Legal Abuse Syndrome and The 3020-a "Trial"

Karin Huffer

Many people throughout the world are victimized by a judicial proceeding that turned out badly, or turned out well but included torture from an abusive judge and/or lawyer, loss of family, career, money, house, and/or health despite a successful end. Everyone is affected by the experience and many are traumatized by it.

The "teachers' trial" 3020-a arbitration is not a trial, people say. It doesn't matter. The trauma of being put into a situation similar to that of being "on trial" is enough to establish a baseline for psychological trauma and post-traumatic stress syndrome.

In May, 2007, I attended a conference on judicial accountability and whistleblower protection in Washington DC and Karen Huffer was there. She is the Editor of a book on Legal Abuse Syndrome, what I am writing about here.

Legal Abuse Syndrome

WARNING: Protracted litigation can be hazardous to your health.

Legal Abuse Syndrome - PTSD

You know you have traumatic stress when:

•Ø there are no words to describe how you feel...
•Ø your heart is saying, I CAN'T STAND TO BE HERE, NOW
•Ø Peace, rest and recuperation are prevented by intrusive thoughts and emotions

Our's is a time of injustice due to ethical violations, legal abuses and Fraud on the Court.

What do we do about it? Also, See "Current Hot Topics."

Legal Abuse Syndrome(LAS) is a psycholegal trauma (a form of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is a psychic injury, not a mental illness. It is a personal injury that develops in individuals assaulted by ethical violations, legal abuses, betrayals, and fraud. Abuse of power and authority and a profound lack of accountability in our courts have become rampant. This adds greatly to the original distress requiring court assistance in the first place.

This stress can and does lead to physical illness. AMA statistics show that around 85% of all physical illness is directly attributable to stress. Legal Abuse Syndrome is a public health menace in this country. It leads to massive medical intervention costs, burdens insurance companies, and adds to Medicare and Social Security costs. Most painfully it shuts down the brilliance and creativity of its sufferers. Legal Abuse Syndrome is detrimental to all of society, and nobody is immune.

Whatever the court setting, whether it is regarding divorce, child custody, parental support, probate matters, personal injury, property disputes, legal or medical malpractice, criminal charges or other deeply personal issues, the frauds put forth in our courts add greatly to the trauma. When litigants are unable to get fair resolution to their issues, when the court dysfunction further adds to the litigant's burden, when no amount of actual case law compels an equitable outcome, litigants suffer often disabling levels of stress. When further attempts to achieve redress fail, litigants display the hallmark signs of Legal Abuse Syndrome(LAS) a subcategory of PTSD.

To Overcome the Devastation of Legal Abuse Syndrome, become empowered, be enabled to function in court, and inspired to continue you may need supportive help:

There is a self-help book - To order your copy of Overcoming the Devastation of Legal Abuse Syndrome, click here.

PTSD treatment is compensable under most health insurance. To learn more about PTSD see http://traumacenter.org.

Karin Huffer, MS/MFT, author of Overcoming the Devastation of Legal Abuse Syndrome, has achieved over twenty years of research and experience in diagnosing and treating Legal Abuse Syndrome. She has been an ADA Section 504 Consultant worked with schools, businesses, and the judicial system to provide effective accommodations for those who suffer from disabilities. She has put the groundbreaking new out based upone her research that our judicial system can and does cause traumatic stress in those who seek civilized, fair due process of law and redress of grievances.

Synopsis of Legal Abuse Syndrome
LINK

Legal Abuse Syndrome is a 234 page book which discusses the effects of, and steps to recovery from Legal Abuse Syndrome (LAS), which the author has defined as a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder resulting from abusive and protracted litigation.

Anyone subjected to the abuses of the American civil justice system will immediately identify with the cover and quotations appearing on the back cover of the book.

Ms. Huffer begins in the Preface by defining LAS, and in the Introduction identifies seven LAS victims whose stories she has woven into a highly readable self-help book for other victims of LAS. Legal Abuse Syndrome also doubles as a text book for mental health professionals providing therapy to LAS victims.

The book is divided into 10 chapters. Beginning in Chapters 1 and 2, Huffer identifies the symptoms of the LAS victim and the etiology of LAS. These two introductory chapters are followed by 8 chapters in which the author breaks down the Eight Steps to Recovery, consisting of Debriefing, Grieving, Obsession, Blaming, Deshaming, Reframing, Empowerment and Recovery.

Each chapter begins with a relevant quote which sets the stage for the material presented. The book concludes with Maya Angelou's powerful poem, "I rise."

CHAPTER SUMMARIES

Chapter 1 - "Invisible Hostages" reveals the hostage condition that results from betrayals of trust and the quiet crimes. Symptoms of the hostage-stage psychological reactions are put forth with a list of the white-collar crimes, litigation/judicial atrocities and bureaucratic failings that cumulatively assault victims. The case of James graphically portrays the path from the initial affront through the aftermath of the crime. James went to law enforcement agencies, sued through the courts at huge expense, and found his situation worsened to the point of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Chapter 1 includes one cartoon and two illustrations.

Chapter 2 - "The Epidemic" illustrates the chemical changes that take place in the brain during prolonged victimization. It becomes clear that a profound sense of helplessness in the face of jeopardy causes post traumatic stress disorder. The longer the feeling of helplessness lasts, the more pronounced are the symptoms. Victims find themselves in the symptoms as they relate to their own experiences. James shares that at the time he needed the protection of his judicial system, it betrayed him. He was left unable to obtain justice. Extensive research supports the theory that "psycholegal" post traumatic stress disorder is a common occurrence in litigants and victims of the invisible crimes. The reader can look around and see the "cellophane-wrapped" victims who have moved beyond rage to an implosive, cyclical lifestyle. These victims usually remain invisible. The chapter includes one illustration.

Chapter 3 - "Debriefing" begins the second part of the book, the eight steps to recovery. Debriefing is an activity that the reader can do. It centers around a graphic, processing sheet that delineates losses, feelings and facts. This chapter begins a caring journey. The sense of isolation is relieved in victims as they see their experience(s) begin to take a manageable form. The case of P.J., who broke through denial during debriefing helps us understand how to effectively respond to victims. This chapter also lists "absolutely what not to say to a victim." The chapter includes one illustration and two reader participation graphics.

Chapter 4 - "Grieving" clarifies that loss of trust is the greatest loss known to a human being. The case of Judy demonstrates the profound effect of bureaucratic and law enforcement behavior on a victim. Judy had to face the FBI, the IRS, and court after a betrayal by her husband. Grieving masques as depression (the common cold of mental illness), exhaustion, varied illnesses and conditions. Grieving over loss of property is usually discounted in American culture. "Takings" have become a part of business strategy and are often done through the use of the system. Bankruptcy court, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the IRS effect takings of property without due process. Takings threaten the lifeblood of the nation. The case of John depicts the nebulous nature of grief. It is pushed aside if the loss is not "respectably" large. John breaks down over a tiny tangible issue that, in fact, reflects huge intangible losses. In this chapter we see that the loss of belief systems, trust, and ideals are critical to the loss picture. Each case will show that our protective systems did not function as intended, and inadvertently or by design, intensified the trauma. Legal Abuse Syndrome , a journey Beyond Rage... and Back, articulates that the right to redress in order to prevent losses and to exact recompense is key to a sense of safety and security necessary for mental health.

Chapter 5 - "Obsession" leads us toward a sense of control over our lives again. Readers become aware that obsession is a natural response to victimization. Randomization is a difficult concept to grasp in life. When good people are assaulted and left unaffirmed by their culture's systems, life proceeds on a path with no moral compass - no guide to safety. A list of obsessive styles is characterized by descriptive names, i.e. "Lifeguard," obsesses around health; where as an "Inventorier" counts and accounts for all belongings, endlessly. What to do about easing obsession is listed with case examples. A sense of humor interweaves as victims look at their obsessive selves with acceptance.

Chapter 6 - "Blaming" faces victim-blaming head on. Society discourages blaming; therefore, victims are praised for taking responsibility for the awful things that happen to them. Further, victims often see little recourse once blame is established. Attribution is a necessary step toward justice because it reinforces the moral code. This chapter gives a victim a graphic for assessing degrees of blame and then enriches the reader with specific blaming actions dramatized by James and the other cases. Barriers to blaming are explored, such as guilt and societal pressure. There is a self-blame checklist followed by the danger of self blame. Revenge and punishment are contrasted with appropriate, quality blaming actions which drive behavior toward the moral code. Those ignored, outrageous assaults by attorneys and the systems, such as slander and character assassination in the courtroom and denied right to redress, are listed at the end of the chapter. Victims begin to feel that they are not crazy or at fault. This chapter includes a reader participation check list.

