Howard Keith Henson created the L5 Society, was involved in cryonics through the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, was involved in space law, memetics, protesting Scientology, etc. That's what Wikipedia will talk about. What they won't discuss (not even in a short "controversies" section) are the ugly things Henson did years before he was railroaded into a six-month jail sentence in 2007 for picketing Golden Era Productions (the "secret" Scientology headquarters) in Hemet, California in the late '90s.
The Accusation
From around 1974 to 1981 two of Henson's daughters state that they were molested by him and that he had also molested two of their childhood friends. The accusers are Valerie Aurora (she will not use her father's surname) and Gale Grant. According to Aurora, Howard K. Henson began molesting Gale at the age of six, and she writes about it in an attached Word document in horrifying detail. Valerie Aurora claims she has no memories of being molested, but "various doctors" have told her she has physical signs of molestation. According to her, "We are honestly not sure how many children Keith molested in total or if he stopped in 1981." Howard Keith Henson had two wives, Carolyn Meinel and Arel Lucas; Meinel divorced Henson in 1982 over his sex crimes, which came out through child therapy. Lucas (according to Valerie Aurora) knew about the molestations, married him anyway, and produced a child (Amber Henson), who at the time of the writing of the website (2007) did not believe her half-sisters. Arel Lucas' bizarro reason for marrying H. Keith Henson is as follows: "Our best clue as to why Arel married, supported, and defends Keith while knowing that he molested his previous daughters is a comment she made to Gale. Arel told Gale that it was natural for little girls to have sexual feelings for their fathers, and if Keith molested her, it's because Gale (6 years old at the time) wanted it." Logic from an alien world....
Neither wife wanted their ex or present husband jailed for fear he would be murdered in prison, so they did not drag the police into it, even though Henson had dug tunnels (!) underneath his and Meinel's house for reasons Valerie Aurora did not mention. However, in the affidavit for divorce drafted by Carolyn Meinel in 1982 under "Total Monthly Expenses" it says:
$955 + MEDICAL **$6,000 since May 1981 includes Gale's operation and four-day hospital stay; Valerie and [redacted] for pulmonary problems and psychological counseling for Gale and [redacted] as a result of father's sexual molestation of them.
It was an open secret, if you could find the right document. Which is what the Scientologists did.
The Failed Propaganda Campaign
When Howard Keith Henson began his campaign, they struck back through the internet:
Keith Henson Child Molester Uses Internet to Foment Hatred. Like many bigots who attack other religious organizations or racial minorities, Henson has a shady history which includes sexual perversion and numerous violation of the law.
Henson has never been a Scientologist nor has he had any contact with Scientology other than hearing about it from a religious hate newsgroup on the Internet. Henson's behavior belies his true motivation, which is quite simply to deny Scientologists any rights of any kind which is what lies behind his criminal actions against members of the Church over the past two years.
Nobody believed a word of it, especially because they mixed it together with an attack on another Scientology critic, Grady Ward, where they made absurd claims that he was a pornographer. This sort of "fling anything at the wall and see what sticks" propaganda rarely works, and yet the Church is still using it, especially after the Going Clear documentary came out. The quasi-slander about Howard Keith Henson was allegedly released to the Nigerian government in 1998 as part of the slime-ing of a former business partner of Bob Minton (the now-deceased founder of the Lisa McPherson Trust who was an investment banker), a man named Jeff Schmidt who had worked with Minton doing debt-control for Nigeria. It didn't work, but it did leak onto the Internet, and it made the case of "Henson Persecuted by Scientology" bulletproof, which is why Valerie Aurora's "Keith Henson is a child molester" page is mostly unknown to the public.
.....For example, Keith Henson's first wife divorced him because he was I child molester who caused untold emotional damage to his underage daughters by sexually molesting them while married to his first wife. In an affidavit he filed with the Arizona Superior Court, Henson's former wife (while complaining about Henson being a deadbeat dad and the amount of funds she had to put out as a result) complained that Henson was so irresponsible that he had not even paid for the psychological counseling of his two daughters due to Henson's molestation of them. His wife alleged, " .$6,000 has been owed since May 1981 which includes Gale's operation and four-day hospital stay; Valerie and Virginia for pulmonary problems and psychological counseling for Gate and Wendy as a result of father's sexual molestation of them."
A friend of the Henson's also testified in the case that:
"Carolyn stated that Keith had sexually molested his children and that if he did not come back to Tucson for therapy he might be arrested. In all probability she felt there would be a divorce. Several meetings with Carolyn occurred over the next several weeks where she enumerated occasions of child molestation and at this time she said she had money problems since Keith was not giving her enough to care for the kids properly,"
Henson's behavior is nothing short of criminal and he should have been prosecuted for it.
The Final Seal of Approval: Wikipedia
And so we are back to where we started. In spite of founding the short-lived Ada Initiative, being a friend of the now ex-Wikimedia Foundation employee Sarah Stierch, and generally being as "free culture" as humanly possible, there is no mention of the sickening greasy sleaze, either on her stub-like BLP ("biography of a living person") nor on her estranged father's page. There were attempts in March 2013 and November 2013 to bring Valerie Aurora's BLP closer to reality, but the former insertion was ganked by Ryan Kaldari in a few hours, while the latter insertion only lasted ten minutes.
Yes, Sarah Stierch had locked the page so that changes were impossible to do for a while.• (cur | prev) 23:28, 4 December 2013 Jehochman (talk | contribs) . . (7,003 bytes) (-47) . . (→External links: WP:BLP external links policy)• (cur | prev) 23:27, 4 December 2013 Jehochman (talk | contribs) m . . (7,050 bytes) (0) . . (Changed protection level of Valerie Aurora: Violations of the biographies of living persons policy ([Edit=Allow only autoconfirmed users] (indefinite) [Move=Allow only autoconfirmed users] (indefinite)))• (cur | prev) 17:05, 4 December 2013 Fluffernutter (talk | contribs) . . (7,050 bytes) (+49) . . (Adding {pp-semi-blp} (TW))• (cur | prev) 17:05, 4 December 2013 Fluffernutter (talk | contribs) m . . (7,001 bytes) (0) . . (Protected Valerie Aurora: Violations of the biographies of living persons policy ([Edit=Allow only autoconfirmed users] (expires 17:05, 4 February 2014 (UTC))))• (cur | prev) 17:04, 4 December 2013 Fluffernutter (talk | contribs) . . (7,001 bytes) (-628) . . (Reverted to revision 581282019 by SarahStierch (talk): BLP. (TW))• (cur | prev) 03:42, 12 November 2013 SarahStierch (talk | contribs) . . (7,001 bytes) (-430) . . (Reverted good faith edits by 12.238.249.2 *(talk): Reverting unexplained removal of content and changing of names/etc. . (TW))
The final blow was the discovery that Howard Keith Henson was editing Wikipedia under the account Hkhenson since 2005, mostly editing articles on things he had done or things he was interested in, or the biographies of supporters, and Douglas Hofstadter. Hkhenson has never been blocked, kept away from editing his own BLP, or sanctioned in any way. It's like finding out that James "Whitey" Bulger was editing his own biography or a list of his crimes.
***
Finally, I have to re-affirm that I am not a Scientologist for the Reddit readership.
May I say that I feel sorry for Henson's children, whose lives were nearly ruined by this heartless, self-centered creep, along with his other molestation victims (you know they have to be out there.)
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