Interview with Aaravindha Himadra about cyberstalking and the dark cyber defamation and attacks on him and other spiritual teachers by Be Scofield
Interviewer: Aaravindha, —we’re excited that you’re willing to be here to share with us today. I believe what we’re going to talk about is a particularly trying subject for you, having burdened you with a huge issue that goes far beyond what just happened to you. There seems to be a much larger issue here.
Aaravindha: Yes, absolutely, it’s certainly about what happened to me, and my wife, and the people in the world I move around in. But similar and equally toxic things have happened, —are still happening, —to others, —right now. Sometimes its minor, but often, it’s very serious. Aside from this happening to me, it’s without a doubt one of the biggest issues we’re facing today.
What’s at risk is our ability to maintain our freedom to connect with each other in a safe environment. —We’ve all heard of the more prevalent internet-dangers: Revenge porn, deep fakes, online predators, identity theft, Ransomware, and of course… defamation, and… there’s the newer cyber-stalking trend.
These are important issues, —and for any of this to change, it’s very important that we all accept —the internet we used to know, is no longer a safe place, —it’s not even close to being safe.
And that’s so sad, so very unfortunate. There are so many good things about having a universal medium through which we can all communicate and learn from each other. But that’s being dwarfed now, by a blitzkrieg of disturbing issues that are getting worse on a nearly daily basis. “The” prime example, the internet is now every hate groups haven, —and yet, there’s really not much being done about that.
Interviewer: I’d like to get right to the point. Our intention behind this interview is to expose one of those online issues —that you personally had to endure. Involving cyber-defamation, and what you mentioned already, cyber-stalking. Which, I think very few people fully comprehend, —I believe most people are still confused about what that is, and how serious and far reaching it’s become, —unless they have been victims.
Just a few days ago, you released an investigative piece titled “the Malicious Mania of Be Scofield.” …. It outlines how an offbeat online blogger, who claims to be a journalist, produced a smear campaign against you. To me, that appears to be motivated solely by a desperate need to promote her online recognition. Do you agree with that, or is that too strong of a statement?
Aaravindha: I actually didn’t write that article. —It’s a carefully researched report —that resulted from an investigation that I called into action in response to that cyberstalking and defamation issue.
And, Yes, —But, there’s no way to really know what moves her to do what she does. Her baseless attack on our lives is exactly the kind of thing we’re all now facing as a nation. —It does appear, very much like a desperate need to feel important or significant. But that reason alone might be a bit too simplistic. I believe, there’s quite a bit more to it. —The best place to read about that is in that report.
Interviewer: While, this issue is hugely prevalent, —in the report, the investigation directly refers to her, Be Scofield?
Aaravindha: Yes, —she’s the primary perpetrator. That’s why the report was titled the malicious mania of Be Scofield.
But… Before we get too far into this, I need to be clear, —this report is even more about a new cyber-disease that contaminated my life, our lives, that was purposefully intended to damage my personal and online presence. And this isn’t a minor thing. It’s dangerous, —and it’s happening to other people all across the net, every day.
Sadly, most people have no idea of what to do about it when it happens to them, other than hope someone might step in to help.
Not many people know we have cyberstalking laws set up in the US that are meant to protect us from people like her. But the FBI, who handles those issues, is a Godzilla-sized animal that seems a little slow to carry through. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not offering that as a negative. They’re an astounding investigative service, probably the best in the world. But it takes quite an effort to rouse them into action when it comes to felony-cyberstalking.
All the same, —we passed them the ball, it’s now in their hands, and hopefully it’s already in motion. Though it might be a while before we know anymore.
Interviewer: The FBI’s involved?
Aaravindha: I don’t really know if, or how much so. But not just us, a number of other people we’ve talked with, who Scofield previously defamed and cyberstalked, have joined in, —to also file their complaints with the FBI. But the FBI’s a stealthy group. It appears that the public, not even the victims of those crimes, get to see what’s going on in their extremely advanced and complex world. We’ll just have to wait and see, and rely on their expertise. And, it might take them a while yet, to gather all the information they might need.
