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Gentle Wind Project sues couple over Internet postings

Press Herald (ME), Sunday, January 9, 2005
By Gregory D. Kesich, Portland, Press Herald Writer

The Gentle Wind Project collected millions of dollars in donations
by distributing plastic healing instruments that believers say
alleviate suffering through the regeneration of human energy fields
damaged by trauma.
But when two of the group's former associates went on the Internet
and compared the Kittery-based nonprofit to a "mind-control cult,"
Gentle Wind called a lawyer.

The organization and six of its officers have filed a complex
defamation lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Portland. It charges
that former adherents James Bergin and Judy Garvey, a married couple
from Blue Hill, made false accusations of financial and sexual
exploitation that damaged the organization's reputation and slowed
the flow of donations, its only income.

According to court documents, Bergin wrote that he and Garvey had
been "obedient followers" of Gentle Wind for 17 years, allowing the
organization to influence his family in "very destructive ways." He
said his wife had participated in sexual rituals with members of the
Gentle Wind inner circle. Bergin said after leaving the group he
studied "cults and high-control groups" and was struck with "their
universal similarity of these groups to Gentle Wind."

But Gentle Wind is not a cult, said Mary Miller, a director and
spokeswoman for the 21-year-old organization, and the group is ready
to fight to prove it.

"We want our reputation back," Miller said in a recent
interview. "When someone says lies about the organization, it might
be possible to believe that these things are true. We want to let
people know that they are not true."

Gentle Wind is suing for unspecified damages, including punitive
damages. To win its case, the organization must prove that the
statements are false and Bergin and Garvey were negligent by
publishing them. To get punitive damages, they will have to prove
that Bergin and Garvey knew the statements were false and made them
to intentionally hurt the organization.

The couple say they have a legal right to tell their life stories
and call the lawsuit an attempt to intimidate them. They have
already spent $12,000 defending themselves and could pay more before
the case runs it course.

"They are simply expressing their views," said Jerrol Crouter of
Drummond Woodsum and MacMahon, the couple's lawyer. "They have
suffered a significant personal toll of being accused of substantial
wrongdoing, and it's a completely unfounded claim."

Bergin and Garvey's allegations were made public in online articles
published on their own Web site, www.windsofchange. org, and later
repeated on other sites.

According to the lawsuit, the couple alleged in their articles that
Gentle Wind is a cult-like organization run by John "Tubby" Miller.
They described Miller as a charismatic former psychotherapist who
manipulates naive people around the world, allowing him and his
inner circle to live a life of luxury.

John Miller would not be interviewed for this story, said Mary
Miller, Gentle Wind's spokeswoman. She said Gentle Wind does not
have a leader.

THREE INTERNET SITES SETTLE

In their articles, which are quoted in the lawsuit, Bergin and
Garvey charge that over a 17-year period, Gentle Wind's control of
their lives led them to sell a profitable publishing business in
Massachusetts and donate tens of thousands of dollars to the
organization.

According to court records, Garvey also claims that for a period of
time she took part in group sexual rituals that she believed were
necessary to provide the energy needed to make the healing
instruments the organization distributes.

In addition to Bergin and Garvey, the lawsuit names as defendants
several operators of Internet sites that published the couple's
work. Three of the operators have settled the claims against them by
removing the material from their Web sites, and one has published an
apology.

But one Web site operator, Rick Ross, a New Jersey consultant who
studies cults and similar groups and sometimes testifies about them
in court, has refused to remove the material he has collected on
Gentle Wind and remains a defendant in the case.

At stake is an "alternative and complimentary healing" program
operated out of houses in Kittery and Durham, N.H., which, before
the controversy, collected more than $1 million a year in donations,
Miller said.

Donations fell by $587,000 over an 18-month period ending in August,
according to court records. The organization has cut its paid staff
from 12 to seven.

Gentle Wind's legal fight had cost $113,103 when a September report
was issued, and the case is far from resolution. Bergin and Garvey
have asked that the case be dismissed from federal court, but even
if they are successful, Gentle Wind will continue to pursue them,
said Daniel Rosenthal of Verrill Dana, Gentle Wind's lawyer.

"There's no prospect of it going away," Rosenthal said. "The only
question is whether it's in state or federal court."

TYPICAL CONTRIBUTORS

Bergin said he was a successful academic textbook publisher in 1983,
when he and his wife began looking for parenting advice from Mary
Miller, who they say was then known as Claudia Panuthos.

Bergin and Garvey were educated professionals in their mid-40s -
typical of people involved in Gentle Wind, he said.

"They don't want starry-eyed bliss-ninnies," Bergin said in an
interview. "They want people who have a life. We had money and
skills. They wanted us. We were prime."

Bergin said their involvement began with a "soul reading" in which
they sent hair samples to Mary Miller and received an audiotape. The
insights were "mysterious and intriguing," Bergin said, and the
speaker seemed to know them better than they knew themselves.

