I Need You to Understand Why I Am Asking for Your Help
Friends,
Most of you already know pieces of what has been happening to me, so I am not sending this because I need sympathy, reassurance, or people to tell me they are sorry. I am sending it because I need you to understand why I have refused to walk away from what is happening at Sojourner Family Peace Center, why I filed a federal lawsuit, and why I am asking you to do something more than simply read what I have written. This has never been about me. It has been about the women and children who are still inside that building, the victims who will enter it tomorrow, next month, and next year, and what happens when a person escapes violence only to reach the end of temporary shelter without a meaningful path to sustained, independent safety.
I entered Sojourner as a domestic-violence victim. I did not enter looking for a story. I entered because I needed somewhere safe to live. While I was there, however, I began witnessing things I could not ethically ignore. Women were approaching the end of their shelter stays without safe housing. Some were talking about returning to violent abusers because they had nowhere else to go. Residents were learning about resources from other residents instead of being given a comprehensive roadmap of available assistance. I began documenting questions involving housing, financial assistance, child safety, disability accommodations, confidentiality, surveillance, policies, funding, and whether the enormous institutional system surrounding these victims was actually producing sustained safety. My investigation ultimately became hundreds of pages because the deeper I looked, the more questions the evidence created. The executive summary I prepared explains why the central issue became so urgent: a shelter can provide numerous individual services and still leave a survivor standing at the end of temporary shelter without somewhere safe to take her children.
I want to be precise about the financial numbers because they are disturbing enough without overstating them. Across six comparable financial filings examined in my investigation, Sojourner reported approximately $49.54 million in expenditures, while approximately $578,600—about 1.17%—was reported in the specific category of direct grants or assistance to individuals. That does not mean only 1.17% was spent on program services or that the other 98.83% did nothing for victims. Staff, shelter operations, facilities, advocacy, technology, and other institutional expenses can absolutely benefit survivors. But in the most recent year examined, Sojourner reported approximately $9.52 million in expenses while $81,593 appeared in the Schedule I direct-assistance category—about 86 cents for every $100 of total organizational spending. Much of the reported assistance consisted of things such as food and clothing gift cards, bus tickets, and gas cards. Those things matter. A bus ticket can matter enormously. But a bus ticket is not housing. A gift card is not sustained independence. And a shelter bed is not an exit.
That is what I could not turn my back on. When women are talking about returning to people who have violently abused them because they cannot see another executable option, this stops being an abstract debate about nonprofit management. The foreseeable consequences can be another assault, great bodily harm, or death. I could have kept my mouth shut. I could have decided that I already had enough problems of my own. I could have walked away after I was removed. But I would have had to live with knowing that I saw what was happening and decided protecting myself was more important than saying something. I cannot do that. Turning my back on human lives is not something I know how to do.
And what happened after I began investigating is why I need you to understand how serious this has become.
Sojourner's records attacked the legitimacy of the domestic violence that brought me there in the first place. An institutional record included the assertion that the man I identified as my offender “really is not” my offender. That attack was not something that existed only inside my own account of what happened. Friends and professionals saw me within hours of the attack. Police records exist. Injury documentation exists. Court proceedings exist. A four-year protective injunction exists. Yet the institution I entered as a domestic-violence victim generated a record undermining whether the person I identified as my offender actually was my offender. My federal complaint now puts that statement directly at issue.
Then it became far more dangerous.
After my removal had already begun, Sojourner's electronic system contained a separate record titled “Threat to Building Plan on 9/11/2026.” The entry attributed to me a statement that I was “planning to do something to the building on 9/11.” I categorically deny that encounter and statement. The following day, Sojourner distributed a “HIGH ALERT-BOLO” containing my photograph and surveillance imagery. My federal complaint further alleges that residents received an oral warning leading them to believe I might “blow it up” and that they should not be in the building on September 11. Those events and their electronic chronology are now part of the federal lawsuit I filed.
