The point I will try to make tonight is that this technology and the way it was used against me, my family, and my friends, shaped the way I lived my life and followed the career path that I took. It's pretty essential to understand that the most dramatic Lori influenced moments pushed me to become the person that would eventually expose her lies.
As early as the fifth grade I was exposed to Lori's influence and lies. I'm pretty sure I was like most kids. I had friends that I grew up with and knew very well. We'd been in school together for many years and kind of knew what each person was like in our class. About half way through the fifth grade year we all noticed that our friend was acting differently. When someone suggested drugs were involved, it was a surprise because this guy was the smartest in our class. He was a skateboarder when the sport was really coming into prominence. I kind of wrote it off like it was something he got into because of skateboarding.
I can remember in the sixth grade a group of us got together to work on an anti-drug campaign to help him and others avoid drugs. As his life started to spiral, he got really mean to us. We'd known him forever and honestly we were concerned for him. It was out of love that we all tried, but eventually, he would make the choices that he did. It cost him a lot of friendships and his education as a college bound student.
Now I realize that Lori LaFond was involved with his demise and behind the negative way he began to deal with us, especially me. I think this was the beginning of my living two lives. Also I remember that this was when my father was accused of having sex with a male student; it was in all the papers.
I had to grow up quickly and I had to protect myself using my intuition and intelligence. One was to protect myself from someone who was confronting me with no real reason and two, to protect my family from the case against my father.
The whole legal case against my father was probably more than a sixth - eighth grader would be exposed to. I was one of many witnesses in the case so I was prepared for his trial by our attorney. Meanwhile, I first met Lori LaFond. She wasn't at the same grade school as my friends, so she was in the eighth grade and I was in seventh. It was a brief week or so that I saw her and knew she was mean to kids. She also caused a conflict that I probably took differently than the other kids. Here she was, in front of the class, obviously flirting with the teacher. For a kid whose father is in the papers for this kind of alleged activity, it was painfully similar. Remember, I knew my father wasn't guilty, since I was a witness, so I thought there were kids that did these things to teachers. Lori was the aggressor, the teacher wasn't impressed, and she was removed from the class.
So, yeah, there was a lot of stuff going on during these years.
My father was well represented in a case that was mostly about a student that didn't want to testify who was forced into this situation by an unknown witness who was pushing for his family to go forward. I'm not sure but as I recall the student did not testify and the case was based on evidence that someone had given to the student's sister. I guess the law allowed for a prosecution without the victim consenting if the parents pursued it. I'm not sure. So, I'm thinking Lori probably met with the sister of the accuser and pushed the case Lori made up.
In any event, I was dodging a bully and dealing with a serious legal case. It forced me to become an adult quickly. When my father was fully acquitted, I was happy to put that behind me. I had a few weeks before high school began and I was glad to have that behind me. It didn't take but five minutes on the high school campus before I was first attacked by Lori Jean LaFond. All of a sudden the feelings about my father's case were immediately brought back as she screamed bloody murder about how she knew I was "a flaming faggot and everyone knew it" with one of my best friends standing next to me. It was almost like Lori planned the attack.
Two or three more incidents would happen like that with Lori and a campus full of onlookers. So, for the most part, Lori was still trading drugs for violent favors from the same kid that used to be my friend, his friends, and some girls that Lori talked into saying things to me. It all kind of reminded me of my father's case. I was popular with mostly everyone so I had that face on at school, but privately, I was feeling like there was some kind of evil element going on. On the outside I looked confident, but on the inside I was cautious.
I guess what I am getting at is that homosexuality was a theme of Lori's rage and hatred. For a kid that actually was gay but wasn't really sexual or dealing with that, it made me more concerned about who I told about my feelings. After all, Lori made it seem like if I was gay, her friends would get violent with me.
I really hated high school, but most people wouldn't have known that. I definitely had friends that protected me from her druggie customers. Even after Lori graduated, she still found another person to keep the pressure on me through my senior year. I couldn't wait to escape.
