The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) - Firewire News Case Study: Progress Foundation (Shrader House)

The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) was born of the struggles of one tenacious survivor of domestic violence and stalking. The NCIDP continues her work with the help of many. Read more about the NCIDP...

[Backstory Note from the NCIDP editors: This case has an additional backstory. The details of this case file selected for publication by Firewire News narrowed the focus to the most intense violence of the case, which occurred at Progress Foundation's Shrader House. The NCIDP feels that the details of the backstory provide important insights into the depth and breadth of the organizational involvements in this violence; insights that reveal how easily, systematically and routinely homicidal and violent perpetrations like this occur within the City and County of San Francisco and likely elsewhere across California and perhaps the nation. The NCIDP is appending the backstory for this case to the end of the Firewire News report of it, at the bottom of this webpage.]

(Firewire News) - Among the thousands of cases in the NCIDP files, this Progress Foundation case represents one of the worst, most egregious, most psychologically vicious and devastating examples of violence against a victim by individuals purporting to be helping professionals.

IIULA status:

Progress Foundation and its subordinate programs, including Progress Foundation's Shrader House, are known by the NCIDP to have had previous full notice of a standardized Survivor's Identity Information User License Agreement (IIULA) prior to this incident.

Every breach of law perpetrated in this case at Progress Foundation and Progress Foundation's Shrader House, as discussed here and noted in the IIULA, was well known by Progress Foundation, Progress Foundation's Shrader House, and all involved individual perpetrators to be felony violent assault crimes before those crimes were perpetrated upon the victim(s) of this case.

The perpetrators of this case may not claim any ignorance of these laws, and must be presumed to have perpetrated these violent felony assault crimes with the willing and willful intent to do violence to the victim, including against survivors such as to willfully precipitate homicidal assaults upon such victims.

In short order, the perpetrators in this case: lured the victim in; manipulated her into dependence upon them; then terrorized, extorted, and victimized the victim all over again; then finally cast her off, back to the mercy of her merciless previous perpetrators and their homicidal intent - perpetrators that later confessed to YEARS of stalking and terrorizing the victim before and after the period of this case at Progress Foundation's Shrader House. The perpetrators in this case at Shrader House were so vicious that their actions rose to a point that the Patriot Act defines as terrorism. Those actions precipitated continuing and escalating violence against the victim, including homicidal assault.

Background: In most of those thousands of cases in the NCIDP files, homicidal assault preceded, followed, or both, each case. In this case, the victim came to Progress Foundation's Shrader House having already survived multiple homicidal assaults, rapes, extensive stalking, and much more violence. Moreover, she was actively in the midst of attempting to survive continued stalking and terror from her perpetrators with homicidal intent, who happened to be involved in organized crime.

The victim herself was not a participant in organized crime, and was herself unaware of the organized crime activities. She simply happened to draw the twisted amorous interests of, and personal connection to, a member (or two, it isn't entirely clear on that point) of the racket.

Shortly after reporting the violence and stalking to police, the perpetrators intensified their stalking and terror tactics aggressively. Overwhelmed with despair, the victim went to a local hospital seeking help and asking for domestic violence counseling and assistance, seeking safety. The domestic violence safehouses that she needed and was recommended to by the hospital were full, and she was put on a wait-list for them where she was twelfth on the list. This purportedly represented a wait of as much as three to six weeks or more.

In the interim, Progress Foundation offered its domestic violence counseling and housing program at its Shrader House location, which Progress Foundation claimed to be the specialization at the Shrader House location. Although Progress Foundation's Shrader House was not considered to be a secure domestic violence safehouse, it was believed and represented that it could be an interim safe haven where the victim could receive domestic violence counseling and assistance while waiting for a safehouse placement, and where leaving the house and becoming vulnerable to the assault of the perpetrators would not be necessary during those weeks of waiting for a more secure placement.