I am saying this as clearly as I possibly can: I never threatened to bomb Sojourner. I never threatened to attack Sojourner. I never threatened the women or children inside that building. I never made a September 11 threat. I believe the evidence will establish how that narrative was created, transformed, and disseminated, and that is one reason I filed the lawsuit rather than simply continuing to argue about it publicly. I want the native electronic records, timestamps, audit histories, communications, surveillance evidence, distribution records, and witnesses subjected to discovery so the evidence—not anybody's reputation or public-relations narrative—determines what happened. The complaint specifically identifies those electronic records and preservation issues.
I also need you to understand what an accusation like this does to my physical safety. Falsely portraying someone as a prospective threat involving September 11 and a building full of domestic-violence survivors and children can get that person killed. It changes the information that may precede an encounter with security or armed law enforcement. It changes how strangers perceive that person before he has said a word. It changes the threat assessment around him. That is not theoretical to me.
For more than a year, I have been homeless while dealing with repeated violence and threats that I have reported to authorities. I have described four incidents as attempts on my life and seven additional attacks. One of the most dangerous incidents followed my obtaining evidence connected to a federal case in which I was a material fact witness; a false police report produced an armed law-enforcement response. I have already experienced what happens when false information changes the tactical circumstances in which police encounter someone. Now another institution has attached my identity to an extraordinarily serious September 11 threat narrative. That is why I cannot treat what Sojourner did as merely defamatory words on a computer screen.
But even after all of that, this still is not why I am asking you for help.
My safety matters, but I made a conscious decision that I was not going to protect myself by abandoning women and children whose circumstances I had witnessed firsthand. The federal lawsuit is one mechanism for forcing accountability and obtaining evidence. The journalism is another. Neither one, by itself, guarantees that the women currently struggling inside that system will receive meaningful assistance or that the next victim entering those doors will encounter a better system.
So I am asking something specific from you. Please do not just read my articles. Please do not just send me a message telling me you support me. Please help move the evidence beyond my own reach. Share the investigation. Share the articles. Share the federal lawsuit with journalists, attorneys, advocates, government officials, nonprofit oversight professionals, donors, domestic-violence experts, elected officials, civil-rights organizations, or anyone else you personally know who has the ability to examine this independently or get it in front of someone who can. Make a phone call. Send an email. If you know somebody in television, newspapers, radio, government, law, philanthropy, domestic-violence advocacy, federal grant oversight, or nonprofit governance, personally tell them why they need to look at this.
I am not asking you to tell anyone that every conclusion I have reached must be accepted because you know me. Tell them the opposite: look at the evidence yourself. Ask why an institution entrusted with protecting domestic-violence victims would maintain a record disputing a resident's documented victimization. Ask how an allegation involving September 11 entered its electronic system after that resident began investigating the organization. Ask why a HIGH ALERT-BOLO with his photograph followed. Ask whether residents' private conversations were being captured by a surveillance system they were told did not record audio. Ask what meaningful housing and financial assistance victims actually receive before their temporary shelter expires. Ask what happens to the women who have nowhere safe to go afterward.
And ask the question I cannot get away from: if an institution is willing to attack a victim's documented domestic-violence history and place an investigative journalist under an extraordinarily dangerous September 11 threat narrative after he begins documenting what happens behind its closed doors, what was happening inside that institution that made discrediting him more important than answering his evidence?
Sojourner has an important history. It has a respected name. It serves an indispensable mission. None of those things should make it immune from scrutiny. A respected history is not evidence that everything happening behind closed doors today is acceptable. The mission is the reason to investigate this, not the reason to look away.
You know me. You know I can take people attacking me. What I cannot accept is knowing that people may be seriously hurt while everyone who could have helped assumes somebody else will do it.
I am asking you to be one of the people who does something.
Kevin
https://neverstopmediallc.com/blogs/news/for-immediate-release
https://neverstopmediallc.com/blogs/news/follow-the-money