faith and trust

Yesterday I received an email from Robert Conrad, Secretary of the Board of Unfettered Mind and, apparently, Ken’s personal attorney on occasion.  I am publishing his email to me followed by the response I sent  him this evening.  It is heartening to see that the Board of UM has engaged in consultations with the Faith Trust Institute whose expertise in matters of clergy misconduct is well-known and highly regarded.

I would also like to add that I have re-published previously archived posts after some readers expressed the wish that my story remain available as an online resource to anyone interested in studying with Ken.

Here is Robert Conrad’s email to me:

Dear Patricia,

This letter continues our correspondence and is in response to your emails of October 26, 2012, and November 9, 2012, which in turn, were in response to my email to you of September 17, 2012.  In my last email to you I wrote in part:

"My definition of "evil" is intentionally causing harm.  There is no other way to put what you are now and have been doing. I have read your latest blog of September 16, 2012; it is factually so much in error (either by the sin of omission or by misstatements), that you have simply rewritten events to suit your current version of you as victim."

I was not suggesting that evil exists in the world as a separate force or that you are an evil person.  Instead, I was merely saying that I believe that it is wrong to intentionally cause harm to another person.  My September email was not directed to the events in 2009, but to your blog writings this year about Ken.

Over the last couple of months, the Board of Unfettered Mind has consulted with the FaithTrust Institute to better understand its role in situations where a person wishes to complain about the actions of a teacher.  Thus, the Board has recently posted on the Unfettered Mind website a revised complaint procedure and is currently working on ethics policies, as encouraged by George Draffan.  You will note the absence of any reconciliation or mediation process; this was at the suggestion of the FaithTrust Institute which is of the opinion that it is not the Board’s function to engage in either of these processes. 

You have expressed your view that the Board is not unbiased and therefore will not be able to hear you or will not mete out the proper sanctions in your situation.  Nonetheless, I have great faith in the Board’s ability to do so.  If you wish to follow the Board’s procedures, your complaint will be taken seriously and reviewed.  If, then, you wish to discuss your complaint with someone other than Stephanie Siebert, the President, I am willing to discuss with you any issues you wish to raise.

As an aside, it seems that you might have been under the impression from Ken’s comments about closing down the Unfettered Mind ning website that he is presently engaged in teaching one-on-one or to groups.  Actually, Ken began winding down his teaching practice in 2008 and brought it to an end in July 2012.

Sincerely yours,

Robert Conrad 

 ***

And here is my reply:

 

Dear Robert,

I appreciate your clarifying what you meant by your allusion to "evil" in reference to my blog, but I understood you the first time.  You assumed, and apparently still assume, that my intention was to cause harm.  Perhaps you are inferring intentions from results.  If so, you are in error.  My intention is, and has always been, to prevent Ken’s harmful behaviour with me from being repeated with other students, and to ensure that Unfettered Mind created a place where grievances could be aired.  If Ken has been harmed by my publication of the truth, then I guess the truth hurts, but that has nothing to do with my intentions.  I’ve mentioned in emails to you, Ken and Stephanie that I was concerned for Ken’s well-being and that remains true, even if none of you has ever expressed concern for mine.

Thank you for letting me know that you have been consulting with the Faith Trust Institute and that this has led to changes in Unfettered Mind’s grievance procedure and to an effort to develop an ethics policy.  If you recall, in February 2011, I wrote to Stephanie as President of the Board and urged Unfettered Mind to adopt formal guidelines and a code of ethics to deal appropriately with the boundary violations that had occurred with me as a student of Ken’s.  So I am pleased to hear about these developments.

But I am also disappointed.  In those first communications with Stephanie I explicitly stated that I needed to know UM’s ethics policies before submitting my grievance and yet, here we are, almost two years later, and you tell me that you are “currently working” on them.  Although I appreciate your invitation to submit my complaint to you, my position has not changed and I do not intend to submit a complaint to anyone from Unfettered Mind without first being provided with a copy of your code of ethics.  You might also explain to me whether and how it can be applied retroactively to my situation with Ken in 2009.  To the best of my knowledge, no policy, grievance procedure or code of ethics was in place at that time.  Is that correct?

I have reviewed your complaint procedure and I have two comments.  The first is that “boundary violation” is not defined.  The second is that it mentions the possibility of sanctions.  In reference to my situation, you reiterate that possibility in your email, saying that the Board is prepared to “mete out sanctions”.  I would advise you to avoid punitive measures.  Preventative, remedial and restorative ones are enough.  If you are hoping to help a grievant recover, acknowledgement of harm done would be the natural first step in that process.  I am still waiting for this.