Askew Environment: Upon arrival at Progress Foundation's Shrader House facility, the victim immediately noticed that the clients housed in the facility were of mixed gender. She had not been warned about this aspect of the Progress Foundation domestic violence program, and was shocked, expecting it to be a female-only facility. She also quickly learned that most of the males in the facility were actually there for a mix of psychiatric and substance abuse problems without any significant history of being victimized, most being called 'dual diagnosis'. Although the women in the facility were coping with issues of violence, a number of them were also suffering from severe psychiatric and substance abuse problems.

The victim at the center of this case study had no history whatsoever of any substance abuse. Nor did she have any psychiatric history apart from issues related directly to the violence that she had been experiencing. Indeed, her sole significant need was to cope with and survive her dangerous perpetrators, both ongoing and past, which did include symptoms of post traumatic stress and situationally-related depressive effects. In fact, she was placed into the only single-bed room in the Shrader House facility precisely because her post traumatic stress symptoms were so severe; it was hoped that the extra measure of tranquility and quietude that she could have in a room to herself might help - so the victim was told at the time, anyway.

The counselors at Progress Foundation's Shrader House first convinced the victim that she should give up her own apartment and move out as it was thought to be known to her perpetrators and therefore unsafe. Shortly thereafter, the staff demanded that the victim give them the deposit that they assumed was returned to the victim by the landlord. When the victim reported accurately that there was no deposit to be returned by the landlord, the staff reacted angrily.

The victim soon realized that, as a domestic violence program, Progress Foundation's Shrader House program was incompetent at best. The victim kept reminding herself that she was only there to survive long enough to be placed into a more competent program at a safehouse oriented toward survivors of extreme violence similar to her own experiences. With that view, the victim did her best to take care of herself at the Shrader House facility and avoid any issues. However, it became clear that the domestic violence program at the Shrader House facility was designed, or misdesigned, in the same mold as treatment programs for dual diagnosis patients, and consequently the program really offered no substantive or helpful guidance, counseling or resources for actually surviving violence and, indeed, is a model generally iatrogenic to survivors. Again reminding herself of her wait-list standing for a more appropriate program, and feeling hopelessly without other options, the victim patiently and quietly awaited her placement.

In individual counseling sessions, where the survivors set their periodic goals for their time in the program, all of the victim's initial goals specifically oriented toward surviving and coping with violence were ruled out by her so-called counselors as reportedly beyond the capacity of the Shrader House domestic violence programs. In other words, the things that really would help the victim to stabilize her life and secure her safety were prohibited to her in the program, and the counselors instead insisted on setting goals more oriented toward minute daily activities or functions, like completing trivial projects or accomplishments largely unrelated to her real, fundamental needs. This appears to be a vestige of the domestic violence program being designed in the mold of a dual diagnosis treatment program, where the efforts to control patient behaviors and teach them to control their own behaviors are the focus. Unfortunately, this is not just useless, but iatrogenic, to a survivor of violence for whom it was or is the uncontrolled, controlling behaviors of others, of violent perpetrators, that is the problem.

The Shrader House facility dual-diagnosis program specifically sought to assert power and control dynamics over dual diagnosis patients, attempting to force such patients into behavioral compliance. This is exactly the dynamic that most survivors of violence need help learning how to avoid and escape, or otherwise protect themselves from. It is the worst possible thing that can be done to a survivor of violence by anyone purporting to be there to help. By repeating instead of breaking that cycle with survivors, programs for survivors molded on dual diagnosis programs deepen and perpetuate the cycle of violence and oppression for victims. Progress Foundation's Shrader House would soon prove, to the victim at the center of this case study, to be the devastating epitome of just such an iatrogenic, misogynous power-oppression by so-called helping professionals. The NCIDP psychosocial department vigorously decries the use of brutality to impose behavioral control in any case.

This case came to be a case in the NCIDP files because the crimes perpetrated by staff members at Progress Foundation's Shrader House included identity theft and identity related crimes, in addition to the extraordinary violence perpetrated there. The NCIDP case file excerpt released to Firewire News does not contain information on any subsequent law enforcement investigations and prosecutions that might reveal whether the terrorist activity at the Shrader House facility was tied to foreign terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, or foreign regimes, or if it was entirely domestic terrorism.

