Imagine yourself waking up to what you expect will be a normal work day.  You groom, down your juice, tea, coffee, or whatever gets you going in the morning.  Then you commute to the office.

Now, imagine that once you reach the office there are a dozen or so protesters marching around outside with signs saying that you personally “[Prowl] for Women Victims,” “[You] Sexploit Women,” “[Your] Poison Kills Families,” “{You] Grand Poobah of the Lunatic Fringe and Con,” “300 Ft. to [Your] Voo Doo Pit,” “Stop Mind Control Experiments,” “Beware [Your] Crooked Femi-Nazi Powr Lies.” Imagine one of them holding a sign made of a large wooden cross, draped with a US flag on one side, and on the other side a blowup photograph of your face.  The caption underneath reads “Psycho Spook.”

On 27 January 1995, Dr. David Calof, a Seattle-based psychotherapist, no longer had to imagine that scenario.  He lived it, and continued to do so for years. 

Charles Noah, whose eldest daughter had made an accusation of childhood sexual abuse against him, led the protests with his wife, June.  Did Noah target Dr. Calof because he had treated his daughter or any other member of his family?  Nope.  Calof never treated anyone related to or associated with the Noahs.  Was Dr. Calof a quack with a tarnished reputation for “implanting false memories” in his patients?  Not according to the State of Washington, which actively sought his advice on matters pertaining to therapy, and granted him a license for eighteen years (by that time); and not according to his peers; not according to his patients, none of whom had ever filed a complaint against him.  Was Dr. Calof on some great crusade to prove Ritual Satanic Abuse by forcing people to recall “repressed” memories of bizarre rituals? Wrong guy.  In fact, in his writings he expresses mild reservations about helping patients recover memories; he knows that it might not be in the patient’s best interest to recall the incident at all, and even if the patient insists he stresses that they have to prepare for what might be revealed.  Did Calof have some sort of CIA “spook” contract to do “mind control experiments” as the protesters would suggest?  Not an iota of evidence supports that.

So, what did Dr. David Calof ever do to incur the wrath of Charles and June Noah?

In 1991, Dr. Calof began a professional journal titled Treating Abuse Today (TAT).  During the course of its run, he published several articles from well-credentialed researchers who raised severe doubts about the notion of False Memory Syndrome.

And that’s all it took.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the last thing you’d want, as a therapist, is a bunch of people picketing your office.  After all, what are the neighbors going to think?  More important, what are your patients going to think?

Unfortunately for Dr. Calof, the harassment didn’t stop at picketing.  In fact, it had hardly begun.  The Noahs didn’t content themselves with marching around and handing out accusatory flyers to passersby.  They verbally assaulted him every day he came to work, yelling out such things as “That’s right, baldie, go back to your hallucination pit...cocksucker.”   They also taunted Calof’s assistant, calling him “Freak!” and “Calof’s little suck!”  When Calof got a new assistant (surprise, surprise), Noah attached a blowup photograph of this person on his camper, with a caption reading, “Meet David Calof’s Pet Rat.”

Noah and company eventually got to the point where they would enter the office itself, and raise a ruckus with staff and patients.  In one instance, Noah slammed one of the staff members against a wall, an assault for which he was convicted and sentenced to a suspended jail sentence of one year, and a fine of $5,000, $4,950 of which was also suspended pending Noah’s future behavior.*

Noah and company expanded their campaign to Dr. Calof’s residential neighborhood..**  They then took the same brand of harassment to Steven Anderson, his lawyer, and Anderson's family in their residential neighborhood.  Calof described the incident in “Notes from a Practice Under Siege,” writing:

Noah eventually could not contain his ire and visited his personal harassment on my attorney’s house, where he parked his sign-covered camper for most of a weekend, tried to provoke a confrontation with my attorney’s wife by taunting her, and eventually was arrested when he refused to obey a police order to leave.  My attorney’s wife was very shaken by this rude intrusion into her privacy.  Her two young children were terrified by the loud and queer spectacle.

Arguably more shocking: Noah and his associates put Dr. Calof, his staff, his family and his patients under surveillance.  While at home, Calof’s wife received an anonymous phone call that let her know, in no uncertain terms, that someone had followed her for a considerable length of time.***  The group photographed and videotaped anyone and everyone going into that office.  They took down the license plate number of patients as they drove up. 

Of course, if you’re a patient, the last thing you’d want is people taking photographs of you entering your therapist’s office, especially if they might blow them up and use them in some sort of street campaign outside your place of work.  The harassment of patients forced Dr. Calof to usher in some of his higher-risk clients through back and side entrances.  Extremely high-risk patients he had to discontinue seeing altogether.  He also felt obliged to tell perspective patients that if they sought his help that others might spy on, photograph, and harass them. 

Noah had the savvy to hire an attorney connected with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).  The ACLU subsequently took on his case pro bono when Dr. Calof sued for defamation.  Noah consequently enjoyed virtually limitless free representation, while Calof had to spend over $100,000 in legal fees. 

The effects of the ACLU representation were fourfold.  To start with, the ACLU lawyer Noah obtained worked in the same law office that represented the landlord of Dr. Calof’s office building.  The attorney apparently suggested the landlord evict Calof, despite not having any legal cause to do so.  She then enlisted the services of a private detective who, posing as someone representing a mentally ill person, tried in vain to get Calof to pronounce, sight unseen, the fantasy sufferer as a victim of Satanic Ritual Abuse.   The PI did glean some information, which ultimately landed in the hands of the landlord, whose souring relationship with Calof became evident.  In order to calm things down, and thinking that the harassment might end, he moved his practice to another location.  Of course, that didn’t work.

