U.S. Political Prisoner Since 2004

Foreword

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

- Robert Heinlein, 1940

No law shall be passed impairing the freedom of speech or expression. Every person shall be free to speak or publish whatever he will on any subject, being responsible for all abuse of that liberty...

- Montana Constitution, Article II, Section 7

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In spite of what anyone may think, this book is very hard for me to write.  Not because it is untrue or even because of the subject matter being so radical.  Instead, it is because every time I tell my story, I feel like I am spreading lies about myself.  It is not a good feeling, and it leaves me sick every time I have to open myself up for this kind of scrutiny.  There is also the ever present fear of further retaliation for speaking out.  But I have reached a point where I just cannot remain silent any longer.

A great many people have tried to silence me, to suppress what I am presenting within this volume.  They have convicted me of a heinous act to discredit and undermine anything I have to say – it is so much easier to say, He is a convicted felon, so don't listen to him than to give me the credibility I should be entitled to.  But what people forget is that all of what I am speaking of in this biography happened before there was a conviction, and much of it happened before there was ever a charge filed against me.  This is the story of political corruption and how I became a political prisoner in my own country for standing up to it.  And it is a story that could very easily be your own if you ignore the forewarning provided herein.

People talk about feeling shame for their past – shame for things they have done and for which they wish they could undo.  But no one talks about the shame associated with having to talk about things that are not true, but that people automatically assume are.  In all my years, I have never met anyone else who talks about feeling shame for being accused of something they did not do.  I am confident that this is not a unique phenomenon; I in no way believe I have somehow evolved an entirely new kind of emotion.  But it is certainly not an aspect of shame that is ever talked about.

And I do feel shame.  I do.  Every time I am compelled to talk about this, I feel it.  But it is not shame for anything I have done – it is shame for having to tell people something about myself that is not true, for having to open myself up for prejudice and bigotry for something about myself that has been made up by other people about me.  It is hard to express beyond that, but it is a feeling I cannot escape.

I feel it as I write these words, and I imagine I will feel it for the rest of my days.  Even if I could somehow be exonerated, this will always be hanging over me.  In today's information age, there will always be a scarlet letter out there with my name attached to it.  And there will always be people who would rather believe me guilty, if for no other reason than to validate their own wicked views of the world.  I have become a poster child in the community I find myself confined in, and I have no idea how to ever escape it.

So what do I feel ashamed of?  It can be summed up in two words:

Sex offender. 

For me, they are not words of truth – they are a false label imposed over me to undermine any support I might gain in fighting a corrupt regime.  But they are powerful words all the same.

The words have a pretty broad meaning, but every invocation of them creates negative feelings and repugnance.  It used to be rapists, and molesters, and pedophiles, and so many other words.  Now all of these and more have been dubbed under one easily classified label, and in doing so, every offender – regardless of how minor or serious the offense may or may not be – are now grouped with the full-fledged maniacs like Joseph Duncan.  If you urinate in an alley, you are now classified with serial rapists. 

In American society, just having these words attached to your name is enough to convict you.  Varying statistics show that over fifty percent of sexual assault allegations are false in America, but to the general public, the mere mention of the accusation is equal to one hundred percent guilt.  And conviction rates for this kind of crime are nearly equal to the court of public opinion.  Simply put, if you are accused, there is a ninety-nine percent chance that you will be convicted – at least in Flathead County, Montana.  It will not matter if you are innocent.  It will only matter that you were accused.  And even if you somehow escape being prosecuted or convicted, if someone says you molested a child – true or not – the accusation alone can destroy you.

Before I fell under this scrutiny myself, I often heard the term, Where there's smoke, there must be fire.  And I hate to admit it, but I held similar beliefs.  I was a youth advocate, and if I heard a child say they had been molested, I automatically shifted into defense mode.  I believed the child because – to my mind – I could not conceive of a child ever lying about something like that.

To put it bluntly, I was wrong.  I was naïve, and corrupt authorities in Kalispell, Montana, were able to take advantage of my naivety to brand me as a sex offender in order to stop my own legal challenges against their corruption.  And they were able to do it through abduction, terrorism and outright manipulation of the the legal system through an entrenched Good Ol' Boy Network that holds absolute power over a blind public.  It turned out it is pretty easy to create a political prisoner in the United States if you convince the public that a dissident is actually a child molester.  And remember – the accusation alone is enough to have the public believe it.

