Ryan Jerz :: Reno Blogger, Reno Blog

Misc: The Terri Patraw Experience: the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (allegedly)

Update 5-23-08

Due to the ongoing legal situation, I have removed the full text of Terri Patraw’s emails to me. In their respective places, I have put up a summarization of what those emails contained.

In my attempt at trying to do right by people and run this site the right way, I’ve recently been taken advantage of, and I’ve lost my patience. Let me give you the full story, as it should be told, then I’ll offer what I think of the situation.

I’ve long contended that I should have fun on this site. I’ve also thought that I should use some of the energy I devote to this site for original research and actual coverage of issues and events I find interesting. I try to pay attention to local things, mostly, and tend not to put much stock in national events and issues unless they are particularly riveting. So when local stories pop up that interest me, I’ll often have a comment or two on them.

The above statement leads us to how the following stupid ordeal with a fired soccer coach got started.

I like for the titles of my posts to both reflect what the posts are about and grab the attention of a casual reader so they read on. Hence the use of the names of Roger Clemens and Terri Patraw in a post from February 14, 2008. Putting those names in the title of that post was a fateful decision. I honestly felt that Roger Clemens wouldn’t give a crap that his name was used that way, and I mistakenly thought Terri Patraw was a big enough person to let something like that slide. I was wrong. My post rose to the front page of Google’s search results for Terri Patraw’s name, and she found it by doing just that—searching for her name.

I am pretty clear about the options for contacting me on this site: You can leave a comment or you can use the Contact page. Terri Patraw chose the latter and sent me this:

Summary:

She asked me to remove the post about her, citing that she was taking a beating to her reputation online and my post was not helping. She also said the university was going to be impacted greatly by the suit. Included were several charges against what I perceive to be both the UNR athletic department and Athletic Director Cary Groth:

“I was the most successful, ethical coach in the department. I was fired by an AD who told me she ‘had nothing in my personnel file to use against me.’ Can you believe that? This lawsuit is very real and about the truth. The AD is dirty. That is why the NCAA flew to my home in November. It is also why Nevada is under investigation right now.”

She closed by repeating that her reputation was being damaged by all of this.

I mulled over that for a few days. It was both a decent letter and was loaded with clues as to what was to come from my reaction. I thought about being very open, as I usually try to be, by explaining my position, but ultimately decided to send this:

Terri,

I’m sorry that you are going through everything that you are going through. I will not be taking down what I wrote. However, if you would like something to be said, I would be happy to offer up my site as a forum for what you would like said. You can email me something and I will post it so that your name is also attached with what you would like said.

I look forward to hearing from you and I wish you the best of luck.

Ryan Jerz

Several hours later, I received this response:

Summary:

She said I had lied about her but did not cite a specific lie. From that she said she had no choice but to go after me in court. Continuing, she said she would not settle with the university and that statements like mine made her want to expose the university further. She closed with this:

“Thank you for your time. I hope you reconsider removing it. If not, I am sure we will meet through the course of our legal proceedings.”

You can imagine that I was caught a little off guard (not completely, just a little) and got pretty nervous. That was a serious threat. And she certainly wasn’t demonstrating an inclination to think of who she might affect by her reckless actions. After all, I’m an independent person, running a website that is not tied to any organization, company or name, other than my own. I have a family, who largely has no idea what I do on this site. I also have every right in the world, based on the U.S. Constitution and subsequent court rulings, to say what I said.

For starters, I link every post of that type (Reactionary Hurl) back to the proper context, which is that it’s mostly tongue-in-cheek. Secondly, I linked to a newspaper article as the basis for my opinion, which should ensure that the subject of my opinion is a public figure. And lastly, if you didn’t catch this in the previous sentence, what I posted is my opinion. Every single person that I asked about this, from journalism professors to lawyers to current and former reporters, (and we’re talking close to 20 total, all informal conversations) assured me that I am fully protected under the law. But I was still nervous about it.

Not wanting to make any sort of critical error, I did not respond to that threatening email. A few days later, I received this:

Summary:

This is the email in which she said that if I met her for coffee we could talk it out and I would learn all about her lawsuit and the way the athletic department worked.

Seems nice enough, doesn’t it? Except that I had already tried to play nice myself and still was unsure what to do and was afraid of making that critical error. So I did not respond. Fast forward another couple of days, and I got this:

Summary:

In this email she again asked if we could meet for coffe, but this time it included that if I didn’t meet her, she would be forced to go the litigation card:

“I wanted to extend the invite to meet for coffee again. I did not hear back from you. I would love to give you some insight into this situation. Perhaps it will also open the door for you to rethink your position on your post. I do not want to take this any farther than an open discussion between two people. However, I am prepared to turn this into litigation in order to ensure that only the truth is printed about me on the internet.”

She added that her reputation is her “proprietary right” and thatI should respect that.

