Meryl’s version: The Truth about the AVN Investigations
From Living Wisdom / AVN E-newsletter, received 15 February 2010.
The AVN under investigation
Why all the investigations?
I just received the following email from one of our members (a very long-time supporter of the AVN):
Hi Meryl,
It may be worth responding to recent press about the investigation into AVN fund-raising. I’m comfortable with pledging money to you – particularly considering that you’re not asking for it until you know there’s going to be enough to make it worthwhile continuing – but others may have concerns.
Good luck!
TC
To tell or not to tell – that is the question
I have been up in the air about whether to write to you about this issue or not, but TC’s letter has made me realise that I do need to let you, our members and supporters, aware of the pressure we are under and the terrible victimisation of both the AVN and myself personally by an Australian-based anti-choice organisation known to many of our members in particular and the group, SAVN (Stop the AVN) in general.
Fact: According to the NSW Government Fair Trading office, an incorporated association has certain obligations(1):
“Although there are benefits to be gained from incorporation, there are also obligations. For example, incorporation requires the payment of application fees and obliges the association to maintain proper financial and membership records and registers. In addition, it imposes certain reporting obligations on the public officer and committee members.”
Fact: According to the NSW Government, Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing, Best Practice Guidelines for Charitable Organisations, Section 2-300 “Access to Information”(2)
“The Act [section 47 & Regulation 11] requires an authority holder to provide, subject to payment of a fee, the following documentation and particulars within 30 days of being requested to do so by any member of the public:
• copies of annual audited statement of accounts prepared in relation to fundraising appeals for the seven years prior to the request
• a copy of or extracts from the organisation’s objects and constitution, including any amendments
• the names, qualifications and occupations of members of the governing body of the authority holder.
There is no legal obligation for the authority holder to provide any financial
information in excess of that required to be provided in the annual audited financial reports. However, authority holders may consider providing separate or supplementary information where appropriate in the interests of disclosure and accountability.
The qualifications of the director or member of the governing body would normally relate to the person’s academic or professional qualifications.
Meryl, as the Australian Vaccination Network is an incorporated association operating under a charitable fundraising licence, you are in fact duty bound to be transparent and open in certain financial dealings of the AVN. It is not your choice “to tell or not to tell”.
This will be a long email so please bear with me – I want it to be as complete as it can be though much of this is still up in the air.
First off, I have not been writing to you about most of what has been happening because I haven’t wanted to feed the fire of these groups. The people who are behind these attacks are, in my own personal opinion, totally without morals and ethics. While I oppose those organisations that want to tell you and your children what you can and cannot do in regards to your own bodies, I never have and never will stoop to the level of personal attacks, vilification, and the underhanded lying tactics which have been used against myself and the AVN by these individuals – with the complete cooperation of both the media and government departments may I add.
The only thing I have ever asked for is to have an open and honest debate so that others can decide for themselves which side has the best information. But that has never been allowed. Instead, these groups who cannot argue with the information the AVN produces instead, attack the messenger with a viciousness that almost belies their claim to humanity.
For an overview of some of these issues which I will not go into further here, please visit my blog post Why I did what I did, Why I do what I do (first printed in the AVN’s publication, the Inside Edition)
12 months of attack
Approximately 12 months ago, an unremitting campaign of harassment began with a complaint filed by an anonymous complainant against the AVN with the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing (OLGR). They stated that we were fund-raising without the correct authorisation because our fund-raising certificate had expired.
Let us never forget that the campaign to halt the AVN’s misleading and dangerous activities was after the death of 3 young babies from preventable diseases, one(c1) of which occurred in a low vaccination area of NSW, near the headquarters of the Australian Vaccination Network, and other babies that were hospitalised in a critical condition due to these diseases.
This was a situation that both the AVN and the OLGR were perfectly aware of. Our last auditor, a woman who was an AVN member and who helped us out by doing our audit for free for several years, sold her firm so we needed to find a new auditor. Because of the regulations, we could not use an accountant – it needed to be an auditor and, being in a rural area, they are very hard to come by.
We stayed in communication with the OLGR and they were perfectly aware and understanding of the fact that we would not be able to submit our audit until we found an auditor. Our paperwork was already with the auditors at the time this complaint was filed and the OLGR stated that they had no issues with our charitable status and as soon as the audit was submitted (about a month later), our certificate was renewed.