When you hold absolute power, you can threaten witnesses without fear of reprisal.  When you control the courts, you can legitimize abduction of children by calling it child welfare.  When you own the prosecutor's office and court clerk, you can have documents filed at 4am to have someone arrested to get them off the street to stop a lawsuit – even if they are in another state.  When you run the jails, you can keep that person locked up indefinitely without a trial or hearing while you run around terrorizing everyone in their life and to give you time to manufacture witnesses against them – to make sure that when a trial is held, it is a kangaroo court where everyone does exactly what you want – because you control what can happen to their lives.  And when you are in charge of who represents the accused, and the public defenders are all assigned by the same court that is in your pocket, there is absolutely no hope that the truth will ever be presented to a jury.

For almost ten years now, I have been a political prisoner in my own country because of being naïve.  Because I held personal belief in my own integrity and knew I was incapable of ever harming a child, it was simply inconceivable to me that a child would ever say I had.  But I knew nothing of the kind of corruption that ran rampant in Kalispell, or in Montana, in general.  I did not account for how a child could be taken from her home and scared into saying whatever she had to in order to go back home.  And I knew nothing of the psychology involved with how children are raised to follow the direction of anyone in authority – even if what that person says to do is wrong.

Unfortunately, by the time all of this became crystal clear to me, it was too late.  Even when I was arrested, I held to the belief that they could not convict me.  I stubbornly held – even after sitting for sixteen months in jail without a trial or probable cause hearing – that sooner or later, I would get the truth out there and they would be exposed.  Again, my naivety and trust in the illusion of truth and justice worked against me.

As consequence, I spent five years incarcerated – almost two years in jail, and over three years in prison.  Ironically enough, under Montana law I was eligible for parole before I ever saw trial, since after serving one quarter of one's sentence, one becomes eligible – and I spent sixteen months in jail before I ever saw trial (on a five year sentence, fifteen months meets that requirement).  But I was subsequently sent to prison because I would not confess to the false allegation against me.  And when I finally saw the parole board, I was denied parole twice because I refused to confess.  I have since been subjected to over five years of probation (when I was only sentenced to a suspended sentence) at the time of this writing, and have another ten years to look forward to.  And during it all, I continue to be victimized and given harsher restrictions than anyone else – all because I refuse to admit to a crime I did not commit.  All because I sued Kalispell and the power players in this town, and they cannot abide that someday I might win free of their false conviction.

I mean, it all makes sense in a warped way – so long as I maintain my innocence and continue to look for ways to overturn my conviction, I remain a very real threat to the powers-that-be.  If I ever overturn my conviction, if I ever prove my innocence, they become exposed as the true criminals.  And that is a very dangerous proposition for them.

I had hoped that when the time came for me to write this book, my story would be done.  That I would be writing a story of what happened, how I continued fighting and – most of all – how I overcame the impossible odds mounted against me.  But the more time that passes, I realize that day may never come.  And so I am going to write this so that at the very least there will be a record of the truth – a record that will survive my death.

I also know that writing this at this juncture just opens me up for more retaliation.  I could find myself back in jail again over this.  But I need to do something – and I would like to know that at least there is one place I can send people to look for what the real truth is.

I will be drawing material from several places for this book.  A lot of the content in here will be modified from online posts I have written, for example.  In scripting this, I imagine a lot of this will not read like a narrative.  I will be quoting laws and judicial precedents, as well as other legal material.  And I will be including scanned content from materials I have managed to reacquire in recent years.  I hope that in presenting this, that it will at least be cognizant enough to be able to be followed.  But I, of course, welcome any feedback and suggestions in how to better organize what is contained herein.  I will be the first to admit that I am too close to this topic to write objectively, so by all means – please do not hesitate to ask.

One more note for this foreword: One of the many restrictions that was uniquely placed upon me that does not exist for any other individual convicted within the State of Montana that I can find is that I am forbidden by court order to use the real name (or publish any identifying information, which would include the initials) of my alleged victim.  It is standard practice to not identify minors or victims in court records, substituting initials for their true names, but no such law exists outside a court.  However, I alone am forbidden to name the person who accused me – My sentence was modified six years into it to include that condition that I cannot publish nor maintain any record using any identifying information of my alleged victim.  And as my alleged victim is over eighteen, this convention is no longer appropriate, either.

