Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Neil Riser campaign worker linked to defunct church girls’ home, accusations of sexual abuse by father-in-law minister

September 16, 2013 by tomaswell

© 2013

Two men with ties to a defunct church-operated home for girls and boys in Bienville Parish—and to the Baptist minister and accused sexual predator who ran the facility—currently are actively involved in the congressional campaign of State Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia), LouisianaVoice has learned.

Timothy Johnson of Choudrant in Lincoln Parish, who was fired earlier this year as a vice president at Louisiana College after leading an unsuccessful coup against President Joe Aguillard, is married to the daughter of Rev. Mack Ford who ran New Bethany Home for Girls and Boys south of Arcadia in Bienville Parish for several decades.

Timothy Johnson performs work on behalf of the Riser campaign, Riser’s campaign headquarters confirmed on Monday. His son, Jonathan Johnson, Ford’s grandson, worked for about a decade as State Director for retiring 5th District Congressman Rodney Alexander at $75,000 per year and is currently a paid employee of the Riser campaign.

LouisianaVoice has obtained more than a dozen affidavits from women who lived at New Bethany as teenagers and each one accuses Ford of sexual abuse, including rape and in at least one case, of having forced a 17-year-old girl at the school to perform oral sex on him.

The girl, now a woman with children of her own, said Ford had her follow him into a building on the New Bethany grounds only to encounter a woman who was cleaning the office. He told the woman to leave so he could “counsel” the girl. Once the woman was gone, he directed the girl to get on her knees. “I thought it was to pray,” she said, but then she said Ford unzipped his pants.

Another girl who claimed to have been subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of Ford, attempted to have Ford prosecuted after she left the home, married and had children of her own but law enforcement officials and the district attorney’s office in Bienville Parish ignored her claims until, despondent over her failed efforts, she committed suicide. Before she killed herself, however, she fired off a scathing letter to Ford.

In her letter, she reminded Ford that she was recruited for a singing quartet which would visit area churches to give testimony in order to attract monetary donations to the home and he would then later force her to have sex with him.

Once, while on a testimonial trip to Rhode Island, she said in her letter, she walked in on Ford having sex with another girl and instead of being contrite and ashamed, Ford blamed women in general, telling her that a man could “smell a woman” and that smell was what caused men to yield to temptation.

“You used your power to gratify your selfish, sick needs with no regard to the harm and pain and years of shame you were inflicting on innocent children,” she wrote. “And sickest of all (were) your attempts to find sexual fulfillment from children you had an obligation to protect. You lied to everyone—our families (and) multitudes of churches across the nation. You lied and said we were safe with you when in fact, you were a predator of the worst kind.”

When the children at the facility were not being sexually abused, each of the affidavits claim, they were being physically and mentally abused. The abuse including beatings, scrubbing children’s bodies with steel wool pads, handcuffing them to their beds with no opportunity to go to the bathroom, being forced to clean commodes and dog pens while wearing no rubber gloves, and forcing other residents to gang up on rebellious residents.

Female residents were forced to turn their backs and look down when male residents walked by. They were told if the boys lusted after them, it was their (the girls’) fault.

Children constantly ran away but were returned by sheriffs’ deputies and Ford steadfastly refused access to the grounds by state inspectors, claiming that he took no state money, was not licensed by the state and was not obligated to comply with state child care laws because as a church-affiliated facility, he was protected by the separation of church and state doctrine.

One of the things the state wanted to inspect was a four-story girls’ dorm that had no windows and no sprinkler system in the building.

It took decades before the state was finally able to shut the facility down and when it was finally closed in 1996, at the organization’s final board meeting, the board member who made the motion to sell off all the facility’s assets was Timothy Johnson, Ford’s son-in-law, married to one of the Fords’ eight daughters.

A support group comprised of former residents of New Bethany who say they each were physically, mentally and sexually assaulted claim that one girl who was assaulted by Ford managed to record the attack and was subsequently whisked away from the school by Timothy Johnson in an effort to protect his father-in-law.

Despite this incident and despite his serving on the board and making the motion to sell the home’s assets, Timothy Johnson is said to have insisted in a conversation with an employee at Louisiana College that he had never heard of New Bethany.

Another interesting twist emerging from documents received by LouisianaVoice involved a 1981 visit to another of Ford’s homes, the New Bethany School for Boys in Longstreet in De Soto Parish. The chairman and spokesman for the school, Rev. Bill Burrows, met with state officials and told them New Bethany was not required to be licensed by the state because of a new state law he had written with the help of then-State Rep. Woody Jenkins of Baton Rouge.

