Maybe it’s me. Maybe I can’t count. Or read.
But in the pdf file on scribd which Tony Ortega represented as “the full court transcripts”, I count way over 100 pages missing from this document – following the original court page numbering.
Here’s how Tony Ortega represented this document to his readers this morning
If this is the full court document as Tony has represented to you, where are the following pages?
Pages 60-104
Page 118
Pages 122-141
Pages 169-184
Pages 189-190
Pages after 191 to the end.
See for yourself:
Oklahoma-DHS-Poff-Deposition.pdf
I’ve asked Tony in this tweet where these pages are.
Tony Ortega never answers questions from me. So maybe someone over at the Bunker can ask him, and maybe they’ll answer them for me.
From Fully Licensed Family Therapist Rachel Bernstein to the crazy lady who thought she recognized Shelly Miscavige in a hardware store, Tony Ortega likes to protect the “veracity” of his sources. The missing pages here all seem to go into questioning the veracity of his source for this story, as much of this deposition is missing.
What gives Tony? Are you trying to manipulate us again?
Or is there some other explanation for the holes in your narrative here?
If Tony Ortega was an objective reporter here, we would be getting the State of Oklahoma’s side of this dispute. But, along with the over 100 pages that are missing from this court document, none of that exists in Tony’s reporting.
You have to ask yourself why.
Don’t you?
On the serious issue of addiction, as far as I know there are no reliable statistics on the recovery rates of various recovery programs. Twelve Step programs are usually given credit for the highest recovery rate but many people are unwilling or not ready to identify with “I’m an alcoholic” or “I’m an addict”.
It’s not uncommon for people to die while in recovery programs. Someone decides to give it one more try and goes out and overdoses. It’s up to the courts to decide if Narconon Arrowhead was directly responsible for the death or deaths which are being litigated.
Very good point, Richard.
You have to think outside the anti-Scientology squirrel cage where all the same old ideas just keep spinning around and around.
“Scientology killed them!”
“Scientology bribes the police!”
“Scientology muscled them under and made them stop investigating!”
“Scientology torpedoed the investigation!”
“Scientology paid them off and now they’re a turncoat spy!”
These same highly unlikely explanations go around and around. They’re the answer to everything. No one ever considers any others in the anti-Scientology squirrel cage.
Like:
“Scientology settled with the agency by making the changes they asked for.”
“Scientology’s attorneys advised them to stop this practice, or that behavior, because the legal liability was too high, so they did.”
“Scientology knows the law and their legal limits very well, and any staff member who goes outside of those limits gets thrown into lower conditions and worse because their actions jeopardize the income of the Church.”
“Scientology loves their money, and so they make sure that the areas where they can lose everything are shored up and legally protected.”
These scenarios are much better explanations for what we have been seeing for the last 5 years, and much more likely to be true.
Even so, Narconon might just be high price quackery. Some people might get better simply from the placebo effect. Spending twenty thousand dollars and a month in a rehab might be a wake up call.
Back to the Godzilla thing. Algonzo arising from the deep to do battle with Ortegra could be a dream sequence in the previously mentioned “Alanzo’s Crusade” movie.
Leah Remini is on the front cover of “US” magazine this week with Tony making comments in the write up.
Looking at Narconon from another point of view, I don’t think doing communication drills and objective processes would do anyone harm. Even a “sweat out” program or whatever they call it might have benefits if combined with proper nutrition. It’s an alternative approach and open for debate.
Getting an addict into treatment is difficult. Wasting that opportunity on communication drills and sauna programs is a crime.
Success of a program must be judged soley by recovery statistics. How many people are free of drugs in a year? Narconon’s statistics (as far as I can tell) approach zero.
Victimizing the vulnerable, it must be Scientology!
I used Scientology’s techniques to get off of drugs very successfully in my early 20’s.
I can’t deny this. I know it’s anecdotal, and I also know that what probably worked for me was that I had a new self-identity of “Scientologist” and all that meant. But it still worked for me.
I think that where it works for anyone in Narconon, it works if they adopt the new self-identity of “Scientologist” too. If not, and they go back to who they were telling themselves they were in the same environment they were in while doing drugs – forget it. Nothing, even the most standard and approved treatment, is going to work under those circumstances.
