John Oliver slams owners of Florida newspapers on HBO
08/08/2016
John Oliver's Last Week Tonight on HBO is one of the funniest and most thought provoking programs on television. Each week, he looks at a different issue in depth. On Sunday, Oliver focused on the struggle inside newspaper newsrooms.
One of his targets is TRONC, the horribly named company that owns the Orlando Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel and other newspapers.
It is very much worth watching....and you should be worried.
Dear Sir,
The Florida newspapers could care less about the taking of civil rights from its citizens by rulemaking that eliminates Rights as if they are loopholes. I have been subject to the taking of my rights without ever being served or stepping into a court room. Here is a letter to Governor Scott.
Regards,
Ronald Pray
Dear Governor Scott,
I have tried for years to contact you but I don't seem to be getting through to you for redress.
The state of Florida has taken away my Rights without Constitutional due process of law and have denied me any avenue of Constitutional relief and have constructed a stonewall obstructing justice in regard to two cases which are nearly fourteen and fifteen years old respectively. I would prefer not to go after the State of Florida in U.S. District Court for racketeering but rather have you step in and bring me the lawful relief I have a Perfect Right in demanding, and for you to exercise the Perfect Obligation in rendering.
I am a former investigative journalist from Honolulu, Hawaii and a veteran who has the responsibility for taking care of my wife by the VA. My wife is a U.S. Army veteran who is disabled; she takes up nearly one hundred percent of my time and I do so gladly because she is the love of my life. I have had the misfortune of returning to Florida after being away since 1972 at the invitation of my sister who unbeknownst to me hated our elderly parents, yet loved their money and was conspiring with other siblings in getting me onboard with the taking of my elderly parents assets without their consent and knowledge. Yes, we lived in a somewhat dysfunctional family, but regardless of abuses, killing off our parents, hating them, then ungraciously taking their wealth is not good. The estrangement and omission by Jaqueline Pray of our elderly parents at family events accompanied with the hateful pet names given to them in their absence and around third parties; I said no way. I was under attack ever since, which is the genesis of the unlawful taking of my Rights and the taking of my now deceased parents' Rights as well.
I am petitioning you for your advocacy because I have had my Rights unlawfully taken from me through unconstitutional rulemaking and violations of the law by the Florida courts in two cases, a Baker Act case filed on January 8, 2004 in Orlando, and a Domestic Violence case filed on May 26, 2005 in Sanford. These cases were filed consequent to my pushing back on the brutal abuse led by my sister Jaqueline Pray in the taking of our elderly parents assets. Witness statements and government record are evident to these facts.
In these two aforementioned stale cases filed by Jaqueline and Dwight Pray, the respevtive courts deprived me of my Rights without due process of law. I never was served by the court, I never made a pleading, the cases were filed fraudulently with false declarations, fraudulent court process by both the litigants, and by the unlawful acts by the sheriff and the court. There has been no movement in either of these stale cases.
In the domestic violence case filed on May 26, 2005, my Rights have been arbitrarily taken from me through, a temporary, yet unlawfully permanent restraining order. In the Baker Act case, the court obstructed justice through abuse of judicial discretion; all done without due process of law.
My sister transferred my parents' real property over to herself using fraud while acquiring a power of attorney from my father who was inundated at the time with dementia and used abusive behavior in getting a power of attorney from my mother which is backed by government records. The powers of attorney unlawfully had a guardianship clause within its terms that gave Jaqueline Pray arbitrary authority to declare them incompetent and to declare herself as their guardian without the findings of a court or a doctor which the sheriff's office and the court ignorantly accepted on the word of the plaintiff and her attorney. The court and the sheriff's office apparently do not know the laws pertaining to guardianship while neglecting to vet this claim of guardianship.
Jaqueline Pray was slowly starving my father on a breakfast cereal diet and using 'in your face' abuse and neglect on my mother. I had to make my father's weekly meals and freeze them or he would have starved to death. Our parents were shutout from any family get-togethers like holidays and retreats. Jaqueline believed, and convinced other siblings to believe, that they deserved to take possession of our elderly parents' assets because they were “bad parents” when we were growing up. She wanted me to go along with this authority she had arbitrarily taken which I refused so she began by calling my house multiple times per day demanding that I speak to them even if I was on the toilet; and if I didn't answer the phone, accused my girlfriend of hiding me from them. It then escalated to assaulting me regularly mostly by directing others to carry out the assaults and harassments.
On January 5, 2004, she directed our brother Dwight to assault me at my mother's care home; to take my car-keys away from me, piling on top of me, punching me, in an effort to keep me from entering the car and driving away. The Seminole Sheriff was called in and an investigation for aggravated assault was started. Coincidentally, three days later these two assailants filed with the Orange County court and had me Baker Acted where I was held for an involuntary examination. While in the custody of this involuntary examination by the court, I was denied legal counsel in spite of the fact that they had informed me that I had that Right including one of habeas corpus. A term for my release was added by the clinic that I sign a voluntary request for admission into their facility which I begrudgingly signed 18 hours after the court ordered time period had come and gone; “without prejudice” printed below the signature line.
After my release from the court's clinic, I asked and received a court date for a habeas corpus hearing where they changed the hearing date upon my request due to work constraints. I wanted to face my accusers at this hearing and grill them about the lies they had filed in their petitions to the court. I planned on presenting evidence to the court proving that this case was a malicious filing based upon false declarations filed with the court. I also would have presented to the court facts showing that when I was taken into custody, I was living one and two counties away from these filers. I had a lease for a nice apartment at Arden Villas in Orlando; I paid all of my bills, and I had recently acquired an agriculture business license with the state of Florida with a business 800 number. My end goal was to get a degree and become a school teacher. Furthermore, and very importantly, I planned on presenting public record and witness testimony showing that the only violent actors were the vexatious litigant filers, where evidence within the public record and eyewitness testimony would have shown that they and they alone were “a danger to (myself) and others.” Also I would have presented the evidence that would show that they had conspired together against my parents in taking their assets through abuse, neglect and fraud.