You say that you “have great faith” in the Board of Unfettered Mind.  I don’t.  Nor do I have much faith in you at this point, Robert.  In your emails to date, acting as Secretary of UM, you have not once acknowledged that Stephanie Siebert lied in saying that there was no relationship of any kind between me and Ken.  You have never retracted either your statement that my actions were evil or your insinuation that I was never a student of Ken’s.  You have never heard my complaint sympathetically but instead have insinuated that I was the abuser.  You accused me of pursuing Ken and charged me with factual errors without ever telling me which ones you found erroneous.  Moreover, acting as Ken’s attorney, you threatened to sue people who discussed my story publicly.

Am I now to believe that you can hear me without bias?  What reason have you given me to believe that?  What reason have you given me to trust your judgment?

Finally, on the subject of Ken's teaching one-on-one or to groups, Ken posted the following on his Unfettered Mind Facebook page on December 7 2012:

A close read of Sherry Turkle's book, Alone Together, has reinforced my doubts about social networks as a medium for spiritual guidance. For myself, in the future I am going to rely solely on in-person, real time interactions such as the sutra sessions. {emphasis mine}

In your email, you say that Ken brought his teaching practice to an end in July 2012 and that he is no longer “engaged in teaching one-on-one or to groups”.  Maybe you should tell Ken that.

sincerely,
Patricia

Bigger Picture, Narrower View

An Open Response to Stephen Batchelor’s 

"Buddhism and Sex: The Bigger Picture"

Stephen,

I was very disappointed by your essay.  

In the name of considering “the bigger picture”, you side-step the issue of misconduct and focus on the doctrinal elements that, you say, enable ethical transgressions in Buddhist institutions.  You do not attempt to define teacher misconduct or circumscribe abusive behavior.  Instead you posit “beliefs” as the origin of the problem, and promote Secular Buddhism (your brand) as the solution.

While I agree with you that institutionally entrenched inequalities may “facilitate and legitimate” abusive behavior, they cannot make Buddhist teachers abusive, and getting rid of them cannot protect Buddhist students from abuse.  Institutional inequalities do not cause sexual abuse any more than inequalities in families cause incest.  That is because, contrary to what you claim, inequalities are not the “core issue”.  Exploitation is.  The key to dismantling sexual abuse lies not in getting rid of inequalities but in naming and stopping their exploitation, and then removing the perpetrator from his position of authority.

You maintain that power disparities stem from beliefs in the teacher’s enlightenment and students’ submissiveness, a “two-tier model of authority” that, you say, has become entrenched in Buddhism as an “organized religion”.  You blame this model for “the majority of cases of abuse” insofar as it provides what you call “sexual opportunities” for Buddhist teachers.  

First of all, sexual misconduct is not about “lust unbidden” any more than rape is.  It is a form of assault and/or exploitation that uses sex.  Second, the power disparity between a Buddhist teacher and student exists by virtue of the former being entrusted with the student’s mind, heart, soul or psyche.  It is similar to the power disparity that exists between University professors and their students, therapists and their patients, lawyers and their clients, parents and their children.  It is rooted, not in the teacher’s “mystical-ontological” authority, as you claim, but in the trust he holds by way of his privileged position in a fiduciary relationship.  The potential for exploitation is built into this relationship, ipso facto, without a teacher having to be additionally empowered by beliefs in his magic woo-woo, elevated to the status of a “guru” or perceived as “enlightened”.  How much power a student relinquishes may indeed depend on beliefs and the nature of the relationship s/he has with the teacher, but the abuse of that power is a consequence of the teacher’s beliefs and behavior, not the student’s, and should never be blamed on the latter.

On the subject of blaming the victim, your third point reads like an attempt to discredit reports of those coming forward to denounce their teachers. You say:

3.  The Buddha himself was accused of having sexual intercourse with the female ascetics Sundari and Cinca.  Tradition explains that these accusations were unfounded, and used by those jealous of his success to discredit him. Having sex with one’s students is not a contemporary issue that has only started to rear its head in the simultaneously permissive and puritanical societies of the West.  It is simply what human beings in positions of authority are liable to do or be accused of doing.

Could you be more explicit about what you are insinuating here and perhaps also explain the relevance of this point to your “bigger picture”?  You could begin by naming one contemporary example of a teacher being falsely accused by a student.

