, and his arraignment is scheduled for October.

Lucien Greaves, the co-founder of The Satanic Temple, said in a phone interview that his group has grown accustomed to the threats, as it is now routinely mentioned alongside a number of other perceived dangers, including socialism and child abuse.

“The satanic panic mongers have always loved the idea that we’re harassing children or otherwise harming them,” he said. “And that whatever they do against us is justified in the name of preserving the children.”

Greaves said demonization by the religious right is predictable, but he is concerned about what feels like the creeping normalization of satanic-panic-style beliefs in the mainstream or even progressive culture.

“Moral panics don’t really take off when they can be brushed off as being a hysterical evangelical or right-wing talking point,” he said.

Social media can also power new accusations, launch police investigations and invite harassment or worse upon the accused who have little recourse to defend themselves.

On July 1, police in South Windsor, Connecticut, announced that they were reopening an investigation into allegations of sexually explicit crimes against several members of the community. Those allegations had come from TikTok — where a 25-year-old woman named Haley Garcia, who lives in California, posted a video naming her parents and seven others as part of an “elite network” that had done “many ritualistic satanic things” to her and other children years ago.

“That’s what’s happening in Connecticut and beyond,” she said in the video.

The South Windsor Police Department noted that they and the Department of Children and Families had investigated the allegations twice in the last seven years but had been unable to corroborate them.

Garcia, who did not respond to interview requests, is a spiritual coach and self-described shaman, who charges hundreds of dollars per hour, according to her website, and has more than 313,000 subscribers on TikTok. Her video has been viewed 5.3 million times and was shared by accounts with tens of thousands of followers, including “TrueCrimeandRedWine” and more locally, in a private Facebook group, “South Windsor community,” where 7,000 neighbors weigh in on local happenings.

“Let’s all hope justice is served,” one commenter responded.

Garcia received more than 13,000 comments on her TikTok video. Most were in support, but there were exceptions. A user named Frank Day, whom Garcia had named as one of her ritualistic abusers, wrote that she was lying in an attempt to further her business. He asked people to DM him to hear the truth.

“I went in, swords drawn, and tried to wade my way through it,” Day said in a phone interview. “And then I realized what I was up against.”

Social media accounts belonging to the accused were swarmed with Garcia’s supporters. People commented under photos of children that their parents were pedophiles and posted their home addresses. (NBC News reached out to Garcia and the people she accused. Garcia did not respond to requests for comment. The other people she accused either did not respond, or declined to be interviewed or to go on the record, citing fears of increased harassment.)

Day spent a week reporting to TikTok the videos that he said had falsely named him as a sexual abuser to no avail. Flags for bullying or harassment all came back with “no violations,” he said. (TikTok doesn’t have an explicit rule against accusing someone of a crime without evidence.) A representative for TikTok declined to comment.

Day described Garcia’s family as friends who owned the one house in the neighborhood with a swimming pool. Kids, including his own, were always welcome, he said.

“I’ll just say categorically, none of this happened,” Day said in a phone interview. “I’ve known this family for 20 years and none of this stuff is true.”

Day said he went to his police precinct the day of Garcia’s posts, because of the messages that started flooding into his email, his social media DMS and his phone.

By the time Day thought to make his Facebook profile private, it had already been swarmed with Garcia’s supporters. People commented under photos of his children that he was a pedophile, posting his home address and writing that they were “coming for him.” Some described the things that would happen to him in prison. Others sent him violent videos like one with kittens being put through sausage grinders. They wrote that his grandchildren should be kept far away from him.

Day has hired a lawyer and is exploring legal remedies.

“It was just chilling,” he said. “I was afraid the first couple of days, and now I’m just angry.”

Phillips, the University of Oregon assistant professor, said the internet’s power is particularly worrisome in light of what appears to be a renewed satanic panic.

“The internet has basically jumped over the need for other intervention,” she said. “You can have an accusation that goes viral, be seen by millions of people by the end of that day. That was never possible before.”

“You can almost foresee what is coming next,” Phillips said. “It’s what we’ve seen before, but all of the bulwarks are gone.”

CORRECTION (Sept. 14, 2022, 11:25 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the employer of a local journalist. It is KSTU, the FOX affiliate in Salt Lake City, not Fox News.


Note the correction: they're smearing Adam Herbets for covering a sex trafficking / abuse case, very carefully and professionally, with corroboration from both local and federal law enforcement sources, all of them on the record.

Clearly this is just the beginning of such pieces; we can expect to see Leavitt doing a media tour soon, too.
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Re: David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Wed Sep 14, 2022 5:31 pm

Two small notes:

Wombaticus Rex » Mon Aug 01, 2022 12:01 pm wrote:Still digging on the Novell angle and had the misfortune to dig through Jeffrey Vernon Merkey's online footprint. Although he is definitely involved with Mooney, definitely another fake Indian, and definitely got fired from Novell, based on his property records, I find it impossible that he was, at any point in his sad life, in a position to give out $500,000 donations, or even pass around a Lexus.