Chapter 7 - "Deshaming" offers a totally unique approach to understanding human motivation in terms of power. A continuum is presented which ranks a person's motivating force as either conscience-based or power-based. Human interactions can be visualized as on a grid. The conscience-based person is often victimized even though he may have spiritual power. Power-based people are motivated by envy and a need for superior posture. Lying is a key tool of the power motivated person. Lying wins over truth. Here is where violation of the moral code is "business as usual" for some and an outrage to others. Shame is known to the conscience-based person,who often absorbs shame from the violator as well. A tournament of the game, "Prisoner's Dilemma," is used as an example of strategies that help conscience-based people learn to identify and cope with power-based individuals. Specific skills are taught regarding cooperation, competition, and self-protection. Thus, to free them from shame, the readers are able to relinquish undeserved shame and to follow guiding principles for modification of their belief systems. The case of Manny exemplifies the predicament and the process for deshaming. The chapter includes two illustrations.

Chapter 8 - "Reframing" is the pivotal procedure that embarks upon recovery. All five steps leading to reframing are required to effectively achieve this phase. The victim shifts from a painful perception of self to a new, open, morally sound and personally inspired view of himself. There is an LAS Reframe Exercise which allows the painful issue to come forth. Then the pain is put to the reframe steps. The victim might say, "I was a fool." Reframed, the victim will say, "I was a trustworthy person, I believed that others were largely trustworthy too." Then the victim searches for the wisdom gained from the experience. The chapter includes one reader participation checklist.

Chapter 9 - "Empowerment" more than anything, brings a fresh approach for legal and bureaucratic problem solving to the ordinary person. Steps are blueprints: 1) seek and destroy misinformation, 2) from pragmatic expectations, 3) avoid the predictable, 4) persevere, 5) use mental toughness, 6) become a vigilante consumer, 7) call a crime a crime. Misinformation is a strategic tool used by abusers of the justice systems. It crushes the force of truth distorting the course towards justice. Oppression thrives on misinformation. Empowerment requires effective attacks on misinformation through official channels. The predictable path is owned by the power-centered. They travel ahead and prepare to take the conscience-centered person out at every turn. Victims need each other and creative approaches. This chapter ties into Appendix B which contains a host of resources. Eleven tools and techniques are presented. Rules and regulations of an institution are usually broken by those who abuse from within the organization. Finding those violations empowers a victim tremendously. Mental toughness is the ability to never lose focus regardless of attacks or diversions. Vigilante consumers focus on the real bottom line in America, the consumer. When crimes occur, they must be treated as crimes and dealt with by consumers who keep the focus on the real bottom line. The chapter contains one graphic.

Chapter 10 - "Recovery" brings perspective. Victims become veterans who have an important function in correcting societal wrongs. Readers are brought up to date by parting words from the victims whose cases were portrayed in the book. It becomes apparent that recovery is not a destination but a journey wherein the eight steps are incorporated into a renewed lifestyle. Forgiveness and restoration are discussed as quite separate issues from recovery. Veterans are no longer cellophane-wrapped hostages but are back in the game of life, risking once more. Trust as a staple, societal issue is explored in the context of LAS being a totally preventable assault to the mental health of our nation.

In the Conclusion , Ms. Huffer thanks her patients who have trusted her and taught her that there is an invisible fabric woven of American character found in the ordinary person. It is an invitation for these victims who refused to be soul-murdered to lead the nation back into a future of hope, trust and a code of American conduct that they represent to quietly. The Epilogue contains a snapshot of an LAS victim that has been driven beyond rage.

The book includes a Bibliography which cites referenced and related works included as well as a Glossary of terms used in the book.

Appendix A defines clinical post traumatic stress disorder.

Appendix B - Resources for the Empowerment of the Ordinary Person. This appendix provides the LAS victim with a list of organizations dedicated to legal reform and victim rights.

Appendix C - Victims-Witness Protection Act of 1984.

Appendix D contains worksheets to be used in conjunction with the book.

The following pages contain the Preface and Introduction as they appear in the actual book.

Preface

* If you are deeply disillusioned and feeling oppressed as an American Citizen, resulting from experience with our justice system, you may be suffering from Legal Abuse Syndrome.
* If you've been a litigant in court and justice was not to be obtained at any price, you may be suffering from Legal Abuse Syndrome.
* If you fantasize an act of vigilante vengeance because it seems like the only recourse, you may be suffering from Legal Abuse Syndrome.
* If you've reported a crime and found that you were punished instead of the criminal, you may be suffering from Legal Abuse Syndrome.
* If creativity and dreams have been left in the past because their development was ripped from you and torn to shreds by your protective systems, you may be suffering from Legal Abuse Syndrome.
* If you feel numb, disconnected, and vulnerable, you may be suffering from Legal Abuse Syndrome.
* If you feel that you have been victimized twice, once by a perpetrator and then by your protective system, you may be suffering from Legal Abuse Syndrome.

Some will deny that Legal Abuse Syndrome (LAS) exists. They will remind us that we have an adversarial system of justice. Abuses will be written off as adversaries battling for their clients. Victims will be nothing more than casualties of a "fight for justice." Others will worry that victims of LAS will want compensation for their psychological injuries. Skeptics will ask, "Aren't LAS victims just malingerers wanting more from the system?"

I do not indict the legal profession, fine judges and hard working public servants. I applaud those who serve their clients well in any milieu. We do not bash any organization or profession in this book. Lawyers, judges, FBI agents, police officers and investigators have all crossed my private practice and helped me to delineate the abuse of power that permeates every profession. Many of these professionals are themselves invisible victims also and need the support of the public.

Abusers are studied in this book as a method of exposing to LAS victims the predicament that oppresses them. The systems are explored in the light of victims' experiences. The psycholegal condition is revealed along with skills to help the victim cope with abusers of his systems. The scope is a large one for a marriage and family therapist or or fellow victim to tackle. It may feel unwieldy and threatening to the reader. However, reading and rereading has produced results and has motivated me to risk a big project and perhaps an unpopular one in behalf of those invisible victims who can heal in spite of systems without a cure.

A firm warning to those who would use the following material to damage or discredit any citizen in any manner:

LEGAL ABUSE SYNDROME IS A NATURAL AND NORMAL RESPONSE TO AN ABNORMAL, UNNATURAL, CUMULATIVE TRAUMA, AS WITH ALL POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDERS. ANY ATTEMPT BY ANY PERSON TO DISCREDIT AN INDIVIDUAL'S TESTIMONY, CHARACTER, OR ACTIONS DUE TO THEIR SUFFERING FROM LAS IS TO CLEARLY DEMONSTRATE THE ABERRANT NATURE OF OUR SYSTEM OF PROBLEM-SOLVING. ANY ALLY OF CIVILIAZATION MUST CLEARLY IDENTIFY SUCH BEHAVIOR AS ABUSIVE, PUT A HALT TO DESTRUCTIVE ACTIONS, AND DEVOTE THEIR ENERGIES TO RESTORATION OF VICTIMS OF THE "SYSTEMS".

No one likes to think of himself as a victim. Immediately, it conjures an image of a loser or someone making poor life-choices. Yet, in spite of resistance to facing our victimization, legal abuses have become common. When abuses occur, victims are created. We either have to face that we are victimized or accept an aberration to civilized living as being "just the way it is".

Laws provide for courts, agencies, law enforcement bureaucracies, and regulatory services. We depend on them to resolve our disputes and to protect our cherished rights. When they fail, our nation must deal with the victims and vigilantes left in the wake of officially sanctioned wrongdoing.

In this book, we will explore cases that are shocking and fascinating. They illustrate abuses perpetrated by our legally instituted protective systems and the pain and suffering that results. Citizens are driven "Beyond Rage." However startling and moving our cases may be, we have only touched a segment of their lives and experiences. Each case has left unrevealed depth of trauma and complication that would be prohibitive in space and time to write about in one book.

This work results from my experiences of the past twenty years as a marriage and family therapist in private practice. Throughout my career, a certain discomfort gnawed at me regarding clients who attended my various groups and seminars. While the seminars dealt with the subjects of codependency, substance abuse, parenting, divorce adjustment, assertiveness, stress, or whatever the current topic dictated, there always remained the walking wounded. Those were clients, whose true source of pain was not recognized by family or friends. Worse, it was never clearly defined by helping professionals. With no diagnosis, their condition could not be targeted for treatment. Invisible trauma nebulously danced around the topics, never to be healed in these hungry participants.