Jenkins would later make three unsuccessful runs for the U.S. Senate against incumbents J. Bennett Johnston, Russell B. Long and Mary Landrieu.

Ford even branched out in his operations, following the pattern set by his mentor, Lester Roloff, who ran several such schools in Texas before dying in a 1982 plane crash. Ford opened a school in Walterboro, S.C., where one of his daughters resided. South Carolina officials later raided that facility, however, and arrested two men who ran the home for cruelty to juveniles after authorities found boys locked in concrete cells wearing only their underwear and with just a coffee can for a toilet.

Ford taught the girls that it was a sin to wear pants and makeup or to listen to popular music or watch television and that if they were friends with anyone of a different faith, they would go to hell.

One girl said she was forced by one of the women at New Bethany to pull up her dress and to pull down her panties at which time she was beaten on her buttocks with a paddle.

On another occasion, a girl said she arrived at New Bethany and was sitting in a room when Ford walked in and asked her name. When she did not respond, he grabbed her by the hair and slapped her repeatedly with both the palm and back of his hand until she screamed out her name. He then told her she would continue to be “spanked” until she could answer in a civil tone.

One girl said she saw a girl who refused to eat grabbed by “several resident females” and held down while a staff member pried open her mouth and shoved peas down into her mouth. When she tried to spit them out, the food was shoved back into her mouth until she gagged whereupon she was told by the staff member that if she threw up, she would be paddled.

One man who removed his daughter from New Bethany was especially critical of the methods employed by Ford. “He would take those kids around to area churches to give testimonials about what a wonderful place it was,” he said. “And those kids weren’t about to rebel because they knew what would be waiting for them later if they did. When they would give their tear-jerking testimonials, the church members would hit the floor with their knees while reaching for their wallets to held Mack Ford with a love offering,” he said.

Ford now lives in retirement at the back of the New Bethany property and his son-in-law moved first into academia and now both he and his son have are involved in the Riser campaign that has itself been the subject of considerable criticism.

First, Alexander announced he would retire in a matter of weeks and then Gov. Bobby Jindal immediately announced Alexander’s hiring as head of the State Office of Veterans Affairs at $150,000 per year, a job that will give a substantial boost (from about $7,500 per year to $82,000 per year) to Alexander’s state retirement over and above his federal retirement and social security benefits.

Then Riser announced his candidacy…but before Alexander had gotten around to announcing that he was stepping down, according to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), leading to well-founded speculation that the Alexander retirement and subsequent state job offer was orchestrated by Jindal to open the door for Riser. Riser, for his part, said the FEC incorrectly dated his candidacy documents.

The state congressional delegation, with the exception of the state’s two U.S. Senators, Democrat Mary Landrieu and Republican David Vitter, immediately endorsed Riser for the 5th District seat.

So now we have a candidate for an office that was created for him by the governor to replace a sitting congressman who will move into a cushy appointive position to feather his state retirement while two campaign workers—a son-in-law and a grandson—tied to a fundamentalist Baptist preacher who is said to have preyed on teenage girls for several decades now work in the candidate’s campaign.

And Jindal tried to tell us on inauguration day back in 2008 that it was a new day in Louisiana.

You can’t sell this as fiction; the plot would be considered far too improbable.

Posted in Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Transparency | 55 Comments »

Hey! We haven’t gone away; we’re just busy cobbling together a pretty good story that’s sure to raise a stink

September 16, 2013 by tomaswell

Dear readers:

I hope you haven’t given up on me because I’ve not posted anything for a few days. There is plenty to write about but I am presently working on a story that will be very explosive and which will generate a lot of controversy in both political and religious circles. Because this will likely be, by far, the most emotionally-charged story I’ve yet written on LouisianaVoice, I am required to move slowly and cautiously to verify all facts and to separate facts from unproven allegations.

I know this sounds like some local TV station hyping its 10 p.m. Thursday news stories a week in advance (a practice I abhor), but I wanted to explain why we’ve been relatively silent these past few days.

Your humble newsboy (with apologies to John Hays for stealing his online nom de plume).

Posted in Politics | 15 Comments »

Could Sports Illustrated story on Oklahoma State be part of underhanded anti-SEC scheme by all those BCS also rans?

