Beaverton Grace Bible Church and church Pastor Charles O'Neal is suing Julie Ann Smith, her daughter, and three others for $500,000 after allegedly posting bad reviews of the church and Pastor O’Neal online. mom daughter sued church review,
Julie Anne Smith told KATU News in Portland, Oregon, that after leaving the church she and her family were shunned and couldn't understand why. So she went online and wrote Google and DEX reviews of the church and then started a blog. church pastor sues followers 500000,
With that in mind I suppose it's no surprise that neither Bob Hawke nor his second wife, Blanche d'Alpuget, were interviewed for the book; that no photograph of d'Alpuget appears; and that the final chapter is titled My Mother, My Hero.
This means this biography, written with the assistance of Hazel Flynn, is much closer to hagiography than to objective analysis and that's understandable, in human if not critical terms. Admittedly, Pieters-Hawke says right at the beginning: "I make no claims for balance in this account of her life."
As long as we take all this into account, Hazel: My Mother's Story presents some illuminating insights into the life of one of Australia's most admired public figures. Indeed, her down-to-earth approach as the prime minister's wife, one who pushed for social inclusion and support for the disadvantaged and underprivileged,
including indigenous Australians, won her widespread approval from all sides of politics. But this was only one side of her complex personality.n an early chapter, Pieters-Hawke recounts that Hazel, who was born in Perth in July 1929, had a backyard abortion before Bob, as a Rhodes Scholar, went to Oxford University, where she shortly joined him. After almost eight years together and a six-year engagement, they were eventually married on a very hot day in Perth, with a reception held in a church hall where there was no grog to drink, only warm orange juice.
Less than a year later, the author was born in Canberra in January 1957. Even then, Bob's drinking problem seemed entrenched. When they moved to Melbourne, for Bob to work at the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Hazel was increasingly isolated and alone while her husband's drinking started to spiral out of control. At the same time, Hazel became aware of his numerous sexual infidelities. To make things worse, their fourth child Robbie died when he was four days old.
Even when Bob was ACTU president, he and Hazel were still paying off a large mortgage and had children to educate, sometimes at private schools. In a key chapter, The Lowest Ebb, the author is frank about Hazel's own, often solitary, binge drinking as a short-term "solution" for despair and loneliness; and also about how, in 1977, she had cosmetic surgery, which may have been an attempt to deal superficially with her own self-image.
Pieters-Hawke also points to the fact that Hazel overcame her dependence on the booze and stopped smoking in 1983, which showed she had considerable strength of character.
However, it is in dealing with her beloved mother's failing memory, increased disorientation and advanced Alzheimer's disease, about which Hazel went public in 2003, that this tenderly written book hits its straps. This is not surprising, given the author is the inaugural national ambassador for Alzheimer's Australia and co-chairs the federal Ministers' Dementia Advisory Group.
Talking about Hazel moving into the fog of dementia, Pieters-Hawke poignantly puts it thus: "As we slowly and painfully lose her, I have had the privilege of spending a year immersed in her life, rediscovering the woman she was." The author has done so "with real curiosity as to how the times in which she lived shaped her, how key people and events in her life helped form her character, influenced her values and affected the choices she made".
Established in 2003, the Hazel Hawke Alzheimer's Research and Care Fund is a lasting tribute to Hazel. Fittingly, donations to this important fund support dementia grants for research into quality dementia care, prevention and management.
Now 82, Hazel has since 2009 been living in a care facility for dementia patients. In telling the life story of her mother from this unique perspective, Pieters-Hawke has done so with love and with "an immense sense of gratitude" that Hazel is her mother. In this sense, Pieters-Hawke has done her mother proud.
The family being sued left the church a few years ago and Julie Anne Smith says she and her family were shunned and couldn't understand why. So she went online and wrote Google and DEX reviews of the church and then started a blog.
"I thought, I'm just going to post a review," Smith said. "We do it with restaurants and hotels and whatnot, and I thought, why not do it with this church?"
Never did she think Beaverton Grace Bible Church and Pastor Charles O'Neal would slap her with the lawsuit.
"I'm a stay-at-home mom. I teach my kids at home, and this is just not the amount of money that normal moms have."
When the family left the church, Smith says friends were told to end all contact with her.
"If I went to Costco or any place in town, if I ran into somebody, they would turn their heads and walk the other way," she said. "All we did was asked questions. We just raised concerns. There's no sin in that."
Dissatisfied, she went online to write reviews. Other church members counteracted them with church praise. So Smith started a blog called "Beaverton Grace Bible Church Survivors."
But the pastor claims in the lawsuit he filed that her words, "creepy," "cult," "control tactics," and "spiritual abuse," are defamation.
"What somebody does in the church is one thing, but when you get out into society we have the right to free speech, and it may not be what people want to hear, but we absolutely have that right," Smith said.
The lawsuit didn’t just target Smith. Her daughter and three other commenters are also being sued.
"He can say what he wants in the church and say, don't talk about this or don't talk about that, or don't talk to this person, but when you're out in the civil world, you don't do that anymore," Smith said. "And he's not my pastor anymore. He does not have that right to keep people from talking."
The Smiths filed a special free speech motion to dismiss the lawsuit. It goes before a judge later this month.KATU News called the church, went there, went to the pastor's home and spoke to his wife. KATU News also called the pastor's attorney. All of them declined to give their side of the story.