It wasn't until a white-collar crime was perpetrated on my family that I saw these walking wounded with uncomfortably opened eyes. After nearly a decade of struggling with the justice system, and working with other such victims,I have concluded that the enormous betrayals and inefficiencies that make up bureaucratic post-crime experiences, are literally attacking the emotional health of this nation. Victims have no satisfying place to turn. Rage accumulates and its sequelae have reached epidemic proportions.

A therapist must, of course, check such observations against the danger of inaccurately projecting onto a client personal feelings or attitudes that go beyond the therapeutic use of self. I have done that. Even more uncomfortably now, i see the massive validation of my theory by participants in the "Beyond Rage" seminars. Still theoretical, but deadly serious, is the thesis of this book that victims in America are, first, assaulted by crime and, secondly, by abuses of power and authority administered by the systems their tax dollars support to provide due process of law. In short, they get a "double whammy."

People of principle find their decency, trustworthiness, responsibility, and use of their courts trounced by systems that perpetrate judicial and bureaucratic atrocities. Americans, who follow a code of conscience, encounter a profound imbalance between the abuses of power perpetrated by those entrusted with the systems and the prohibitive conscience of the ordinary person to violation of values and laws. At the heart of this book is the threatened psychic underpinning of the American citizen which is tied into the Constitutionally protected rights that we depend upon. To imperil the basic freedoms, which Americans are taught are their birthright, is to jeopardize conditions of trust and safety necessary for a healthy, productive life.

Victims challenge the finest of counseling techniques. The lack of closure combines with prolonged, cruel, and unusual punishment exerted by the court system. Ongoing strain of litigation then interfaces with psychological issues. Diagnoses are tricky and dynamic. Healing techniques and strategies are interrupted by the trauma of the proceedings or behaviors of court personnel. Stress reduction training is of marginal value for a litigant who will regularly be administered another dose of outrage. The best of family intervention is defeated if the family court renders a visitation arrangement that destroys continuity in the raising of the children or if the current custodial parent is harassed and stalked, unprotected by the law enforcement system.

Outrage is tough enough. Beyond rage is terribly painful territory. I caution the reader that to earnestly use this self-help material for healing purposes will be challenging. On the other hand, if you choose to stay beyond rage, you exist in a type of living death. So victims of the systems are caught between a tough place and a really hard place. Go slowly, get involved in groups, if possible, but don't let your lifeblood be stripped from you without a fight. This book will help to get you back on your fighting feet. You won't change massive systems or reform your country in all likelihood. However, when all of the trauma has been processed, you will become an empowered, effective individual again.

More and more, helping professionals are being confronted by "psycholegal" issues. Patients are driven beyond rage over an extended period of time during which victims travel an isolated road. The impact of the invisible assaults usually are ignored.

Vigilante violence results when the needs of the majority are not being met by the systems (Tucker). What of the gentle and decent person who values a law abiding mode of life? Unless the unique needs of these victims are identified and healing processes made accessible to them, the cost in pain, suffering, disillusionment, and shutdown of creativity to the individual and society is immeasurable.

Karin Pearson Huffer

© 2010 http://www.legalabusesyndrome.org/

Commercial Law Bulletin

The NYC Teacher Acute Stress Syndrome

For six years I have been invited to attend 3020-a hearings of teachers as "the general public" basically to keep a teacher/friend going through his/her "arbitration-trial" sane, focused, and able to testify. I have willingly donated thousands of hours of volunteer time to sit in the rooms of the sixth floor at 51 Chambers street while evidence is presented by the NYC Board of Education "Gotcha Squad" because there is a huge injustice going on and I am the person who will document what is going on for all of you. I am your eyes.

The process of getting rid of "bad" or incompetent teachers is completely broken. Joel Klein and Mike Bloomberg have tried for almost eight years to alter the reality of those people who work for the NYC Board of Education ("NYC BOE") into thinking that Constitutional rights to due process, the right to face your accuser, the rights to freedom of speech, assembly, religion, to be free from discrimination, and all the other rights that we all learned about when we were young, are not available, different, removed for expediency, and you are simply wrong to think that, etc.

Followers of this line of thinking use threats, your former colleague, your best friend, or someone you trust, to turn against you and end your world as you know it. Suddenly you trust no one. And you feel alone, isolated. Thoughts come to you that this has never happened to anyone else, and you think that you are the only one ever attacked by everyone you know. Everyone becomes suspect, and you no longer trust close friends and family.

Even if you know that you are an excellent teacher/guidance counselor/professional you begin to have doubts. Maybe you are not as good as you thought. Maybe your dislike for "X,Y or Z" has come out, and you were unsuccessful at hiding it and must be punished. Maybe.....

Stop.

The Principals and administrators in your school are supposed to terrify you. They are supposed to lead you to believe that you are incompetent, and alter your reality. You know who you are. You know that if you have been a terrible teacher for 20 years, you should retire/resign. You know that if you are a dedicated teacher who cares, you must fight off the people who would lead you to doubt yourself,and all you have to do is stick to the facts.

But you are stressed to the point of a breakdown. Every time you walk into your school or into the workplace to which you are assigned, your heart starts beating faster...your hands get sweaty, you begin to think that you cannot breathe.

You are reacting normally to the situation. You are not alone. Some people call it "Traumatic stress syndrome" and other people call it "Post-traumatic stress disorder" (see below).

Whatever you call it, it is a well-known phenomenon, and you have become part of a group who have experienced exactly what you are experiening. You are not alone.

You do not have to feel embarrassed by your feelings of helplessness. You are not a victim.

Dont become one (a victim), but fight for yourself, your career, and your future.

Threats are a sign a weakness, I think. Someone who screams threats at you is unable to support anything he/she says, so all he/she can do is scream, threaten and try to make you a victim.

Dont fall for it.

As I wrote above, you know who you are.

Betsy Combier
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter




AT THE MERCY OF THE MOB
Kenneth Westhues, University of Waterloo
LINK
The Mobbing Portal: Resources For Teachers

"Ganging up to collectively humiliate and exclude an individual is normally associated with swarms of children in the schoolyard. Teachers, presumably, act responsibly and logically, intervening in such situations. Ironically, similar acts of social violence take place within the walls of the staffroom. Workplace mobbing in schools is an unfortunate reality. The resources in this section deal specifically with mobbing in educational settings."

A summary of research on workplace mobbing published in OHS Canada, Canada's Occupational Health & Safety Magazine, Vol. 18, No. 8, December 2002, pp. 30-36. Published on the web, January 2003.

In the early 1980s, a Swedish psychologist named Heinz Leymann identified a grave threat to health and safety in what appear to be the healthiest, safest workplaces in the world. German was Leymann’s first language, Swedish his second, but he labeled the distinct menace he had found with an English word: mobbing.

Over the next twenty years, news of Leymann’s (pictured at right) discovery spread

across Europe and beyond. Untranslated, the English name he gave it entered the vocabulary of workplace relations throughout Scandinavia and in Germany, Italy, and other countries. All across Europe, not only specialists in occupational health but managers, union leaders, and the public at large came to recognize workplace mobbing as a real, measurable kind of harm, a destroyer of health and life.

Strangely, recognition of Leymann’s discovery has been slower in coming to the English-speaking world. Newsweek published a popular summary of research on workplace mobbing in 2000, but only in its European edition. In Britain and America, attention has focussed less on mobbing than on the different but related problem of bullying, and, occasionally, on one of its extremely rare possible results: the outbursts of extreme violence, that from time to time make headlines across the country.

Workplace mobbing was almost never discussed in Canada until the coroner's inquest following the murder of four workers at OC Transpo in Ottawa in 1999. In that case, a former employee, Pierre Lebrun, had ended the shooting spree by also taking his own life. It turned out that Lebrun had been ridiculed relentlessly by co-workers for his stutter, and then, after he had slapped one of them in retaliation, been forced to apologize to his tormentors. Had Lebrun been mobbed at work? Was this the phenomenon Leymann had in mind? Media reports and the inquest itself tentatively said it was.

In 2000 and 2001, The National Post publicized my research on mobbing in the academic workplace, the process by which even tenured professors are ganged up on, humiliated, and run out of their jobs. While trying to make sense of some bizarre and hugely destructive university conflicts in 1994, I had stumbled upon Leymann’s work and found it powerfully illuminating of the data in my files.

