Those of us who have in the past been trapped in the cycle of abuse often find ourselves unwittingly entering into relationships with abusers. Even those of us fairly well-educated on the matter sometimes fall for the tricks of a personality-disordered person when we really ought to have known better.
When Kristina Hansen (now apparently going by the name Kristina Mendez online) was elevated to the position of Senior Editor and Canadian News Director of A Voice for Men, I must admit I had some trepidation. Actually, it appears several people had reservations, although to be fair to Paul they were mostly only expressed in hindsight.
Although I considered Kristina a friend, her elevation seemed like a really quick and sudden move to me. But I had defended Kristina in the past from other things she’d said that I considered ill-worded but coming from the right place, and I always did believe she had her heart in the right place. “She’s more a doer than a thinker” was my standard excuse for some of her (apparently) ill-considered words and behaviors. And hey, this is a team and Paul’s the coach and that’s all there is to it. (And yes, now the coach also knows he made a mistake–well every coach makes mistakes, even the mighty Ditka.)
Fast forward to earlier this year, and we got into an argument with Kristina; while we tried to make it abundantly clear that we don’t agree with everything that comes out of everybody in the MRA and MGTOW community, and in fact strongly disagree with certain high-profile members of the community on various issues (which we have laid out in any number of articles and videos), we felt that some of the shaming language and confrontational tone she was using toward some of them was toxic to the mission and stated values of AVfM, which is to show compassion to men and boys who are hurt and damaged by our toxically misandrist culture.
We tried to negotiate something in good faith with her, and when she decided to open something called the Earl Silverman Center, even after we were agreed she would no longer officially affiliate with AVfM, we offered to give her full support, including free unpaid advertising and our endorsement for donations, for her supposed effort to start a shelter for abused men, without any more discussion of the editorial areas where we could not agree.
Our efforts to reconcile and simply agree that we had a difference of opinion on how to handle some of the more pungent opinions we sometimes see among some in the community (our goal is usually to avoid shaming language and rely on dialogue with those who have been wounded and hurt) went nowhere with Kristina. Our offers to continue to support her publicly with free advertising and privately with our own money so long as she got the Earl Silverman Center up and running went nowhere, even though we repeatedly offered to just agree to disagree.
Despite our best efforts at goodwill, she and her husband, Joel “Joe” Mendez (aka Iconografer on YouTube) went on what looked to us like a drunken and/or drug-addled rampage, with a barrage of hours-long video tirades over a period of a few days viciously attacking most of the AVfM community. She took most of the ranting, irrational videos offline (although at least one remained last I looked, and multiple people got copies of it all in case she did try to cover it up), and they have continued in the months since then with periodic outbursts of vicious attacks on AVfM and various members the men’s community.
Still we said nothing much, as we waited to see what would happen with the Earl Silverman Center. As time went on we increasingly lost hope that she had the character, integrity, or even ability to open up a center to help abused men, and it started to look likely that even if she did open a center for men she would likely wind up abusing the people she was supposedly going to help, though we couldn’t prove that. What seemed even more likely was that she might try to find some excuse to not go forward at all, likely putting the project “on hold” in some public way and then wait for everybody to go away and forget that she’d taken our money and made multiple promises, public and private, on the matter. But we couldn’t prove she’d do that until she did it.
And then she did it.
People from AVfM who gave Kristina money for the Silverman Center include myself, Paul Elam, Peter Wright/Tawil, Dr. Greg Canning. AVfM moderator Kimski, members of Men’s Rights Edmonton and some other individuals who we don’t even know by name. In private conversation with me, wherein I was still trying to remain in some sort of friendly contact with Kristina, hoping beyond hope that she would become a responsible person, she confessed to me that since her vicious public attacks on AVfM she was now receiving donations from what she called “equity feminists.” Even then, I thought, “Well, if the money’s going to help men somehow, I guess that’s good.”
Some weeks ago I noticed she defriended me on Facebook and changed her name there to “Kristina Mendez.” She also removed me from her Skype contacts, as her husband had some time previously. Subsequent checking also confirmed that she had deleted from her Facebook wall a conversation we had wherein I asked for an accounting for the money and the possibility of a refund or sending the money to another group, but she subjected me to obfuscating, evasive responses–now all lost, because I foolishly did not make copies.
Also while all this was going on, we have seen a continuing pattern of what Dr. Tara Palmatier calls DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender behavior. She publicly acknowledged collecting over $6,000 from our community and continues to accept donations, yet continually attacks or blocks or ignores anyone who inquires about the money or what’s being done with it.
Indeed, even though she gave me (and presumably others) personal promises that receipts would be issued for donations, and that there would be a full accounting of how the money would be spent, we have noticed that the pages of the Earl Silverman Center web site have been changed to state that they are not a non-profit, and that no receipts will be issued to anyone who donates–which was not ever stated when they were first accepting money from the men’s rights community and which is directly contrary to what she explicitly stated to us.
And then in a recent series of public tweets (see below), she did what a lot of us suspected she would, and claimed the Silverman Center was “on hold” because she had personally more important things to do, and gave some sideways excuses about problems her friend Murray Pearson has with what she and he say are false allegations. Well they might be false allegations Kristina, and you may have other things going on (like being pregnant with a 5th child), but if you are not capable of going forward with the project then it is incumbent upon you to turn the project over to someone else who can move forward–there are multiple persons who could be found to do that in Canada, as you well know.
I might also mention here in passing that even though Kristina now refers to Murray as “co-founder” of the Earl Silverman Center, privately she told me repeatedly that Murray was not a person in authority in the center and had no control whatsoever over the money and he was merely an assistant. It’s hard to know where the truth lies, but I thought I’d mention this in passing; my suspicion is that Murray Pearson is being used just like the rest of us have been used by Kristina, but I just don’t know.