Please do not mistake my raising this point to in any way suggest that a victim of a crime is not entitled to a certain amount of privacy.  I actually hold to European practice that not even criminal offenders or suspects should be publicly named. 

But this being said, there should not be blanket protection for individuals who bring forth accusations simply by virtue of making such an accusation – not when (as previously mentioned) statistics prove that over fifty percent of accusations made are false.  If there is going to be a right to publicize the name of a man or woman accused of a crime, then there should rightfully be the right of the accused to not only confront his accuser, but also to speak out in the same public forum against them.  In law, as I mentioned, this is permitted through using initials to protect minors and victims – but as I am prohibited from even using initials, one has to ask why such an extreme measure is being used in my instance?

Keep in mind, as well – before there was ever a prosecution, the alleged victim's and family member's names were published on the Internet.  In fact, their names can still be found in archive records if you search for the original posts – and because they are archive records, I could not change them if I wanted to (search for Another Case of Gov Abuse for evidence of this – GeoCities (where this was originally posted) is a now-defunct website where I made an initial appeal for public support, but the site exists solely as an archived record now, which means it cannot be edited by anyone – including myself).  Consequently, the order actually only prohibits me from creating new material, since this original information has been searchable on the Internet since 2003 – it is a moot point, but it makes it harder for people who might support me to actually research the truth.

If there had been a general crime committed in this instance, there would be no need to write this book and therefore no need to mention anyone's name in any kind of public disclosure like this.  However, since there is – by virtue alone of my own protests of innocence coupled with the evidence presented in this book and elsewhere – there should be no restriction upon my relating the true names of the individuals involved.  And Montana law agrees, since there is no law which prohibits anyone else in the State of Montana from naming people involved in their criminal cases.  But there is a court ruling that specifically bars me alone from doing so, even though there are clearly sources that are beyond my control that already name the person whom I am currently forbidden to name.

To avoid the legal infraction, I will be adhering to the court order so the corrupt authorities cannot use this as an excuse to incarcerate me again.  Who knows – maybe they will blame me for the site I have no control over and still do it, since they may claim that they were unaware the site existed.  It is hard to predict the form – reasonable or otherwise – that their retaliations take.  But of course, anyone is able to go to the Internet and get the real information – and I encourage you to do so, in the interests of full disclosure. 

I do not violate the law by telling you that the information is out there – I am only forbidden in naming these people myself or maintaining any source where they are named; I do not maintain the archive of Geocities, and therefore this court order is ineffective and pointless – it exists solely in an effort to harass and frustrate me personally in a way that no one else is.  This is but one of many examples of disproportionate treatment that I have been forced to endure, and it is my hope that collectively you will see that the disparate attention and restrictions applied in my case alone are cause to question the validity of all that has been done to me.

I will be reprinting the content of this original posting, albeit, with my alleged victim's name substituted.  For instance, Daughter 1 will refer to my alleged victim, since she is the eldest.  The only other name I will redact is that of her sister out of respect that she is still a minor at the time of this writing, whom I will call Daughter 2.  Other than these changes, I will endeavor to post everything in as close to its original content as possible.  And that includes full disclosure on all names and identifying information necessary to expose the truth.

I should also note before I leave this topic – the United States and Montana State Constitutions protect freedom of expression.  They entitle any citizen of the United States to say whatever they want about any subject or person, so long as in doing so they do not deliberately spread false information intended to harm another or breach national security.  It should be noted that this is the reason no law exists that prohibits anyone else in the country from naming people involved in their criminal prosecutions – because freedom of speech trumps it.  This is a basic, inalienable right – yet I alone have been censured in what I can say. 

As you continue to read, you might ask yourself why such a blatant violation of civil liberty has been inflicted upon me – what exactly are these people afraid that I will say?  This is not the only example – but it is a pretty obvious one that needs little documentation to back it up, since everyone knows that we are supposed to have freedom in this country.  Right?

