Support for harassment and abuse victims
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
Two more high profile cases of abuse have been successfully prosecuted yesterday. In one case, the victim has waived her anonymity so that the name of her brother, Karl Ronan, can be published as an offender. The victim didn't have to waive their anonymity as the judge was already sending the offender to jail anyway.
The other case, in County Donegal, involves Catholic priest Eamonn Crossan. In this case, news stories about a previous prosecution had prompted a second victim to come forward many decades after the abuse occurred.
One of the things that strikes me from the case of Karl Ronan is the news headline selected by Ireland's national broadcaster RTE. The victim was quoted telling other victims "you will be believed".
The sad reality is that around Ireland and around the world, victims and potential witnesses are not always treated with respect.
Based on personal experience of these cases and the people involved, I feel that witnesses and victims need to exercise some caution in deciding who to trust. In some cases, the first contact they make may not provide a suitable response and they may need to exercise more courage to reach out to somebody else.
While the assistance to victims has improved in recent decades, I still feel that the statement "you will be believed" hides the amount of effort some victims have to make to find somebody who does believe them.
Victims will not always go to the justice system. They may disclose something to a family member, school teacher, doctor, trade union or even an elected representative.
I'm personally aware of various cases where victims and witnesses reported to doctors and didn't receive appropriate care. In one case reported by the press, the doctor, a former classmate, began a relationship with the victim. It involved a pregnancy and an abortion. The doctor's peers granted him a one year suspension from practice.
The unredacted report about abuse in the Archdiocese of Melbourne tells us that various victims reported to other priests. Some of the other priests collaborated to undermine these victims and help the offenders.
In the recent proceedings before the World Intellectual Property Organization, I informed the Legal Case Manager at WIPO in Geneva that the complainant has been trolling me with references to abuse. Carla shared details of her history with an eating disorder and I had mentioned to female victims in Albania that my cousin participated in the choir of Cardinal George Pell in Melbourne, Australia.
In relation to Carla, research suggests that women who developed eating disorders and other self-harm tendencies during childhood are possible abuse victims. In relation to those in proximity to the choir, while Cardinal Pell's conviction was eventually overturned, it remains unexplained how a member of the choir developed a heroin addiction during the Pell era. Due to the intense efforts to protect the privacy of choir members, the media have failed to join the dots and confirm that at least two known pedophiles and a priest responsible for the cover-up arrangement really were in that orbit.
Family and friends observed the online mobs spreading references to harassment, abuse and anonymous victims since the conviction of Cardinal Pell in 2018. People feel sick when exposed to privacy violations like this.
In both the Ronan case and the Crossan case, it has taken decades for the victims to come forward and seek justice. It seems like a logical conclusion that anybody in proximity to the Cardinal Pell choir could also discover that they are a witness to relevant facts at any time in the future. Despite the fact that the Cardinal and other offenders are deceased, there has been significant progress in civil litigation. Any former choir member could come forward at any time seeking an apology or redress from the church as an institution.
Being in proximity to this high profile case, I want to emphasize the total contempt shown for my family by the Legal Case Manager at the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva. Then I will go on to document some of the confirmed facts about my relationship with these high profile abuse cases and the interaction with victims.
Subject: D2024-0770 Debian / victims and witnesses to abuse Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2024 22:04:56 +0100 From: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> To: Domain Disputes <domain.disputes@wipo.int>
The insults that WIPO transmitted to me are very disturbing for me as a witness in relation to real cases of harassment and abuse.
Blackmail, defamation, shame and abuse often go together.
Please kindly advise me what assistance WIPO provides to victims and witnesses of abuse when you blackmail us to participate in your administrative procedures
The Legal Case Manager has a standard cut-and-paste reply to all queries. The Legal Case Managers employed by WIPO appear to be law graduates early in their careers. It appears that they have been given no training whatsoever in the rights of potential victims and witnesses to abuse. This female lawyer, Stanislava, is hiding her last name so we are unable to check her credentials at the bar association. The lawyers hiding their names like this remind me of the masked men with Russian accents who occupied Crimea in 2014.
Subject: (ILS) D2024-0770 <debian.chat> et al. Acknowledgement of Receipt Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2024 16:13:25 +0000 From: Disputes, Domain <domain.disputes@wipo.int> To: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro>, <daniel@softwarefreedom.institute> CC: <alessio.canova@adv-ip.it>
Dear Respondent,
This is to acknowledge receipt of your below email communication on April 13, 2024 by the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center (the Center).