So by the time college rolled around, I was more than ready to start anew. Obviously I was prepared to go to college, but once again, Lori wrote a letter to my dorm and pretended to be someone else. It was a creepy letter about a girl running her car through a garage door because she envisioned me standing in front of it. I thought it strange enough to share with my entire dorm floor. So when I tell you all that I've always kind of had the feeling that someone was trying to kill me, these are the reasons. From the beginning I always thought someone was trying to hurt me, not just my father. Later that year, the same bully skateboarder showed up to my college apartment. Strange how these things trigger that feeling or is it?
I had a fondness for the legal system that set my father free, but once accused him of something sexual and very inappropriate. I thought about becoming a lawyer. My grades were good enough my first year of college, but in the summer, I was intentionally infected with HIV and implanted with a microchip. By my second year of college, I was sick and had to come home to recover. I couldn't explain the infection as I hadn't been sexually active and didn't even think about drugs; never needles. This was the time of Ryan White and all the problems that he encountered. Being HIV positive was a death sentence and not something you would tell anyone. Once again, someone was trying to kill me and they just had.
So life changed. I had goals to graduate from college to make my mom and dad proud. They were in the room when I was diagnosed. Of course, Lori was listening in the whole time. I also experimented with drugs thinking that I had only a limited time to live...something Lori called my sister and brother in law about behind my back. People began stalking me then too, so there was really a lot going on.
I can remember feeling a ton of pressure on me and I didn't handle it all that well. Not like I do now. Even then I remember thinking that this whole thing tied to the girl that accosted me in high school, but it seemed only a theory, I hadn't seen her in years. Kinda believed it was just my mind thinking about when it all started.
I pursued the law school angle half heartedly because my grades weren't good, but I knew I was smart. When that wasn't an option, I began to look into moving to San Diego and paralegal school at UCSD. Again, people were following me to class and stalking me everywhere. No drugs were involved, just these people that were seemingly everywhere.
I studied hard despite the "people watching me" and started working for an attorney service. I thing between living in San Diego and trying to succeed with a job, I kind of just blocked these people out. My time there was invaluable because I had contact with lawyers, secretaries, and legal staff at the courts. I had a personality and I looked good, so I became popular in that world. Legal messengers have their own world. I would process serve, file, pick up and drop off documents and basically learned the San Diego court system from Municipal to Federal...I became an expert.
Eventually I would find my way to the U.S. Justice Department and the federal court. The place that I wanted to work the most. By the time my third or fourth month at that job rolled around, I was being asked about working for a judge. It was good for me because it usually takes years to do that, but I was good and I knew I could do it.
So, I guess what I am trying to tell all of you is that it was Lori's insistence on following me around that shaped how I learned to protect myself. I didn't worry about being beaten up because I got myself into good shape. I knew that people were following me and it embarrassed me. I thought, these people have seen me do absolutely nothing, and they are still following me.
By the time I was the victim of a shooting, I was pretty confident that I could find out who was behind all of this and for some reason I knew it began in Palm Springs. Remember too, that I'd had a conversation with my brother in law about Lori LaFond. It wasn't about stalking or remote neural monitoring, but more about her freaky obsession with me and my sister. He, like others, told me to be careful.
I would like to point out that from beginning to the end, the Lori LaFond factor was a constant but not in person. I would later use that to try to draw her out online...and it worked.
Being forced to live in an obsessed woman's world isn't a natural feeling for me. It seems forced. My college background prepared me for women's issues. My career prepared me for legal matters. My life prepared me for confrontations. It made me into the perfect warrior to lead this investigation.
So when I get upset about not being able to do what I do best, understand that my whole life was about learning how to fight against this "wave of negativity" that I couldn't explain at the time, but I can now.
I am proud to be a gay man. When I learned about how this affected the community in Palm Springs, I knew I had to be careful and kind. That was easy for me because I was that way my whole life. I knew someone was spreading rumors about me to get people to follow me around so I had to be the best person I could be. It worked well enough to earn me a good reputation in the small LGBTQ community of Palm Springs.
All in all, it makes more sense to me now than ever before. I am sure my father will understand what it's like to be falsely accused by Lori LaFond. My sister will as well. Most of my friends will too.
I would caution anyone that tries to help Lori that there are laws about stalking a witness in a court case and involving yourselves in a murder and attempted murders (I have police reports for my rape and beating in Palm Springs and for the shooting in San Diego.) These cases are open and workable, so helping Lori isn't recommended for anyone that wants to stay out of her legal problems.