The most blatant lacuna of your essay is that it cannot be applied to exploitation in secular Buddhist institutions, a situation that is not so uncommon.  In my particular case, for example, misconduct occurred at the hands of a teacher who did not flaunt a title, don robes, pose as enlightened, demand my submission, or threaten post-mortem consequences in another lifetime. He called himself a “meditation consultant”.  In fact, his teaching model was set up to consciously and deliberately get away from the hierarchical structures of more traditional Buddhist organizations and proffered “a path outside established institutions”.  Everything about this presentation passed the secular test.  Nevertheless, misconduct occurred and has never been acknowledged by him or his organization.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, your essay does not provide a map for concretely dealing with teacher misconduct.  Maybe that is because you do not really want to do anything about it.

Last July I wrote to you for support in my attempt to confront my teacher about his misconduct with me and another student, and you responded that you were “a long time friend of Ken McLeod, so may not be entirely neutral in this particular case.”  You said you would inquire about his organization’s grievance policy and possibly, if “appropriate”, discuss the matter with him personally.  You did not get back to me after that and, as far as I know, never acted on this.  In the meantime, the other student and I were left to our own devices, there was never any adequate grievance procedure set up by Unfettered Mind, and Ken McLeod is still teaching.  

You had an opportunity to do something about teacher misconduct in a real-life situation but instead penned this theoretical treatment that further obscures the issues.  Could it be that your allegiance to an old boys’ network is getting in the way of concrete action?  Or have you simply positioned yourself as an innocent bystander?  Either way, a passive gaze, even one that purports to embrace the bigger picture, enables an exploitative teacher far more than any special status attributed to him by students.  

The real enabler of teacher misconduct, Stephen, is not the sacralisation of Buddhism, but the same perverse dynamics that operate in other, secular or religious, institutions when they are spear-headed by a narcissist cosseted by sycophants whose mutually gratifying affiliation blinds them to the harm they are causing.  The answer lies not in secularization but quite simply in raising individual awareness about the signs and pitfalls of narcissistic leadership, groupthink and cult behavior.

An Open Letter to Ken McLeod

Ken,

I have not written this letter before because, until now, I had hoped that there was still a glimmer of dignity in you that would enable you to respond my grief, but your silence and your embarrassing legal threats against Grace Schireson and Adam Tebbe have shown me otherwise.  Though I’ve now lost all hope, I remain grateful for your finally waking me up to what is most important to you as a teacher: saving face. 

Before I started my blog, you ignored me; maybe you were thinking that, like an old stain, I would eventually fade away.  After I started my blog, you could no longer ignore me, but you still refused to acknowledge me.  You dodged and stonewalled and then, when my blog received public attention, you had your attorney (student? Board Secretary?) Robert Conrad step up efforts to protect your reputation and keep up appearances while you vacationed abroad and wrote vacuous newsletters to your loyal following back home.  You carefully avoided mention of any public “scandal” and reported instead on your adventures sipping local wine and savouring Buddhist poetry while, over here, the ugly struggle continued.  Did it ever once occur to you to do something helpful for someone other than yourself during this time?  In a way, it is a saving grace that my hope was finally snuffed out by the evidence of your callous indifference, because now I am at liberty to tell you how I really feel. 

This is my grievance procedure.

I have heard that you have shared emails I wrote over the past three years—a few, short emails in which I sought to reassure you that I was well and still cared for you.  Perhaps you shared these emails to discredit me and divert attention away from your own behavior.  If you know anything about trauma, Ken, and I think you do, inconsistent emotional reactions shouldn’t surprise you.  Yet they seem to.  Despite your being able to write that it takes five years for a student to get over a relationship with her teacher, you seem unable to conceive or care that this might have been the case for me.  Have you ever wondered what goes on in those five years?  Have you ever asked yourself what a student might be feeling?  I notice you have never written about those details.  Well, I can tell you: lots of confusion, lots of contradictory thoughts and emotions, a stream of pain that seeps in as one gradually, very gradually, thaws and starts to feel again.  Those emails I wrote were written because I still had some lingering hope, a deluded hope that was not ready to admit the full force of your deception. 

For the first few months after you dropped me, I expected you to reappear.  I was not yet able to conceive that you could be motivated by something other than kindness and compassion.  I could not believe that you would allow a student to fall in love with you, stand by as she risked everything to be with you and then, after spending a couple of nights with her, decide to take off and leave her naked in your dust.  It was just too painful to consider that I might have been used and discarded, just like that, and by someone to whom I’d entrusted myself completely.  So, as the first few months went by, I convinced myself that you were waiting for the air to clear before resuming contact with me, that you wanted to leave the student-teacher thing far behind so that we could be together again on equal footing.  When that stopped making sense, I believed that your sudden withdrawal was a way of continuing to care for me as a teacher, showing me “there is nothing to hold on to”, a killer lesson but intended for my own good.  I found every reason not to believe that you were escaping the mess you’d helped make of my life and were leaving me to clean it up alone.