The Center will forward your communication to the Panel, (when appointed).
Sincerely,
Stanislava I. Legal Case Manager _______________________________________________________________________________ WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center 34, chemin des Colombettes, 1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland T +41 22 338 82 47 F +41 22 740 37 00 E domain.disputes@wipo.int W www.wipo.int/amc * Please cite "(ILS) WIPO Case #" in the subject line. Thank you.
In the response created by the legal panel, the lawyer W. Scott Blackmer appears to be mocking my concerns in the final lines of his order to seize domain names used for spreading " critical commentary".
What is "critical commentary" and why is it a sin before WIPO? We can think back to the time Galileo dared to suggest the earth was not flat. WIPO's definition of "critical commentary" is a lot like the definition of blasphemy in medieval society.
Fact checking the series of events in harassment and abuse cases
I have obfuscated the names of the conspirators with pseudonyms like Father X___ and Father Y___. This is the same technique used by the Swiss financial regulator FINMA to protect the names of rogue lawyers in the Juristgate affair.
1962: the Pope published Crimen Sollicitationis. It is a procedure for investigating abuse outside the real justice system of the state.
1980s: Father X___ moves to a parish close to St Patrick's cathedral and becomes involved in administrative matters for fellow priests.
1980s: church becomes aware that Father Y_ is an offender
1980s: [ redacted in full ]
1994: Father X___ personally involved in exfiltration of Father Z___ from Boston back to Melbourne.
1995: letter confirms that Father X___ and Father Z___ are now housemates.
1996: from minutes of the Personnel Advistory Board:
Father X___ raised the question of how much is told to whom
1997: boy who subsequently dies was seen by Royal Children's Hospital in relation to poor behavior at school. Various people in the online mobs subsequently repeating references to "poor behavior".
1998: boy who subsequently dies observed experimenting with drugs at age 13 or 14.
1999: WIPO proposes the use of an administrative procedure, the UDRP, where people can argue about the use of trademarks in domain names. The parties can use the procedure to insult and defame each other. Notably, the procedure operates outside of the court system, a lot like the Canon law procedures described by the church in Crimen Sollicitationis are operating outside the state. Administrative procedures neglect a range of topics including privacy, victim support and the provision of legal aid for private bloggers.
2002: Spotlight investigators examine documents from the court house in Boston and find evidence about the communication with Father X___ in Melbourne.
2010: a key volunteer in the Debian software project sends a resignation note on the night before Debian Day and then he commits suicide.
Mark Shuttleworth indicates he is aware of the situation and there is a high risk of copycat suicides. The question of whether a death is foreseeable is crucial in assessing both criminal and civil liability in relation to subsequent deaths. the email from Shuttleworth clearly anticipates more deaths.
2011: the next notable Debian death occurs 8 months later and on the same day Carla and I got married. The volunteer died in Switzereland so the coroner's report and cause of death were never published.
2013: I resigned my membership of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), citing the abuse of female asylum seekers from Iran and the similarity to abuse in the Catholic Church. The resignation was published by political news site Crikey.
2014: former member of the choir dies from heroin overdose. The addiction began during his time in the choir for reasons that have never been confirmed by any of the trials or the Royal Commission.
2015: the Spotlight biographical film is released in cinemas. Any comments I made about abuse prior to this could not have been influenced by the film.
2016: a woman goes to Dr A___ for assistance after a sexual assault. Dr A___ gets her pregnant and then persuades her to have an abortion. Coincidentally, Dr A___ and I were classmates many years ago.
2017: the FSFE fellowship elected me as their representative on April 24, the anniversary of the Easter Rising. Women began making reports to me about abuse in non-profit organizations receiving funds for the promotion of women in technology.
Here is the internal complaint about the harassment. The date is 12 October 2017 so the misfits publishing alternative statements about harassment are lying. I have redacted the section that identifies underage victims.
The next internal email from Larissa Shapiro at Mozilla admits that kids are at risk.
Emma Irwin from Mozilla admits this is a serious matter and asks me to speak to Marta, Mozilla's HR investigator.