In the meanwhile, the concept of workplace mobbing caught the attention of the Ontario Nurses Association, the College Institute Educators Association of British Columbia, and a smattering of other union and management groups, which then sponsored workshops on the topic, much as occurred in Germany a decade earlier.

The trauma of being mobbed

To describe mobbing as possibly the gravest threat most workers face is not to ignore threats posed by slippery floors, dangerous machines, toxic chemicals, and the other material hazards that health and safety committees properly make their top priority.

In practical terms, however, the worst kind of harm most Canadians have to fear at work is the kind that arises from faulty human relations, some kind of glitch in how people treat one another. Montreal researcher Hans Selye won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1964, for the best single-word description of today’s main workplace ills: stress. This short English word struck a chord in both the scientific community and the public, as mobbing would decades later, and quickly found its way into other languages. By now, research has shown in a thousand ways the stark, even lethal effects of too much of the wrong kind of stress on physical and mental health.

Mobbing can be understood as the stressor to beat all stressors. It is an impassioned, collective campaign by co-workers to exclude, punish, and humiliate a targeted worker. Initiated most often by a person in a position of power or influence, mobbing is a desperate urge to crush and eliminate the target. The urge travels through the workplace like a virus, infecting one person after another. The target comes to be viewed as absolutely abhorrent, with no redeeming qualities, outside the circle of acceptance and respectability, deserving only of contempt. As the campaign proceeds, a steadily larger range of hostile ploys and communications comes to be seen as legitimate.

Mobbing is hardly the only source of debilitating stress at work, and it was not the only one on which Leymann did research. He interviewed bank employees who had undergone the terror of armed robbery, and subway drivers who had watched helplessly as their trains ran over persons who fell or jumped onto the tracks. Leymann documented the depression, absenteeism, sleeplessness, and other symptoms of trauma resulting from such stressful experiences.

Bank robberies and subway suicides were no match, however, for being mobbed by co-workers in the personal devastation that ensued. Not infrequently, mobbing spelled the end of the target’s career, marriage, health, and livelihood. From a study of circumstances surrounding suicides in Sweden, Leymann estimated that about twelve percent of people who take their own lives have recently been mobbed at work.

How it happens

Mobbing is relatively rare, and many workplaces hum along for decades without a single case of it. But by Leymann’s and others' estimates, between two and five percent of adults are mobbed sometime during their working lives. The other 95 percent, involved in the process only as observers, bystanders, or perpetrators (though occasionally also as rescuers or guardians of the target), mostly deny, gloss over, and forget the mobbing cases in which they took part. That is one reason it has taken so long for the phenomenon to be identified and researched.

That children and teenagers sometimes join in collectively humiliating one of their number is well known--most people can cite examples from their own school days. The widely publicized deaths of two girls in British Columbia–Reena Virk, beaten and drowned in 1999, and Dawn Marie Wesley, driven to suicide in 2000–have heightened public awareness of the cruel reality of swarming or collective bullying among both girls and boys.

Leymann’s contribution was to document beyond any doubt the same reality among adults, even in the cool, rational, professional, bureaucratic, policy-governed setting of a workplace. The tactics differ. Workplace mobbing is normally carried out politely, without any violence, and with ample written documentation. Yet even without the blood, the bloodlust is essentially the same: contagion and mimicking of unfriendly, hostile acts toward the target; relentless undermining of the target’s self-confidence; group solidarity against one whom all agree does not belong; and the euphoria of collective attack.(Emphasis added - editor)



An example from a factory

One of the cases that first opened my eyes to workplace mobbing serves also to illustrate related concepts commonly but mistakenly applied. A former student of mine asked if he and his wife could meet with me. She was being sexually harassed, he said, in the factory where she had worked for most of her adult life.

The label this woman and her husband had placed on her problem fit the facts they presented to me. She was regularly paired for certain tasks with a male co-worker who day after day humiliated her with insults to her work and degrading sexual slurs. Years earlier, when she had threatened to report him to the boss, he had grabbed her arm in a threatening manner.

Yet as this shy, soft-spoken lady shared more facts with me, sexual harassment appeared to be a very partial characterization of her predicament. She had in fact complained to both union and management about the man's offensive behavior, but to no avail. She and her husband were at wit’s end. The leader of the union was a paragon of political correctness. A zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment was posted where all could see. Yet her harasser carried on as before.

Explanation could be found only in the larger dynamics of the work group. This woman ranked at the bottom of the pecking order. She was apart from her workmates in three crucial ways. First, she had a partial disability, the result of an accident at work years before, that under terms of the collective agreement precluded her doing certain jobs. For want of physical dexterity, she was exempt from tasks at which everybody else took a turn. She was also paid at an hourly rate, while most others were on piecework.

Second, though most workers in the group were from immigrant groups, this woman was from a different one than everybody else. Ethnically, she was a minority of one.

Third, while most of her peers sprinkled their speech with obscenities, took crude banter in stride, and seemed to thrive on a relatively coarse workplace culture, this woman did not. She was devoted to her family and her faith.

These and other factors made her an outcast. Her problem was far worse than one man’s harassment and bullying. It was the humiliation of daily loathing by her peers. What drove her over the edge were comments from two female co-workers on a hot summer day when job assignments were being rotated. One called out so that all could hear, “I don’t want to work with the cripple.” Another, distributing sweatbands to combat the heat, passed this worker by saying, “You don’t work hard enough to get one.”

At that point, this veteran of years of co-workers' hostility began crying then and could not stop. She was taken to the nurse, who sent her home. Her husband took her to the hospital emergency room. She was diagnosed with clinical depression and placed on sick leave. She returned to work months later, was again paired with the man who led the harassment and later suffered a severe heart attack. The formal grievances she had lodged were resolved with her early retirement about ten years after the mobbing began.

The case illustrates the escalation that is essential to workplace mobbing. Each higher level of authority, in both company and union, to which this woman and her husband appealed, was faced with overturning the will of a successively larger group of subordinates. Steadily more and higher-level employees over time voiced the common sentiment: this woman is impossible to work with, she has to go.

Mobbing was exacerbated in this case by its leader's special status in the group. Some female workers found him sexy. He had connections for getting cigarettes and alcohol tax-free, and in this way had forged semi-secret ties with other employees. Acting in the role of chief eliminator, he led the campaign to rob one partially disabled worker of her job, her dignity, and her health. The process took years, but it eventually achieved its aim.

Mobbing versus other exits

Why didn’t this factory worker quit? In the answer to this question lie clues to why mobbing is more common in some employment situations than others. Mobbing rarely happens to a worker who can easily relocate to a different employer.

Mobbing is also rare in the case of workers on at-will contracts, since they can be summarily fired. A manager faced with ten subordinates who get along and get work done reasonably well, all of whom despise a certain other subordinate and want to be rid of him or her, ordinarily heeds the collective will. If for some reason the manager does not, there is conflict but not mobbing, since opinion about the acceptability of the worker in question is divided.

Further, in situations where a worker can be terminated only for cause, mobbing seldom occurs if legitimate cause exists. On the basis of clear evidence of substandard performance or serious misconduct, workers are routinely terminated–firmly, but often with compassion and regret.

The worker most vulnerable to being mobbed is an average or high achiever who is personally invested in a formally secure job, but who nonetheless somehow threatens or puts to shame co-workers and/or managers. Such a worker provides no legally defensible grounds for termination, yet usually fails to pick up subtle hints and leave voluntarily. An attractive solution, from the majority point of view, is to bring or wear this worker down, one way or another, however long it takes.

As the process drags on, both sides, collective and individual, dig in their heels. It is often as if the targeted worker has grabbed a hot wire and cannot let go, despite the pain and injury it inflicts. The worker’s investment of self and sense of having been deeply wronged prevent the one resolution that would satisfy the other side.

Ironically, it is in workplaces where workers’ rights are formally protected that the complex and devious incursions on human dignity that constitute mobbing most commonly occur. Union shops are one example, as in the case of the factory worker described above. University faculties are another, on account of the special protections of tenure and academic freedom professors have. It happens in police forces, too, since management rights in this setting are tempered by the oath officers swear to uphold the law. Mobbings appear to be much more frequent in the public service as a whole, as compared to private companies.

Mobbing also appears to be more common in the professional service sector–such as education and health care–where work is complex, goals ambiguous, best practices debatable, and market discipline far away. Scapegoating is an effective if temporary means of achieving group solidarity, when it cannot be achieved in a more constructive way. It is a turning inward, a diversion of energy away from serving nebulous external purposes toward the deliciously clear, specific goal of ruining a disliked co-worker's life.