By a weird fluke, I met a woman (W.) who had also been a student of yours.  W. was very troubled about her relationship to you and, when I asked her about the details, I discovered that you had pressed her, a married woman, for intimacy during a retreat.  You had asked W. to sleep with you and, when she refused, you dropped her as a student and never spoke to her again.  She had been studying with you several years and was shocked and devastated by your behavior.  But the thing that was most shocking and devastating to us both was that you were seducing us at the same time.  Actually, you had already seduced me, and I was in the midst of separating from my husband in order to meet you after that very same retreat.   It was a life-changing moment for me but apparently it was just the same old same old for you.  W. also told me that she was not the only one struggling with her feelings for you at the retreat; another woman was noticeably fawning over you as well.  That woman drove you to and from the retreat.  I had asked you once who that other woman was, and you had told me she was “just another student”.  You used to use that same expression when receiving messages from students while we were skyping.  I wonder now if that is how you referred to me behind my back: “just another student”.

Once we got over the initial shock, W. and I had a few more enlightening conversations.  She told me about so-called “energy practices”.  She was in fact the one to explain to me what you were doing with me in your hotel room in Montreal.  What for me was a frustrating exploration of desire, using a practice that I did not understand or enjoy, was for you, apparently, what?  Using sexual energy to power your spiritual practice?  Was that what that was?  She told me that you had several other partners, female students, with whom you also practiced these techniques.  She told me that I actually met one of them when you and I were in Toronto.  You introduced me to her yourself at Mindcamp.  Remember?  She gave me a funny look. In retrospect, I understand what it meant.  It was pity.  For there I was thinking that you and I were about to embark on a spiritual journey together, a journey I believed in and left my marriage for, while you apparently were seeing me as a fresh supply of energy.

I wrote to you once that I had forgiven you for getting “cold feet”.  That you didn’t love me, or fell out of love with me, was something I could have lived with.  But this was not just love gone sour.  You were my teacher and you deliberately concealed your involvement with other women students, led me on, and then abandoned me.  Love me?  You didn’t give a shit about me.  My yoga teacher, a student of Hart Lazer, told me that you told Hart over lunch in Montreal “she’s leaving her husband but it’s not going to work out between us”.  That night you met me in your hotel room.   Why would you say that to him and not to me?  If you had doubts, you might have had the decency to share them with me.  I was in the midst of leaving my marriage for you.  Have you no idea what another human being might be going through in such a situation and how vital that piece of information would be?

It took me about two years to begin to speak openly about my experience.  That is when I spoke to another student who put me in touch with the Unfettered Mind Board President, your friend Stephanie.  At the time, I approached her out of concern for you and other students.  I had not yet fully connected with my own anger because to do so, Ken, I would have had to connect with the utter vanity of what I had done to my life to be with you, the absurdity of having left a good man for someone who would treat me this way, the heartache of witnessing my ex-husband’s struggle to let me go so I could pursue what he and I both thought was my “spiritual path”, the pain of facing my children’s lack of understanding and my own inability to explain my actions to them.  I had imagined that Stephanie, as your friend and as someone who already knew about us, would be sympathetic to my distress and sensitive to my concerns about the patterns of behaviour that put you at risk of causing more harm to yourself and your students.  Instead, she hit me with red tape and asked me for a “written statement”.  After a few more fruitless exchanges, I could see this was not going anywhere.

About a year later, I spoke to an authorized Unfettered Mind teacher, someone who knows you well and who knew about our relationship.  He was kind and sympathetic.  But then he made a remark that helped me connect with one of the last blind spots I had not yet faced into.  When I told him of my disappointment in you, he shrugged and said, as if to explain your behavior, “he’s a monk”.  I nodded in wistful agreement but, as the words sunk in, I began to reject them like a failed transplant.  Then, within days, I found release from one of my most stubbornly held delusions: that everyone, including me, should make exceptions for your spiritual genius and emotional naiveté.  I think, by the way, that you probably share the same delusion, which is why you’ve been unable to meet me face-to-face like another human being. 