Violent Assaults: While at Progress Foundation's Shrader House, the victim consistently checked on her standing on the domestic violence safehouse wait-list once, if not twice, each week. Each time, the staff responded that she was still on the list, sometimes updating her on what her number was. At some point after several weeks, and with her wait-list standing progressing much more slowly than expected, the victim was down to being sixth on the list. The report was that turnover at the safehouses had slowed below average rates.

Abruptly one day, the victim's so-called counselor demanded that the victim apply for welfare. The demand was portrayed as non-optional for the victim, and was accompanied by the stated threat to throw her out of the Shrader House facility domestic violence program and leave her at the mercy of her violent stalkers - and now without even an apartment to return to.

Progress Foundation's Shrader House facility was a city contracted and funded domestic violence program prohibited from denying services to individuals regardless of resources. Moreover, the so-called counselors at the Shrader House facility were well aware that their demand and threats were illegal and criminal under both state and Federal law. More still, California law prohibited any requirement for disclosure of personally identifiable information regarding a victim for payment of any funding or benefits to provide services to that victim, another law of which Progress Foundation and the Shrader House facility and staff were well aware. That meant that if the Shrader House facility were eligible to receive welfare funds for providing services to the victim, they were eligible to receive those funds from the welfare department WITHOUT any disclosures of personally identifiable information regarding the victim. (CCC § 1798.79.8-1798.79.95). Federal law also describes the unauthorized, including extorted, acquisition or use of personal identity information in the conduct of any activity prohibited by any law as Federal felony identity theft crimes. (18 U.S.C. §§ 1028, 1028A).

The staff insisted that the information would be disclosed to the welfare agency anyway. Their demand, the entire monthly welfare check, amounted to the Shrader House facility collecting approximately $100 from the welfare department. A pittance for which it was clear that the money was not the issue - the power, abuse, control, and manipulation was all that really interested those perpetrators, just as it does most abusive personality types.

The victim's so-called counselor, her newest perpetrator, at Progress Foundation's Shrader House went so far as to threaten to call the victim's stalkers and inform them of the date and time that she would be kicked out the door of the facility. That is, this perpetrating so-called counselor pointedly threatened to be an accessory to, and facilitate the murder of, the victim.

The victim asked about her standing on the wait-list for the safehouses. That same perp snapped back, "No safehouse for you! WE had them take you off the list! It's here or the street!"

Violence for Fraud: Bad enough as it was, it did not stop with the violent abuse and homicide threats. The so-called counselor went on to threaten that, if the victim did not cooperate, Progress Foundation's Shrader House would "make sure you'll [the victim] never get help from anyone in this city ever again!"

As it happened, the victim had been conceived by her mother out of wedlock - a bastard child. Consequently, the laws of the state of her birth, as with a great many states, sealed her birth records, and disclosures of those records was strictly prohibited by law (felony crimes). So strictly that not even the victim could obtain her own birth certificate in any routine fashion. [Note: the NCIDP reports that this situation has applied to a significant number of individuals in NCIDP case files, although not always significant to the course of those other cases]. The seals were imposed by two different statutes: one protected the privacy and standing of the child; the other protected the privacy, reputation and memory of the mother. Consequently, not even a mother or child could obtain a certificate for themselves individually - there were absolutely no exceptions at law. Only prior to emancipation of the child, while the mother could still act both for herself and simultaneously as the legal guardian of the minor child, could a certificate be issued to the mother acting alone, which had not been done since the victim had been a newborn infant less than one month old.

The victim in this case had been working to obtain a birth certificate from the state of her birth for several years when the staff at the Shrader House facility began perpetrating their threats and violence. In fact, her actions to obtain her certificate and the associated appeals process generated yet another seal preventing any third parties access to the record while that appeal process was underway.

