Message to Kate Coe: How You Got the Theresa Duncan Story - Wrong, Again

Ok, I've been away from the Blog regarding Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake but I've not forgotten to update readers as promised. I'm still short on distraction-free time to post more extensively about the infomation I have come across, so this blog piece will have to suffice for the time being.

Just today I had a few minutes and just happened to be browsing some of the blogs when I saw that the infamous Kate Coe, of Mediabistro's Fishbowl LA and the unjournalistic LA Weekly pieces on Duncan and Blake, had actually replied to something I'd written a while back in reply to Anne Thompson's August 7, 2007 blurb: Suicide Watch: Blake and Duncan Undone by Paranoia blurb over at Thompson on Hollywood .

I seized the opportunity to give Coe a piece of my mind, thereby including some of the information I'd initially reserved for the update blog piece. I just could not help myself. I am a firm believer that, when opportunity knocks, one should answer the door. So I did.

Kate Coe replies to the comment left by me, Mary McConnell August 15, 2007 at 05:30 PM

"Mary-- I talked to Father Morales for several hours on more than one occasion. While Theresa and Jeremy were indeed very distressed, Father Morales saw no evidence of anyone following, stalking or harassing them. I quoted two people who went on the record about the accusatory emails and letters that Duncan and Blake had sent them--both got lawyers, neither had any affiliation with COS.I was stalked by members of a cult--Children of God--two years ago, and I'm extremely familiar with what it's like to find random photos of my license plates, my kid's school and my dog posted on a website, as well as threatening letters sent to my workplace.

Further investigation may indeed prove that some of your assertions are correct. But to accuse everyone who has a view of Theresa Duncan that differs from yours does not make them a tool of LRON. "
Posted by: Kate Coe August 17, 2007 at 09:06 PM

And I take her to task in reply to it ( I've corrected a typo or two here and edited missing information from the original in bold) :

"Kate, if you spent 2 hours speaking to Father Frank Morales, then where is the evidence of it in any of your articles? Nowhere. Nada. Perhaps the reverend did not give you enough meat to help you shore up your story.

There are many people you did not speak to or perhaps did speak to but you've dismissed as credible because you went into this story to malign the reputations of these two people. Good close friends are not necessary for trash articles like yours and Mr. Lee's. Carol "Christine" Nichols is no better than you for alluding to a professional friendship where none existed anymore. Her's ended years before because she was a lousy businesswoman and was pro-scientology. Interesting how she just happened to be the first mole to speak up badly about the two. You must have been frothing at the bit for the July 31st announcement of Jeremy being ID'd so you could get your trash piece up on August 1st. It's almost as if the thought that these 2 people had good loyal friends, and relatives, had never occurred to you.

Search the internet and you will find those who are calling you out on your coverage of these 2.

Here's one for starters: Raymond Doherty's August 09, 2007
A Letter to Kate Coe: How You Got the Theresa Duncan Story - Wrong

Instead of doing the decent thing and getting a balanced story, you with your envious grudge went seeking those they dismissed as unloyal, all the while implying that these bitter losers would make a better story to match you preconceived gossipy article intended to destroy the goodwill they'd created on the internet.

What a glorious moment I am having, being able to finally respond to you, the rabbit who posts trash on others blogs minimizing the largess of these 2 special and well loved people, then running for cover after you've heated things up with your rumormongering.

**Blake's stepfather knows full well about the intended lawsuit Blake and Duncan were set to begin against Scientology. He probably offered to help them, until he found out just who it was that was to be sued. It's bad enough that Blake's mother is a mental health counselor - a fav target of scientology and it's CCHR front group- but the truth is that Arthur C. Delibert works for the very law firm who provided pro bono representation and lost a major case for their client who was being sued relentlessly by The 'church' of scientology and related entities. And Mr & Mrs Delibert probably tried to talk them out of filing their case against such a hyper-litigious and evil organization. This would surely explain Theresa's last* blog quote.

