Oklahoma wrongful termination lawsuits over suppressed Narconon report

Something is being lubed, not sure if it's palms.

An interesting new PR website: PRESS RELEASE ROCKET is being used to push
Narconon News Google searches up.

I posted a couple comments a few days ago, and had a REPLY: 'Waiting For Moderation'

Then, when searching Google News again a few minutes agao, saw more ROCKET crap. So, I
went to a couple of their sites, and BINGO, my Comments were posted: (for now at least)

It's starting to seem like Mr. Love isn't happy with Narconon.

An Oklahoma County judge threatened to jail the state’s mental health commissioner for ignoring a written order to commit an inmate to a state mental health facility.

District judge Ray C Elliot admonished commissioner Terri White for not transferring 35-year-old Ricky Norman Edwards to the Oklahoma Forensic Center in Vinita per his 24 July order, The Oklahoman reported. The inmate was transferred this week after a contempt-of-court hearing was scheduled for White.

White’s representative, state general counsel Dewayne Moore, said Wednesday that Edwards could not be moved because there were not enough beds at the facility. The judge rejected that explanation.


“You just don’t get to ignore a court order,” he said. “It’s kind of sad that I have to tell the commissioner of the Department of Mental Health the same thing I have to tell someone who’s committed eight felonies.”

A spokesman for the department said after the hearing that the issue is a lack of funding for services, not a failure by the department. Moore said in court that the waiting list to get into the 175-bed center is 100 people long.

“That’s really not my problem, counselor,” Elliot told Moore. “You don’t solve that problem by ignoring a court order.”

A psychologist found Edwards mentally incompetent after police charged him with two counts of sexual battery for allegedly having inappropriate contact with two women in downtown Oklahoma City last May.

The contempt-of-court hearing will be held 2 March.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/05/oklahoma-judge-mental-health-official-contempt-court

State investigators fired for blowing the whistle on Scientology’s rehabs get hearing in Denver

By Tony Ortega, March 23, 2017

Quote:

Yesterday, attorney Rachel Bussett argued before the federal Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, and we caught up with her after she’d gone through the heady experience.

“I’m feeling good about it. The heads in the courtroom were nodding,” she told us. It was a big moment for the 41-year-old Oklahoma City lawyer representing two former Oklahoma state investigators, Kim Poff and Michael DeLong, who found terrible conditions at Scientology’s flagship drug rehab, Narconon Arrowhead, but when they recommended that it be shut down after a series of deaths in 2012, their bosses buried the report and fired them when they complained.

Poff and DeLong filed suit over their terminations, but their cases were gutted and then dismissed by the district court in Oklahoma. Bussett was in Denver to argue to the appeals court that the lower court erred when it considered the retaliation claim in DeLong’s lawsuit but not in Poff’s, who had also sued over gender discrimination.

The meat of their lawsuits, Bussett says, was the claim that they had been fired because they dared to complain that their bosses were too afraid to take on the Church of Scientology. The suits should not have been dismissed without considering the retaliation claim in both — that was Bussett’s argument to the appellate judges, and she felt she got a good reception.

A decision from the court may not be coming for six months or more, she says, which puts back yet again the chances we’ll get our hands on the central document in these cases — the actual investigative report that Poff and DeLong wrote after studying conditions at Narconon Arrowhead, where three patients had died over a nine month period ending with the overdose death of Stacy Murphy on July 19, 2012.

Bussett pointed out to us, however, that the state civil trial over Stacy Murphy’s death is rapidly approaching — it’s scheduled for May in Tulsa, and we know from our previous reporting that the attorney representing Stacy Murphy’s family, Gary Richardson, also received a copy of the Poff and DeLong report under court order. Will the trial finally give us access to the report, as well as the many depositions that Richardson has taken while he investigated numerous deaths at the facility?

Narconon Arrowhead remains open, but we’ve received reports from our sources that it’s operating on fumes, with just a handful of patients in a facility that was built to house 250. Oklahoma was the place where Scientology leader David Miscavige was trying to take Narconon in a new direction — large facilities that not only brought in steady income but also might qualify for government subsidies and insurance plans. After opening a clinic on an Indian reservation in 1990, Narconon moved to the large center on Lake Arrowhead in 2002. But the deaths of Gabriel Graves, Hillary Holten, and Stacy Murphy between October 2011 and July 2012 made even sleepy Oklahoma government agencies take notice. Attorneys also took notice, and over the next three years dozens of lawsuits were filed against Narconon facilities not only in Oklahoma but also in California, Nevada, Colorado, Georgia, Florida, and Michigan.

