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Anonymous Smear Campaign Escalates against Federici v Pignotti et al Defendants following dismissal

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As many of you already know, there has been a malicious anonymous smear campaign on the internet against certain critics of Ronald Federici and others that has been going on now for about the past two years. Strangely enough, for the duration of Federici v Pignotti et al. there were far fewer postings about us with only a few mild ones appearing now and then between December and March 4, 2011. There is a smear website using the domain name of one of the defendants that went completely blank for the duration of the case, which is now back up. Following the dismissal, the anonymous smear campaign has escalated and has included fabrications of all kinds, including a fabricated story on a "cheaters" website with my full name posted and the lie posted to various public internet newsgroups of all kinds, that I was fired from a university when in fact, I earned my PhD there and left only because I graduated. Although I cannot say who is doing these postings, here are some of my thoughts and opinions:

http://monicapignotti.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/anonymous-smear-against-monica-pignotti-escalates-after-court-case-dismissal/

Note that the postings are anonymous and so it is difficult to prove who is behind them. The timing, however, is interesting to note.

In June 2010, Federici also sued some of these defendants (Mercer, Miller, Advocates for Children in Therapy) in small claims court and lost. He appealed that case, but nonsuited it in September 2010. Under Virginia law, he had six months to reinstate the case but now the deadline for that one has passed and so that case is now closed. Public records show he has sued and nonsuited other cases as well. However, in Federal court, cases cannot be nonsuited and thus, he had to either respond to our Motions to Dismiss and appear at the hearing or withdraw the lawsuit. He chose the former and the case was dismissed on March 4, 2011. He will have 30 days following the final order to appeal the case, although as I understand it, appeals in Federal court are generally very difficult to have granted.

In addition to suing a number of people, attempts have been made to take down this website, the website of Advocates for Children in Therapy and a Search for Survivors blog. However, all of these websites remain up.

by Monica Pignotti on Wednesday, 23 March 2011