Interviewer: Aside from that, I understand you also filed a defamation lawsuit against her?
Aaravindha: Yes, that’s true, we did. I originally hesitated, but eventually we filed it, —and then… after a few months in… we changed our minds. Instead of following through, for now, we asked the court for a temporary dismissal. We asked for an unprejudiced stipulation that would allow us to restart the lawsuit if we choose to later.
It’s not often a court does that —unless they see merit in the case. The judge did, —and so he granted us that right.
Interviewer: Why did you drop the case?
Aaravindha: For a number of reasons. I’m not a conflict-oriented person. I’ll defend myself when I have to, but prefer to bring truthful knowledge into the light, —and… not let Scofield use that exposure time to publicly aggrandize herself online, by turning the process into a media circus. For her it doesn’t matter which way the wind blows, she thrives on any attention she can get.
She also hides her money in a secret account, keeps her website in an offshore location out of US jurisdiction, has no physical address, and changes her name and identity whenever she’s on the move. Spending two years of our lives in expensive court procedures to make her accountable wasn’t acceptable for us. Although, it’s possible, we might still continue to sue her later.
We decided, we wanted truth, as soon as possible… I’m not after revenge for her assault. At the end of the day, she’ll have to live with what she does. She’s already paying the price. You can’t deceive people like that without paying a price. We only wanted the truth.
So, we chose to look for a highly reputable investigative service. It was important to find an investigator with strong ethics, and plenty of experience working with law enforcement. Once we found that person, we asked her to investigate anything and everything involved. And then record the found facts in a well written report.
As a side benefit, —that investigation, now provides us with a legal brief and an uncontestable discovery, if we choose to reopen our lawsuit.
Interviewer: Scofield published on her websites that she won the lawsuit, that the court dismissed the suit in her favor? So, did she lie?
Aaravindha: Yes …Of course, she did. That’s a perfect example of how she spins the truth to make herself look more important and blameless. But, it’s public record, —anyone can check that ruling out for themselves. —Scofield’s betting that her core audience is too simple-minded to see through her spin. —Which it may well be. She doesn’t want them to be sophisticated or intelligent, she only wants their adoration and devotion.
Interviewer: You’re only one of her more recent victims of defamation against prominent spiritual teachers. Tell me more about that?
Aaravindha: Yes, that’s true. But I don’t really see myself as a victim. I’m a target. And like you said, —One of many. I’m only a victim if I let her get away with what she did. I chose to say no, —you don’t get to foul our lives, or the lives of others with your lies and fake stories.
She’s been getting away with damaging innocent people’s lives for close to a decade. She targets spiritual minded individuals —writing her lies about anyone she feels she can gain attention through. But, of all her assaults; I believe we were the most severely libeled.
In her effort to do me harm, she literally fabricated a crime that didn’t happen, and then repeatedly accused me of committing it through publishing her online deceptions, outright lies, and at times, through using a few erroneous statements from people didn’t even exist. And, she sought out and purposefully consorted with a pair of attention hungry conspiracy mongers to help her story along. It’s hard to set the bar low enough to fully describe the manner in which she operates.
But… I feel I need to say this one more time. This is a symptom of something much larger. I could easily just focus on Be Scofield here, she’s an obvious choice if I was just looking for a poster person for this issue. But this is a much larger and more prevalent issue. —A large part of our shared humanity is at stake, along with everyone’s 1st amendment constitutional right to believe, or not believe, —spiritually, or religiously, —in any way they choose. And without derision, persecution, or being defamed. She accuses everyone she attacks of being a cult. Cult has become any haters weapon, used like any other slur, racial or otherwise. I’ve never run or been associated with any kind of cult. But, without that term, people like her would get a lot less attention. —Interestingly, that same 1st amendment gives people the right to free speech, which we should all do our best to protect. —but the rules there, are clear.
The right to free speech is not the right to lie. And when those lies become malicious or strategically focused, it’s no longer freedom of speech, its civil defamation.
Interviewer: And, that’s why you initially chose to sue?