The deaths had made more public what activists had long tried to warn the public about Narconon — not only that it was a Scientology front, but that instead of the drug counseling it promises, patients are put through beginning Scientology training, the same exercises and processes that are delivered in Scientology churches. Lawsuits also alleged substandard conditions and facilities that were rife with drug use and even drugs traded for sex. (The staffs of Narconon clinics are made up by recent graduates of the program.)

Scientology paid to make many of those lawsuits go away, and Miscavige shifted to a new focus for his rehab empire: Instead of big facilities looking for tax money, he’s gone to small, boutique clinics aimed at wealthy and celebrity clients. So a new Narconon in Ojai, California, for example, was housed in Larry Hagman’s estate, which the church paid $5 million for. It has only six beds, the maximum allowed for it to remain unregulated in the state of California. Exclusive, unregulated, quiet — that’s what Miscavige has shifted to after being sued so many times.

Bussett, meanwhile, tells us there’s another way that documents may be coming: After Kim Poff was fired by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuses Services (ODMHSAS), she was hired at the state’s Department of Human Services (DHS), but she then was let go from that position after we reported on her lawsuit against ODMHSAS. So then, Bussett filed another wrongful termination lawsuit against DHS, and she says it’s moving into discovery.

We asked Bussett about how her clients were coping since being fired. She said that Poff is now working in Colorado. “She couldn’t get another job in Oklahoma. And Michael has gone back to school because he can’t really work in law enforcement.”

Well, we hope that before too long, we can obtain and make public the actual work they did investigating Scientology’s rehab empire, which their bosses then buried. We figure they’re owed that much, at least.

Source: http://tonyortega.org/2017/03/23/st...on-scientologys-rehabs-get-hearing-in-denver/

Kim Poff nears trial over retaliatory firing in Oklahoma

By Tony Ortega, September 7, 2017

Quote:

In 2014, we told you that an Oklahoma state inspector general, Kim Poff, was suing her former employer, the state mental health authority, because she said she had been fired when she complained that her bosses had buried her investigative report recommending that the Church of Scientology’s flagship drug rehab there be shut down. And then, because she had filed that lawsuit, she was fired by another state agency, the Department of Human Services, in retaliation. Poff filed a second lawsuit, against DHS, also in 2014.

That lawsuit against the state DHS has slowly been moving through court over the last three years, and is now nearing a November trial. But first, her claim has to get past motions for summary judgment filed by the state, and yesterday, Poff’s attorney, Rachel Bussett, filed responses to those motions.

We’re very interested to see whether Poff’s case can actually survive to trial in November, but we’re not sure why Channel 9 in Oklahoma City is reporting this as if Kim Poff has filed her lawsuit for the first time.

She hasn’t. This is a three-year old lawsuit that has some new filings in it, but not any major new developments.

As ever, what we’re really interested in with regards to Poff’s lawsuits is her original investigative report recommending that Narconon Arrowhead be shut down. It’s still under seal, and perhaps if this thing does get to trial, we’ll finally get our hands on it.

Source: https://tonyortega.org/2017/09/07/f...cientology-rehab-shows-that-business-is-grim/

Former DHS Employee Settles Lawsuit With The State

Posted: Apr 23, 2018 5:30 PM CDT Updated: Apr 23, 2018 5:30 PM CDT By Dana Hertneky, News 9

OKLAHOMA CITY -
A state investigator who tried shut down the Scientology based drug rehab center Narconon Arrowhead has now settled her lawsuit with the state. She received more than $200,000.
Kim Poff said she was not only fired from her job with the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse for trying to shut down Narconon Arrowhead, but then lost her job with DHS after her attorney told News 9 about the case.
In August 2014, News 9 reported that former Inspector General Kim Poff and another inspector with the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse wanted to shut down the Narconon Arrowhead drug rehab center. But both investigators said because the state didn't want to take on the church of Scientology their recommendations were ignored, their report was buried, and they were fired when they tried to push back.
more @ link (VIDEO)
http://www.news9.com/story/38022618/former-dhs-employee-settles-lawsuit-with-the-state

Shame on the state. And NN Arrowhead is still open.

irksome quote

"The litigation involving Ms. Poff and DHS was settled without determining any issues of liability. Specifically, by agreement of the parties, a jury never had the chance to consider the true reason why DHS felt Ms. Poff should be terminated from her position with the agency.”

the settlement kept it out of the courts.. and a jury trial..