The insistence that the victim's information be disclosed to the welfare department also meant that a birth certificate was required. When the victim reminded the principle perpetrating staffer of the facts regarding her certificate, his response was, "We don't care whose birth certificate we get! We are going to get OUR money!"

In utter shock, the victim sat dismayed for a moment before responding, "That's welfare fraud!"

"So go ahead and report us! I DARE you!"

The NCIDP caseworkers report that, in listening to those tapes, their "jaws just came to rest on the floor, and stayed there" as they replayed those tapes over and over. They could not believe what they were hearing - and the tone of the perpetrator just floored them, they report, and left them feeling physically ill, crying themselves. Keep in mind that these NCIDP caseworkers deal with a lot of cases of extreme, vicious violence routinely, and this was too much for even hardened veterans. What has been quoted here are only the highlights - it was worse than can be conveyed here.

The perpetrator was acting like a schoolyard bully on a school playground, but here toying with the very life and survival of the victim. Indeed, the perpetrator made several acknowledgments about the laws and legal protections of the victim that the Shrader House facility staff was and intended to violate and flaunt, stating repeatedly, "We don't care!"

The victim did, by the way, report the crimes to law enforcement authorities promptly.

Twisted Terrorism: Progress Foundation's Shrader House needed a birth certificate, but the victim's certificate was thoroughly sealed and the victim herself could not obtain it, even after several years of effort to that point by her and her lawyers. Several days after their stated plan for identity theft and welfare fraud (and a host of other Federal felonies, including RICO statutes), the Shrader House facility staff claimed that they'd obtained the victim's birth certificate, implying but not overtly stating that it was indeed hers. Stumped and skeptical, she called her attorney and learned that her certificate remained strictly sealed, and that no such release of her certificate had been made by the state.

It is important to note here that it would not have mattered if the Shrader House facility had indeed obtained the victim's actual birth certificate - it still was identity theft, extortion, welfare fraud, RICO violations, and a list just as long of other felonies regardless of what birth certificate was obtained. Once the felony racket undertook to obtain a birth certificate by criminal means, the crimes were committed regardless of the actual content of the certificate stolen through those crimes. That the declared intent was to obtain ANY certificate without regard to its content demonstrated their mens rea (knowing intent) in the racket, as did their repeated admissions of knowing but 'not caring' that the written law criminalized their activities. They knew that they were perpetrating violent felonies, but they felt that they were above the law and didn't care about the law or the victim; they only cared about the abusive power play - the tapes unmistakably and painfully demonstrated that.

As mentioned previously, the Shrader House facility staff had threatened to ensure that medical help would never again be available to the victim if she refused to capitulate to their violence and cooperate in their welfare fraud and identity theft scheme. The victim did not know how they intended to carry out that threat until later.

Section 814 of the Patriot Act (P.L. 107-56) describes acts of terrorism, specifically cyberterrorism, to include alterations to medical records or systems that cause "(ii) the modification or impairment, or potential modification or impairment, of the medical examination, diagnosis, treatment, or care of 1 or more individuals."

As it turned out, it was this act of terrorism that the perpetrating staff at Progress Foundation's Shrader House intended to employ for both the identity theft/welfare fraud scheme, and in carrying out their threat to bar the victim from accessing medical care in the future.

The perpetrators needed to be able to explain why the birth certificate that they were purporting to be the victim's did not match her legal identity, so they falsified her medical records with a fake diagnosis that she was "transgendered". Presumably, then, whatever birth certificate they fraudulently obtained and misrepresented as applying to the victim was actually a male birth certificate, although the victim never learned any details regarding that certificate, and had never herself been male.