September 12, 2013 by tomaswell

It’s not often that we agree with the writers who ply their trade with The Hayride, a web blog that is decidedly pro-Bobby Jindal—especially when the blog refers to Baton Rouge District Judge Janice Clark as a “bully” for threatening to jail members of the LSU Board of Stuporvisors for their failure to comply with her order to release public records to the media.

That said, we rarely call out other bloggers for their opinions because we believe in everyone’s right to his or her own opinions. It’s a position we hope they hold in the same high regard and to date, The Hayride has called me out only once and that was for a sloppy error on my part.

So, we both go about doing our thing, each reading the other on a regular basis and most times disagreeing with the other’s position. That’s the First Amendment working at its best and I hope it can remain that way.

Today’s post by Oscar about the Sports Illustrated series about Oklahoma State and Les Miles found us agreeing in part and adopting a slightly different conspiracy theory, thanks to the suggestion from a friend who put the bug in our ear.

  • That the SI exposé is a piece of tabloid journalism best suited for the now defunct Weekly World Guardian: agreed.
  • That the series was written by an Oklahoma Sooner fan who has his own agenda. Agreed.

But that is as far as our commonality of conspiracy theories goes. His is a bit limited and localized; mine is much more far-reaching and spiced with more intrigue, kind of like the grassy knoll, the inside job on the Twin Towers, Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate and CIA drone assassinations all rolled into one.

No, wait. That CIA drone assassination thing just might be real.

Oh, well, never mind. Here’s our theory.

The Southeastern Conference (SEC) has been kicking butt in the Bowl Championship Series, almost to the point of boredom.

Since 1998, its inaugural year, SEC teams have won nine titles. The ACC, Big Eight, Big East, Big Ten and PAC 12 divided the remaining six championships.

Even more humiliating to the other conferences, the SEC has won the last seven consecutive titles and eight of the last 10. And let’s not forget that in 2011, the championship game featured two SEC teams, Alabama and LSU. With the exception of LSU’s 2003 title and Auburn’s squeaker over Oregon in 2010, all 10 SEC wins have been by double digits.

We’ve already seen how anemic the NCAA is in both its ability to investigate reports of wrongdoing and to mete out appropriate punishment. To illustrate that weakness, one need only look at the Pete Carroll, Reggie Bush, USC “investigation,” the Cam Newton “investigation,” and the Johnny Manziel “punishment.” A half-game suspension? Really? If Manziel was innocent of selling his autographs (and we’re not suggesting guilt or innocence here), he should have received no punishment. If he was guilty, he should be ruled permanently ineligible under existing NCAA rules. A half-game suspension is a joke. Let’s just split the baby.

So, it is left to hack journalists, with the help of the weak sister conferences, to do the dirty work.

It’s this simple: Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma and USC can’t compete on the field with the SEC, so they compete in the only way they can—character assassination, innuendo, and stories based on interviews with players who may or may not have an axe to grind. No matter, if the stories can weaken the SEC’s stranglehold on the national championship it’ll open the door to those schools whose boosters are starting to grumble about the lack of top-tier competiveness.

This is not to say that “student-athletes” (I hate that term) don’t screw up. Of course they do; they’re kids away from home perhaps for the first time and they will test the waters. LSU has had its share under Miles and he did exactly what he should have done in each case: He fired the players. And they were front-line players: Ryan Perrilloux and Honey Badger Tyrann Mathieu (the latter after everyone in Baton Rouge had purchased black market Honey Badger T-shirts). I personally disagree with Miles’ decision to allow Jeremy Hill back on the team, but on balance, I like what I see in Miles as a decent human being and a very good coach, his detractors’ opinions notwithstanding.

I recently had lunch with Miles, along with my two sons-in-laws. One son-in-law was the successful bidder on the lunch which benefitted an organization for the hearing impaired. I went in expecting Miles to show up, go through the motions but to be largely aloof and distracted from the moment at hand, to simply go through the motions of fulfilling his public relations obligations.

What I saw was a man who was most attentive to his guests, quite talkative (a talkative Les Miles, imagine that!), friendly and receptive to any questions we might wish to lob his way. He spent most of the lunch talking about the difficulties experienced by his brother, who has been deaf since birth and how teachers initially believed him to be mentally retarded. We found a Les Miles who was able to talk openly about a very personal subject; we saw a man who was warm, open, congenial and personable—traits not normally associated with his predecessor at LSU.