I've had a few contacts now either assert or suggest that the Novell executive in question was Ray Noorda of the Canopy Group; long since deceased. I am quite ambivalent about this but the scale of the largesse here would be a clean fit to the facts.

Wombaticus Rex » Fri Jul 29, 2022 9:52 am wrote:...I was surprised to see that it later wound up (2014) owned by Susan E. Christensen -- aka Susan "Suki" Hamblin, who is mentioned constantly in the "Victim Statement" documentation. Small world, huh? They have really let the place go -- the tennis court is now a parking lot.


I had someone correct me on this and I believe they are right: This is not, in fact, the same Susan Christensen, despite the initial. The property records list a Burton Christensen, Suki Hamblin's husband is named Craig. Again, way too many overlapping names in Utah, so a single initial is insufficient grounds to be reaching conclusions, my mistake and I appreciate the fact check.
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Re: David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Wed Sep 28, 2022 12:18 pm

I value having these guys on the beat but I don't think they're on target here. Still:

Utah News roundup

In case you haven’t been focused on news out of Utah… lets catchup.

About 3 weeks ago , an employee for the FBI was arrested for aggravated child abuse in Tooele County, Utah

https://ksltv.com/504108/utah-fbi-employee-arrested-on-suspicion-of-multiple-counts-of-child-sex-abuse/amp/

A former mayor of West Bountiful, Utah was arrested for child sexual abuse.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/nation/former-utah-mayor-mormon-bishop-accused-of-sex-abuse-of-children

And a former attorney for Utah’s AG office was arrested for for aggravated child sex abuse.

https://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/2022/sep/16/former-utah-assistant-ag-arrested-again-on-sex-abuse-allegations/

Notice the jobs they held:

FBI, Mayor, Attorney ….

Quite the news round up out of Utah


1. Tooele County is adjacent to both Juab and Utah Counties, and the arrest in question was Robert Alexander Smith, a "supervisory intelligence analyst" who was prepping to retire out of the FBI at 65. There has been a great deal of news coverage, but all of it is rehashing the initial reports of the arrest -- four counts of abuse against young girls in his care; no clarity on whether they were relatives or not. Since then, it's been pretty much radio silence until something formal gets filed. FBI internal affairs will of course not comment past some basic boilerplate copy about taking such things seriously.

2. Former West Bountiful mayor Carl Matthew Johnson admitted to three incidents stretching across the 80's and 90's, and prosecutors have stated they believe there are six victims in all, some shockingly young. This particular headline is the most likely to prove connected to the tangle we have been exploring here in this thread; Bountiful pedophile ring allegations have been documented at some length already. I expect a cursory examination of this man's name and career will yield some surprises but life has been too demanding for an evening of notebooks and Newspapers dot com skullduggery. So far. Note that PBS coverage states the arrest comes not on the heels of the Utah County Sheriffs Office investigation, but the AP report about the Mormon "Help Line" coverup system; and of course, it will probably prove to be unrelated to either narrative once more detailed filings hit the public domain.

3. The mayor was 77 at the time of his arrest and Gary Lee Bell was 66 when he got arrested in Spanish Fork -- another town that has come up often already. He currently stands charged with dozens of counts, all of them related to CSAM possession and creation. He was initially released with a GPS leash and then arrested again a week later when a search of his phone turned up more CSAM. During the course of analyzing that content, LEOs realize that much of it had been shot in Bell's home. This case is all transpiring in Utah County, and Bell was "assistant AG at the Utah Attorney General’s Office" -- note that this is a statewide organization, not a county office. The initial tip came in from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's online monitoring team.

"Great job by Sheriff Smith !!!" one of the comments effuses, but even with all the caveats about parallel construction, protecting sources and avoiding political landmines, it's likely he had nothing to do with any of these. Zion is just a den of snakes...just like any other patch of American soil.

Some more than others, though, innit?
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Re: David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Thu Sep 29, 2022 2:00 pm

Welp: https://sheriff.utahcounty.gov/media/sh ... ?ID=241895

DAVID LEE HAMBLIN ARRESTED ON MULTIPLE SEXUAL OFFENSES AGAINST CHILDREN
09/28/2022 02:37:28 pm

David Lee Hamblin was booked into jail on 6 first degree felony counts of sexual offenses against children and one misdemeanor sex offense.

*** PRESS RELEASE September 28, 2022 ***

This morning investigators from the Utah County Sheriff’s Office Special Victims Unit arrested David Lee Hamblin, age 68, of Provo, and booked him into the Utah County Jail for multiple first-degree felony sexual offenses against a child. Details regarding the arrest are documented in the Probable Cause Statement that was filed in Utah County 4th District Court this morning. This investigation is ongoing and additional information will be forthcoming. This case is being prosecuted by Juab County Attorney Ryan Peters, who has been deputized as a special prosecutor by the Utah Attorney General’s Office for this case.