But that was Scientology, not Narconon. The long term cure to substance abuse seems to be tied to exactly what you describe- a new identity and sense of mission.
The process for getting people detoxed and free of substances is pretty well known. The unknown part is keeping people from relapse.
The interesting question is not “why do people abuse drugs” but rather “why don’t people abuse drugs?” The answer seems to lie in having a purpose, social connections that don’t use, and meaningful work.
Makes total sense that Scientology would often work, although the opioids present a whole different set of challenges.
Just my opinions – First of all, some people have an epiphany or moment of clarity and quit an addiction for good after any form of treatment or therapy, but most people go back out more than once before quitting. Maybe the only way to judge Narconon is by what percentage of people are satisfied after completing its program, whatever it is. The same thing could be said of any other drug addiction program.
Narconon is definitely high priced quackery. If people want to try “alternatve therapy” that is their right, but these people are victimized into thinking they are receiving “evidence based” treatment.
Above Alanzo says, “. . . and they only address me personally . . .” Someone referred to him as Algonzo. That made me think of Godzilla. Godzilla was a badass. Maybe it was a compliment.
Notice how defensive Tony gets when someone questions the narrative he is trying to sell us – even with an obvious expert with experience in this type of matter who is being very polite, professional and rational with him.
I don’t remember Tony treating “TexasLawyer” this way when he sold us the narrative that Marty & Monique Rathbun cheated Ray Jeffrey out of his contingency fee and stole money from his law firm by making a secret deal with David Miscavige and the Church of Scientology to drop their lawsuit.
Do you?
The document on Ortega’s website is a court filing, submitted and then retrieved electronically, starting with the header on the first and each subsequent page:
Case 5:15-cv-00936-R Document 100-5 Filed 11/07/17 Page 1 of 46
All the pages through page 46 are there. Note the word “Document” used in the header – I’d say that counts as a “full document,” as filed.
I’m just noting this, because you left your readers – or at least me, since I don’t accept things unquestioningly – wondering what’s going on here, and that’s the first thing that jumped out at me when I looked at the source material for myself.
Yes, I realize that there a bigger questions here, but you didn’t even ask the right question, which is not why Ortega didn’t post the whole document – he did – but why the document filed with the court doesn’t appear to include everything in the original materials that it’s based on. I’ll go ask that question for you, over at Ortega’s blog.
This is the numbering system of the pages of the court document.
I spoke to PlumTree Reporting, the court reporter today. She told me that the document had to be obtained with the approval of both attorneys by another attorney. She also said that the attorneys may take out pages for whatever reason they want, before they turn them over to a purchaser.
Tony is not telling us the pages have been taken out of the document, or for what reason. He is presenting this information as the “full court document” when it’s not.
The most important problem here, among many, is that the State of Oklahoma’s position is not being reported by Tony Ortega in any of his reporting on this story while posing as an unbiased, objective reporter on this case.
This is another very important pattern of Tony Ortega’s reporting that his readers must keep in mind.
EDIT: The quality of the answers you’ve received so far are staggering over there at the bunker, PM. No one addresses the point at all, and they only address me personally, the history of my blog, etc.
Oh well. It was a nice try, PM.
The only Bunkerite to even come close to the point, Robert Eckert, begins with the obligatory personal insult to me:
Get the bunker complacence with not being provided all the information regarding this case by Tony Ortega. Robert is fine with having opinions and thinking he knows the “truth” about this case without knowing all sides.
The State had an attorney there, asking questions of the plaintiff. I would like to see those questions, and her answers. I keep thinking that the full court document means the full court document.
But I guess that’s only because I’m so stupid.
Ortega still did post the full “Document 100-5,” as the headers indicate. I’m glad to see you did some legwork that might have been done before you posted – and found out, as I suspected, that the full deposition transcript isn’t available.
Has Oklahoma even filed a response in the case yet, saying what their position is? You should be able to find that out, if you check the court records (a quick search, shows that at least some of the docket is available online).
I’d agree with you that the pieces on Ortega’s blog, and his general approach have their shortcomings. But as you’re finding out, it’s a tough and sometimes impossible job to track down all the details around something. Is there anywhere on his blog or in any other representations, that he’s actually “posing as an unbiased, objective reporter”?
