the board finally speaks

I finally received a response to my letter to Robert Conrad, Secretary of the board of directors of Unfettered Mind.  You can read his response here.

Mr. Conrad’s email arrived after I posted my last blog post in which I noted that I had received no response from him for 10 days.  As you can read for yourselves in my letter to him, I had clearly stated my allegation and also clearly indicated where Ms. Siebert had dealt inappropriately with me and the other grievant.  I specifically documented false statements she had made to others about me and the situation, and made very specific requests in an attempt to have Unfettered Mind redress her errors.

In his email Mr. Conrad does not retract any of the false claims made by Stephanie Siebert or address the ethical matter of her conflict of interest in handling my allegation.  In fact, he ignores all that completely.  Instead, after informing me that he has reviewed “some of the correspondence” between me and Ken (provided exclusively by Ken and submitted without either consulting me or requesting copies of other correspondence in my possession), he proceeds to make false and unsubstantiated judgements about me and the relationship I had with Ken, this time adding disparaging and false remarks about my marriage to my ex-husband.

Finally, Mr. Conrad informs me that Unfettered Mind’s grievance procedure is for handling “abuses of power” and asserts that, just as in the therapist-client relationship "an abuse of power can occur... from a client as well".  This is another totally inaccurate statement. I am surprised that Mr. Conrad does not know that a therapist is in a fiduciary relationship where the onus of power lies clearly with the therapist as the person whom the client implicitly trusts to dispense wisdom, skill and guidance.  This unilateral power is clearly reflected in all professional counselors’ codes of ethics.

I am not sure what to make of Mr. Conrad’s email.  Is he dealing with me as a grievant or as an adversary?  Is he acting as a neutral party or as Ken McLeod’s advocate and defense attorney?  Moreover, his remark about abuses of power by clients leads me to wonder if allegations have been lodged against me that I am not aware of.  Am I being investigated by the board of directors for an abuse of power?  Perhaps Mr. Conrad would like to clarify that as well as his own role in the grievance process.  What did he hope to accomplish in his communication with me?  It seems to me that he ignores everything I have said while assuring me that he is “not ignoring me”.

The root of grievance is grief.  One would expect a Buddhist organization to respond to a grievance without prejudice and with an open and compassionate heart not with a closed and defensive one that demands evidence and witnesses before a grievant even speaks.

I regret that I see no reason to pursue private communication with Mr. Conrad or any member of the board until these issues have been clarified.  As long as Unfettered Mind’s grievance procedure has been set up as an adversarial process culminating in a judgment by ADR services, I see no constructive purpose in submitting my grievance to them.

I do continue to welcome the board of Unfettered Mind’s participation in this public forum and I do hope that they will change their adversarial attitude but, until their procedure reflects a more restorative approach to imbalances within their organization, I will be telling and documenting my story here where I am free to talk and where all are free to read and respond to me.