Second, and most important, the ACLU played a significant role in developing Noah’s legal strategy.  Their primary claim was that by picketing and monitoring Dr. Calof, Noah’s group was within their First Amendment Rights of free speech; therefore arguing that their harassment of Calof was in fact lawful. 

To some extent, Noah and the ACLU had a point.  One can really push the boundaries, and aggressively picket just about anything--at least that’s the way it’s supposed to work.  The problem is that the First Amendment does not protect all speech as free speech.  Threats are not protected speech.  Neither is defamation.  When you lie about someone, and the party you’re lying about is clearly identifiable, and they suffer consequences from your actions, the First Amendment no longer protects you.

The ACLU subsequently attempted to argue that Noah’s harassment was not defamatory.  While this might sound ludicrous at first, they might have had a legal leg to stand on.  Certainly, Noah’s accusations against Dr. Calof were untrue.  They identified him in numerous ways (most conspicuously in blowup photographs), and they damaged his practice, and arguably the lives of his patients.  But, other private investigators, posing as patients, could have possibly tricked Dr. Calof into doing something that could either damage the therapist's reputation, or proved a specific allegation.  If that were to happen, ACLU attorneys could conceivably make a case that Noah's accusations were true.

Also, the case received some press in the northwestern US at the time, and later Mike Stanton would discuss it in his noted essay “U-Turn on Memory Lane.”  If someone has become a public figure, they have to prove, in addition to inaccuracy, identification and damage, a legal concept called ‘malice.’  In other words, they have to prove that those making defamatory statements had a reckless disregard for the truth.  Malice is extremely difficult to prove in a court of law.  That’s the reason why celebrities usually don’t sue malicious gossip about them, or when they do rarely win.**** So, if the ACLU attorneys could persuade a court to view Calof as a public figure, then Calof would have to prove malice.  Thus, depending on a court’s interpretation, the statements might not only have constituted lawful harassment, but could also have been non-libelous-although, admittedly, that’s a really thin stretch.

The ACLU also tried to minimize the scope of Noah’s activities by attempting to argue that he and his associates weren’t part of an organized conspiracy to drive Dr. Calof nuts.  They instead wanted a court to believe that Noah and his supporters all just happened to show up outside of Calof’s office, his home and that of his attorney at the same time other picketers were there, and that they never coordinated harassment activities. Calof found out pretty quickly this was not the case.  As he explained:

On August 18, 1995, one of my professional colleagues, on her way to my office, stopped to talk with the picketers.  She asked Robert Farkus, one of the picketers, if he was with any organization.  He responded, ‘No.’ My colleague asked, ‘Aren’t you working with some organization?’ Adams [another picketer] replied, ‘Yes, but we’re not supposed to say so.’

Third, backing from the ACLU had a negative impact on Dr. Calof’s ability to seek legal representation.  Although he could find attorneys sympathetic to his plight, most declined to represent him.

Lastly, the ACLU added to the pressures on Calof by sending him a bill demanding $40,000 in compensation for their pro bono representation of Noah. 

It might first seem that Noah was some kind of lone gun, working on his own zany crusade, independently of the wishes of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, and that the ACLU’s Washington chapter’s actions were innocently misguided.  But Dr. Calof found compelling evidence that the FMFS actively supported Noah’s efforts in Seattle.

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*In addition to the above conviction, Noah also received numerous contempt of court citations during the proceedings involving Dr. Calof.  In one instance, he grabbed Calof’s assistant by the shoulders, in open court, and shouted, “You little cocksucker.”  In another instance, he told the judge, “I don’t respect you.”  After his conviction on the assault charge, Noah complained to the prosecuting attorney, “You ruined me!” and threatened to “get even.”  Noah was also convicted on a count of violating a no-contact order issued by the city of Seattle.

**In a 1998 paper titled “Notes from a Practice Under Siege: Harassment, Defamation, and Intimidation in the Name of Science” (Ethics & Behavior; vol. 8, no.2), Dr. Calof wrote about additional harassment on the home front:

For over 2 years, we have received hundreds of unsolicited ‘you requested this’ offerings for products to cure impotence, bedwetting, baldness and psoriasis; trade school courses, investments; luxury cars; dog and cat food; and psychotropics.  They pledged money to various organizations in my name and ordered magazine subscriptions for which I have been billed.  They once made an application for life insurance in the name of one of my staff members, naming me as the beneficiary.  My wife has received several unsolicited sexually graphic advertisements for telephone sex services.

Calof noted that Noah et al testified under oath that they were not responsible for this specific chain of events.  Still, one can detect, in his commentary, that he didn’t believe that for a second.

***When Dr. Calof complained about the surveillance, and the telephone calls that alerted them to it, Dr. Pamela Freyd wrote him saying that she was “concerned” that someone in the FMS might be harassing him.  She claimed that she inquired about the matter to verify, on Calof’s behalf, that he was receiving threatening phone calls from the numbers of FMSF members.  She then said that she spoke to a Mrs. Moore, who assured her that Calof’s accusation was “a fiction.”

Upon receipt of the letter, Calof made his own inquiry to the local phone company, which promptly initiated an investigation.  The company found that they indeed had a Mrs. Moore working for them, but she denied ever speaking to Pamela Freyd or anyone else in the FMSF.  The phone company determined that because of Mrs. Moore’s appearance on a local talk show shortly before Freyd’s letter, during which she identified herself as a telephone company employee, the FMSF simply attached her name to a false claim.
                
****In one famous exception, comedienne Carol Burnett managed to win a defamation suit against the National Enquirer.   The case is noteworthy because of its singularity in this regard.