I encourage you to ask this question – and keep asking it.  And while you are at it, by all means please start asking your federal representatives and law enforcement agencies why Montana is being allowed to treat American citizens like this.  If enough people ask, maybe – just maybe – some day we might get an actual answer.  I only pray it comes before I die.  And as you will see later on, one person has already died to cover up what these people do not want you to know.

Chapter 1

Frank Garner.  Ted Lympus.  Peg Allison.  Ed Corrigan.  These are real names of very real criminals hiding under the cover of official titles and positions in Kalispell and Flathead County, Montana.  These are members of an elite Good Ol' Boy gestapo network of corruption that has been entrenched in this area – a small subset of a larger problem persistent throughout Montana as a whole.  And just as their names are real, so is my own. 

My name is Ron Glick.  My name is real, and so are the names of most of the people in this book (with a noted exception barred by unconstitutional court censorship, and one other for respect to her being a minor at the time this is written).  Likewise, everything in this book is true.  Before the events of this volume, I was a single father and a community leader.  All I ever wanted to do with my life was to use what moderate skills I had to improve society and bring people together.  I had my ups and downs – and I certainly was not wealthy enough for my community-minded pursuits.  But as a single dad with a disability, I wanted to give back and make the world a better place.  Unfortunately, in doing so I ran afoul of people who did not want someone like me out in the world working against their own corrupt interests.

I was never anyone exceptional before any of this – I was not a celebrity, expert in my field, nothing of especial noteworthiness.  I had a rough upbringing – surrounded by alcohol and addiction from my parents (father and step-father), I was left to my own devices on where to draw any kind of morality from.  And for me, that moral compass came from comic books. 

Spider-man's with great power must also come great responsibility was a ruling mantra of my life.  Superman's inability to lie was another.  From comic books I drew inspiration, hope and an unquenchable desire to help others.  I could look to my own life, see the pain and misery I lived through, and see the heroes in comics overcome even worse obstacles to arrive at victory – just so long as they persevered in the name of what was just, they would eventually prevail.  Sans any genuine concept of right or wrong from my parents, comics were the guidepost by which I modeled my life. 

No, I was not running around in spandex – but I was living up to the ideals of truth, justice and the American way of life in every breath I took.  Even today, after all the years I have suffered as a US political prisoner, I continue to reach out and help others.  That is the one thing about me these criminals posing as authority figures can never do: they cannot take away from me who I really am.  And who I am – in spite of what they want others to believe – is a good person.

Like many who are reading this, I worked in a wide variety of jobs over the years, ranging from general labor, to retail, to debt collection, to telemarketing.  I tried my hand at several personal businesses along the way, primarily retail oriented, but I tried publishing once, also.  I even created and operated several nonprofit charities.  Learned early on that I enjoyed working with and helping people, and this is the direction I took my life, always moving forward over the occasional bump in the road.

I became a father at 21 while living in Bakersfield, California.  I raised my son John with his mother until he was five, and then we were on our own from that time after we moved to Montana.  I settled originally in Polson, but by 2000, we had moved to Kalispell.  I had opened a youth recreations program in Polson in 1997, and moved it to Kalispell that year.  By 2003, I and my then-girlfriend Mara Pelton had opened a business, Arcadia, to coordinate with the youth program.  But it was then that this story came to an abrupt halt – because it was then that the true face of Kalispell showed itself.

This is a story of not only corruption, but how a good person's life can be destroyed by falsehoods and manipulation of people in positions of power.  It is a story of the true darkness that far too many people possess, both those in affluence and those who do not care who they hurt to gain it.  Worst of all, it is a story of what happens when people allow themselves to be blinded by propaganda, specifically that people allow themselves to be indoctrinated into the belief that they live in a free society with guaranteed civil liberties.

I was not a radical.  I was not a terrorist, or troublemaker, nor did I have a criminal record of any kind.  My whole life I had prided myself that I was a law abiding citizen and would never be a burden to society.  In fact, even when I became disabled in my twenties, I spent fifteen years trying to find ways to not rely on government support as best I could.  So imagine my surprise when I was not only accused, but convicted of a heinous, unthinkable crime.  None of it was true – and it staggers me to this day how many people believe it is true simply because other people say it is – but when people have absolute power to do whatever they want outside the law, people will bend to the popular belief just so they do not stand out.  It is sad that a country based on standing together against oppressive rule would bow so meekly to it two hundred years later.

Abraham Lincoln once said, The trouble with too many people is they believe the realm of truth always lies within their vision.  In other words, too many people think they know the truth even when they do not.  If you always believe the first thing you hear or believe what you want to believe rather than search for what is really going on, then truth does not lie within your vision no matter what you may think.  Of course, there are too many people out there who deliberately encourage people to believe in the mistruth, also – so it is a slipper slope.  I guess all I can ask is that anyone reading this follow President Lincoln's wisdom and consider that the truth is not always so simple.

Another way of looking at it is to look to a quote attributed to Samuel Clemins: A lie is far easier to believe, for it can be molded to the ear of the listener.  Truth, by comparison, is far more rigid and less likely to be believed.  To put it another way, lies can be told to be what someone wants or expects to believe – but truth is unalterable and not as pleasant to hear.  As you read this book, I ask you to keep this thought in mind: it represents the road of least resistance to believe that our government is filled with honest, honorable and trustworthy people who work to preserve our rights above and beyond all else, and that someone accused or even convicted of a crime could only be so if what is said against him is true.  It is far harsher to hear that people in power are corrupt and manipulative, and that people you may have supported or even assisted in getting elected are lying to you in order to protect their own criminal misconduct.  But just because the latter is not as pleasant to hear, it nevertheless is the truth in this instance and I would appreciate if you, as the reader, will set aside your own personal prejudices and opinions in order to consume the content of this book with an ear tuned for truth rather than preference.

Ironically enough, before all this, I was just about as patriotic as you could imagine.  I voted every election, I contributed to political campaigns and I openly promoted the ideals of American civil liberties.  I am a compulsively honest person by nature, and honor was more important to me than anything else.  Most importantly, I did my absolute best to pass these morals down to my son, inspiring through my own dedication to my country and its ideals a belief in the American way of life.

But I was naïve.  It was all a lie.  Because there are no civil liberties in this country if the government does not want you to have them.  They are not guaranteed as we are raised to believe – they are conditional.  So long as you live your life quietly, meekly, and most of all do not stand up to your betters, you will be allowed to believe you have freedom and liberty.  But if you do just the opposite – if you stand up and demand these rights, you can just as easily have them stripped from you. 

If you are wealthy or in a position of political power, you can walk all over anyone else's liberties without repercussion.  And even if you are exposed for some crime or another, you will not face legal consequences.  If you do not believe this to be true, I ask you to look at all the sexual scandals in the last couple of decades American politicians have been caught in and ask yourself why they were never arrested for actions that would sent anyone else to prison.  When a mayor has sex with an underage intern, why is their worst consequence to simply not be reelected in the next term?

I realize this is a harsh viewpoint, but let me tell you what happened to me and how I came by this hard-earned knowledge.  Then perhaps you will better understand why I have come to see it as an inescapable viewpoint.

By 2003, I had been a youth advocate for nearly seven years.  I ran a youth recreations program, originally called The Flipside CCG, and later renamed to The Outpost CCG, that promoted educational activities with youth to inspire independence and self-worth.  My nonprofit promoted educational games and activities amongst youth to provide better alternatives than to leave restless minds to create their own forms of entertainment, which too often resulted in vandalism or worse.  My work as a youth advocate was an extension of this work. 

I should note that in spite of all my work, I had been listed as being physically disabled since I was 22.  In 1990, I was diagnosed with a rheumatoid variant disease, which is a chronic joint pain disease, that would progressively become worse as I grew older.  For almost twenty years I resisted the label of being disabled though, and always looked for ways to work and support myself so I would not have to fall back on support from the government for disability.  I did initially receive funds from California state when I lost my first job because of the disease, but that lasted for less than a year and I refused to seek federal disability after that.  My youth program and business that I will be talking about throughout this were just my latest efforts to not become fully disabled, as I hoped to support myself through them.