Over time, Garvey began visiting the Gentle Wind members in Maine,
and eventually the family moved to Blue Hill, where John Miller had
temporarily set up headquarters.

Bergin said nearly every decision in his life was based on advice
from John Miller and Mary Miller. They dictated how he made his
living, how he raised his sons and the most intimate details of his
marriage. Bergin said he discovered that his wife gave Gentle Wind
$77,000 in cash contributions and advanced them $205,000 in no-
interest loans, which were repaid.

In 2000, the couple started to have second thoughts. They started
researching cults and found similarities. In a section of his
article quoted in court records, Bergin said he realized he had
given up control of his life to benefit Gentle Wind.

He wrote that, "The process was deceptively subtle, pervasive and
persistent."

But in interviews and court documents, Gentle Wind's directors
adamantly deny the couple's charges.

"Gentle Wind is not a 'group,' it does not have a 'leader' and does
not recruit additional staff," the lawsuit charges. "Gentle Wind
does not . . . espouse an all-encompassing belief system and does
not have an agenda other than developing and promoting the use of
its healing instruments."

THE HEALING INSTRUMENTS

The instruments include colorful plastic cards and hockey pucks that
are displayed on the company's Web site, www.gentlewindproject.org.
The items are said to restore the "human energy field and contribute
to healing."

Although the instruments are free, each is posted with a recommended
donation, starting at $250 for the Advanced Family Unity/Integrated
Space Set and including $5,850 for the Rainbow Puck, which "may
solve many of the problems found in humanity."

Two products designed to work together are the City Block Sweep and
Decompressor, for $1,175, to "relieve stress from confinement and
transactional and territorial disputes" in homes and offices and the
New World System V - suggested donation $7,800 - which is a handheld
device to "improve emotional physical well being."

The instruments are circulated at open houses held around the
country and abroad by about 7,000 people, Miller said. They have
been given to soldiers returning from Iraq and will be delivered to
aid tsunami victims in Asia, she said.

Miller, a former social worker, said she began using the instruments
in the late 1970s when she saw their effectiveness in the emotional
healing of parents who had lost children. "They showed noticeable
improvement that far outpaced the normal grieving process," she
said.

Although the products don't work for everyone, the organization
enjoyed a good reputation among people who used them, including some
health-care professionals, she said.

Miller said the trouble started when Garvey was asked to leave a
volunteer position in Kittery in 2000 and began publishing her
criticism of Gentle Wind. Miller would not discuss why Garvey was
fired or any of the details of the suit, but she denied the couple's
allegations, which she called "hurtful."

"You won't find any evidence for claims of a cult," she said. "We
wouldn't be spending these kind of resources if these charges were
true."

Miller would not shed any light on the relationship between the
Gentle Wind staff and directors, some whom live together and receive
room and board as well as salaries from the organization. She said
that she and others have changed their last names to Miller but
would not explain why.

"I don't want to go into that," she said. "But it has nothing to do
with cult behavior, I can tell you that."

'PUBLIC HAS RIGHT TO KNOW'

Defendant Ross said he is getting used to being sued by groups he
writes about. As executive director of the New Jersey-based Rick A.
Ross Institute for the Study of Cults, Controversial Groups and
Movements, he has pending cases with groups called Pure Bride
Ministries and Church of Immortal Consciousness for material he
posted on his Web site, www.rickross.com.

He said he has been successfully defended in other lawsuits, thanks
to pro bono legal work from different law firms.

"I regard these as nothing more than harassment suits designed to
get critical information off the Internet," Ross said.

On his Web site, Ross called Gentle Wind "a rather odd group." He
says he could settle his part of the case by removing the critical
articles, but he has refused.

"I feel the public has a right to know what information is out
there, and I have a First Amendment right to tell what I know," Ross
said.

U.S. District Court Judge Gene Carter has described the lawsuit
as "convoluted." The original complaint, filed in May, claimed
relief under federal racketeering laws. Bergin and Garvey
successfully got those charges dropped. But Gentle Wind filed a new
complaint that relied on different laws.

A motion to dismiss those claims is pending. In the meantime, one
defendant, a Web site operator in New Zealand, has been found in
default for not responding to the complaint, and three Web site
operators have settled.

Ross has asked to be dismissed from the case because he argues that
he never came to Maine and could not have violated Maine law.

The role of the Web site operators is what is driving the case, said
Rosenthal, Gentle Wind's lawyer.

If Bergin and Garvey had made their charges to a neighbor, Gentle
Wind could still sue them, he said. But since the charges were
published on the Internet, the damage to the organization has been
far greater.

"These things really started to spread like wildfire," he
said. "This case really shows what can happen when rumors spread in
the electronic age."

Staff Writer Gregory D. Kesich can be contacted at 791-6336 or at:
gkesich@...

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/050109lawsuit.shtml