Epic Mormonism Live on Rosebud Accusations

[Res Ipsa]

Problem is . . . There was no harassment claim until after their termination letter was issued at the end of August. The harassment claim does not exist as a motive to ask for resignations or to motivate a termination. Rather, it was a consensual affair—by Rosebud’s own account in a text written at the time—that led to the solution of mutual resignation.

We cannot assume there was a sexual harassment claim. A more careful person might have assumed the situation should be dealt with as a technical case of sexual harassment. However, Rosebud and JD did not approach Joanna Brooks with a claim that there was sexual harassment. It is Rosebud who introduces the counter-argument that there was no sexual harassment in her text exchange with JD.

We can only really judge what the Joanna and the board did with the understanding that no sexual harassment claim was made until some time after the events of August.

That’s hard to say. A consensual relationship becomes harassment when one person says “it’s over” but the other keeps pursuing the relationship. With these two, it’s hard to say if or when that actually happened. Even if this situation occurred, the board had a duty to act only when it was informed of the situation. But Rosebud says she informed the board (not sure of what), was asked whether she wanted the board to investigate, and said no, she didn’t. But later, she castigates Brooks for not investigating.

Clear as mud.

[Lem]

JP’s argument above that Joanna really had no intention to hire Rosebud back is just Rosebud’s paranoia speaking, and JP *should* know better than to take Rosebud’s mind-reading of Joanna Brooks seriously.

Wait, didn't one of the guests on the Mormonism Live podcast say the Open Stories Foundation had no intention of hiring back Rosebud?

Based on the auto-generated transcript, at about 24 min, Helfer said they didn't plan to hire her back for the same projects:

•Now even after ann was terminated did she continue to want to press the issue of being allowed to be in charge of the Facebook Mormon stories groups and circling the wagon events

•yeah she i have a feeling that that's what she really did want and why she didn't want to resign because i think we were making it clear that that was not going to be one of the things that we would allow if she came back and asked for a 1099 contract

So much for offering an equal deal to both parties.

[Res Ipsa]

In response to a question previously asked, JD did not ask me to use Rosebud’s real name. Quite the reverse.

JD has been very concerned that Rosebud may harm herself if the texts and emails were made public.

In fact, only an hour before show time it was JD who pointed out the texts had Rosebud’s phone number on each one from her and was concerned about this.

This was in the context of my making sure it was okay to link the full documents in the show notes.

I told him it was a good catch and he got busy redacting all of them, getting us the finished document less than half an hour before we went live.

I thought carefully about whether we should use Rosebud’s real name, finally concluding that inasmuch as she had doxxed herself publicly on her own Facebook page for months, there could be no harm in doing so.

It was important to use her real name because of the links to the documents containing her name, but I would have not done so has she not done so first.

She used a link to her own name on MDB. Didn't anyone see that? Notice it? That's when I first saw her real name.

Pepperidge Fahm remembers.

So does Res Ipsa.

[Dwight]

Wait, didn't one of the guests on the Mormonism Live podcast say the Open Stories Foundation had no intention of hiring back Rosebud?

Based on the auto-generated transcript, at about 24 min, Heffer said they didn't plan to hire her back for the same projects:

•Now even after ann was terminated did she continue to want to press the issue of being allowed to be in charge of the Facebook Mormon stories groups and circling the wagon events

•yeah she i have a feeling that that's what she really did want and why she didn't want to resign because i think we were making it clear that that was not going to be one of the things that we would allow if she came back and asked for a 1099 contract

So much for offering an equal deal to both parties.

My understanding is this was in order to create a clear line between JD and Rosebud. She couldn’t be involved in the Mormon Stories side, I think the conferences like Circling the Wagons was on the table. Her being in charge of the groups would be too hard to keep a clear line between the two.

[Lem]

Problem is . . . There was no harassment claim until after the termination letter was issued at the end of August. The harassment claim does not exist as a motive to ask for resignations or to motivate a termination. Rather, it was a consensual affair—by Rosebud’s own account in a text written at the time—that led to the solution of mutual resignation.

