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Kim Poff fired by Oklahoma agency after stories (including ours) described Scientology dispute

Kim Poff

Kim Poff

Now it can be told: Just days after we reported, along with local Oklahoma media, that Kim Poff had filed suit against the state’s Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuses Services (ODMHSAS), she was fired by another Oklahoma state agency, the Department of Human Services.

Her attorney, Rachel Bussett, tells us she believes those events are directly connected.

“On August 18, you and News 9 reported her lawsuit. And then on the 19th of August, the story was reported by the Daily Oklahoman and the Tulsa World,” Bussett told us by telephone yesterday. “It’s our understanding that Kim’s file was pulled the next day, on the 20th, and she was fired on the 22nd.”

Poff filed a grievance over her firing, and after it was rejected, this week she filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

You remember Kim Poff. She was the Inspector General of ODMHSAS who headed up an investigation of Scientology’s flagship drug rehab facility, Narconon Arrowhead, which is in the eastern part of the state, on Lake Eufala.

In the summer of 2012, Poff and her investigator, Michael DeLong, looked into three recent deaths at the facility — deaths which sparked multiple government probes and numerous civil lawsuits. As a result of their investigation, Poff and DeLong found that Narconon Arrowhead was in violation of state law, and they recommended that it be shut down. But they allege that their bosses were so afraid of taking on the Church of Scientology, they pretended that the study wasn’t finished, and simply shelved it. When Poff and DeLong complained, they were both sacked in August 2013. They’ve each filed lawsuits against the Mental Health department over their firings.

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By the time we reported on her lawsuit in August, Poff had been working in her new job at the Department of Human Services for almost four months. But just days after our story came out about her suing the state, she was cut loose.

Bussett says that Poff was accused of lying on her job application, and not divulging the real reasons why she had left her job at the Mental Health department.

But Bussett points out that not only did the Department of Human Services do a thorough background check on Poff, on April 18 News 9 did a story about Poff and DeLong losing their jobs, reporting that it was related to their Narconon investigation. (At that time they had filed a complaint with the EEOC.)

That story came out 13 days before Kim Poff started her new job with the Department of Human Services.

“The department was fully aware what was happening when they hired her for the position on May 1,” Bussett says.

So now, Poff has submitted another EEOC complaint in anticipation that she’ll probably end up filing another lawsuit, this one against the Department of Human Services. In the meantime, she’s still looking for work.

“She is looking for employment and having difficulty finding work because the state of Oklahoma was her career,” Bussett says. “She was fired for doing the right thing and trying to protect the people of Oklahoma, the people she was hired to protect.”

Poff and DeLong began looking into Narconon Arrowhead in July 2012 after three patients — Gabriel Graves, Hillary Holten, and Stacy Murphy — died there over only a nine month period. Their families are suing the facility with the help of former federal prosecutor Gary Richardson.

In September, Richardson persuaded the court that his clients should get access to the investigative report about Narconon Arrowhead prepared by Poff and DeLong that the state allegedly suppressed. The report was turned over to Richardson under seal (see the update, below).

We reported previously that Narconon Arrowhead itself is suffering badly after two years of controversy, and Scientology leader David Miscavige has announced new facilities — all but one outside of the United States — suggesting that Miscavige is shifting away from the existing network of rehabs in this country, which continue to be hit with dozens of lawsuits for deceptive practices.

 
UPDATE: Gary Richardson tells us that although Judge Jim D. Bland made his decision back in September that Richardson should receive a redacted copy of the state investigation of Narconon Arrowhead, it was only today that the two sides in the matter came to an agreement about the terms of Judge Bland’s order. Richardson says he expects to receive a copy of the investigation in about a week, and that it will be for “lawyers’ eyes only.”

 
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Remembering L. Ron Hubbard on Veterans Day

“My experience with Australia goes back to being the only anti-aircraft battery in Australia in ’41-’42… I was up in Brisbane. There was me and a Thompson submachine gun…I think that was all that was there.” (Interview granted to the Australian Press by L. Ron Hubbard on Jan. 10, 1963 at Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, England.)

Hubbard had to be referring to Mt. Coot-tha, a small peak south of Brisbane. Coot-tha (‘place of honey” in Aborigine) commands a panoramic view of the Brisbane River valley, north to the city and the Tasman Sea. It’s a park now; you can go to the visitors’ center, enjoy the spectacular view, and read how, during WW II, the site “bristled with searchlights and gun emplacements” manned by the Royal Australian Air Force, and that the U.S. Navy had a large ammunition depot on the lower slope at a spot called J. C. Slaughter Falls.

Apparently Hubbard’s blindness had already struck, since these hundreds of personnel were invisible to him. The Navy alone had approximately 175 men camped at the depot. The guns, by the way, would have been bristling since 1939 when Australia went to war. They must have been so camouflaged he didn’t notice them.

These men were not there to smash their names into history, but just to “get the job done”; (an old Navy phrase I heard all my life, which some other outfit keeps using for some odd reason) watching for the enemy and loading the ships; helping to push the war north, island by bloody island, with no expectation of any glory but the remembrance their nations owe them to this day.

Of the many lies Hubbard told, this seems a small one; but stealing the honor due to those who really did get the job done is, in my eyes, one of his greater crimes.

There was another Navy lieutenant on the mountain — later, in ’43-’44; one R.L. Keeting of Boston, in command of the depot. A career man who exemplified the hardheaded, no-nonsense attitude of the wartime Navy. Slightly built but wiry, one-time lightweight champion of the Pacific fleet, he possessed a peculiar immunity to glamor and charisma; and had a short fuse with what he called ‘chiselers.’ Though Keeting and Hubbard had been in the same places — Brisbane, San Diego, Puget Sound — their paths don’t seem to have crossed. Which was perhaps just as well; one too many shore stories, and Keeting would have called him a damned liar and cleaned his plow.

Every time I see the Sea Org fake uniforms and stolen phrases and especially the fake dress swords, I could choke on bile.

Keeting’s sword — the genuine article — hangs in an old farmhouse, his grave lies in a small country cemetery. He’s remembered only by those who loved him. But he served his country with distinction and consequently helped to save the world. No mean legacy.

— Deborah Keeting-Hansen
a/k/a Cicely Neville

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on November 11, 2014 at 07:00

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Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…

BLOGGING DIANETICS (We read Scientology’s founding text) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25

UP THE BRIDGE (Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48

GETTING OUR ETHICS IN (Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING (Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49

PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | Scientology’s Private Dancer
The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ

 

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