Kim Poff gets $200K in settlement from Oklahoma

By Tony Ortega, April 24, 2018

Quote:

We were pleased to read the news yesterday that whistleblower Kim Poff received $201,912.50 from the state of Oklahoma to settle the latest of her lawsuits.

It was Poff and her investigator Michael DeLong who, in 2012, investigated Scientology’s flagship drug rehab facility, Narconon Arrowhead, after three patient deaths occurred there in a nine-month period. What they found was so bad, they recommended that the state shut down the facility immediately. Instead, according to testimony by Poff, her bosses at the state mental health authority buried her report because they were too afraid to take on Scientology.

When they complained about it, both Poff and DeLong lost their jobs, and so they sued. Poff got a job with another state agency, but then was fired there as well and filed another lawsuit. It was that secondary lawsuit that was still alive and that has now been settled.

Poff’s attorney, Rachel Bussett, told News9’s Dana Hertneky that the payment should be seen as a victory: “This settlement is some kind of vindication to show that she didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. But the state disagreed, saying that no liability was determined in the settlement.

We’re glad that Poff got some money. But when is the state of Oklahoma going to act on what she found at Narconon Arrowhead?

Source: https://tonyortega.org/2018/04/24/s...wn-on-their-denials-about-church-involvement/

Kim Poff, finally free to speak: ‘I want this story out. I want people to know what Narconon did.’

By Tony Ortega, April 26, 2018

Quote:

We talked to Kimberly Poff yesterday, the former inspector general who recently won a $200,000 settlement which ended several years of litigation with the state of Oklahoma. We’ve been following Kim’s story since she was fired for acting as a whistleblower when she revealed that Oklahoma’s officials were afraid to take on the Church of Scientology. She had recommended that its flagship drug rehab facility, Narconon Arrowhead, be shut down following three patient deaths in a nine-month period that culminated with the overdose death of 20-year-old Stacy Murphy in July 2012.

Kim filed a lawsuit against the state’s mental health authority for firing her. In the meantime, she got another job with the state’s Department of Human Services. But DHS also fired her after a news story came out about her whistleblowing, and so she filed a second lawsuit against DHS for that firing.

“The mental health lawsuit lasted for over a year, but we lost,” she points out. The settlement she just received was in relation to the second lawsuit, against DHS, which really had nothing directly to do with her Narconon investigation. “They fired me after finding out about my lawsuit against the other, sister agency.”

Sure, it’s complicated. But we told her that what really mattered to us was that after six years since the death of Stacy Murphy we can finally have an interview with Kim Poff about what convinced her that Narconon Arrowhead should be shut down.

“I want this story out. I want these names out there — Stacy Murphy, Hillary Holten, Gabriel Graves — I want people to know what Narconon did. That’s all I ever tried to do, to live by our mission and protect people,” she says.

We still can’t get our hands on Kim’s investigative reports that so frightened her bosses — they’re still under seal — but we asked Kim herself, what’s in them?

“I found multiple violations of mental health law and of Oklahoma administrative code for substance abuse treatment,” she says. And not only were there shocking examples of a facility way out of compliance, she says, but she soon realized a stunning reality — Narconon Arrowhead never should have been allowed by the state to open for business in the first place.

“They never should have been certified. They could not meet the standards of care. In fact, I believe I was terminated because at one point I told the leadership that some day someone will ask me about Arrowhead’s certification and I will have to tell the truth about it.”

Continued at https://tonyortega.org/2018/04/26/k...-out-i-want-people-to-know-what-narconon-did/

I would love for Ms Poff to appear on Leah's show.