We cannot assume there was a sexual harassment claim. A more careful person might have assumed the situation should be dealt with as a technical case of sexual harassment. However, Rosebud and JD did not approach Joanna Brooks with a claim that there was sexual harassment. It is Rosebud who introduces the counter-argument that there was no wrong done that should lead to resignations in her text exchange with JD.

We can only really judge what the Joanna and the board did with the understanding that no sexual harassment claim was made until some time after the events of August.

I would have to disagree. Sorry for the bad auto-generated transcript, but it seems that Helfer, at around 16:30, stated that they knew before Rosebud was asked to resign:

16:29
you know the allegations were sexual and
16:32
we are we were always kind of aware that
16:35
we want to be extra careful
16:37
around patriarchal issues so i think we
16:40
went over the top
16:42
to make sure that anne would have
16:45
a fair um somewhat
16:48
equitable reaction from the board as
16:52
john would so we asked them both to
16:55
resign

"allegations were sexual" seems to clearly admit they knew it could qualify as harassment.

[Jersey Girl]

I only went 39 minutes into the so-called CI. I don't see it as a valid CI. Perhaps if/when I listen to the remainder that will change my impression. I just have two comments to make, one is a repeat. Keep in mind that I'm a nobody onlooker.

1. As I just stated in a recent post. I don't know why she decided that since John or ML doxxed her, that now is the time to spill the rest of the beans when she posted a link to a document form with her own name on MDB. No one here caught that?

2. In the matter of the historians. I watched this video last night dtd 18 April of this year. Don't ask me how I ended up with this, I don't remember. I don't know who this is.

The End of John Dehlin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCLZ4vWcGEU

It's an apparent and overt attempt to discredit JD that falls flat under scrutiny. Anyone with half a brain can refute the presentation. That said, in the video the content creator scrolls down a page of MDB as proof that Rosebud has been carefully documenting the saga for years on a public message board.

Sounds good on paper. The only problem is that nearly every link to every thread on MDB is broken making the content of her posts/threads inaccessible and unreadable. So. So much for the A ha! moment.

Somebody should tell Rosebud that all of her work and how/where she decided to publish it was a case of poor judgment on her part.

[Lem]

Problem is . . . There was no harassment claim until after their termination letter was issued at the end of August. The harassment claim does not exist as a motive to ask for resignations or to motivate a termination. Rather, it was a consensual affair—by Rosebud’s own account in a text written at the time—that led to the solution of mutual resignation.

We cannot assume there was a sexual harassment claim. A more careful person might have assumed the situation should be dealt with as a technical case of sexual harassment. However, Rosebud and JD did not approach Joanna Brooks with a claim that there was sexual harassment. It is Rosebud who introduces the counter-argument that there was no sexual harassment in her text exchange with JD.

We can only really judge what the Joanna and the board did with the understanding that no sexual harassment claim was made until some time after the events of August.

That’s hard to say. A consensual relationship becomes harassment when one person says “it’s over” but the other keeps pursuing the relationship. With these two, it’s hard to say if or when that actually happened. Even if this situation occurred, the board had a duty to act only when it was informed of the situation. But Rosebud says she informed the board (not sure of what), was asked whether she wanted the board to investigate, and said no, she didn’t. But later, she castigates Brooks for not investigating.

Clear as mud.

Agreed on the mud part.

However, just based on Helfer's statement in the podcast, at least one person on the board did know Rosebud was making the claim before she was asked to resign and before she was fired in late august:

do you remember what the nature of her
09:43
allegation or complaint was
09:47
well i believe it was in the nature of
09:49
that she
09:50
was describing that in order to continue
09:53
with her job or her
09:56
responsibilities that she was getting
09:58
pressure from john to
10:00
either continue or begin some type of
10:03
sexual
10:04
relationship or emotional affair type of
10:07
relationship
10:08
okay and she did not want that well
10:10
that's what she claimed
10:12
all right so what did the board do with
10:14
that report

well so in my understanding um
10:20
there was one member of the board that
10:22
was approached
10:23
by ann first um and i believe that was
10:26
joanna brooks