But back to our original point. Is it coincidence that all those stories have come out in recent years about Florida, Auburn, Mississippi State, and now LSU? Three of the four—Florida, Auburn and LSU—have BCS championship trophies (LSU and Florida have two each). Mississippi State was indirectly involved in the sordid Auburn-Cam Newton story and LSU, in addition to being a two-time BCS champion, is joined at the hip with the latest accusations at Oklahoma State by virtue of Miles having coached at both schools.

Of course, it was never necessary to do a hatchet job on Arkansas. Former Coach Bobby Petrino took care of that himself in that bone-headed motorcycle accident with a female employee/girlfriend as his passenger.

Do the Florida, Auburn and Oklahoma State stories represent the opening salvos in the campaign to take down the SEC? Perhaps. Stranger things have happened.

If so, you can look for the next shoe to drop somewhere around Tuscaloosa. (‘Bama, after all, has three BCS trophies.) There are already stories circulating about former ‘Bama players Luther Davis and D.J. Fluker. Fluker, now with the San Diego Chargers, recently tweeted that he took money while a member of the Tide football team. That may explain why ‘Bama Coach Nick Saban lost his temper (what else is new?) and walked out on his weekly news conference on Thursday. (It also explains why I shall never have a Twitter account.)

Whether or not this scenario plays out, one thing is for sure: Sports Illustrated, like the rest of the print media, has fallen upon hard times. Unlike most other periodicals, however, SI seems to be taking desperately sordid measures to forestall the inevitable: the death of a once great but now sadly mediocre—or worse—publication.

Posted in Politics | 7 Comments »

‘Deliberative process’ defense used to protect ALEC records in Texas; reminiscent of 2012 LouisianaVoice experience

September 11, 2013 by tomaswell

Because we have all the metaphorical snakes we can kill right here in Louisiana, it’s rare that we dwell on events in other states unless there is a direct link to developments in the Louisiana political arena.

But a request for public records in Texas pertaining to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) under that state’s Freedom of Information Act raised a red flag when a favorite but questionable phrase of Louisiana officials was invoked by a Texas legislator in an effort to prevent the release of records.

For the record, we do not believe it a coincidence that the “deliberative process” ploy, so popular with Gov. Bobby Jindal and his minions reared its ugly head in Texas over the issue of whether or not ALEC records are public.

It is our opinion, impossible to prove because of the veil of secrecy thrown over this organization in an effort to conceal its agenda from public scrutiny, that Jindal did not originate the deliberative process maneuver to protect public records from becoming just that—public.

But he certainly knows how to use—perhaps abuse is a better word here—the exception that he slipped into a law that he proudly points to in his national travels as the “gold standard” of transparency that he rammed through the legislature in 2009.

While that 2009 law requires elected and appointed officials to disclose their personal finances, it did little to open up the records of the governor’s office to public examination.

Now, the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas (FOIFT) has filed a brief with the Texas Attorney General in support of a request for records by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

That request challenges ALEC’s efforts to declare its communications immune from state public records law—even communications with Texas elected officials.

FOIFT’s brief, filed late last month, supports CMD’s position and raises additional arguments countering claims by Rep. Stephanie Klick that the lobbying organizations communications with lawmakers are not subject to disclosure.

Texas was the first state in which ALEC made a formal request of the Attorney General that its records should be exempt from Texas sunshine-in-government laws. ALEC has even begun stamping documents with a disclaimer that says materials such as meeting agendas and model legislation are not subject to any state’s open records laws.

FOIFT counters that assertion by saying the arguments by Klick and ALEC are “mutually inconsistent.”

“Rep. Klick invokes the deliberative process privilege, which involves policy discussions internal to a governmental body,” not between a legislator and a third-party special interest group funded by lobbyists trying to influence legislation,” the brief says. At the same time, it says, “ALEC invokes its members’ First Amendment right of association, which involves its internal discussions and membership.”

Accordingly, it says, because ALEC is communication with Klick in her official capacity as a state representative, the requested documents should be officials records to which the public has a First Amendment right of access.

All of which raises the question of which came first the chicken (Jindal) or the egg (ALEC) insofar as the origination of deliberative process?

Our opinion, for what it’s worth, is that Jindal devised that ploy straight from ALEC’s playbook—just as have so many of his policies, from privatization of prisons and hospitals to school vouchers and charters to pension, healthcare and workers’ compensation reform to massive layoffs of state employees.