It was around this time that I confided in some of the women that I had a family connection with the choir of Cardinal George Pell and that I was watching these matters very carefully.
2018: one of the women writes an email thanking me for my support to victims of harassment and abuse.
2018: Dr A___'s peers suspend him from medical practice. The duration of the suspension is 12 months.
2018: Dr Norbert Preining reaches out to me when people start using secret punishments, analogous to abuse, to blackmail him to be more docile.
2018: I publicly expressed support for Dr Preining.
On Christmas Eve, some of the men complicit in the dark network begin spreading rumors about abuse by email.
2019: the same men begin spreading rumors about abuse through source code repositories.
Mozilla has refused to publish their final report about the abuse. It is very clear from the emails written by the women that they thanked me for my support.
In February, Cardinal Pell was sent to prison. I rang a former employee of the diocese in his nursing home and made some queries about the case. That was the last phone call with my father before he died.
2021: the FSFE management has a shortage of adult volunteers and now they are offering a prize enticing children to work for free. They call the program Youth Hacking 4 Freedom (YH4F). I was the last person the FSFE Fellowship community elected as their representative. I published a blog post denouncing the YH4F program for the risk of child labor.
2022: IBM Red Hat, one of the main sponsors of the FSFE, begins a UDRP complaint through WIPO. In their bundle of evidence, they submit my article about "Google, FSFE and Child Labor" as the basis for their concerns. (their evidence bundle).
The legal panel rules that IBM Red Hat was using the UDRP to harass me.
2022: on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, an employee of ETH Zurich files a criminal speech demand with the Swiss authorities seeking to have them shut down my company servers to destroy evidence I published about the blackmail, shaming and suicide cluster.
Coincidentally, IBM and Google have chosen Zurich for their most significant research and development centers in Europe. They are both in close proximity to ETH Zurich.
2023: on 5 January, those who observe challenges in the church are surprised to see Cardinal Pell back in the news talking about the death of Pope Benedict. The Cardinal had not been seen in public since his successful appeal in Australia.
I began making a fresh review of the evidence about Debian, FSFE, Google, Mozilla, Ubuntu and the abuse reports from young women, volunteers and the suicide cluster.
At the same time, I was looking at the belatedly unredacted report about the Archdiocese of Melbourne. Despite the fact that the church is a very old institution and the tech industry is very new in comparison, I was surprised by the similarity in the tactics used to keep victims from speaking up about their experiences.
On 10 January, I traveled to Italy and made the police report about the similarities in the shame felt by victims of Catholic abuse and the shame felt by unpaid volunteers subject to secret punishments in the tech industry. The afternoon I was meeting with the Carabinieri was the same afternoon that Cardinal Pell was having his surgery. Sadly, the Cardinal did not survive the surgery.
2024: in March, the Debianists begin harassing me with another UDRP demand. They accuse me of publishing "critical commentary". They don't dispute the authenticity of the critical commentary.
The WIPO legal panel, W. Scott Blackmer, writes a condescending response where he demonstrates extraordinary bias. Specifically, he fails to give any acknowledgement to the co-existence of copyright with trademark rights. He mocks me for not being a lawyer and then mocks my family and I with another reference to abuse.
My feeling is that W. Scott Blackmer has not acted independently. There is a cabal of intellectual property lawyers who appear to be colluding to work around the interests of individual, personal copyright holders in open source software projects. The cabal has created the image that these legal panels operate independently and ethically.
In reality, the lawyers who submit these censorship demands to WIPO and the lawyers who act as "legal panels" to adjuciate upon them are networking with each other behind the scenes. They are using forums such as the FSFE Legal & Licensing Workshop (LLW) and the FSFE Legal Network. I am reminded of those priests who heard reports about abuse and communicated with their colleagues behind the scenes to frustrate justice for the victims who trusted them. Nobody should trust the logic being used to seize domain names that haven't even been used yet.
The irony is that both Crimen Sollicitationis (the Catholic Church) and the WIPO UDRP are administrative procedures and both of these procedures, despite operating in very different contexts, serve to frustrate, denounce and discredit those who are seeking to be believed.
Hence my reservations about the quote selected in the RTE headline, "you will be believed".
In the vast majority of cases, the victims and witnesses to any type of abuse and exploitation have an extremely difficult road ahead of them.
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