That was the beginning of the undoing of the last strands of hope.  I was inspired to rekindle my campaign for a grievance process.  You know the rest. 

At the retreat where I first met you, you said the door to practice should carry a sign above it warning students who cross its threshold: “abandon hope all ye who enter here”, Dante’s inscription above the portal to hell. 

It’s been hell, Ken.  Thanks for the warning.

Ignoble Silence

Lots of people go to court; they pay millions of dollars so they don’t have to make an apology.
~ Ken McLeod, Guru Deity Protector, 2004

It’s been almost two months since the publication of My Story. 

Reactions to this blog have been mainly of two kinds.  Those from people affiliated with Unfettered Mind and Ken McLeod: his Board of Directors, students, fans and other supporters, and those from people having no affiliation with Unfettered Mind and Ken McLeod (or me).  

The responses of the unaffiliated have included critical and multi-faceted reflections by some well-known Buddhist bloggers.  Myoan Grace Schireson wrote Those Misbehaving Monks on Sweeping Zen, Justin Whitaker wrote two separate analyses for Patheos.  Seth Segall, editor of the Existential Buddhist, wrote an essay in response to Ken’s lawsuit threat against Adam Tebbe.

The public response from those affiliated with Ken McLeod and Unfettered Mind has been, for the most part, silence while, privately, Ken and his Board of Directors have responded to me and others with lies, denial, threats and lawsuits.

The day of my last blog entry, Unfettered Mind Board member Robert Conrad wrote an email to me in which he called me “evil” and “destructive” for publishing my story.  Then Mr. Conrad crafted the legal threat that was sent by him on behalf of Ken to Adam Tebbe, editor of Sweeping Zen, for publishing the article written by Ms. Schireson's whom Conrad also threatened to sue.  He did this presumably as a preemptive strike to discourage further public discussion.  That didn’t work.

Those affiliated with Ken McLeod or Unfettered Mind have mostly been defensive, dismissive and hostile in response to this blog and my allegations.  The exception to this rule was George Draffan who, despite his 20-year affiliation with Ken and his organization, publicly criticized Ken’s recalcitrance “to acknowledge the facts, to apologize for mistakes, and to transform the difficulty into something positive and worthy.”

The refusal to acknowledge wrongdoing and apologize is indeed surprising coming from a Buddhist teacher who recognizes “the power of remorse or regret” and  who knows that it “involves two or three things. One is acknowledgment: I did this.” (Ken McLeod, Then and Now, class 23, 2008)

The inability to admit fault or wrongdoing is a basic narcissistic defense.  It serves to strengthen one’s identity in response to criticism and/or stress.  But when this defense is fortified to the extent that persons (or their affiliations) no longer tolerate outside criticism or public scrutiny, it starts to strangle the very identity it was intended to protect. 

In his email written to me the day I published my last blog post, besides calling me names, Robert Conrad said that he was “greatly disappointed” in me.  How bizarre, I thought, that he should use that expression and feel that way.  I and the other grievant have been stonewalled for almost two years by a teacher and his followers who, having once offered “a path outside established institutions,” have now become a club “for members only”.  The path as groupthink?  That, Mr. Conrad, is disappointing.

S.L. Bloom, founder of the Sanctuary model for nonviolent organizations, writes that “the ability of a group to solicit and listen to the dissenting minority is the only real defense against groupthink”.  The problem may be that Ken McLeod has got too comfortable using silence as a means of disengaging from conflict.  He would have to be willing to break the silence for any dialogue to be possible.  Not easy to do when, as Kipling Williams notes, “there is something so addictive about the act of maintaining silence and pretending someone does not exist that it becomes very difficult for sources to break with its use.” (Ostracism: The Power of Silence)

Not easy but not impossible, and I remain hopeful that a man with the intelligence, sensitivity and understanding of Ken McLeod has the ability to see the way from here. 

my story

As some of you may have noticed, Ken McLeod’s recent newsletter to the Unfettered Mind community makes no mention of this blog or of the issues raised here and elsewhere.  (See the threat of a lawsuit against Adam Tebbe of Sweeping Zen, 20-year Ken McLeod student George Draffan's public statement, Myoan Grace Schireson’s report on teacher sexual misconduct, Seth Segall's article in The Existential Buddhist and Justin Whitaker's From Scandal to Just Plain Ugly, Patheos.com.)