I’d say that verifies my suspicion on what kind of behavior I could expect from Terri Patraw. Despite the escalated threat, I continued to not respond to her emails and requests for me to contact her. A couple of days later, I received this:

Summary:

In this email she told me a story about how the UNR PD had come to her house the night previous. In fact, a lot of that email was contained in this post on her blog including that UNR President Milt Glick sent them there. She followed that by asking if I was unwilling to see what UNR was doing because of my love for the school. She also said that Glick would be getting a restraining order, presumably issued on her behalf. I don’t know if that ever happened.

At this point I was lost. I had now received three unsolicited emails from Terri Patraw, who should have understood that I was in no position to want to contact her. She had already threatened me with a lawsuit for my perfectly legal actions and had even gone as far as to insinuate that my meeting her for coffee could make her threat go away. I was not interested, but continued to ask for advice from people I trust in hopes that I would learn something new. Nevertheless, I received another email a couple days later:

Summary:

In this message she sent me a letter telling me how she intended to sue me. It was a scanned document with her signature on it.

She also sent me some information regarding defamation that she apparently researched. Funny enough, the information she sent me talked about how blogs and other online media carried with them the same protection as “institutional media.” I don’t think she understood that one as well as I did. But the scary part was that it had a citation of a case where a woman was sued and had a judgment levied against her to the tune of $11.3 million. I think I was supposed to run scared there.

That email came complete with a document detailing her intent to sue me (I took it down).

After some more thinking and some advice seeking, I decided to call her. After all, the goal is to not get sued. Granted, I am totally right, but nobody wants to get dragged into court and face a lawsuit to begin with. The conversation lasted 66 minutes, according to my cell phone’s timer, and it went well. Terri Patraw was decent to me and sounded like she just wanted her side of the story to be told. I was seeking a fair assessment of the case and didn’t think I could get that without at least attempting to talk to her.

One interesting note that came from the conversation was her telling me that people had accused her of taking on multiple identities to support herself on message boards and in the RGJ forums. I asked her if she did post. She confirmed that she did under the moniker “password5.” That moniker is the one that was threatening to sue people on one message board, which is what prompted my comments on February 14. The only possible error in fact that I could have made when I originally posted about Terri Patraw, according to her own admission to me, was true. There goes any claim of defamation. But let’s not forget about the rest of what she said—people were accusing her of using fake names in support of her cause.

Sock puppets: The same IP address has posted several comments recently. Click the image to make it bigger.Since that call, I posted her letter and have seen a barrage of comments both for and against Patraw’s position. As of this writing, there are 18 total comments, 6 in support of her, 6 opposing her claims, and 6 that are neither for or against her (they are responses directly to questions posed in the comments or simply not adversarial). Every comment in support of Terri Patraw, either by “s thomas” or “Jose,” has come from the same IP address. All six, plus one that I rated neutral. What’s more, I ran a search of that IP address in my comments, and it returned several more, under different names, in the past several weeks. The image at the left shows the results of my internal search. I should also note that this post was no accident. I knew then what I’m telling you now.

In one of those comments, “s thomas” states “I am certainly not her.” If only I could believe that statement. In fact, that IP address—the one leaving all those comments—happens to be the same IP address that sent me the email including her “notice of intent to file lawsuit” letter, the email confirming I should post her letter, the email detailing the police visit to her house, the email telling me she’d sue if I didn’t meet for coffee, the email inviting me for coffee the first time, and the email originally telling me she planned on suing me. The only contact I can’t confirm came from that IP address is the initial contact asking me to take down my original post. That came through my site’s contact form and does not store IP addresses like email does, because it was mailed from my web server, not her (or whoever’s) “HomeOffice” (presumably the name of the router she or whoever is using to connect to the internet).

What possible conclusion can I or anyone else draw from that evidence? I’m open to any and all theories ready to be presented, but I must warn you that if it’s not meant to be funny, it will just look stupid.

After Terri Patraw’s initial email, I felt badly about my contribution to her current situation. When she approached me and asked that I not be a party to her diminished reputation, I should have, and did, take it seriously. So I was fair to her. I offered a solution to her complaint using a method that has been proven to work, hoping she would take me up on it. When her response was to attempt extortion using the threat of a lawsuit, despite my being completely protected under U.S. law, I took it seriously. And when the threats ebbed and flowed, seemingly on her whim, it was time to get serious myself.

I may reflect back on this someday and have a different take than I do right now. And if that happens, I’ll might even feel sorry for Terri Patraw. Right now, though, I’m angry with Terri Patraw. I understand that she was upset with what I wrote about her. And I understand that she may have a legitimate claim against the university. But to use me for her gain when I did nothing either wrong or against the law is bullshit. And to use the forum I provided to continue her attacks on people she is suing is bullshit.

I said it originally, and I’ll say it now. She’ll eventually leave this town, and that will be a good thing.

The comments have been closed on the posting of her letter, and anything that would normally go there should be left here.

Update

Due to the circumstances detailed in this post I will be abiding by the following:

• If your phone number is blocked, I will not answer my phone. Leave a message.
• I will correspond with relevant parties only in public. It’s either published or ignored.

tags: fake names, lawsuits, multiple identities, nevada, reno, soccer, sock puppets, terri patraw, unr
posted by Ryan Jerz on 03/26/2008

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