What to do about it

As a clinician, Leymann made his priority the healing of post-traumatic stress in those most severely affected by mobbing. With the support of the Swedish health service, he opened a clinic for mobbing victims in 1994, and published detailed research on the first 64 patients treated there. That clinic no longer exists and Leymann himself died in 1999, but 200 patients are currently treated in a similar clinic that opened in Saarbruecken, Germany, this year.

Competent, well-informed treatment of the many mobbing targets who suffer mental breakdown is obviously in order, especially since they have often in the past been misdiagnosed as having paranoid delusions.

Psychiatric injury, however, is but one possible harmful result of being mobbed. Some mobbing targets keep their sanity but succumb to cardiovascular disease–hypertension, heart attack, or stroke. Most suffer loss of income and reputation. Marital breakdown and isolation from friends and family are also common outcomes.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, although experts do not agree on the ingredients of the desired ounce. Believers in human perfectibility favor enacting laws and policies that forbid workplace mobbing under pain of punishment. Organizations as diverse as Volkswagen in Germany and the Department of Environmental Quality in the American state of Oregon already have anti-mobbing policies in place. It is too soon to say what effect, if any, such policies will have on the incidence of the phenomenon.

The impulse to gang up, to join with others against what is perceived to be a common threat, lies deep in human nature. It is not easily outlawed. A policy forbidding it may, in practice, become a weapon for convicting some mobbing target of a punishable offense and thereby aiding in his or her humiliation. The evidence is clear by now that policies against sexual harassment have often been used as tools for harassing innocent but disliked workmates. Anti-mobbing policies may turn out to be even more versatile tools for such mischief.

The tiny percentage of mobbing victims–like Pierre Lebrun–who lash back in violent attack would probably have lived out their lives peaceably and productively had they been spared the excruciating pain of relentless humiliation.

All can agree, at least, on the desirability of public awareness of the vital but sad discovery Heinz Leymann made two decades ago, and on the continuing need for careful, critical scholarship that builds on his. The better we understand ourselves, including our darker impulses, the more able we are to keep one another healthy and safe.

For further reading, see the easy-to-read, practical paperback: Noa Davenport, Ruth Schwartz, and Gail Elliott, Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace (Ames, Iowa: Civil Society Publishing, 1999).

Heinz Leymann's original website continues to be maintained.

The Rubber Room
Breaking The Silence
The Mobbing Encyclopedia

The Eva Moskowitz/Joel Klein E-Mail Scandal

Eva Moskowitz has both friends and enemies in New York City. One friend is definitely Joel Klein, as Juan Gonzalez of the NY Daily News revealed last week when he released the 77 pages of emails sent between Moskowitz and Klein.

Moskowitz, wife of lawyer Eric Grannis, is the golden girl of charter schools and the apple of Joel Klein's eye. At least this is what the 125 emails sent between the two (see below) show. Several years ago, however, she managed to give a $350,000 donation of City Council money to the NEST+M school located at 111 Columbia Street in Manhattan's lower East side in order to get her son accepted there. (He was, and NEST is a public school, not a charter).

Joel Klein was made a figurehead Chancellor (remember, he has no contract)by Mike Bloomberg to reform public schools in New York City. Reform how, you may ask? In my opinion, the strategy was to dumb down the curriculum in math and reading, get rid of experienced, senior teachers, and then, when public schools got so bad they had to be closed (no effort made to fix them was part of the plan), bring in charter schools to save the day. Oh, and add into the plan a new way of grading schools so that the New York City parent community would be totally confused as to which school was good or bad on a given day. This "flavor-of-the-week" pattern is most useful when obstruction of parent protests is the focus.

That's what I think.

Anyway, below is the transcript of the discussion between Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on democracy now!

Thanks, Amy and Juan!!! Great job!

Betsy

AMY GOODMAN: Juan, following up on our debate on charter schools, you had a very interesting piece in the New York Daily News today.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes. Well, my column in the paper today—you know, there was a hearing yesterday in Washington of the Education Committee of the House of Representatives over reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, and the Obama administration wants to double the amount of money being spent across the country on new charter schools. And my column actually dealt with one of the people who testified at that hearing yesterday, the lead person testifying at the hearing, Eva Moskowitz, who runs the Harlem Success Academies, a group of about four or five schools in Harlem.

And I’ve been fighting now for months to get the email correspondence between her and the chancellor of the New York City public school system, Joel Klein. And the Department fought me for eight months. We needed a legal ruling. Our newspaper had to appeal to the State Committee on Open Government to get a legal ruling to force them to turn over the material. They finally did. And we actually published not only an article, my column in today’s Daily News, but on our website you can actually get the entire three-year email correspondence between these two figures.

And what it shows is an enormous amount of direct support by the top person in the public school system to these charter schools, in terms of raising money for them, overruling lower-level officials who were insisting that certain policies don’t allow them to do certain things. A very close relationship between the top chancellor of the New York City school system and this very small charter network leader in Harlem.

And, of course, Harlem has become the ground zero for the battle over charter schools, because there are about twenty-five charter schools in Harlem right now. Hundreds of parents are turning out in meetings. There are battles between pro-charter parents and anti-charter parents. It’s creating enormous divisions not only in New York City but throughout the country, as the government fails to improve the public schools but urges parents to continue to go into charters. So it’s a major issue across the country, and the Obama administration, of course, is coming out on the side of more and more charters and not dealing with some of the fundamental problems for how we improve our public schools.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ll link to that at democracynow.org.



Eva Moskowitz has special access to Schools Chancellor Klein - and support
others can only dream of
Juan Gonzalez, NY Daily News, February 25th 2010
LINK

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein often lauds a small group of Harlem charter schools founded by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz.

But few New Yorkers are aware of the access Moskowitz has to the chancellor or the special support he has bestowed on her program, whose four schools enroll just 1,300 of the city's more than 1 million public school students.

Since Moskowitz launched her first Harlem Success Academy in August 2006, Klein has attended at least 13 events for her schools, including several fund-raisers and private meetings with her, 125 e-mails between them show.

The e-mails, obtained by the Daily News under a Freedom of Information request, provide a glimpse into the close relationship - one that would make most principals green with envy.

They show that in addition to Klein's visits, Moskowitz:

- Secured the chancellor's help last year in landing a $1 million donation from a private Los Angeles foundation.

- Got Klein to intervene on her behalf in clashes she had with his subordinates.

- Boasted to him of organizing parent "armies" to advocate for Mayor Bloomberg's educational policies - and of flooding politicians with thousands of pro-charter school postcards.

The News requested e-mails pertaining to the efforts of Harlem Success to get more space in school buildings. The space issue is contentious in many city neighborhoods, and Moskowitz may be the best-known advocate of more public space for charters.

The e-mails clearly show Moskowitz had Klein's ear on the issue, even complaining to him about his aides.

"Dilly dalling [sic] bureaucrats don't want to confront principals," she wrote in June 2008. This was after a top school official refused to allocate Harlem Success Academy 2 an additional classroom in East Harlem's Public School 7.

"I still am short rooms and zoned school is getting more space than charters," Moskowitz said. "Your people will say am sure i am wrong. What they will say is simply not true."

"I've talked to John White [the official in charge of allocating school space] who will call you," Klein wrote back.

A few days later, Moskowitz told Klein that White was not giving her the space she wanted.

"Really could use your intervention," she wrote. "We need to quickly and decisively distinguish the good guys from bad. And yes take away resources from institutions that are harming children and give to those who are truly putting children first."

Not long afterward, the problem was apparently solved. "Help on space much appreciated," Moskowitz wrote.

Asked about her e-mails, Moskowitz said it is her job to advocate for her schools.

"I don't just quietly accept what is dished out to our parents and what I believe are unfair allocations of space that hurt my schools," she said.

At one point, she told Klein city Education Department policy kept her from getting enough mailing lists of public school kids for a marketing campaign for her charters.

"We need to be able to mail 10-12 times to elementary and pre-k families" Moskowitz wrote.

Five days later, Michael Duffy, the head of Klein's charter school division, wrote her:

"The Chancellor asked me [to] give you an update on where things stand with getting mailing labels to you and other charter schools."

Duffy was trying to "overcome the obstacles" of "privacy laws," he said, to make available all the labels Moskowitz wanted.