Jindal and his legislative floor leaders are in lock step with ALEC and that’s a sad commentary on those officials’ inability to think and act for themselves. Their every move is dictated by ALEC, which writes “model legislation” for its members to introduce in state legislators and assemblies back home.

Sometimes, lawmakers even forget to change key wording in their bills, exposing their efforts for what they are—shams, sacrifices offered up at the altar of profiteering enterprise either by puppets or co-conspirators.

It’s no wonder that ALEC wants to protect its records at all costs.

The affair in Texas is reminiscent of our own experience with Rep. Joe Harrison (R-Gray) in July of 2012.

Harrison, the State Chairman of ALEC, sent out a letter on state letterhead soliciting contributions of $1,000 each from an unknown number of recipients of his form letter to finance the travel of Louisiana legislative ALEC members to an ALEC conference in Salt Lake City set for July 25-28.

The letter opened by saying, “As State Chair and National Board Member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), I would like to solicit your financial support to our ALEC Louisiana Scholarship Fund.”

Not college scholarships, mind you, but to support “over thirty Louisiana Legislators serving on ALEC Task Forces.” Contributions, Harrison said, “will allow the opportunity (for legislators) to attend conferences funded by the ALEC Scholarship Fund.

“The conferences are packed with educational speakers and presenters, and gives (sic) the legislators a chance to interact with legislators from other states, including forums on Medicaid reform, sub-prime lending, environmental education, pharmaceutical litigation, the crisis in state spending, global warming and financial services and information exchange. All of these issues are import (sic) to the entire lobbying community.

“I, along with other members of the Louisiana Legislature, greatly appreciate your contribution to the scholarship fund. Your $1,000 check made payable to the ALEC Louisiana Scholarship Fund can be sent directly to me at 5058 West Main Street, Houma, Louisiana 70360.

LouisianaVoice submitted a public records request to Harrison requesting, since the contribution solicitation was written on Louisiana House of Representatives letterhead, that Harrison provide the identities of every person to whom the solicitation was sent.

Harrison never responded to the request but House Clerk Alfred “Butch” Speer jumped into the fray, responding, “I have looked further into your records (omitting the word “public” from our request). Rep Harrison sent that one letter to a single recipient,” he said, overlooking the fact that it was a form letter that opened with “Dear Friend.” Not a very personal way for a letter to be sent to a single recipient.

Also unexplained by Speer was how a single $1,000 contribution might cover the travel expenses of “over thirty” legislators to attend the conference.

Speer, ignoring that the letter was printed on state letterhead, said, “The origin of a document is not the determining factor as to its nature as a public record. Whether the letter was or was not composed on state letterhead…does not, per force, create a public record.

“What Rep. Harrison was attempting is of no moment unless he was attempting some business of the House,” he said.

Speer again apparently ignored the fact that the House and Senate routinely pay per diem, travel and lodging for lawmakers to attend ALEC conference. In fact, between 2008 and 2011, the House and Senate combined to pay 34 current and former members more than $70,000 for attending ALEC functions in New Orleans, San Diego, Washington, C.C., Phoenix, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Austin.

If those ALEC trips were not for state business, why in hell were the House and Senate shelling out that money for legislators’ expenses and per diem?

Mr. Speer’s reasons for protecting the names of the recipients of that letter was, to say the lease, quite disingenuous and his effort to protect that information goes against the grain of everything for which a public servant is sworn to uphold, protect and serve.

What’s more, his arguments don’t even come close to accurately defining what is and what is not a public record. We don’t claim to be attorneys at LouisianaVoice, but we can read the public records act.

For Mr. Speer’s erudition, it can be found in LA. R.S. 44:1-41 and Article XII, Section 3 of the Louisiana Constitution.

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Public Records, Transparency | 7 Comments »

Notable Quotables (in their own words)

September 7, 2013 by tomaswell

“A lot of people know they owe money. This gives an opportunity for them to save some money and get the debt cleared.”

—Senate President John Alario (R-Westwego), on the two-month tax amnesty program that goes into effect on Sept. 23 and which will allow delinquent taxpayers to save 100 percent on penalties and half of the interest on their late taxes.

“By creating the Office of Debt Recovery and better collecting funds owed to the state, we can use taxpayer dollars more responsibly and ensure that we continue funding critical services like education and health care.”

—Gov. Bobby Jindal, on signing HB 629 (Act 399) into law, creating the Office of Debt Recovery within the Department of Revenue.

Posted in Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, Notable Quotables, Revenue, Taxes | 2 Comments »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »