Is Jon Groff a Foul Mouthed Prosecutorial Misconduct Victim?
Report #: 311
Date Reported: Friday, January 27, 2012
Status: Active and Ongoing
Severity: Moderate - Public Bullying
Primary Weapon: Email
Specific Location: P.O. Box 42486
City/Local Area: Portland
State/Territory: Oregon
Region: United States
If the people claiming to be Jon Groff and his ex-girlfriend are honest then they are doing a great job helping to keep Portland weird on the web as two of the most memorable nuts I’ve encountered on the net since becoming a webmaster. It all started back in 2009 when according to server records an anonymous author going by the name of SvenMogul created a report accusing his ex of having the Human Papillomavirus (HPV). Then for over two years nothing happened until I received some emails from someone claiming to be his ex-girlfriend who like most people denied the accusation and wanted the report removed, but unlike most people she had a story full of accusations that only Jon Groff could top her with accusation against her.
When responding to his ex’s complaint I noticed right away that she was a pushy one dedicated to getting her report removed fast, but she also seemed willing to do just about anything to get it removed short of actually disproving the contents. Her first messages seemed to focus more on trying to convince me that Groff wrote it and that his conduct violated a plea bargain. She sent a .pdf file that was one part personal message with two parts of what looked like a plea agreement from Multnomah County Circuit Court. The court document said that Groff was convicted of telephonic harassment for unspecified reasons and that he sent an email to the Ash Street Saloon under the alias Michael Mandiberg falsely claiming that her ban played at his nightclub in Detroit. In the personal message she said that Groff had been stalking her for years, took naked pictures of her while she was sleeping, and put those pictures on a website named after her which he purchased in 2007 along with accusations of prostitution and drug use after already being served with a restraining order. Then she accused Groff of being a Herpes infested adulterer before urging me not to contact him at all because he is a dangerous master programmer with an arsenal of weapons on anti-psychotic medication.
During the same time period I received an email from someone claiming to be Jon Groff and requested that I remove the report for him because he did not recall ever creating the account or the report, but he was using an email address other than the one used by the author to create the account, so I asked him to perform the simple task of replying to my message from the author’s email account or any account at NeoCoreTechs.com since he is the registered owner of that domain name. Once his ISP unblocked my IP address he responded instantly and confirmed that he did in fact make the request, but when I replied to him I noticed that even though his reply-to header listed a NeoCoreTechs.com address that the message was actually received from an Earthlink address. When confronted with what appeared to be a possible case of header spoofing he claimed that despite being a master programmer his ISP had blocked his ability to send mail from that account, so we were back to square one, exchanged several immature profanity laced emails, never confirmed the author’s email address, and I never heard from him again. One would think that a master programmer could solve a simple email problem, but without being able to confirm the authenticity of the request I must assume that the request did not come from the author just to be on the safe side.
Assuming Groff is the author comments like "after these many years her HPV is most likely a danger only to her own cervix unless she has managed to brew up a new and different batch of funk to unload on some lonely, unsuspecting schmuck" didn’t sound like the words of a man trying to correct a wrong. They sounded more like a man afraid of being prosecuted for telling the truth, but eventually his behavior led me to believe that he knew she had nothing on him, that he had beaten the rap, and didn’t fear prosecution at all. The post itself could only be considered harassment if the statements were false, harassment is a misdemeanor in Oregon, and the statute of limitations on misdemeanors is 1 year. His telephonic harassment conviction was in March of 2010 and his probation expired in March of 2011, so he had done his time and the report was written before his conviction so even if he were still on probation he couldn’t be violated. His more recent behavior including statements like "she is an extremely effective manipulator and displays sociopathic tendencies bordering on psychopathy" could be a different issue altogether however and so could the insults he directed at me, but unlike his ex I publicly put my name out there promoting a controversial venture, have years of experience being insulted online, and know how to take it with a smile on my face.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Groff wasn’t how he trashed his ex-girlfriend or myself, but the accusations he made against Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Kevin Demer. According to the document I previously mentioned Demer was the prosecutor who convicted Groff, but according to Groff he abused his power to trample on his constitutional rights in exchange for oral pleasure from her.
Now what is a webmaster to do here? What should I do when I am presented with two stories full of very serious accusations that are completely unverified? How much weight should I give request that could be from the author just as easily as they could be from an imposter? Who should I believe when taking either side makes the other one look mentally ill?
I do what all webmasters should do when completely surrounded by unfounded accusations just as likely to be true as they are to be rubbish. I look at the evidence objectively and enforce my policies even if it does make me sound like a "whiny little bitch in print" to people like Jon Groff or become the subject of legal threats from people like his ex-girlfriend. My policies require proof beyond a preponderance of the evidence to find an author in breach of contract.
In this case his ex-girlfriend did not prove anything and I have every right to accurately report what other people say or in this case abstain from removing what an anonymous user has said, so I cannot in good conscience censor or suspend SvenMogul. If this misleads people like her into thinking that a site is causing them "economic distress" to use her words then their blame is misplaced because no one is more responsible for giving weight to unfounded anonymous complaints than end users. People like her should not have to worry about not getting called for a job interview, losing a gig, or being embarrassed in real life because some people don’t know how to properly scrutinize what they read online.
Greater user education is the only thing capable of ending cyberbullying because it is the only real alternative to censorship. Censorship of the internet is the worst type of cyberbullying imaginable because nothing you are capable of saying is worse than not having the freedom to speak in the first place. The day people stop letting unverified data influence their hiring, purchasing, and social decisions is the day no one will have the power to hurt anyone with vicious lies or less than convincing otherwise devastating torpedoes of truth.
|