Klein spokesman David Cantor acknowledged the Moskowitz request led to a change in policy to provide more mailing lists.

"But it didn't only have to do with Harlem Success," he said. "Several charter schools were asking to be able to send mailings to families in their districts."

In a Jan. 11, 2009, e-mail, Moskowitz outlined her plans to build an advocacy network with other charter schools.

"What you are doing is so important," Klein responded. "Your charter colleagues are miles behind."

Since August 2006, the chancellor has attended several parent meetings at Harlem Success; two lottery drawings for its applicants; two poker night fund-raisers for the network at a Manhattan W hotel; an auction at Sotheby's of artwork by Harlem Success children, and several private breakfast meetings with Moskowitz.

"Klein hasn't been to our school in more than five years," said one principal of a high-achieving Manhattan public high school. "I've never had breakfast with him."

"The chancellor meets with several principals, charter school leaders and other N.Y.C. school operators just as often or more," Cantor said.

Cantor pointed to Geoffrey Canada, who operates two acclaimed Harlem Children's Zone charter schools, and to Richard Kahan, who runs the Urban Assembly network of public schools, as examples.

A spokesman for Harlem Children's Zone said Klein had visited its schools "maybe two or three times in the past six years."

Kahan said his network, which has existed for more than a decade and operates 22 schools, has had "maybe a dozen visits" from Klein.

The e-mails also show Klein appealed to Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad to fund Harlem Success, helping Moskowitz get $1 million from Broad's foundation.

"Can't thank you enough for your support," she wrote Klein after getting the money last year.

"We plan to open our last 3 in Harlem in august 2010 and then move to Bronx," she added. "With 27 charters in Harlem [counting other non-Harlem Success charter schools] we will have market share and will have fundamentally changed the rules of the game."

jgonzalez@nydailynews.com

Charter schools look good under Ed Department's grading system
BY Carrie Melago and ERIN EINHORN DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Thursday, December 20th 2007, 12:05 AM
LINK

City school officials Wednesday extended their controversial A-F grading system to 14 charter schools - a month after critics blasted them for exempting charters.

The problem, said city charter-school chief Michael Duffy, was that the publicly funded private schools don't have to submit the same data to the city.

"Charters by definition are independent of the district, so getting information together for them is less straightforward," Duffy said.

Parents and teachers had not taken the opinion surveys that accounted for 10% of grades at other schools.

After critics objected, officials launched a pilot program with 19 charters authorized by the city, but five of those had not been open long enough to have gradable data.

Most of the remaining 14 earned A's or B's, including two - Williamsburg Collegiate in Brooklyn and KIPP Infinity in Harlem - that earned the highest total scores in the city.

A few did poorly, including the Peninsula Preparatory Academy in Far Rockaway, Queens, which scored an F.

Comparisons are difficult because without survey results, attendance accounted for 15% of charter grades but only 5% of public school grades.

The difference upset some charter advocates.

"We thought if charters are going to be graded, let's do it by the same methodology. If not, let's wait until next year," said James Merriman of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence.

He predicted that when all 60 city charter schools are given the option to be graded by the same criteria next year, most will participate.

"Going into this, you want to believe you should be held to the same standard as every other school out there," said Julie Trott, founding principal of Williamsburg Collegiate. "As much as we believe we're doing well and serving students as best we can, it's nice to have outside confirmation."

School officials say they wanted charter grades out before parents consider applying for next year.

"Our desire is to get information into the hands of parents," Duffy said.

cmelago@nydailynews.com

Former City Council member Eva Moskowitz makin' a bundle at nonprofit schools
LINK
Juan Gonzalez - News

Friday, February 27th 2009, 12:32 AM
Ex-Council member Eva Moskowitz made $371,000 for running four charter academies, more than Chancellor Joel Klein got for running 1,400 city schools.
Costanza for News
LINK

Eva Moskowitz, the former City Council member who founded a small chain of nonprofit charter schools, is a passionate and abrasive champion of the charter school movement.

She's also making a bundle.

Moskowitz, who makes no secret of her desire to create 40 charter schools across the city and run for mayor some day, raked in $371,000 in salaries in the 2006-2007 school year from organizations connected to her four schools, tax records show.

Those schools, Harlem Success Academy 1, 2, 3 and 4, have an enrollment of about 1,000 pupils, from kindergarten to third grade.

The nonprofit organizations connected to the schools have yet to file more recent tax returns, but Moskowitz said in an interview late Thursday she received $310,000 last year - the 2007-2008 year - $250,000 in salary and $60,000 in a bonus.

That means Moskowitz, who is responsible for four schools, makes more than Chancellor Joel Klein, who gets $250,000 to run 1,400 schools.

In 2006-2007, she even surpassed John Ryan, the former chancellor of the State University of New York, who earned $340,000 to manage some 70 campuses with nearly 300,000 students.

Needless to say, she left your run-of-the-mill public school principal, with an average annual salary of $124,000, in the dust.

Tax records show in her first year of operation Moskowitz made $85,000 as executive director of Harlem Success Academy, the group that receives DOE money to operate the charter schools.

At the same time, she received $186,000 as chief executive officer of the Success Charter Network, a separate nonprofit that provides "management services" to her schools.

Finally, she received $100,000 as an "independent contractor" for Friends of Gotham Charter School, which provides support finances for Harlem Success.

All three organizations share an address and list as officers Joel Greenblatt and John Petry, the millionaire hedge fund managers who bankrolled the Success Charter Network.

Moskowitz said her unusually high pay for 2006-2007, included compensation for months of planning work from the previous year.

"Yes, I earn a good living," Moskowitz said. "I also have an enormous responsibility to try and design 40 schools that are immensely successful. If your child walks into my school, I treat them like my child."

Charter schools are free to use the money they raise from outside sources any way they see fit - even if that means huge salaries for the chief executive.

Given that Moskowitz routinely complains that the Department of Education has failed to provide a fair share of funding for her students, it's fair to ask why she's paying herself so much for educating so few. Charters get about 90% of what it costs to teach each child and raise funds for additional money.

Parents from Moskowitz's schools vehemently defend the Harlem Success Academy and say their kids are making phenomenal progress. That could very well be true, but the DOE has not posted independent test results for any of the Moskowitz schools.

Her critics, who include educators, parents, the teachers' union and Harlem political leaders, say she is a relentless self-promoter.

They say she is not shy about packing public meetings with a parent group she has organized, and then demanding that other public schools give up their space to make way for her programs.

"We had one meeting in East Harlem last year where she bused in her [students'] parents, and the situation got ugly and tense as they kept demanding space in our school," said one East Harlem community leader.

This week, more than 500 parents from the Harlem Success Academy were bused to a hearing at Public School 241 in West Harlem, a school the DOE wants to phase out and turn over to Moskowitz.

"We're unwilling to accept failure," Moskowitz said. "PS 241 has failed for years on end, and it needs to change."

Parents who send their children to 241, along with the local Community Education Council, say the DOE is violating the law by eliminating a zoned public school and replacing it with a charter.

jgonzalez@nydailynews.com

Mike Bloomberg Is Being Investigated For a Mysterious Disappearance of $750,000

June 14, 2010
G.O.P. Consultant Accused of Stealing Campaign Money
By DAVID W. CHEN and COLIN MOYNIHA, New York Times
LINK

A top Republican political consultant was accused on Monday of stealing $1.1 million from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg during the campaign last year and using part of the money to buy a house.

The consultant, John F. Haggerty Jr., 41, lied to Mr. Bloomberg and other aides by saying that he would spend the mayor’s money, which was funneled through the state Independence Party, on Election Day ballot security and poll watching last November, said Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney.

But Mr. Haggerty, who set up a company, Special Election Operations L.L.C., to execute the Election Day plan, spent $32,000, Mr. Vance charged, and kept about $750,000 for himself. The balance of the money, $450,000, went to the Independence Party.

About $600,000, Mr. Vance said, went toward Mr. Haggerty’s purchase of his childhood home in Forest Hills Gardens, Queens. Mr. Haggerty even wrote out bogus checks from Special Election Operations, Mr. Vance charged, in an effort to cover up the crime.

“The defendant’s fraud was an audacious scheme to steal funds in order to buy a house, cynically misusing our political party process to hide what is common thievery,” Mr. Vance said at a news conference.

Of the five counts listed in the indictment — first-degree grand larceny, second-degree money laundering and three counts of falsifying business records — the first is the most serious and carries a maximum punishment of 25 years in prison. But election lawyers say that if convicted, Mr. Haggerty would most likely face a few months.