This case is still being actively investigated. We will not discuss ongoing details of this case. We also will not discuss the names of victims, suspects, or witnesses who may be involved in this case.

Hamblin was booked into jail on the following charges:

-Sodomy of a child, 1st degree felony, 3 counts

-Rape of a child, 1st degree felony, 1 count

-Aggravated sexual abuse of a child, 1st degree felony, 2 counts

-Lewdness involving a child, class A misdemeanor, 1 count

A Judge has not yet set bail or approved the probable cause statement. Once the PC statement has been approved we will make it available to media.

For questions contact Sergeant Spencer Cannon, Public Information Officer, Utah County Sheriff's Office.


There was going to be a media briefing yesterday but that's been postponed for unclear reasons. I hope to slog through the local media coverage of yesterday's events this evening because there were a number of very odd details and quotes in the mix.

Meanwhile, at least the dude is in jail. He may yet wind up cooperating and testifying against the other perpetrators in his circle/family.
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Re: David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

Postby Grizzly » Thu Nov 10, 2022 11:16 am

“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
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Re: David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Thu Aug 10, 2023 9:05 am

The case has continued to unfold despite my neglect for this thread -- reassuring to know the work doesn't matter. Yesterday was a most remarkable twist, though.

Ex-wife of former Utah County therapist arrested in ritualistic child sex abuse investigation

Roselle "Rosie" Stevenson was booked into jail Wednesday afternoon on one count of sodomy against a girl under age 13. A judge has ordered that Stevenson will be held without bail.

Police say the incident occurred at a home in Spring City in 1994 when the victim was six years old until she was approximately 12 or 13 years old.

Court documents state that during investigations, it was found that Stevenson was one of the main suspects in the series of sexual assaults of several children over an extended period.

Stevenson is the ex-wife of former therapist David Hamblin, who was arrested on multiple charges including rape of a child, two counts of sexual abuse of a child and three counts of sodomy on a child.

Stevenson's case is directly related to charges previously filed against David Hamblin and are part of an ongoing investigation involving sexual abuse of children in Utah, Juab and Sanpete Counties during the 1980s and 1990s.


She was clearly implicated in all of the victim statements as an active & enthusiastic participant in the abuse, rather than an intimidated victim looking the other way. Note that her brother Craig Christensen is running for Provo City Council. Good luck, Craig!
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Re: David Lee Hamblin / Utah SRA Case

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Thu Aug 10, 2023 10:06 am

For Rosie to be "held without bail" is a significant detail; David Lee Hamblin was released on a $100,000 bond despite local protests. (A lot of detail at that link.)

As Michael Flynn sagely observed, "there is a machinery behind what we do," and maybe such a machine is growing visible in Utah as Hamblin's trial is being slow-walked through a reticent and compromised criminal justice system. When you squint enough to blur the edges, though, perhaps the most significant detail of all is the fact that this case is being pursued at all rather than buried. Institutions have a richly articulated toolkit for making such problems disappear, though, and doomed investigations are on that list. Activists are rightly concerned that Juab County Attorney Ryan Peters is sabotaging his own case -- hardly unprecedented in the annals of coverups.

But perhaps these delays and mis-steps are downstream of another key detail from the bail coverage:

Additionally, another victim came forward to the police in October 2022 saying they were “repeatedly sexually abused” by Hamblin in the early 1990s in Spring City.


The testimony of that victim led to six additional charges for Hamlin that same month. This could all grind on for another decade with no real results or revelations; consider how long we watched the Epstein case lurch along in plain sight. Next status hearing for the Hamblin case is September 5th.

Earlier in this thread I jokingly said Leavitt was too big to fail, but time may yet prove me happily wrong.

Perhaps this entire family network really is going to be rolled up in a careful collaboration between DOJ and LDS. They will be framed as rogues, deviants, snakes in the temple, and surely they were all of those things and more. But it seems like a dangerous risk to take, given the proximity to both Mormon royalty and the current mess in Ukraine. Not to mention the absolute scandal for Brigham Young University! Then again, considering the state of both LDS leadership and CIA foreign policy, maybe the bigger risk is allowing that system to keep being operated by ... well, actual rapists and murderers. We have just begun to see the blowback from how much power and cover that Order of Nine Angles was given, and this whole Utah network looks equally depraved. Evil is boring and ugly, it escalates because it has to in order for the addicts to feel anything.

As for Leavitt, he fled to Scotland to renovate a castle with his wife. (No, seriously.) He landed with some good, smart PR, getting some prominently placed stories in UK press. Earlier this month, sure enough, it was announced that Nicholas Rossi can be extradited back to Utah, after all. We have examined the LDS-Scotland connection earlier in this thread, I don't think it's a big stretch to infer there are similar family networks in the highlands, and the Leavitts are currently quite safe, indeed.

But that's true for us all until the day it is, suddenly, not.
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