Personhood Leaders’ Smear Campaign Debunked
‘Violent attacks’ reported are more likely personal vendetta by disgruntled ex-collaborators
‘Sounds like Mr. Mason has embellished,’ said Westminster Police Investigator Cheri Spottke for the third time, dismissing several reports on the incident. For example, two squad cars had responded, as is protocol (not four as reported in news stories), and there was nothing about the rock thrown through the door window being 45 pounds.
In addition, the police report doesn’t mention home security lights being ‘yanked down,’ nor is there mention of children, children’s toys, ‘or anything on children at all.’ This includes the alleged tricycle that, Mason claimed, should have signaled the presence of kids to the vandals, which prompted him to tell the Daily Beast that there are ‘some really bad cats out there.’
‘Sounds like Mr. Mason is being a little dramatic,’ said Spottke, when asked about the Masons’ move to a safe house. ‘I don’t mean to laugh. But this is low-level criminal mischief and we would never tell him to go into hiding,’ she said, confirming later that the Masons’ hired a private security consultant who might have been involved in their decision to not return home and that the police played no part in the decision.
‘If the Masons were truly scared and going into hiding, I hope they’d be more cooperative with us,’ she said, explaining that the Masons’ public campaign had undermined their investigation. ‘You don’t release a press release and contact the media if you want to protect your children. But that’s just from a police perspective.’ In a culture war against reproductive health and rights, however, drama is a key weapon. Because it works.
What ultimately got a guffaw out of Investigator Spottke was prominent pro-lifer Jill Stanek’s unwarranted assertion that ‘whether this is deemed a terrorist attack or hate crime will be up to the FBI, which is now involved.’ Composing herself, Spottke assured RD that that no, the FBI is not involved. A private citizen can’t get the FBI involved without coming through her agency, which she doesn’t see happening. The Mason case, as the inspector emphasized, is criminal mischief, which is neither a hate crime nor domestic terrorism.