[Note: the NCIDP reports that it has numerous case files where perpetrators purporting to be helping professionals have used this same ploy of a fake "transgender" diagnosis in order to facilitate further perpetrations upon, and disempowerments of, the victims. To date, every case of this act of terrorism in NCIDP files has arisen in the City and County of San Francisco or the surrounding Bay Area. The NCIDP finds this hateful hypocrisy disturbing in a community that holds itself out as being ostensibly LGBT friendly. More surprising still to the NCIDP is that it finds significantly higher rates of such perpetrations of hate violence in San Francisco arise from gay men and lesbian women than from the general population. The principle perpetrator of misogynous violence in this case was an admitted gay male, and a second major perpetrator was a female of unstated orientation.]

With the grossly misogynous, fake "transgender" diagnosis, the fraudulent birth certificate was explained away, AND the victim was thereafter unable to access appropriate medical care and social services. We might say, 'Even in San Francisco', but the evidence shows that the wording more appropriately must read, 'Especially in San Francisco': Especially in San Francisco, transgendered women are vigorously discriminated against, brutalized and prohibited access to critical programs and services routinely. It is a testament to the destructive power of blind hate, and the power it retains even when misdirected.

The victim in this case was not transgendered by any stretch of the legal or clinical (DSM IV) constructions of identity and the" transgender" terms and diagnostic criteria, but the fake diagnosis entered into her falsified medical records immediately locked her out of the very critical services and programs that she needed. Women's domestic violence safehouses refused to put her back on their wait-lists, and providers universally began dismissing her need to survive her perpetrators in favor of bizarre and irrelevant questions and assumptions about her gender, sexuality and identity. The shift was abrupt, obvious and constant. [The NCIDP reports that, at least among their cases, this appears to typify cases of fake "transgender" diagnoses, and likely reflects the abject hate violence perpetrated upon truly transgendered women on a daily basis in the San Francisco area, centering around a city purporting to be friendly to such individuals.]

Evil Tragedy: Ultimately, the perpetrations at Progress Foundation's Shrader House proved far more devastating and emotionally injurious to the victim than the extreme violence of the earlier perpetrators whom she had sought refuge from. After she left the facility, effectively barred from any of the help that she truly needed, just as threatened, her earlier perpetrators quickly closed in once again and undertook another homicidal assault.

It was later confirmed that those earlier violent stalkers tracked the victim to the Shrader House facility, and continued to stalk her until they carried out that homicidal assault. This was further confirmed by a confession from one of those perpetrators in that organized crime ring: the crime ring stalked the victim for several years, leading up to their homicidal assault, and beginning well before this case unfolded at Progress Foundation's Shrader House facility.

The victim had reported [in her criminal complaints] the involvement in the case of several staff members at both the Shrader House facility and the Progress Foundation main offices, including the Director and Assistant Director of the Shrader House facility, and senior management at Progress Foundation.

Another young woman died at Progress Foundation's Shrader House facility. The victim of this case always believed that the other young woman was also subjected to the same brutality that she had experienced in the Shrader House facility; always believed that the perpetrating staff drove that young woman to suicide. If so, California is a felony state and even before the homicidal assault upon the victim of this case, those perpetrating staff, in the course of committing felonies, caused a death for which they can and should be charged with murder [if they haven't been already].

[The backstory for this case begins here, as noted at the top of this webpage.]

As noted in the Firewire News report of this case, the homicidally intended violent perpetrations at Progress Foundation's Shrader House included perpetrations clearly and expressly defined by the Patriot Act as terrorist acts (P.L. 107-56 § 814), and in any event the perpetrations were violent, vile, thoroughly criminal, and fully known to the perpetrators to be so at the time of their commission.

Not noted in the Firewire News report of the incident was the fact that, during the period within which the victim was waiting to be placed into a domestic violence safehouse, Progress Foundation shuffled the victim to another domestic violence program location, Progress Foundation's L'Amistad, for a period in the middle of that wait. Upon arriving at Progress Foundation's L'Amistad, the victim discovered willfully violent and criminal perpetrations being committed by the staff of Progress Foundation's L'Amistad.