Aaravindha: Yes, because defamation doesn’t just go away. But lawsuits are lengthy and expensive. And they have no teeth if the person being sued is dishonest, financially stealthy, and purposefully hides every potential means to pay reparation. We wanted something more effective. We wanted uncontestable transparency, facts, and truth.
On a weekly basis, I interface online with thousands of people. But, being a public figure today isn’t like it was thirty or more years ago, before the internet became what it is. And, even if you’re not a public person, everything has shifted into a new paradigm. The internet’s now a major part of everyone’s life. And sadly—It seems more and more that we’re digressing online, as cyber communities, and as a nation. Our need for more ethics and decency has been ignored.
We’re literally facing a new cyber-illness, an extended pathology of devious minds, that’s now infesting a once promising medium that should be a fairly safe ground, for research, intelligent communication, education, marketing, art, music, all kinds of entertainment, and in my opinion, a place that might allow you your freedom to express and discover yourselves.
Interviewer: The spread of information warfare is quickly becoming the epidemic of our times. What do you propose is the right action to take when fake news is published with the intent to purposefully mislead or damage lives?
Aaravindha: Then we should apply the same legal process that pertains to real, everyday life situations. If someone vandals your home, or your life, that’s illegal. It should be dealt with in the same way the law deals with real vandals. But this drift toward doing online damage to others is far more grievous than just painting graffiti on someone’s garage door. Or throwing a rock through someone’s window. That’s ruthless, but hate groups have begun weaponizing gullible crowds. Which can lead to more than a little property damage, —it can lead to reputational ruin, violence, and even death.
Most people don’t have the money to file suit, —and see it through to the end. With no guarantee of any reparation. —You see, it’s left entirely up to you to do something about it. But what? That’s the big question isn’t it? Government and law enforcement might care, but it won’t do anything for you. In other words, you’re on you own, and every one of us is vulnerable.
As a result, a new genre of hate groups is reveling in the endless opportunities that online social media is handing them.
Today, anyone can initiate a successful hate group, it only requires a talent for feigning a fake underdog hero-persona, —and then strategizing how to use that. Of course, people like Scofield won’t identify themselves as a hate cult or hate group leader. They’ll claim they’re your champions. So, a large part of the remedy has to be educational, teaching people how to identify the manipulators. But that’s going to take time and commitment. — Two things are not easily won in this world of ours, freedom and the truth.
Interviewer: And, that’s exactly what she does, isn’t it? She relies on her audience’s ignorance of facts.
Aaravindha: I believe it’s wholly unfair to further that popular new idea that most journalists are all fake newsies. I strongly disagree. I believe it’s just a few unethical persons who create that perception. Like the loudest kid in the room, who gets all the attention, —that one bad apple that ruins the rest. In my opinion, being a journalist is one of the bravest and noblest professions. They’re our storytellers, our watchdogs, who we all need so humanity can find its way.
Interviewer: And some make their profession, pushing fake news sensation over truth.
Aaravindha: —It’s one of those forest for the tree situations. It’s happening all around us right now. —Online hate leaders rely on four things; People’s naïve trust that the internet is a reliable source for knowledge. It’s surprising how many people still believe that. —And, they rely heavily on Herd-mentality, in which people unknowingly give up their personal discrimination or critical thinking for the online rush of belonging to a surge of fired up people. —Another central method used by hate leaders is in evoking people’s feelings of being wronged, or being suppressed as societies underdogs. Think of white supremacy groups. They actually see themselves as the underdogs. Hate group leaders look for wounded people to champion. And, in this world, there’s no shortage of wounded people.
—But possibly the most common method they employ is to just manipulate the emotional intelligence of naive or vulnerable viewers.
In a sense, that’s all just a darker means of online strategy marketing. But what their marketing is is the justification to hate.
Interviewer: I just read the investigative report. —I’m impressed. It was fascinating and very thorough. And long. But, I’m curious, why didn’t you just ask the investigators focus only on what Be Scofield did? Instead of including all the details on that crime that didn’t happen? Wouldn’t focusing on what she does have been enough?