Mr. Vance also filed a civil forfeiture action against Mr. Haggerty and his company, seeking the seizure of Mr. Haggerty’s house.

The indictment culminates a politically sensitive investigation by Mr. Vance. Before the indictment, there was buzz in the political world about the unusual way that the mayor’s campaign directed the payment, using personal checks from Mr. Bloomberg rather than the campaign’s official account.

Some lawyers and political analysts say the case could prove embarrassing to the mayor, in shining an unwelcome spotlight on one of his least favorite topics: how he spends his own money.

“The mayor filed a statement with the Board of Elections that he would only make campaign expenditures through his campaign committee,” said one lawyer familiar with the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the investigation. “But what might have happened here is instead of doing that, he gave personal funds to political parties to make political expenditures for him, and that could be stretching the rules.”

Mr. Vance emphasized that his office had found “no criminal misconduct” on the part of the mayor or his campaign.

But he added that a grand jury was reviewing evidence, and suggested that such evidence might pertain to the Independence Party. A lawyer for the party, under order from a judge, is expected to testify on Thursday before a grand jury.

When Mr. Vance was asked on Monday if the Independence Party was cooperating, he said flatly, “No.”

Asked how the mayor’s sophisticated campaign team might have been a victim of fraud, Mr. Vance hinted at the close relationship between the campaign and Mr. Haggerty, a longtime Republican activist who has worked for George E. Pataki and Jeanine F. Pirro, among other officials and candidates.

“They trusted him,” Mr. Vance said.

Mr. Haggerty pleaded not guilty Monday at his arraignment before a State Supreme Court judge, Larry R. Stephen. A lawyer representing him, Raymond R. Castello, pleaded not guilty on behalf of Special Election Operations.

Mr. Haggerty was released on his own recognizance. After the hearing, Mr. Castello told reporters that the investigation began as an inquiry into the possibility that money had been spent illegally by Mr. Haggerty.

“The indictment doesn’t show any money being spent illegally,” he said, adding that Mr. Haggerty had spent “hundreds of hours” working on ballot security issues.

Mr. Castello added: “He didn’t believe he was doing anything illegal. Mr. Haggerty has cooperated fully with the district attorney.”

Mr. Haggerty is now working on Carl Paladino’s campaign for governor.

Mr. Paladino’s campaign manager, Michael Caputo, said Mr. Haggerty would remain on the team, calling him “a loyal and straightforward man of character.”

John Eligon and Isolde Raftery contributed reporting.

From Betsy Combier:

When Mike Bloomberg won the election as Mayor of New York City, and he said to the public that he would take $1 as his salary, we all said that he was so rich, he did not take bribes...he gave them.

Looks like some major media - like below, the NY Post - are trickling out information on how true that assumption really was.

Remember Billy Thompson's laid-back run for Mayor in the past election? There was alot of talk about his wife's Museum getting funded by Bloomberg and his efforts to be elected being compromised.

Another would-be candidate, we were told, newly married Anthony Weiner withdrew from the race for mayor and his wife is working for Mayor Bloomberg.

I'm happy for Mike that he has so much money, but he must tell us what he is doing with it BEFORE it's too late to do something about it.

my two cents.

Betsy

Mayor Bloomberg's money was able to buy silence concerning possible election miscues
Adam Lisberg, NY Daily News, February 28th 2010, 4:00 AM
LINK

Mayor Bloomberg's money was able to buy more than just consultants, polls and advertising in his reelection campaign last year: It was able to buy silence.

The mysterious $750,000 shell company that ran his Election Day poll-watching operation was paid by the state Independence Party, using $1.2 million Bloomberg gave from his own pocket.

Not a penny of it was disclosed until January. All the headlines about how operative John Haggerty can't account for the $750,000 came out after the election was over.

Separately, a coalition of real estate interests also gave $750,000 to the state Independence Party to support City Council candidates.

None of that was disclosed at the time, either, back when voters could have seen which landlords were dropping $45,000 apiece on those candidates - and could have voted accordingly.

A year earlier, Bloomberg dropped another $1.2 million on the Independence Party just as he was pushing to extend term limits with a professional-grade operation that never explained how it was funded.

All those donations went to an Independence Party account that reports its doings only in January and July - and is only supposed to be used for "ordinary activities," not "promoting the candidacy of specific candidates."

The law is flimsy, though, and Bloomberg and party officials believe it was porous enough to soak up the cash without penalty.

Critics say they broke the law, but since the donations were reported to the notoriously toothless State Board of Elections, don't expect a robust probe to find out who's right.

The city's own Campaign Finance Board, by contrast, runs one of the nation's most rigorous monitoring programs for political spending. It audits campaigns, asks for supporting documents and holds candidates to account.

The CFB does it because most city candidates - Mayor Bloomberg not among them - run for office with tax dollars. In exchange for taking public money, candidates forswear big bucks from special interests and agree to intensive monitoring.

Still, clever candidates always find loopholes. The CFB plugged one last year after Bloomberg's challenger, William Thompson, complained that the mayor's personal donations were buying him support without any disclosure.

The CFB agreed. Starting this year, all candidates must report any cash they give from their own pockets to a party.

The board also wants to force outside groups to report their independent spending on city campaigns, so New York voters will have a full picture of who's backing whom before casting ballots.



"There's a gap in disclosure of political activity at the city level," CFB spokesman Eric Friedman said of the board's proposal, which it hopes to enact this year.

"When outside parties go out and spend money on behalf of a candidate," he said, "they're going to disclose which candidate they're supporting, and they're going to disclose where the money comes from."

For New Yorkers who want to know that, it would have been a helpful law during last year's campaign - and during the push to extend term limits a year earlier.

As the law stands now, though, a smart candidate can buy influence - and silence.

alisberg@nydailynews.com

'Phantom' firm got $$ in re-elex
By FREDRIC U. DICKER in Albany and DAVID SEIFMAN in NY, NY POST
Last Updated: 10:35 AM, January 29, 2010
LINK

A $750,000 payment from Mayor Bloomberg's campaign was delivered to a mysterious Albany company that wasn't even created until one month after the November elections, The Post has learned.

In an unusual transaction, Bloomberg's campaign last month sent a $1.2 million check to the state Independence Party -- and the party in turn transferred $750,000 to a previously unknown firm called Special Election Operations. The Independence Party appears to have kept the remaining $450,000.

Special Election Operations has no Web site, isn't found in any Internet or database searches, and was incorporated with the state on Dec. 3, about a month after Bloomberg won re-election as an independent.

The address listed for the outfit, 121 State St. in Albany, is the same as a lobbying firm, Capitol Public Strategies, that is run by many former aides to former Gov. George Pataki.

A partner in the lobbying firm, Ryan Moses, a former state Republican Party executive director who answered the door when a Post reporter visited the address, said he had never heard of Special Election Operations and insisted it wasn't located at that address.

But an hour later, he called The Post to say he had been mistaken. "I didn't recognize the name," he said.

Bradley Tusk, the mayor's campaign manager, said two well-known and politically connected Albany lawyers, Jeff Buley and Mike Avella, were behind Special Election Operations.

Both worked in the mayor's campaign -- but each told The Post that they had no connection to the company and had never heard of it. Neither Buley nor Avella has an office at 121 State St.; both have offices elsewhere in Albany.

On paperwork filed with the state, the organizer of Special Election Operations was listed as Joseph Lipari, a tax lawyer with the firm of Roberts & Holland in Midtown Manhattan. He didn't return numerous calls. As a limited-liability company, no other company officials had to be identified on the paperwork.

Bloomberg's $1.2 million payment went into the Independence Party's housekeeping account, which can only be used for office expenses and party-building purposes -- and not to benefit a single candidate.

So if whatever work Special Election Operations did was strictly for Bloomberg and not all party candidates, it would violate state election law.

Sources said it could also violate the city's campaign-finance rules, since it would be considered an in-kind contribution that wasn't reported.

Independence Party Chairman Frank MacKay accepted "full responsibility" for hiring Special Election Operations but said he had no idea who cashed his party's check for $750,000.

MacKay claimed a consultant whose name he couldn't recall referred him to the company, whose principals he didn't know and couldn't name.

Howard Wolfson, the mayor's campaign spokesman and soon-to-be special counsel, said Bloomberg's contribution was intended to support the Independence Party's "field and Election Day operations around the state -- canvassing, turnout reports, machine checks."

But MacKay told The Post the party's election operation was only citywide.