What I do know is that she has declared she has stalled the project to help abused men because it’s inconvenient to her right now, and she absolutely refuses to give receipts or give any real accounting of where the money is… although, as we already know from this video (which she, astonishingly, has monetized on YouTube, still apparently taking in money from a dead man’s legacy, a man she never knew), she at least got a van out of the deal so far:
(And yes we grabbed copies of that video too, in case she takes it down).
Where else has she put the money? She won’t say, and just engages in DARVO for anyone who asks her for transparency.
Directly below this article you will find a number of screen shots showing some of her more hateful and outrageous public comments, along with documentation of what’s been on the Earl Silverman Society web page recently.
So here’s where we stand at A Voice for Men now:
[unordered_list style=”arrow”]
- We fully and completely withdraw all support from the Earl Silverman Society/Center so long as Kristina Hansen/Mendez and her husband Joel Mendez are in any way involved in it;
- We demand a full public accounting of where all the money went that came from myself, Paul Elam, and other members of the men’s rights community. Where’s the money and what did you do with it Kristina?
- We demand that whatever monies that cannot be proven to have been directly expended on the project to date be turned over to an entity who can responsibly make use of it for its intended purposes;
- We urge all persons who gave any money at all to Kristina and her husband Joe to open the Earl Silverman Center to make reports to the appropriate legal and private authorities, including both your local and national police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Revenue Agency, your financial institution and, because she is or was at one time a welfare recipient, the Canadian welfare fraud office.
[/unordered_list]
Note that if you’re in the US or Canada, you must file reports both with your local police and with Federal police, you can’t just file with the Feds. Yes, if that means even if you don’t live in Quebec, you file with your local police wherever you are anyway, in addition to the Canadian Feds. If you’re in the US, you file with your local police, the FBI, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as well as other Canadian authorities.
While Kristina, in true DARVO fashion, is highly likely to claim that all of this is a “doxxing” incident, the facts I can tell you are all public information:
She goes by both Kristina Hansen and Kristina Mendez.
She and her husband live in Ile Perrot, Quebec.
Any legitimate authority (police or credit card investigation company) who contacts me will also get her full address, phone number, and date of birth (as I have all this information but will not give it out publicly, to those other than legitimate legal authorities I will only give out what is publicly known about her on the public internet).
So to repeat, if you gave this person money, you need to:
[unordered_list style=”bullet”]
- Contact your credit card company or bank and report possible fraud;
- Contact your local police (do not skip this step);
- Contact your national government police;
- Contact the Royal Canadian Mounted Police;
- Contact the Canadian Revenue Agency;
- Contact the Canadian Welfare Fraud Group.
[/unordered_list]
Since AVfM has an international audience we cannot know every country she may have gotten money from, but, here are appropriate link resources that our US, Canadian, Australian, and UK readers can use, and if people wish to share links to who they can also reach in other countries here in the comments, that would be appreciated.
I’m done myself playing nice. Hansen-Mendez needs to give a full and complete accounting for every penny she spent or we can safely presume she collected that money under false pretenses for her own personal use, buying a car and goodness knows what else. Legal authorities should be notified and should be urged to investigate. I will, again, provide not just the information I have given here but her complete street address, phone number, and date of birth to any legitimate authority who requests it.
Agencies you should open inquiries with: First off start with your bank and/or credit card company, whatever you used to donate to her. Then:
In Canada:
Canadian Revenue Agency:
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/gncy/nvstgtns/lds/menu-eng.html
Canadian welfare fraud group:
http://www.mcss.gov.on.ca/en/mcss/programs/social/fraud.aspx
Royal Canadian Mounted Police anti-fraud center:
http://www.antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca/english/reportit_howtoreportfraud.html
If you are Canadian and you gave money you will also need to contact your local police. Please do not skip the step of informing your local police–even if you don’t live in Quebec, the RCMP likely will do nothing without a local police report anyway. Just let the local police know you’ve also filed with RCMP, or, file with the local police and then tell the RCMP you filed with your local police.
In the USA:
If you are in the United States, you need to contact both the FBI and your local police, as well as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police:
Federal Bureau of Investigation internet crime reporting:
http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx
Once again, you must also contact your local police and let them know you’ve also reported to the FBI.
I do not know where to start in the UK or Australia but I suspect it follows a similar trajectory; contact the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Revenue Agency, and the Canadian Welfare Fraud group mentioned above. Also, your credit card or bank. And then also use these links as a starting point for getting your own legal authorities involved:
UK:
http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/
Australia:
http://www.afp.gov.au/policing/cybercrime/internet-fraud-and-scams.aspx
My reports have already been filed. I encourage anyone else who gave Hansen/Mendez any money at all to report to all the above that are relevant to Canada and your own home country.
I expect much screaming from Kristina and her cronies that she’s been “doxxed” (she’s a liar, no she hasn’t, every bit of this is public information) or that she’s being somehow legally harassed (bullshit, she collected money for specific purposes, then changed the rules after the fact and now refuses to account for thousands she took from this community).
Below, again, are some screen shots if you have any questions about whether anything I’ve said here is public information, or if you suspect I’m exaggerating in any way.
This can all stop of course: Hansen can just return the money and/or provide clear public transparency and turn it over to a legitimate entity who will do what Earl would want done in his name: spend it on efforts to help men and boys. Not buy personal vehicles and sit around making excuses for inaction.
*Update* Please note that any donations you did send would have been on or after April 29th 2013, and would have gone to something marked as “Hansen Soap Company,” which Hansen at the time claimed was just a temporarily holding account for the to-be-created non-profit that she also promised to issue receipts for. –DE