Aaravindha: I was also impressed when I first saw the report completed. It is long. It took close to seven months to finalize. I had a good reason to ask the investigators to include their broader findings regarding the entire extenuating circumstances that were included in her assaults. I could, just as easily have rebutted online by saying. —The investigator’s concluded, there was no crime and it’s all utter nonsense. —But, there’s a circumstantial problem with doing only that. There’s a little-known pathology that emerges in a collective audience. When people feel someone isn’t telling the whole story. They respond with suspicion: — that’s called the Streisand effect.
When readers feel the person, who’s defending him or herself, against an accuser might be trying to quash aspects of the accusations, they’ll favor the side of the accuser, regardless of the evidence or how absurd the accusations are.
Interviewer: So, let me get this right. If you try to subdue a lie —that’s been thrown at you unjustly online, — if the readers sense your effort to rid yourself of that lie, they’ll opt to believe the liar?
Aaravindha: Not the sophisticated readers, they’re fairly immune to the effect, due to their self-entrained patterns of intelligent critical thinking. But, yes, many readers will… do… just that. This isn’t just a theory. It’s a substantiated online pathology.
One of the chief reasons Scofield’s been able to get away with defaming and lying about her targets for the last ten years, is partly due to that Streisand effect. And, this is important, —that’s also, largely because she targets spiritual group leaders or spiritually-minded free thinkers.
Interviewer: Say more about that.
For people like Be Scofield, who hope to do maximum damage, they’re a near perfect target group. She’s fully aware that most spiritual leaders will opt to ignore her, feigning the impression that they’re spiritually above that kind of toxic nonsense. Or, their PR advisers, advise them, just ignore her, hoping her assaults will eventually just fade away into the distant background of Google’s analytics ranking.
And, there’s the problem. —And her method. —When readers see a spiritual leader attempting to ignore her attacks, they falsely sense those leaders are trying to hide something. —Bingo, —the Streisand effect takes over.
A number of those spiritual leaders may have mistakenly believed the Streisand effect comes from defending one’s self against an attacker. So, they stay aloof. That’s an unfortunate misunderstanding. The Streisand effect is due to a suspicion that’s evoked in the audience when they believe the accused is hiding something. Over time, an ongoing detached avoidance on the part of the spiritual accused, convolutes into long term damage. What’s worse, it further enables cyberstalkers and online hate groups to do more.
Interviewer: In regards to the Streisand effect, do you think complete and open transparency is the key to dealing with it?
Aaravindha: Yes, I believe, when an audience of readers are shown the whole truth, they’re actually grateful, and they can better relate. In general, most people want to believe in truth, and a higher way.
But here’s one other issue that needs to be explained. It’s about fear. Fear is our most powerful emotional motivator. It triggers timeless survival instincts. Often, when given the opportunity to choose between a truth or a fear producing sensational scandal, people will opt for the scandal. Fear demands you lock your doors, hide your valuables, run for cover, and get ready to defend yourself. That can be awful, but can be weirdly exciting as well.
So, rather than avoid Scofield’s fake scandal, I opted to ask for an investigative elucidation of what the crime supposedly was that she accused me of. I chose to have the investigators search and search for any possible evidence of a crime. Now that might sound a bit absurd, but we now have some very important facts, in the open, —facts that Scofield tried to hide in her article, that now, can’t easily be ignored.
Hate leaders want to convince you, that rope laying in your backyard is a poisonous snake in the grass, waiting for you to walk by to strike. Shine a light on it, and it’s just a rope. Once the fear’s gone, people can let go of their defenses and hear again.
Interviewer: You went to a great deal of expense to hire investigators to do an intense seven months investigation. Was it worth it?
Aaravindha: Yes, absolutely. It pulled my focus away from other tasks I feel are import. But, there’s more at stake here than just my reputation or my right to truth. This is a serious global issue. It has to be addressed. It’s going on now, all across the net. And it’s not going away. It’s getting worse. Hate mongers don’t just go away on their own.
When a monster comes to your door, there’s a reason. As concerned and caring global citizens, we shouldn’t just let that monster do its damage and then walk down the street to the next home to do its damage there.
