Why I Unpublished the Fielding Series

Over the course of writing the eight part series on Connie Fielding’s story, I was increasingly subjected to abusive, defamatory, and insulting emails from Connie. She characterized me as an evil, God-hating individual who served Satan. The reason for this was simple: I didn’t print parts of her story that couldn’t be independently corroborated with at least some circumstantial evidence. I didn’t include her lines of reasoning that did not follow from the evidence, including her increasingly wild assertions about having compromising material on 7,000 US Attorneys substantiating her claims. She never provided that material to me, and to my knowledge she has not provided it to anyone else.

I had warned Connie about her behavior and her defamatory statements about me over the past week. I set boundaries with her, telling her that if she did not enter a treatment program for her severe PTSD and emotional trauma, I would be unable to continue helping her.

Connie believes that she speaks to Jesus directly, and that He has authorized her to break the law or disregard court orders she doesn’t agree with. She believes that she will have a $100 million RICO settlement from her brother Douglas and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who she insists will settle out of court without a trial to avoid exposure. She believes Jesus is going to lead her to the children who are being abused, and she will be their liberator. She also believes that she’ll be on the board of a nonprofit she’ll establish with her $100 million RICO settlement. On top of all of this, Connie insists that there is no time to build a case over 12 to 18 months because Jesus’s return is imminent. However, she can found her nonprofit, get $100 million RICO settlement, and rescue all of the children before the imminent return of Christ. It’s delusional.

Connie Fielding is homeless. She lives in a car she can’t afford to pay for, a car she managed to purchase by obtaining a personal loan from a lady she met at the dealership. She has the gift of gab, and she managed to extract enough money from that woman to make a down payment. She has to pay that loan back in order to get her license plates, which are being mailed to that woman’s house. She doesn’t have the money to do so, and she also doesn’t have a permanent address where her driver’s license can be mailed. She’s facing an impending court ordered mental health evaluation because she erupted in a Webex hearing and called her attorney and the judge corrupt mob associates.

She did so from her employer’s office, and her employer was an attorney who was kind enough to hire her. Connie didn’t last two weeks at that job, because her conduct put the attorney in question on the line. The attorney in question has to go to court before the very judge that Connie disrespected and possibly defamed. Connie didn’t think about that before she lashed out, because Connie Fielding doesn’t think about other people and the consequences her actions have for those people. She barely thinks about the consequences her decisions will have for her, let alone anyone else.

While I believe there is some truth in her allegations and claims, I will not tolerate her megalomaniacal, inappropriate, and frankly defamatory broadsides against me. I will not be harangued via email and text message with snarky, rude messages. I establish boundaries with the people in my life for a reason: I can, and such boundaries lead to healthy communication and good relationships. Connie Fielding has shown herself to be incapable of respecting those boundaries or my right to establish and adhere to those boundaries. In Connie’s eyes, the only thing that matters is her mission, and her visions and dreams and delusions of grandeur.

This work is a grind. It is not glamorous, and it takes months and years of wrestling with evidence, wrenching victim testimony, and material that most individuals wouldn’t want to read or see. Connie Fielding is mentally ill, but she is not crazy. She knows the difference between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, but she does not care. She has a standard for herself and her own behavior, and another separate standard for the behavior of others. At varying times, she has stated that her faith and the Book of Mormon entitle her to disregard the law in service of her higher mission.

That is a dangerous position to take, and one that is directly responsible for Connie’s present situation, where she is facing jail time for repeatedly harassing her son after he explicitly told her to stop contacting him. The risk you run when you’re dealing with this type of material, or living the life described within such material, is that you become the very thing you hate: a self-serving individual with no core principles who feels entitled to transgress against the laws of God and man. The ends justify the means, and no one is entitled to say no to you no matter how extreme and inappropriate your conduct becomes.

In my personal and professional opinion based on 22 years of experience working in this field, Connie Fielding feels that she is above the law and beyond any boundaries others put up for themselves. She feels entitled to trample across the limits of the law and personal boundaries, up to and including defaming those who dare to disagree with her on any point. As such, she lacks credibility. I published the parts of Connie’s story I felt were backed by some level of evidence. I dealt with her story because it connected to the Hamblin story through several key individuals.

It is with great regret that I have decided to unpublish all eight pieces due to her inappropriate and abusive conduct over email and text messages, and her defamatory statements about me to a third party. I have given Connie one condition for republishing those pieces: she is to attend an intake interview for a residential treatment program to get help with her mental illness, and to physically attend that program. Until she does, she will not make the sort of progress necessary to reintegrate herself into society as a healthy, functioning adult. She will be unable to navigate interpersonal relationships with any degree of sustained success.

There is nothing wrong with therapy. I have undergone therapy over the years for my own traumas, and it has been of great benefit. There is nothing wrong with medication, as I take medication for my own anxiety and blood pressure. Neither of these options turns you into a zombie or a goblin. They help you overcome your pain and live a better life. I am not recommending or encouraging Connie Fielding to undergo any form of treatment to remediate her issues that I myself have no undergone or committed to in the past. Heavenly Father gives us access to physicians, clinicians, and medication to help us, not to hinder us. We’re blessed to live in a time where medication is readily available for any number of physical and mental issues, and treatment options are available for those issues at low or no cost.

The residential programs that I helped Connie locate with a third party were all free of charge. She wouldn’t have paid a dime. A gracious and decent human being who is a certified victims advocate spent hours locating those programs for Connie at my request. All Connie Fielding had to do was show up to the intake interview, be accepted into one of the programs, and spend a year undergoing therapy and treatment for her various mental and physical medical issues free of charge.

If she had done so, she would have emerged a better, healthier version of herself with the tools need to cope with trauma. She would have been able to navigate abusive situations in a coherent and rational manner instead of ranting and raving about Jesus leading her to the children or smearing everyone who disagreed with her as a member of organized crime. She would have potentially been a credible witness in any future criminal or civil court case over her allegations.

Connie declined, and she became increasingly rude and abusive to me and the certified victims advocate who was helping her. She libeled both of us in various emails in the most invidious terms imaginable as people who were complicit in the worst forms abuse and corruption. The victims advocate and I are individuals who have dedicated years of our lives to fighting corruption and abuse, often working free of charge to document and build cases for victims, telling their stories to law enforcement and prosecutors. I’ve spent most of my life in anonymity, dropping packages off with prosecutors and law enforcement to enable them to put the pieces together and secure convictions.

I devoted over 100 hours to Connie Fielding’s story, poring over pages of evidence, doing hours of interviews with her, and writing her story up in a coherent and logical form that anyone could understand. If Connie Fielding wants those article republished, she has conditions to meet: first, she has to attend the intake interview for the residential treatment program; second, she has to be accepted into the program; third, she has to physically go to the program and commence treatment; and, finally, she has to complete that program while behaving appropriately and legally from this point forward.

IRA does not condone breaking the law or slandering judges, attorneys, and prosecutors as corrupt simply because they dare to disagree with you or they hold you to an account for your illegal behavior. There is no circumstance where that would be warranted. 1 Corinthians 10:13 informs us that with every temptation, there is a means of escape provided by God. Unfortunately, Connie Fielding chose to ignore the escape route and embrace increasingly lawless, defamatory, and inappropriate behavior. The consequence of her actions is this: IRA has unpublished her story and will not republish her story until she gets help for her various mental issues.