Randy Kretchmar, a Chicago area Scientologist, has for years been the Chicago area OSA ( Office of Special Affairs) agent. The OSA is the Church of Scientology's secret service organization. He has been extensively involved in the Church of scientology's anti-psychiatry activities as initiated by Scientology's front group the CCHR or Citizen's Commission on Human Rights. He got his law degree and passed the Bar last year. Following that he offered his services, pro bono, to Rodney Yoder. Yoder has skillfully positioned himself as a 'psychiatric prisoner.'

It is interesting that Kretchmar says that he will continue working with Yoder, for free, "because I believe in it." What a crock. His wife, Cheryl Berman, finances his activities and she makes very big money as head of the Creative Division at the well known Chicago advertising agency, the Leo Burnett Co.

Berman is a major contributor to Scientology's secret 'War Chest.' She has been awarded the designation of a "Patron Meritorius" given to those who have contributed over $250,000 to the Scientology 'War Chest.' Kretchmar's only interest in Yoder is to use his case to further Scientology's anti-psychiatry machinations.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Yoder loses bid to leave state mental health center By ROBERT GOODRICH Post-Dispatch 12/06/2002 12:00 AM

Rodney Yoder's claim that mental illness is hokum has won him national media attention. The argument failed to impress a jury in circuit court in Chester, Ill.

After four days of testimony, the six jurors deliberated just one hour Thursday before ruling unanimously that Yoder should remain in the Chester Mental Health Center. He's been held there since June 1991.

Randolph County assistant state's attorney Michael Burke said the result was the same as Yoder's 11 previous commitment hearings for one simple reason:

"Rodney is dangerous."

Yoder, 44, is one of about two dozen people in Illinois who have been involuntarily committed to mental institutions for more than a decade.

Intelligent, articulate, persistent but often abrasive, Yoder gets attention and support with a constant barrage of phone calls and letters to journalists and others.

His case received a five-page spread in Time magazine this year. It was reported recently on National Public Radio.

Yoder had several strikes against him in this week's hearing:

An aggravated battery conviction for beating a girlfriend in 1979, with his probation revoked for returning two weeks later to threaten her with a knife.

He told the jury her injuries were exaggerated.

An aggravated battery conviction for clubbing his ex-wife over the head with a chair leg in 1990. He told the jury he was drinking heavily and didn't remember the incident.

An outburst after leaving a hearing in Champaign in 1997 in which he bit a transport officer on the arm through the man's leather coat and shirt. Yoder said he was shackled and being harassed.

An attack two years ago on a fellow patient, whom Yoder cracked over the head with a sock full of flashlight batteries. Yoder told the jury the man was a "gangbanger" who had it coming.

A series of about 130 obscenity-laced letters Yoder wrote from 1993 to 1996 in which he told people he would have them or their children killed. He told the jury it was simply a ruse to get transferred to federal custody.

Testimony by two psychologists and a psychiatrist that Yoder is mentally ill and dangerous due to a delusional disorder that causes him to think he is being persecuted, plus a paranoid personality disorder.

In cross-examination Thursday, Yoder admitting telling a federal judge in 1996 to "kiss my royal ass" and called him an SOB after the judge refused to postpone a hearing on a suit Yoder had filed.

Burke asked, "You called a federal judge an SOB?"

Yoder replied, "I think it should be done more often, perhaps."

Burke said after the verdict, "He shows no remorse for anything he has ever done."

Yoder also testified, "I don't believe that I or anyone in human history has ever suffered from a 'quote' mental illness."

Yoder's attorney, S. Randolph Kretchmar of Wilmette, Ill., told the jury his client was "a character" but not likely to harm anyone physically.

Kretchmar said people who have committed far worse crimes are paroled every day, and Yoder did his time.

On Yoder's behalf, Dr. Nelson Borelli, a Chicago psychiatrist, testified that after examining Yoder on Sunday, he was certain he had neither mental nor physical illness of any kind.

Kretchmar tried to put mental illness and psychiatry on trial, calling mental illness "something that some people use to control others they don't like."

A lot of people make a living from mental illness, he said, noting that one of the state's nationally known experts was being paid $400 an hour and another $360.

Burke said they are paid that much, "because they are the best."

Kretchmar is a recent law school graduate and was trying his first case. He said he was doing it for free, "Because I believe in it." He said Yoder had agreed to pay later for out-of-pocket expenses.

Yoder receives $564 a month payment from Social Security for mental disability, which Burke said was strange for someone who insists he has no such disability.

Yoder said he would prefer to be out working a job.

His case has drawn attention from people who reject the legitimacy of psychiatry and civil libertarians who question the ethics and legality of holding someone in a mental institution who has finished a criminal sentence.

Such commitments are legal in about 30 states.

Kretchmar said afterward that the case is far from over. "It will take a little longer. That's all." Yoder is entitled to another commitment hearing after 180 days.

Yoder could appeal the jury's verdict, but said that would take much longer.

Kretchmar said he would remain on the case.

Associate Judge William A. Schuwerk Jr. said that after presiding over the hearing he had concluded that Yoder should be transferred to a less secure facility than the one at Chester.

He emphasized that he could only recommend, not order, such a transfer, and suggested that in the meantime Yoder be placed in a less restrictive area at Chester.

The last witness at the hearing was Millie Strom, 50, of Vancouver, British Columbia, who said she and Yoder had obtained a license and planned to marry today or Saturday.

Strom said she had met Yoder through e-mail. She was once married to blues musician John Lee Hooker.

On the witness stand, Strom said she loved Yoder and hoped to have a real honeymoon. She wept at the verdict, but said she the marriage was still on. It is to be performed by a minister at the mental health center.

Reporter Robert Goodrich: E-mail: rgoodrich@post-dispatch.com Phone:

618-235-8919

Subject: Re: Randy Kretchmar loses first case
From: Technogeek <tech.maltrap.nogeek@mindlessbile.mailtrap.com>
Organization: The United States of Confusion
Message-ID: <Xns92DD83A6D53Etechnogeekmindlessbi@204.127.202.16>
Date: Sat, 07 Dec 2002 17:56:37 GMT

jimdbb@aol.com (JimDBB) wrote in news:20021206225710.02825.00000250@mb-bd.aol.com:

> Testimony by two psychologists and a psychiatrist that Yoder is
> mentally ill and dangerous due to a delusional disorder that causes
> him to think he is being persecuted, plus a paranoid personality
> disorder.

Wow. If that's not the textbook definition of a Scientologist, I don't know what is.

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