But you never did your research on the possibility that there was truth to the couple being harassed. Perhaps your own fears from your own experience you mentioned made it easy for you to take the easy way out. Good journalism does not do what you did and failed to do. Shame on you for justifying your lousy articles and selfcentered & myopic blog comments.
If you go down in history for the biased and unprofessional work you did on the life and deaths of this couple, it will be of no more surprise to many. Shame on you.

Posted by: Mary McConnell August 27, 2007 at 09:04 AM

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Duncan wrote: "Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips will be on Jay Leno tonight, children of the Staircase. Wayne was harassed by Scientologists after working with Beck Hansen just like Wit and Mr. Wit Of The Staircase were."

The Seattle, WA office of Arthur Delibert's firm, Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis,

**Paul Lawrence. CAN's attorney in the Scott case on appeal in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, of the Seattle firm of Preston, Gates and Ellis. Lawrence is also the President of the Washington State American Civil Liberties Union. Preston, Gates and Ellis is representing CAN pro bono. Did Scientology Strike Back? American Lawyer/June 1997by Susan Hansen

Yes. The church of Scientology now owns, uses, and operates as and under the tradmark name " Cult Awareness Network" .

So, when you call the hotline to get information about cults, you are talking to a scientologist but you are not made aware of that fact. Quite deceptive. Very Hubbardian.

If Jeremy Blake's parents tried to convince him NOT to sue the Church of Scientology, I can see why Theresa Duncan might have lost hope and sang this swang song of defeat:

* Wit of The Staircase July 10, 2007 Storytelling On The Staircase :

"A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens--second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths." --Reynolds Price

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH SCIENTOLOGY? Parts I & II

'What's the Matter with Scientology?', Ross Douthat of Atlantic dot com. asks. He then provides accurate answers in 2 separate articles in reply to Mark Oppenheimer's puff piece on Scientology and his response Douthat's 1 sentence wham of Part I. The more extensive Part II is a comment on Oppenheimer's response to Part I. Both are excellent and worth reading.

As I commented to Douthat's Part II :

"If Mr Oppenheimer were a Scientologist, he'd wear the label 'Theetie Weetie' , a meaning Hubbard gave to those who sugar coat the hard truth because they cannot handle it.

Mark Oppenheimer tried unsuccessfully to conclude his opinion of Scientology based upon the unique situation Milton Katselas has managed to keep himself in. Being able to control his own involvement in the cult to his own advantage.

Katselas is the exception to the rule other scientologists must follow because he's a 'celebrity' who they are afraid of. You see, the church forgot Katselas about back in the 80's when David Miscavige took reign. All he has to do is make a few phone calls announcing he's called it quits, and the cardboard church falls apart in Hollywood.

Katselas is a fringe member who has not really moved up the cult 'bridge to total freedom' in years, sitting comfortably right where he is, using the parts of scientology that he feels are helpful, gaining a steady flow of clientele as a 'celebrity' while keeping the church staff & management pitbulls at bey.

One day I hope Katselas sees the damage he's doing to the minds of others by creating this facade around the truth, flimsey as it may seem to us 'wogs'.

Mary
ps: Because of your public disapproval of scientology, your scientologist relative may well be forced to 'handle or disconnect' from you. I hope he comes to his senses before they make mincemeat out of him for the connection. "

Posted by Mary McConnell August 23, 2007 7:43 AM

Were Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan "Paranoid" or Did Scientology Stalk and Harass the Couple as They Claimed?

I just finished reading the blog Gothamist 'Duncan and Blake's Final Days' article of August 9, 2007 by Jen Carlson.

Despite ending the article with Glenn O'Brien's eloquent final words on Duncan's blog, The Wit of the Staircase, Carlson's article seems to me to be just more of the same propaganda being used recently to slander the late Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake as being "paranoid".

"Most agree, however, that the accusations, lawsuit and blame being placed on others - all came from a place of paranoia." says Carlson, followed by more quoted slander from The Observer. But is that true? Not really.