FACT: The AVN’s charitable fundraising licence was not renewed until members of the public made OLGR aware that the AVN was fundraising with an expired certificate. The term that the AVN was operating under with an expired certificate was two years.
During this time, members of the group previously mentioned and the organisation, Stop the AVN, contacted all of our advertisers and asked them to pull their ads from our publication. One of our advertisers, someone who had taken out a full years’ worth of advertising in both the magazine and on our website / enewsletter, pulled out. Her husband said that she had been so terrified by the calls she received, she was unable to sleep for 2 weeks!
Here is one such advertiser’s comments upon discovering what organisation lay behind the magazine they had paid for advertising in:
” [name removed on request] 11 November 2009
Hi Christine,
Thank you for your message. To be honest I am still reeling over everything- the whole situation has knocked me for six. Until this morning, I didnt even know what the AVN was- had never heard of it in my life! To find all the messages come up on Facebook had me very confused and angry because I didnt know what was going on. Then a letter from Jaime (Australian Images) came in the mail, and for that I am grateful. His letter made me realise and piece everything together. Which of course, led me to feel very, very angry and deceived. I was under the impression that we, as a [details removed to avoid identification] company, were advertsing in a parenting magazine that was all about organic food, natural parenting, etc etc. To find out this was incorrect had me feeling sick to my stomach. Because of course not only did it cost us money (and we are only a small family run business) but it seems, it has also cost us some of our hard earned, wonderful reputation 
I dont want to get involved in debates about what parents should or should not do. My own choices were to vaccinate, but my company [details removed] has absoluely nothing to do with the personal choices that parents make for their little ones. I am so disheartened that there are such fanatic, dishonest people out there, and that they would use my company’s good reputation to further their own devious desires.
I guess there isnt much else I can say on the topic- I actually just want to move on from it all. I emailed the people from the living wisdom magazine and demanded they remove anything to to with my company from their AVN website which I belive has now occured, thankfully. I just want to get back to doing what I do best, and that is providing [details removed]. I’m a young mum of 3, and my focus needs to be on my family.
I did a search for ‘[name removed on request]‘ on the antivaxxers.com site…..I saw there was reference to us…would it be okay if you remove this for me at all? I just dont want to be involved in negativity, due to some personal issues I just dont think I can cope with that at the moment.
Well…..the little ones need their dinner (we dont have daylight savings here so it’s only 6pmish) so I better go.
Thanks for your time,
[name removed on request]“
All details of this person and their company were removed from my site because it was clear they had not realised what they were actually supporting.
To show you how ‘ethical’ these characters are, they found out that one of the other vaccination support groups in Australia had not registered their business name properly. This group started the same month as the AVN – in March 1994 – and have gone by that name for all that time.
These people set up a website using this organisation’s name to specifically attack all of the volunteer groups in Australia who freely give their time and energy to making sure that people can access the other side of the vaccination story. On this website, they have established something called the Hall of Shame where they have listed the names of people who support free and informed health choice and have asked people not to support their businesses.
FACT: Yes, I did register “Vaccination Awareness & Information Service” because it is exactly what this website strives to do, and the name was freely available for registration.
The group that went by this name previously had no formal structure whatsoever, were not registered with any government authority, and actually went by the full-name of “Healthy Lifestyles Naturally / Vaccination Awareness & Information Service” (HLN/VAIS).(3)
They have listed the business details for everyone who is involved in these organisations – even our partner’s private businesses – without any explanation but perhaps so that the harassment can continue with those who love us and support what we do.
FACT:An explanation appears on every page of the Hall of Shame, how did you manage to miss that, Meryl?
“Below is a list of businesses that are professional members of the Australian Vaccination Network, an organisation disseminating dangerous anti-vaccination messages into our communities based on outrageous conspiracy theories.
The scientific and medical community has indisputedly shown that the risk/benefit is overwhelmingly in favour of vaccination.
This Hall of Shame is provided as a community service to parents who need to be aware that when dealing with these organisations they are supporting the continued conspiracy theory nonsense and misleading information which can lead to epidemics of preventable disease.”
FACT: No business is listed that is not directly involved in supporting the anti-vaccination movement.
I still strongly recommend that people do NOT give support to any business or individual that supports the dangerous ideology of the anti-vaccination movement.
They have tried to get venues where I am scheduled to present vaccination seminars to cancel and have harassed those who sponsor such events.