The full document certainly is available. The court reporters sell them for $1.50 per page. You have to have the permission of both attorneys. Tony could have gotten every page, if he requested them and the attorneys wanted him to have them.
Now please get this part here: Since he did not get the full court document, he should not have called it the full court document, because it isn’t the full court document. And a line or two about what is missing in the document and why would have been cricket – if he was being a straight shooter about the information he writes about.
But he’s not. And it seems that the overwhelming majority at the Underground Bunker are fine with that.
You can understand that, after Scientology, that makes me sick, right?
If you are so convinced something is being hidden from us, why not ask for permission to buy the dox yourself and then actually do it?
Also, I just have to laugh about what you said on Twitter about how maybe Narconon has fixed things. First, that misses the point that they never should have been certified in the first place because they didn’t meet requirements. Secondly, I guess you missed the story recently about the woman that worked for them when the deaths occurred, left for awhile and then recently went back. According to her account things had not changed and it is still a danger to the unsuspecting public. It was on the Bunker though, so you will probably dismiss it as hysteria. Lastly, really Allen, you think they may have changed things that much? They have shown nothing but utter contempt for any city, state or federal laws that get in their way. All of it is well documented throughout the decades. Not to mention your personal experiences . I seem to remember reading your KR’s where you pointed out things they had done to you were not only off policy but illegal. You have repeatedly said over the past year approx that they are never convicted so they must not be doing anything illegal (or something close to that). One could drive a truck through that logic.
I can see that you are Annoyed. Let me fix that for you, Tony.
Because it would cost me about $300 and I have to wax my poodle later this month.
The point that it makes is that the State agency doesn’t have to take legal action against them, they can simply threaten to take action and Narconon makes the changes necessary. This is how it works all over the world. Everyone avoids a lawsuit and mitigates the threat of being shut down. The problem with your reporting is that you provide no information from the State. You do not interview anyone in charge of compliance for Narconon and other such facilities in OK. So we have no idea what the actual result of the State’s actions were, leaving everyone with the hysterical conclusions that it’s all bedlam in there and no one’s doing anything about it. There is literally no evidence that this is the case since the deaths that occurred and they have attracted so much scrutiny.
According to a former employee. Great source. How about according to a state inspector? That’s a person who would know whether they were in compliance.
They show contempt for them as long as it is in their interest to show contempt, or if they can save money by doing so. As you have reported, the RPF was disbanded 4 or 5 years ago. Why? Because it was a legal liability that could result in criminal charges, the liabilities of which could be huge. So they shut it down.
They care about money, Tony. They’ll do anything to make it and to keep it. Including complying with state regulations for their Narconons.
This is the problem with your tunnel-visioned cherry-picking. There are other possibilities besides “Scientology has so much power they bribe the government and scare everyone to keep themselves from suffering any consequences for being such a criminal organization.”
Even Leah Remini said in Season 1 that Scientology operates just within the law. This is after their trying to find something, anything, illegal that they could catch them on. Scientology has some of the best attorneys in the world who have been working for them for decades. Those attorneys’ main job would be to handle risk management for them. And the least risky advice, and the most likely advice, that they could give would be to follow the law.
But you never cherry pick that possibility because, even though it is the most likely scenario, that possibility ratchets DOWN the hysteria, and does not ratchet it UP.
Thus, your constant manipulation of your readers.
I don’t care about never-ins, Tony. They can wig out and get as hysterical about Scientology as they want.
But Exes do not need that hysteria after Scientology. It actually causes them damage. They need perspective, and a rational environment that addresses the reality of what they were involved in, not nightmare cartoons played over and over in their minds. If they didn’t have PTSD from being in Scientology, they would develop it by accepting the distorted hysteria you constantly create.
You are not good for Exes, Tony Ortega. You need to be questioned, and poked at, and exposed for the hysterical troll that you are.
p.s. Besides what is in the header for the document, you may also need to search for the case under CIV-15-936-R, though I still can’t readily figure out how to find the whole docket in Oklahoma’s own systems. Good luck, as you’re finding, this stuff gets hard, quickly.