I met Ruth Parris in 1998, in a 12 Step Recovery support group room on the Internet.  One night I recieved a message from her asking if she could talk to me so I opened up a room for us to talk in and asked her to join me.  When she arrived her writting, both spelling and sentence structure was very distorted. At first I thought it was the results of a sever anxiety attack, but then as she could, she explained to me that she had been diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly called Multiple Personality Disorder) and her alter personalities had been integrated 2 years before.  She said she was horrified that they had returned, and fearful that she would no longer be able to function as she had become accustom to doing over the previous two years.  She said she knew I had a abuse survivors support group on the Internet so felt it would be safe to talk about what was happening to her with me.  I told her that I had several members of the abuse survivors support group that were diagnosed as DID/MIP so I was very familar with it.  I asked if she had a therapist and was told no, that she thought her involvement in the church was going to help her after the integration of her alter personalities took place.  She also revealed to me that she was practicing some self-injurous behaviors and was afraid a therapist would just have her locked up for it.  I decided, based on what I was seeing and being told that it was not the time to worry about whether she would or wouldn't get a therapist at that moment, but more immediately to support her until she was able to calm down and have full executive control of her body.  She had said, and it was apparent, that a child personality was doing some of the typing as we talked.  Little by little, over approximately 1 hour she was doing pretty well, was able to communicate as an adult and the fear she was expressing when we first started talking had subsided.  I give her the address to the abuse survivors support group's web site and invited her to join the group any time she felt she wanted to.  I also gave her my phone number and told her that if talking to someone would help her not perform self-injurous behaviors she was welcome to call me on the phone and we would talk until the desire to cut, burn, pulling hair...etc passed.  She told me she appreicated my understanding and would be a part of the abuse survivors group and call me from time to time when she felt she needed to.  On that note I suggested she get off the computer and get some sleep if she could, and we both left the room.  This is how I met Ruth Parris.