Beginning in 2002, I partnered with Mara Pelton, who had been my girlfriend at the time, to open a for-profit business called Arcadia in downtown Kalispell.  Part of the reason for this business' creation was to provide a full-time facility for The Outpost CCG to operate from, since at that point we had some rather disastrous partnerships with local businesses and the organization existed mostly as a mobile tutorial program.  But Arcadia's location also (unintentionally) placed me within a block of where teenagers gathered downtown during evening hours.  These kids were known as the Third and Main Crew for where they hung out – and my business was located between Third and Fourth Street on Main Street in Kalispell, Montana.

Within a few months of setting up Arcadia, I became aware of abuses perpetrated against teenagers by members of the Kalispell Police Department.  Aside from being told of atrocious acts of abuse from police officers by teenagers in my youth program, I personally witnessed police officers hit and shove teenagers, try to persuade them to have sex and generally bully and harass them out of what I could only see as a sense of elevating their own personal egos.  And this is just what I have seen – the stories that reached my ears made these instances pale by comparison.

There were a couple instances that stood out quite clearly in my mind even to this day.

There was a time I saw a teenage girl forced into the back of a police car and driven away when she refused to date one officer (date used in the context of a prostitute's services, not going out to see a movie).  I had been standing a short distance away and heard the officer proposition the girl, asking her if she wanted to go on a date with him, his head nodding toward his police car.  She responded with, F-—off, perv, which prompted the officer to reach around behind the girl's neck and propel her to the back of his car, open the door and shove her inside before peeling off.  It all happened so fast, I was just too stunned to react.

When I asked about what happened later, I was told by a friend of the girl that she was driven to the edge of town where the officer threatened to have her arrested if she did not have sex with him, and that she had complied.  The girl herself was too ashamed to even talk about it.

Another instance involved another girl who I witnessed enter the police station (I was there helping another teenager file a police report regarding a separate issue), fearful that if she went home, her mother would beat her.  The officer who met her in the lobby told her that a parent could do whatever they wanted to a child in Montana, that her mom could beat her within an inch of her life if her mother wanted to, and she probably deserved just that.  The officer even went so far as to say that if she were his daughter, he would have beaten her black and blue (his words) long ago.

Keep in mind that Montana law requires any report of abuse or fear of abuse to be referred to Child and Family Services[1].  Needless to say, the girl fled the station in tears and I seriously doubt there was ever a report made. 

These kinds of stories circulated for a few month before I ever witnessed anything on my own.  Ironically enough, they were happening less than a block from my youth center.  But I – to my own shame – ignored the complaints initially because I thought they were just kids trying to escape accountability for their own misconduct.

At first, I never went out to witness anything because I believed that no police officer would do the things that were being reported to me.  I just could not believe it could be true.  I told the teenagers to file reports with the police department if this was going on, and when they refused, I took it as a sign the stories were being fabricated.  After all, if there were a handful of rogue cops acting out against teenagers, I could not conceive that anyone else in the department would permit this if they knew about it. 

Not until I saw it myself.  And then I began to stand up and defend these kids who had no other voice.

Needless to say, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  No one in authority ever paid the least bit of attention to reports I filed, and attempting to talk to police officers directly were met with belittling attitudes and redirected blame onto me (Why would you be hanging out with teenagers if you weren't doing what you are accusing officers of doing?).  Eventually, my vocal outcry against the abuse made me a target, as well.

Sometime in mid 2002, just before we opened Arcadia, as I recall, there was a rumor that reached Mara from a childhood friend, Chantel Beasley.  See, prior to dating Mara, I dated a girl named Melissa Turner (Turner being her married name) and Chantel was her ex-husband's sister.  Therefore, when Chantel came forward with an allegation that I had molested Melissa's daughter, there was the assumption that Chantel had been told this by my ex-girlfriend, who I did not exactly have the most amicable break up with.  This story was accompanied with a warning from Chantel that I was dangerous to have around Mara's children and that Mara needed to break up with me to get me away from Mara's girls. 

After hearing about this, I personally went to Child and Family Services myself to make sure to make it a matter of record that none of it was true.  CFS confirmed that they had received a report, and though they would not confirm who had made the report, they did confirm that it was not from the child's mother (Melissa).  But it caused a rift between Mara and I, since she believed what Chantel had told her, no matter how much I protested it.

For several months, Mara's and my relationship was rocky.  We broke up and got back together  more than once for various