Asked about the contradiction, Wolfson responded in an e-mail, "I'm not going to speculate on conversations you may have had with Chairman MacKay."

Wolfson repeatedly ignored requests since last week for the names of the people behind Special Election Operations.

Bloomberg has had a long and cozy relationship with the state Independence Party, to which he contributed $1.35 million in 2008 to boost Republicans running for state Senate.

Records show Bloomberg sent $600,000 to the party on Oct. 30 and another $600,000 on Nov. 2, a day before the election.

Wolfson said the party then hired a "specialist for human-resources activities since they weren't going to go out and hire each worker one by one and do all the paperwork that came with it."

fredric.dicker@nypost.com

Mike mystery money went to key elex aide
By DAVID SEIFMAN City Hall Bureau Chief, January 30, 2010
LINK

A $750,000 personal campaign contribution that Mayor Bloomberg channeled through the state Independence Party during last year's mayoral election landed in the hands of a top aide, The Post has learned.

The aide, John Haggerty Jr., served as a Bloomberg "volunteer involved in some of the activities" of Special Election Operations LLC, a hastily formed company that hired 200 to 300 workers to do poll watching on Election Day, according to Ken Gross, counsel to the campaign.

But the company didn't register with the state Secretary of State's Office until Dec. 3 -- a full month after the election.

Haggerty was also the recipient of a separate, eye-popping $120,000 personal contribution from the mayor on Nov. 20, which went to a political committee he had formed a month earlier and registered at his home in Forest Hills, Queens.

Until yesterday, mayoral aides and party officials had refused for a week to say who was behind Special Election Operations.

Frank MacKay, the Independence Party chairman, went so far as to claim that not only didn't he know, but that he couldn't recall the name of the consultant who supposedly recommended he hire the firm.

Special Election Operations listed an address in Albany that's the same as that of Capitol Public Strategies, a lobbying firm operated by aides to former Gov. George Pataki.
INTRIGUE: This lobbying firm is at the Albany address listed for the murky "Special Election Operations."

David Catalfamo, one of the partners in the lobbying firm, said he gave permission for the address to be used on Special Election Operation's incorporation papers, but that was the end of any connection to the company. Some members of the lobbying firm are close with Haggerty.

Although Haggerty worked in the mayor's re-election campaign along with his brother, Bart, Haggerty didn't get paid.

Sources said John Haggerty was instrumental in helping Bloomberg land the Republican ballot line in the face of strong initial opposition from some GOP leaders and that the mayor considers him a trusted adviser.

"There are two people that can get the mayor's ear anytime they want -- [Deputy Mayor] Kevin Sheekey and John Haggerty," said one source.

Leaders of the city Independence Party -- which has been feuding with MacKay for years -- suggested the entire set-up might be "corrupt."

"We have nothing to do with MacKay and Company and we're not the least bit surprised that what they're doing looks fishy, perhaps even corrupt," said Jacqueline Salit, a spokeswoman for the city party and a Bloomberg ally.

One veteran GOP consultant said he believed Special Election Operations was designed to dispense "street money" -- cash that's spread around on Election Day to volunteers and for such incidentals as lunch.

But Howard Wolfson, the mayor's campaign spokesman, insisted the $750,000 -- part of a $1.2 million personal contribution Bloomberg made to the state Independence Party right before the election -- didn't go for that purpose.

"The [Independence Party] made the same Election Day expenses that all party committees make every election for Election Day workers," he said in an e-mail.

"Because the IP does not have the infrastructure to handle this kind of activity in-house, it used Special Election Operations to handle the payroll payments to all these individuals."

Gross said he couldn't immediately provide a list of those workers, saying that was the responsibility of the state Independence Party. Haggerty didn't return repeated phone calls.

david.seifman@nypost.com

Bloomberg's $750K payment for election may have funded purchase of Queens home
Adam Lisberg, NY Daily News, February 14th 2010
LINK

When Mayor Bloomberg funneled $750,000 to a longtime Queens ally last fall, he thought he was buying a citywide poll watching operation.

He may have paid for a house in Forest Hills Gardens, too.

The house was the childhood home of John Haggerty Jr., the Republican operative who has claimed he was working as a volunteer on Bloomberg's third-term campaign.

Haggerty has ducked calls to explain how he spent the $750,000 payment, which went into his newly formed "Special Election Operations LLC."

The money was channeled through the state Independence Party, which got $1.2 million from Bloomberg's pocket right before Election Day.

Sources inside and outside the Bloomberg campaign say it was supposed to buy an extensive Election Day operation, with up to 300 workers paid $500 each to make sure there was no funny business at poll sites.

That only adds up to $150,000, though. One source says the Independence Party can't account for $300,000 to $400,000 of the rest of the money - and has drawn up legal papers against Haggerty to locate the rest.

"It's just infuriating," the source said. "Haggerty probably made money throughout the campaign one way or another."

Special Election Operations got its $750,000 on Dec. 11.(see financial report)

Six days later, Haggerty bought out his brother Bart's share of the family home - paying $1.6 million to the estate of their late father, records show.

It's unclear how much of the purchase was in cash, but Haggerty apparently did not take out a mortgage. The next month, records show, Bart had enough money to buy a $619,000 apartment in Forest Hills - again, apparently without a mortgage.

So where did the Haggerty brothers get that cash? After all, it had been almost a year and a half since their father, a respected longtime lawyer in Albany, passed away.

In his will, he split most of his estate between the brothers - though he gave an extra $30,000 to Bart "due to the extra care, support and effort he expended on my behalf."

Haggerty had another potential pot of Bloomberg cash to tap as well: The mayor gave $120,000 on Nov. 20 to a new political committee Haggerty set up, the 28th Assembly District Republican Committee.

He did not respond to messages left at the house last week, or at the Rego Park office he rents for political operations. Bart did not respond to an e-mail.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. has issued subpoenas in the case, which may deter them from talking even if Haggerty has done nothing wrong.

Bloomberg campaign officials have generally defended Haggerty, who ran Election Day operations for the mayor's 2001 and 2005 campaigns through the Republican Party.

They say he put together an extensive operation in November that could well have cost $750,000. Campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said the campaign offered to pay Haggerty a salary or bonus, but he declined - which he would have been unlikely to do if he really needed money.

"The suggestion is unfair," Wolfson said. "If he was interested in money, he didn't demonstrate that during the campaign."

alisberg@nydailynews.com



Bloomberg Meets With G.O.P. Chairs, Leaves Fast
By Azi Paybarah, New York Observer, February 25, 2009
LINK

Michael Bloomberg met with the five county Republican leaders this morning to seek approval to run in their party's primary, then left after a brief exchange with reporters.

That job was, for the most part, left to Bloomberg campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson, who said that although the mayor would like to run on the Republican line, his administration would continue to "govern" in a nonpartisan manner.

Here's what the mayor said before he left: "It was a nice meeting. These are five county leaders and we talked about the economy, the economy of the country, the economy of New York City in particular. We talked about elections and politics obviously, and I said the last two times I ran, I ran on the Republican line and I’d be honored to run again. We’ll see what they decide to do. But it was a nice meeting, a constructive meeting and most of the politics we discussed were not actually politics of New York City. We just talked about national politics and how we all hope that President Obama will be a good president, and this is not a partisan thing on a national level. We have a new president and it’s time for everyone to pull together and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Then, pointing to me, he said, “And you got a haircut.”

Then he excused himself, saying that he was late for a meeting.

Since Bloomberg is not a member of any party--he dropped his Republican registration around the time top aide Kevin Sheekey was pumping up speculation about a presidential run--he will need approval from three of five county leaders to make it onto a primary ballot.

Bloomberg's meeting with the chairmen at the Metropolitan Republican Club on East 83rd Street lasted more than an hour.

He had walked in with a gaggle of aides including Republicans Matt Mahoney and John Haggerty. Haggerty worked on Bloomberg's 2005 campaign when the Queens Republicans were split between Bloomberg and a former Republican city councilman Tom Ognibene. Haggerty has also waged an intense war with the leadership of the Queens Republican Party, which is now led by Phil Ragusa. Ragusa has said he'd back the mayor if Bloomberg rejoined the Republican Party.

While waiting with reporters on the sidewalk, Wolfson was chided for uncharacteristically wearing a tie. More than once, reporters joked to Wolfson that the meeting was taking too long, with one TV reporter asking Wolfson, "How long does it take to write a check?"

Reporters laughed and Wolfson grinned before saying that "it takes a long time" to talk about the mayor's record of accomplishments.