Over the next year we developed a very good friendship. She came to my home and stayed with me and my girlfriend on two occasions as a result of our online friendship. However, immediately after her second visit I was asked to join the survivors group room on the Internet. As usual I thought it must be someone they had tried to help and couldn't, or the room was being disrupted by people on the Internet that didn't belong in such a room. When I arrived there were 17 group members present. I was told they had been having a conversation and after a few moments realized something was very wrong with something Ruth Parris and Stephanie Bryant had been doing. They then proceeded to tell me that Ruth had sent several of them messages saying her electricty was going to be turned off, and after she had recieved a money order from a group member to pay it, which was sent to her via Western Union, she continued to recieve money from 6 other group members for the same bill. They also had found out she had done the same thing with her phone being caught off if she couldn't pay $162.00. Eight group members had sent her enough to pay the phone bill. After being told by a group member that they would send her the money, and recieving the first donation to cover that expense, she continued to collect money for the same bill from others as well. Then they sent me a letter she had sent to a mailing list for abuse survivors stating she was being kicked out of her apartment and her lights were turned off. Several of the group members, being on that list contacted some of those they knew from the list and found that many on the list had sent her money as well. Next was a computer that she said was being taken away from her because it belonged to a church. The group discovered that a group member, upon hearing this bought herself a new computer and sent Ruth her older one. After having recieved this computer she told another person again that her computer was going to have to be returned to the church she had gotten it from, and this member went out and spent over $1400.00 on a computer for her. This was after she had already recieved the used computer from the other group member. As the groups founder I was told it was up to me to decide how to handle the situation. I suggested we wait a few days to find out from others what the extent of her behavior was within the group. I was crushed. This was a person I thought was honest. It was a person that I had come to really like. Even the group members knew how bad this situation was for me, as they knew I thought of her as a dear friend. The next day I was shown something by my girlfriend that really hurt. She showed me a log on her computer of an IRC chat Ruth had while at my home visiting. In it Ruth was pretending to be in Texas, and making arrangements with someone to send her enough money to take a greyhound bus to come visit me in Pennslyvania. Yet she was sitting in my livingroom when she did this! I went into the support groups room that night and found that while some of the group members were discussing this situation they discovered that Stephanie Bryant had done pretty much the same thing but on a much smaller scale. She had gotten 3 group members to send her money to pay a $77.00 phone bill. Each one had sent the full amount needed, and she didn't indicate to the second or third party that she had already received help from someone in the group. I then shared with them what was discovered on my girlfriends computer regarding the bus ticket money to come see me that Ruth was soliciting, while already at my home. The group members all felt that she should be confronted by me but not in private. They felt they had a right to have their feelings of betrayal heard as well. Then a group member put a motion on the floor to ban both of these woman from the group and that meant being banned from the room altogether. The motion passed animously. I sent a message to Ruth when I saw her get online with ICQ but not enter the room and asked her to join us. When she entered the room I told her we knew what she had been doing regarding getting members of the group to send her money to pay bills for which money had already been sent to her, the computer situation, and bus fare deception. Ruth immediately went out in left field, typing in caps, (which online is equavalent to yelling), saying that her financial agreements with people were not anyone elses business and she thought she could trust the group members to keep their gifts to her private. She cussed out several people that were there, including me saying no one understood what the f*** she was going through and why she needed all the money she accepted. I asked her if she had a drug problem and was told "No, "I'm not a f***** drug addict!" By this time the other members present, including several she had conned out of money were exchanging foul words with her, calling her names etc. At that time I started the process of banning her ISP from being able to re-enter the room after being kicked out of it. Once the ban was in place I tried to get everyone to calm down but was not successuful. Everyone was very upset by what was discovered and by her reaction to being confronted about it. A few people who were relatively new to the room came in during all of this and without doubt were shocked by the situation in the room. This is when I decided it was time to kick Ruth Parris out of the room and did so. She made no attempt to re-enter it. This we know because when someone is kicked or banned and they try to re-enter the room, they are in it for only a second or two when the server puts them back out. Everyone was pretty upset and I asked them what they wanted to do regarding what they found out about Stephanie Bryant. Some said she should be given a chance to apologize to those she got the 2nd, and 3rd moneies from to pay her phone bill and make arrangements with them in private to pay it back. The majority wanted her banned as well. So I put the ban in place that would permanently keep her from having access to the room. I attempted to communicate with Ruth several times over the next week, using ICQ and email, and got no response from her. I did get a response from Stephanie Bryant and we talked about what had happend to result in her being banned from the room. She felt that I, as the founder of the group should overrule the decision of the group and let her back in it if I wanted to. I told her I couldn't do that without the group members consent, but I was willing to talk to them about it again after they had cooled down some. My last message from her said, "go to hell". Approximately 2 weeks to a month later I get a ICQ message from Ruth, with a web address on it and a message that says, "go see this site, its all about you." I went to the site on that message and found that Pat Stubbs had created HIP's web site and I was the main attraction of it. It stated that I was presenting myself online as a licensed therapist. The material on it was very specific, yet very false. There were no "allegations" or "alledged" accusations back then. It was put together in such a way that would lead someone that didn't know the situation as it really unfolded that "many survivors asked that this site be built to protect the online survivor community from John Freifeld" Mrs. Stubbs had went to one of my personal websites and gotten a picture of me to add to her site. My home address and phone number was displayed and made available to the public. Pat Stubbs had quotes from Ruth Parris and Stephanie Bryant on the site that were not true at all. Educational insitutions were listed that I supposedly said I belong to or went to and another area where it listed the administration of these insitutions statements that I had not been a student at their facility. On the message board the 3 of them called me everything but a child of God. Pat stated she had gained evidence that I had run over a police officer as a young man, Ruth Parris stated that I was a cult leader and the members of the survivors group I had founded were nothing but followers. Someone I don't know had put in a message that said they knew me and I had committed rape... against them. A woman by the initials "BJ" stated that she was glad this site was up and would put a link to it on her web page, and also that the #healingroom and #shelterhouse, both of which I founded had cost her group alot of regular members and support. I had never met Pat Stubbs in any manner and was shocked that this person would create such a site about someone that she did't know at all. Our group has over 50 regular members, and she hadn't spoken to me or any of them. I didn't fully comprehend, even while looking at this site the extent they would go to in an attempt to tarnish me on the Internet. I had no idea that when this site didn't accomplish its goal, that this very small group of people would seek out government agencies to report me to with false informtation, and recuite others I had never even met or spoken to, to do the same.

The numerous letters written by group members in my behalf show clearly that Ruth Parris and Stephanie Bryant defrauded group members out of a substanial amount of money and only after they were confronted on it by me, the founder of the group did they start to develope this smoke screen and make false accusations of any kind against me.

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Other Issues or Persons Involved That Are Notable

Example of Letters Written In My Behalf By Other Group Members Ruth Parris
and Stephanie Bryant
Pennsylvania
Board of Psychology
Psychotherapist
Bruce Whealton, MSW
License Revoked! Two criminal convictions!
Alleganey County, PA Dept of Child Protective Services
Miracles In Progress
12 Step Recovery Forums
North Carolina
Medical Board
The #Healingroom
Abuse Survivor Group
North Carolina 
Psychology Board
Broken Laws
Who is Christine Brandon?
(aka LWK)		 Just Some Thoughts
Morning Star Newspaper Back To Front Page

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