Yes, members of the public did contact certain venues to ensure that the venue operators were aware of what the AVN really stands for. It was then their decision whether or not to proceed with the arrangement. One venue, a high school in South Australia, made the decision not to allow the AVN use of their premises for an AVN seminar. That was their decision, not anyone elses.
They continually attribute things I haven’t said to me. Saying that I believe in the Illuminati and Reptilian Aliens are just some of the most blatant examples of this. There are so many more it’s not even funny. They have even gone so far as to follow links on articles I’ve sent to our email list and say that I support what is at that link even when I have sent an article – the links on that page are not under my control.
FACT: Meryl linked to an article, written by David Icke(4) on the official Australian Vaccination Network blog on Sunday 26 July 2009, the official AVN twitter feed on 27 July 2009 1:33pm (both posted by Meryl Dorey) and the official AVN Yahoo! discussion group 27 July 2009.
This article was all about the Illuminati threat and microchips in the swine flu vaccine. I didn’t link to it, Meryl did. Three times.
If you don’t believe in what you post, why include it? What a ridiculous proposition, that one would disseminate information that they didn’t believe in, without an accompanying explanation!
And another delightful, explanatory quote from Meryl:
“Yes, I agree! While we are already seen as rabid, idiotic fringe-dwellers by so many in the mainstream, it does our argument no good at all to bring in conspiracy theories which, though we may subscribe to them, are unprovable….
…why weaken it by bringing up something that will turn 99.9% of the population off of what we are saying?”(6)
There is more I could tell you including death threats and accusations of being a child killer, but suffice it to say that it has been 12 months of this sort of thing and I am well and truly over it!
You’ve told us plenty so far, even warned us that this would be a long email, so why not give the full details of something as serious as death threats? That’s right, they never happened, did they.
This whole situation came to a head about 7 months ago when a complaint was filed against both the AVN and myself with the HCCC which you have all had links to. This seems to have disappeared from our website since we put the new site up but I will be speaking with our website designer this afternoon and will ask her to put this back up so if any of you have not read the original complaint and our replies, please visit the site tomorrow and you should (hopefully) see that information there.
Just disappeared, did it? I see articles going back many years made it through all stages of the AVN website upgrade, but this complaint didn’t?
Along with this HCCC complaint, there have been an unending string of complaints filed against both myself and the AVN every time I’m on either the radio, TV or in newspapers. Without fail, the media will receive complaints stating that they should not be interviewing someone like myself who is not only anti-vaccine (in their words), but under investigation to boot!
FACT: You are anti-vaccine, and I quote you directly(5)
““There will come a time – I pray to God that it will happen in my lifetime – when those who have pushed vaccines upon innocent, helpless babies – doctors, pharmaceutical companies, government officials – will be proven to have lied and cheated these instruments of death into our children’s bloodstream.”
FACT: You are under investigation.
1. Health Care Complaints Commission (multiple complaints)
2. NSW Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing
and I am aware of complaints filed with other government authorities pending a decision on whether to proceed with an investigation or not.
If the media are seeking credible sources to file with their stories, then someone who is currently under investigation and intentionally sets out to mislead the public, is no such source.
“Yes, I agree! While we are already seen as rabid, idiotic fringe-dwellers by so many in the mainstream, it does our argument no good at all to bring in conspiracy theories which, though we may subscribe to them, are unprovable….
…why weaken it by bringing up something that will turn 99.9% of the population off of what we are saying?”(6)
This last week, two more complaints were filed. I only found out about these complaints when our local rag, the Northern Star, published an article entitled Vaccination Group Investigation.
I found out from the paper that one of the complainants was the same person who filed the complaint against us with the HCCC. The other one was, no doubt, one of his cronies from Stop the AVN.
As a result, the OLGR is coming out to do a complete internal audit of the AVN and I am not concerned about this because we take the trust of our members and supporters very seriously. But it is yet another example of how we are constantly under attack from these people and how we have to waste such an enormous amount of time and energy taking care of this crap when there are so many other things that are actually important for us to be taking care of!
In addition, they have filed a second complaint with ASIC when we are no longer even registered with ASIC and haven’t been for a couple of years. Grasping at straws and wasting the public’s time and money – but that is nothing new for these people.
Not registered with ASIC? You are kidding us, right?