The people she targets are mostly free-thinking explorers, who don’t fit her limited approval, —which she smears using any method or deception she can. —Whether I agree, or not, with these spiritual leaders’ ideas, those leaders and groups are all the same essential to our culture.
What defines a free society involves everyone’s right to choose and learn. If a new spiritual leader comes along to give this world something new and novel to think about, then they’ve done it a real service. That’s essential to our evolution as a humanity. If they fail, and end up corrupting their offer, for personal gain alone, then most people will figure that out. It’s called learning and growing in a free society.
Interviewer: So, are you saying that you believe people will grow through the good and bad of new spiritual beliefs on their own?
Aaravindha: Yes, absolutely. I believe in the human spirit, and in the process of learning that life offers us all. And especially, those trials and errors help us find our inner moral compass and show us how to better choose our way.
It’s a bit complex, choosing to follow the teachings of a new spiritual leader, but relationships are just that, they’re complex. And, if any of those teachers turn out to just be another marketer hoping to make a buck…isn’t realizing that also a part of growing up in a shared society. There’s always another door, or another path, if the one you’re walking isn’t working for you. The American forefathers saw that right of choice as an important part of living in a free new world. That’s why they wrote that guaranteed freedom to believe, into the First amendment. That same amendment is also our assurance that humanity has a right to be informed, and has a right to its opinions. Even if those opinions are biting. But… its not right to manipulate that freedom to spread hate and lies, nor can it be used to bring harm or ruin to innocent people’s lives.
Interviewer: What else would you like to say to your listeners that you haven’t already said?
Aaravindha: Well there’s really so much more still to say. But not enough time. Regarding this issue, even though I tend to refer to Eastern philosophers when offering a quote. Being here now, in the US, I’ll share a freedom quote from Theodore Roosevelt:
He said: “The only sure bulwark of continuing our freedom, is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, —and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.”
I spent the last seven months paying for a credible investigation to bring the efforts of a hate monger and online professional defamer into the light. It would be easy for people to assume that what I had to endure through the Be Scofield online hit piece, doesn’t concern them… that would be a mistake. Her effort has been to promote herself through convincing you that her blogs are noble. They’re not!
Scofield wants to convince the world she’s their champion, by deceptively claiming spiritual leaders have actually done what she accuses them of. I can’t speak entirely on every issue in all of her self-published articles, but I can say 90% of what she wrote about me was strategically fabricated, solely to convince you of her greatness. She did it premeditatively, fully aware that she was misleading her readers. —If all she had done was voice her opinion, it would not have concerned me at all. Opinions are cheap and few people really care. But, she did more, she lied. In a seriously grievous manner.
That damaging effort alerted me to something bigger going on. It was her attempt to mislead and dominate the minds of her readers, at any cost, with no regard for the truth. Our freedom was forged from over 200 years of sacrifices and ongoing labors of our American ancestors. To assure that we live in a free society, but also in a truthful one. It hasn’t always worked out well, particularly when it comes to racial issues. But good and honest people keep trying. This might sound like a political statement. It isn’t, it’s a moral one. My hope is to remind people, that we live in a free society, but that freedom can so very easily be destroyed by those who would incite fear, bigotry, and hate in an attempt to control your right to choose, and so very importantly, your right to hear the truth, which is the real responsibility of any ethical journalist.
Do a search on Swiss cow or duck, duck, or even Google, type in the word’s, ethical journalism. There are loads of articles available to describe what that means. Our journalists are our watchdogs and minstrels, that we need to help humanity find its way. We need them to be truthful and responsible.
We, —You, —are no longer safe, if the prime medium through which you gauge humanity, life, and right knowledge is ruined by fake online manipulators.
Our world has completely changed from when I was a child, we now turn on the computer screen to connect with the world. What world will you be viewing. Will it be a truthful, honest rendition of what’s truly going on? Or, will it be the work of online schemers, hoping to frighten you into following them.
The late Robin Williams said, “No matter what people tell you; words and ideas can change the world.” So, let me leave you with this question: What words will you follow, will you choose the lies or the truth? Don’t take that choice lightly, the one you make there will ultimately determine what you leave this world.