In the first and only report from the Washington Post about the Blake and Duncan matters, ' The Puzzling, Tragic End of A Golden Couple ' we read the first and only media comment made by the family:

"Obviously there was much more going on than any of us realized, but he never said anything that suggested there was a problem," said Anne Schwartz Delibert, Jeremy Blake's mother and Theresa Duncan's mother-in-law. "He was devoted to her. He was a loyal caretaker."

Anne Schwartz Delibert is a licensed professional mental health counselor specializing in marriage and family counseling, her office information available on the internet as practicing in the Silver Spring, MD & DC area.

How could Blake's own mother not see the symptoms of paranoia suggested by so many anonymous twits, supposid colleagues friends and in articles like this one. All this beginning the day Jeremy Blake was officially identified as deceased? At the top of the list we find the vengful Kate Coe, scrambling to wherever she can post a derogatory comment whilst no one can post a comment on her blog piece nor the Media Bistro plug and the LA Times piece she co-oped with the very misinformed writer, Chris Lee

As another commentor on the Washington Post article stated "Could it be that these "friends" claiming the couple were mentally unbalanced were not really friends at all and that this is just a seized opportunity for the expression of resentment in a profession known for the potential for displaced envy?"

It's worse than that. I think it's is an outright smear campaign. I am not alone in thinking this. The onslaught of rabid comments is so intense that I suspect many real friends are still shaking their heads trying to digest it and formulate some semblence of truth out of it all.

Interestingly, The Church of Scientology is renowned for treating their enemies to just that kind of smear campaign. But of course, "they were paranoid"... right?

Read the case of Robert W. Welkos, who was harassed shortly before the Los Angeles Times published a comprehensive series on the Church of Scientology he'd co-written with Times staff writer, Joel Sappell. http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/scien384.html

Or try comprehending the horrors writer Paul Brachi had to endure after his expose of Scientology was published in the UK DailyMail:
'Tom Cruise's Church of hate tried to destroy me'by PAUL BRACCHI -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=455886&in_page_id=1879

Paulette Cooper's story is true and verified, yet she was smeared as a terrorist and labeled as mentally unstable until she convinced a judge and jury by willingly being questioned while under 'truth serum'. Several years later an FBI raid of the church found documents that proved the church had set her up.
http://www.xenu-directory.net/critics/cooper1.html

Paulette Cooper spoke up recently in an article for the New York Press Club telling even more details than was contained in her a book written over 30 years ago. Slate Magazine did a review of it:
Writer: I Was Stalked by Scientologists
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2007/06/writer-i-was-stalked-by-scientologists.php#more

You can & should read the complete article from The New York Press Club's Byline:
Looking over my shoulder,The Inside Account of the Story That Almost Killed Me
The Scandal of the Scandal of Scientology
Saturday, June 23, 2007 By Paulette Cooper
http://www.lermanet.com/paulette-cooper/index.htm

When Time Magazine writer RICHARD BEHAR wrote ' Scientology, Thriving Cult of Greed and Power 1991 - (c) Time Magazine, he and others were sued and harassed. Hear his experience as a victim of Scientology's 'Fair Game' Tactics as he discusses it for the first time upon receiving the 1992 LEO J. RYAN award for Cult Awareness http://www.lermanet.com/scientologyscandals/behar.htm

There are many more ordinary and extraordinary people who were made to suffer personal and familial harassment that looking over their shoulder became a way of life for a time. Each one would not hesitate to suggest that it's quite possible Blake and Duncan were being stalked and harassed by the Church of Scientology. Besides, how can a mother NOT know her child is 'paranoid'? Especially one educated in mental illness?

The wolves are out in droves, devouring the reputations of two talented people who deserve better. They claimed the Scientologists were harassing them. They were not alone in claiming to be a target of what is known as Scientology's practice of Fair Game tactics. Let's hope truth reigns after the pack settles down.