Unlike most victims, this victim understood that these perpetrations were felony crimes, and she knew the law well enough to enumerate the relevant felony statutes. She did so and immediately discovered that the crimes were being committed with knowing intent, or "mens rea" (legal term). The Director of L'Amistad was personally overseeing and directing the criminal perpetrations.

Consequently, the victim immediately made a written report and complaint to the law enforcement agency at the City and County of San Francisco reported in literature to be the responsible agency for prosecuting such violent crimes perpetrated by the staff of such agencies. That same literature purported to guaranteed the privacy of the victim and of complaints filed.

Two days later, the L'Amistad Director called the victim into the Director's office, held up the written report (it appearing to be the original signature document, not any photocopy), stated, "This is what I think of your complaint!", and tore the report into pieces in front of the victim.

The perpetrating Director went on to specifically declare that it did not concern the Director or staff in the least that their actions were Federal felonies warranting decades in prison, in addition to state felonies: "The law doesn't matter here; this is my program. You'll leave here in a hearse if I decide you will!"

After that, the victim wisely felt unsafe with the Director, and would not return to the Director's office without the company of at least one other person in the office with them. Nevertheless, when the only other person was another staff member or the Assistant Director, the victim found little comfort in that, knowing how easily they were already willing to participate in violent crimes.

The diversion of the complaint from a "confidential" reporting program back to the very criminal perpetrator being reported indicates the breadth of the racket in this case: the Director was never supposed to have direct access to the report, let alone be given the original, short of pretrial discovery at the prosecutorial phase, well after the victim was made safe from that perpetrator; one or more people at the supposedly independent investigative agency of the City and County of San Francisco had to be a pre-established participant in the racket and infiltrator of that city agency.

The victim did immediate follow up with refiling her report and criminal complaint with other law enforcement agencies at the state level, now including disclosure of the newest statements by the Director of L'Amistad.

Now only days into her planned wait at L'Amistad, the victim asked to return to Progress Foundation's Shrader House if a space at the women's domestic violence safe house was not ready for her. Up to the point of her transfer out of the Shrader House facility, the Shrader House facility had been incompetent in its domestic violence program, but far less overtly and directly violent than L'Amistad.

The victim's request was refused, and the victim attempted to isolate herself from the staff as much as possible while she continued her wait. Although there continued to be a systematic effort to continue to harm and endanger the victim, the threats of a departure from the program by hearse was not repeated during the following many weeks of waiting. After some time and more violence, the victim's request to finish her wait back at the Shrader House facility was granted.

It was upon this return to Progress Foundation's Shrader House facility that the perpetrations of the preceding Firewire News story took place. Suspiciously (to the NCIDP), Progress Foundation had reportedly just hired a new "counselor", assigned that new "counselor" to the Shrader House facility, and furthermore assigned that "counselor" to be the victim's primary domestic violence "counselor".

This was the male counselor mentioned in the Firewire News article, above.

As the Firewire News article reveals, this supposed domestic violence "counselor" did nothing more than perpetrate some among the most heinous collection of violent assault crimes ever reported by Firewire News to have been committed by a supposed "helping professional" with the knowing assistance and aid of numerous other "helping professionals" and agency-wide and interagency-wide knowledge and intent (mens rea). This violence was again reported, this time directly to state criminal investigators - and this one was actually followed up by the state law enforcement investigator to the extent that the victim was actually called by the investigator and asked to an interview to give more details.

The recording of the investigator reveal his apathy toward the serious felony violent assault crimes, and even the welfare fraud Progress Foundation was committing against the state, being reported by the victim.

The NCIDP suspects, from its file information, that the supposed new "counselor" at Shrader House was hired and assigned to the victim by Progress Foundation specifically to do exactly what he did because of the victim's earlier complaints against Progress Foundation - in short, he was sent as a hired hitman (crimes then include federal witness tampering (18 U.S.C. § 1512), among others, since most of the enumerated crimes reported were federal felony crimes).

Thereafter, agencies across San Francisco helped fulfill the terrorist threat by the "counselor" at Shrader House to make sure the victim never got health care in San Francisco again.