Saving the lives of children in our communities from preventable diseases by vaccination is not grasping at straws, nor is it a waste of the public’s time and money. Your opinion obviously differs here, Meryl.
In addition, members of SAVN are saying that the AVN has no money because I have spent it all and that I have taken out bank loans to prop up the organisation.
Both of these statements are complete lies.
PROVE IT, MERYL!
What was the liability of the Australian Vaccination Network Incorporated at the start of this current donation drive?
You have been avoiding this question like the plague (pun intended), yet it is the ONLY QUESTION YOU REALLY NEED TO ANSWER RIGHT NOW.
It is an entirely reasonable question to ask, too. After all, you managed to take the AVN from a $88,000 PROFIT to a $58,000 LOSS in just ONE YEAR.
Why should anyone believe that you are now operating in the black?
I started this organisation in 1994 and from that time to the present, I have been a full-time volunteer for the AVN. It is not unusual for me to spend 60-80 hours a week on AVN work. Despite this huge investment of my time, I am not now nor have I ever been paid by the AVN.
For approximately the last 2 1/2 – 3 years, I have drawn a very small weekly amount as editor of Living Wisdom which is a separate body that is owned by the AVN (and I edited the magazine for 4 years before we were in a position to pay me anything). When times have been tough, I have foregone even that small payment.
FACT: NO, YOU DIDN’T FOREGO THAT PAYMENT WHEN TIMES WERE TOUGH.
Annual statement for the AVN 2008(7a) shows that you paid yourself, in Editor’s Charges, $17,490.00 (an increase of the 2007 payment, which was $15,840.00)
In June 2008, the AVN “Doing the Rounds” newsletter, you threatened closure of the AVN.(7b)
So, when times were tough, you not only still got paid, but gave yourself an increase.
FACT: Living Wisdom is the official magazine of the AVN, and all its associated expenses appear on the AVN annual statements along with everything else. So, YES MERYL, you have obtained income from the AVN!
My husband and I have put our own money into the AVN as we have been able when there has been a shortfall (my husband is a farmer and you know how hard times are and have been for those on the land…). We have usually been paid back over time.
At this point however, our biggest personal exposure comes from the fact that we have gone guarantor for all of the leases and obligations that the AVN has taken on (computers, photocopier, etc.) so were the AVN to fold, we would be personally liable for those obligations.
Anyone who claims that we have profited personally in any way from this organisation is not only wrong, they are immoral and have probably never done a day’s volunteer work in their lives.
Don’t blame your supporters, or your critics, for your mis-management of the AVN. You alone are responsible for your personal debts, and what is immoral is your emotional and misleading pleas to your supporters to cover what is essentially your personal debts.
Volunteers don’t pay themselves thousands of dollars in editor’s charges either, Meryl.
Once again, tell us please, what was the liability of the Australian Vaccination Network Incorporated immediately prior to this current donation drive?
No regrets
I have said many times that if I had put the time and energy that I have given to the AVN into my own business, I would be rich right now. I believe that firmly. But my own business would never have given me the strong, enduring sense of satisfaction that my involvement with the AVN has done. Nor would it allow me to look back over these last 17 years and know that no matter what the future holds, I have done what I could to protect not only the health and rights of my own children, but of all the other children in Australia whose parents otherwise would not have known they had a choice.
Whether you feel comfortable with pledging or donating to the AVN is up to you. What the outcome of all these investigations will be is unknown. I gave up a long time ago expecting justice from government departments but am hopeful that those who throw the dirt will find it flying back in their faces.
What dirt? Facts are not dirt, Meryl. They are facts. High time you answered the questions put to you. Whilst you keep asking for funds from the general public, under a charitable fundraising licence, then don’t expect you can do what you want.
Thanks for reading this and feel free to give me a ring if you would like to discuss anything that I’ve said.
All the best,
Meryl
02 6687 1699
Footnotes:
1: http://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/Cooperatives_and_associations/Associations/What_are_incorporated_associations.html
2: http://www.olgr.nsw.gov.au/charitable_best_pract.asp
3: http://www.antivaxxers.com/?cat=266
4: http://www.davidicke.com/content/view/25191
5: http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AVN/message/36449
6: http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AVN/message/38725
7a: http://www.antivaxxers.com/?p=1527
7b: http://www.antivaxxers.com/?p=1596
c1: correction 15 Feb 2010 – original version stated three babies.