I cannot know Ken’s reasons for remaining silent.  However, after yet another hostile email from UM Board member Robert Conrad, I do wonder if Ken is withholding the truth from his own Board of Directors.  Mr. Conrad’s email contains inaccurate and denigrating statements about me and my relationship to Ken.*

Originally, I had hoped that Unfettered Mind would receive my and the other student’s grievance in a way that would be unbiased and truly open to hearing our stories.  Unfortunately, the Board chose to dismiss and ignore us.  That is why I started this blog.  Now, after it has been widely publicized, the Board has stepped up its obstructive tactics and has become out-and-out antagonistic.  Rather than use a reputable third party like Faith Trust Institute, the board has decided to manage my grievance by adopting an aggressive adversarial position that leaves me, the grievant, to defend myself.  This has been re-wounding for me.  It is time for me to speak.

People have asked me “what do you want?”  All I have ever wanted was to tell my story.  It is important to my own healing and it is important that others hear it. 

Below is a factual timeline.  Most of it can be documented and all of it can be corroborated by correspondence and/or witnesses.  There are a few vivid and specific recollections of what happened between me and Ken privately.  I would testify to these under oath.

I met Ken McLeod during a weekend retreat that took place April 24-26, 2009 in Montreal.  Immediately after this event I asked Ken for a referral to a local teacher but he invited me to consult with him privately as his student.  Skype sessions began on May 11, 2009 and I paid for them.

During our first sessions in May and June, 2009, I specifically asked Ken to clarify the frame of our meetings including managing projections onto the teacher. I asked for help with issues affecting my family.  I asked him for reading materials on Buddhism.  Ken never responded to these requests during our sessions.  Mostly he listened and invited me to “open to everything” and “sit in the mess”.  In one session, Ken asked me to place my hand on my belly and to feel the “energy” there while he watched; then he recommended I read the fairy tale Briar Rose, a story in which Sleeping Beauty is awoken by a kiss planted on her lips by Prince Charming.  

In July, 2009, during one of our long Skype sessions, Ken invited me to be his “friend”.  He wanted me to gaze into his eyes.  In subsequent sessions, he asked me for a photo of myself to put on his phone which, he said, was the only woman’s photo he had ever carried.  Although I was married, he was in regular contact with me via email and Skype chats, sent me poems and music and signed one of his emails “with rosemary and roses”.  He introduced the possibility of marriage to me and asked if I would meet him in private rooms when he came to Canada.

In August, 2009, after receiving an email from my husband, Ken acknowledged error and unethical behavior in an email sent to me and my husband in which he said he would “step back completely”.  Nevertheless, in September, 2009, as my family was falling apart in the wake of what had already happened between Ken and me, he arranged to meet me in Toronto and Montreal where he was teaching.  I agreed to meet him because I believed we had a special relationship that was at the center of a major and painful change in my life.  I went to be with him.  I was registered at both venues and participated as a student during his presentations.   In both Toronto and Montreal there was intimate physical touch, embracing and kissing that resulted in mutual erotic excitement.  Ken instructed me in sexual energy practices involving the genitals.  This took place in his private rooms.  There was no technical intercourse resulting in penetration.

After our physical intimacies, Ken returned to California.  Contact was sporadic but he had talked to me about his three-year plan to be together, including writing two books he hoped to begin in Montreal in November so we could spend more time with each other.  On September 26, 2009, my birthday, the local florist called to say I had a delivery from Mr. McLeod.  When I went to pick up the flowers, I was told the order had been cancelled.  

On October 5, 2009, during an almost five-hour Skype session, Ken said he wanted to end our relationship.  I was devastated.  He had introduced the idea of a marriage between us.  He knew I left my husband to be in a special relationship with him.  He had watched from a distance as my marriage broke under the strain of our affair.  I was dealing with the consequences of a family freshly severed for the sake of this relationship.  I could not take in what he was telling me and I responded in shock "you are kidding; why don't I just slit my throat?"  He smiled and replied, "If I were you, I would slit my wrists".  

I continued to contact Ken but his responses grew fewer and farther between and then came to a complete halt on November 2, 2009. On that day Ken wrote me an email in which he said that “there was no point in any further communication.”  The email was signed “with best wishes, Ken”.

I have heard nothing from him since.

On July 23, 2012, Stephanie Siebert, President of the Board of Unfettered Mind, wrote secretly to three well-known Buddhist teachers and claimed “there was never any sexual or other relationship between Ken and Patricia”.  

The board has yet to retract that statement.

* Robert Conrad has not clarified his role in my grievance.  He has not told me whether he is acting as a board member, executive officer or Ken’s attorney; and he has not responded to the requests I made. I will be publishing my response to Mr. Conrad at some point.