I requested from the court in regards to the habeas corpus hearing that I be granted an attorney to address the civil rights abuses while in their custody whereupon the judge immediately reversed himself ruling that a habeas corpus hearing was moot. This reversal by the judge was ruled after two hearing dates and nearly four months after the Baker Act filing. Thereafter, I filed with the court writs and motions to vacate and set aside for nearly eight months with the court ruling against me every time. Please note that the petitioners received carbon copies of these filings.
I filed a separate case in Orlando against the Baker Act filers to get relief for me and my parents on March 8, 2005. Both Jaqueline and Dwight Pray were served as defendents on March 21, 2005 and March 17, 2005 respectively. Ultimately, I had to quit the case after not being able to afford a lawyer to litigate it. Their lawyer communicated with me in a letter regarding this case dated May 18, 2005. I found out much later that they had filed their own case, a domestic violence complaint on me dated May 26, 2005 declaring to the court that they could not find me for court service of process which is absurd given that they had sent me legal court
correspondences from my March filing to May 18, 2005; a week before their filing their case.
After being denied phone conversations and visitation rights with my mom without any explanation, I called Jaqueline Pray's attorney who then told me that Jaqueline Pray had filed a domestic violence complaint against me; also filing on behalf of our parents stating that Jaqueline Pray had guardianship over them which was a term included and incorporated within the powers of attorney. I asked the attorney to serve me and that he has my address. I visited Bay Life Legal Ministries in Brandon, Florida for legal advice and State Attorney Jerri Collins in Sanford, Florida for an opinion on the law, who informed me that guardianship is not vested by power of attorney. The court records clerk informed me that guardianship was never vested to Jaqueline Pray. Jaqueline Pray's attorney sent me a letter to my address they told the court that they did not have, dated July 27, 2006, telling me that he didn't know what to serve me with. He works a block away from Jaqueline Pray in Sanford and has been her attorney for years, assisting her in the handling of our parents' estate, was her legal counsel for the disputed power of attorney and in the case I filed on them; also he wrote the last legal communication with me a week prior to their filing their questionable domestic violence case against me on May 26, 2005.
Jaqueline Pray called my girlfriend telling her that she never intended on serving me court papers but rather her intent was just to keep me out of Florida. She called trying to get her on board as a witness against my character and that she rewards people who help her with perquisites such as free airline travel anywhere in the world. (She did the same with the other siblings by opening up the estate accounts, paying their mortgages and gifts of cash.) She added an aside telling her that she controlled her former husband by contaminating his food with drugs and that when I return to West Virginia to visit her, she ought to do the same with me. (It has been said that truth sometimes, is stranger than fiction.) On top of all this, when my girlfriend told her to stop calling her multiple times a day, she got her old friend, a retired NASA physicist to call Jaqueline Pray requesting that she stop harassing her. In response, Jaqueline Pray sent court servers multiple times to my girlfriend's home, pounding on her door all hours over a period of months.
This was not the only malicious lie she had told the court which is verified by both court and sheriff department records. I have been informed, and with that information believe that Jaqueline Pray declared to the court in her domestic violence complaint that her reason for filing for court protection was that she had recently heard that I was returning to central Florida after being away in West Virginia for nearly an eighteen-month time frame from January of 2004 till late May 2005. She declared that she felt safe when I was gone, but when she discovered that I was going to return, she feared for her safety compelling her to file for court protection. This is an incontrovertible lie with malicious intent. Court records show that she received carbon copies of my filings with the court and was yet engaged in the original Baker Act case that she filed on me in Orlando from January 2004, till July 22, 2004, and was a defendant in the case I filed against her in Orlando Florida on March 8, 2005 extending after May 18, 2005; and not in West Virginia as she had patently lied to the court as her reason in filing for court protection. This case, all court records including, but not limited to, the court injunction which is filed in the federal database should be declared and are in fact null and void ab-initio.
My parents are now deceased where I could not see them for the last years of their lives; nor could I attend their respective funerals and their burials which makes me very sad. My wife and I have limited resources and all of my time is taken up taking care of her. I do not have time dealing with these injustices against me in Florida where Constitutional relief is obstructed and not a possibility. These cases and the court orders spawned from these cases are void by the law of the land. Please clear the court record, having it conform with the Law of the Land, rightly reflecting the dejure fact that my Rights could not, and should not have been Constitutionally taken from me. The domestic violence case is an unadjudicated case taking away my rights with a permanently filed restraining order without due proces of law; it was fraudulently filed and fraudulently processed with the aid of the sheriff and the court, certainly no speedy adjudication where there has been no movement in both cases since George Bush was President. Both cases have agrieved me for quite a spell now, and have taken up the twilight of my youth.
These adversarial actions against me began when I returned to Florida in November of 1999 when I was 46 years old; I am now 64 going on 65 years old. I hate to use the word “victim” but that is exactly what my parents, my wife and I are; victims. When the taint of these cases have been rendered null and void ab-initio, and I can breathe freely in the fullness of my Rights, please write me verification of this relief long overdue.
I am in full reservation of my Rights ceding none by any rule or statute. The facts as stated within the foregoing are true and correct persuant to evidence, witness testimony, and faithfully compiled to the best of my knowledge.
With all due candor,
Posted by: Ronald Pray | 04/18/2018 at 02:46 PM