[Kishkumen]

I would have to disagree. Sorry for the bad auto-generated transcript, but it seems that Helfer, at around 16:30, stated that they knew before Rosebud was asked to resign:

16:29
you know the allegations were sexual and
16:32
we are we were always kind of aware that
16:35
we want to be extra careful
16:37
around patriarchal issues so i think we
16:40
went over the top
16:42
to make sure that anne would have
16:45
a fair um somewhat
16:48
equitable reaction from the board as
16:52
john would so we asked them both to
16:55
resign

"allegations were sexual" seems to clearly admit they knew it could qualify as harassment.

Fair enough. I appreciate you sharing with me the basis of your disagreement. As I have explained above, I do not consider Helfer a reliable witness for what happened in August. Her early September email shows clearly she had no idea what was going on. Natasha is very sloppy in her use of the word we as it concerns things she elsewhere says she really did not know, i.e., what was going on in August.

What I am relying on, instead of Helfer's demonstrably unreliable memory, is the texts generated by Rosebud herself, her Options email, and the emails from 2012 shared by James Patterson. Those are contemporary documents and they are much more valuable as evidence for what was going on in August, September, and October of 2012 than Helfer, who wrote in an email in early September 2012, i.e., after the resignation plan was hatched, Rosebud refused to resign, and Rosebud was sent a termination letter, that she did not know what was going on.

[Kishkumen]

That’s hard to say. A consensual relationship becomes harassment when one person says “it’s over” but the other keeps pursuing the relationship. With these two, it’s hard to say if or when that actually happened. Even if this situation occurred, the board had a duty to act only when it was informed of the situation. But Rosebud says she informed the board (not sure of what), was asked whether she wanted the board to investigate, and said no, she didn’t. But later, she castigates Brooks for not investigating.

Clear as mud.

I am commenting specifically on what motivated Joanna Brooks' ultimatum to the two lovebirds that they needed to resign or she would. It seems to me people habitually treat this ultimatum as having been motivated by a proximate harassment claim, when the texts really tell a very different story. Unless I see some textual evidence (electronic or otherwise) that Rosebud claimed John was sexually harassing her to Joanna before the end of August, I am going to go with the theory supported by the current evidence, which is that the resignation ultimatum was motivated by the fact that two employees and board members were carrying on a consensual affair that JD, Rosebud, and Joanna Brooks agreed needed to stop for both personal and professional reasons.

This distinction matters a lot. If people are going to continue to insist that Joanna Brooks mishandled a harassment claim, there must be evidence that there was a harassment claim to mishandle, I believe.

[Kishkumen]

Based on the auto-generated transcript, at about 24 min, Heffer said they didn't plan to hire her back for the same projects:


So much for offering an equal deal to both parties.

My understanding is this was in order to create a clear line between JD and Rosebud. She couldn’t be involved in the Mormon Stories side, I think the conferences like Circling the Wagons was on the table. Her being in charge of the groups would be too hard to keep a clear line between the two.

Yeah, the "deal" was that both people would resign and be rehired as independent contractors, not that they would have some kind of equal deal. An equal deal is frankly kind of a silly expectation. The Open Stories Foundation was founded upon Dehlin's work with Mormon Stories. Anyone who thought that having an affair entitled them to share equally in the Dehlin spoils as though these were Dehlin spoils and this was a divorce settlement (50/50!) was really out to lunch.

I agree that it was probably the unequal nature of the outcome that sent Rosebud off the deep end into this ceaseless vendetta, but a more realistic person might have thought: "Gee, I had this job for eight months and maybe it was a bad idea to have an affair with a fellow employee. Next time I definitely won't do that!" Instead we get: "Boy, I can't believe they let the founder of Open Stories Foundation off so easily and I got so little out of this. I am going to threaten to charge him with sexual harassment. That'll change their minds!"