Statement by longtime Frisch victim Jeff Goldstein this morning:
Our stalker of 12 years, Deborah Frisch, was sentenced yesterday on two felony convictions. She received 4 years and 2 years, to be served concurrently in the Colorado Department of Corrections. She is guaranteed credit for time served. She'll likely serve half of that time in state prison. Upon her parole, she will then serve 3 years of mandatory probation. Whether she does so in Colorado or in another state will depend upon that other state's willingness to take her. She stated she wishes to return to Oregon to live, and that she is planning on writing a book. She also claimed to suffer from a personality disorder that cannot be treated with drugs, only with psychiatric ministrations. The judge denied defense counsel's request for probation, relocation to California, and mental health treatment.
Text of my sentencing statement in the case against Deb Frisch:
As I first did a year and a half ago at the initial sentencing hearing, I’ll note yet again that we’re not here today to decide on the guilt or innocence of Ms Frisch. She has pled guilty to a felony — and that plea comes in exchange for having other felony charges dropped, and the felonies she committed to secure those charges forgotten. Legally. But that nicety doesn’t change the fact of those crimes having been committed, nor my family’s position as victim of those crimes.
On numerous occasions, Ms Frisch has tried to trivialize the harm she’s wrought; she has huffed that she’s being persecuted for “Tweets,” and that her 1st Amendment rights protect her from the potential consequences of her 12+-year campaign of harassment, attempted extortion, and stalking. Like so much else Ms Frisch utters, however, such a claim is unvarnished rubbish. Again, I DON’T believe it to be among her rights to libel private citizens in writings that she hopes to be permanently archived by internet search engines; I DON’T believe it is within her rights to try to extort money from her victims in exchange for relief from her harassment and intimidation; I DON’T believe it is within her rights to track down personal information on the family members of her primary targets and to use that information to contact them, contact their employers, post that contact information to community message boards, rifle through their voter records, or use that information to submit baseless, scurrilous, and vulgar accusations to Child Protective Services, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, or the press.
I DON’T believe that posting pornographic stories about our children, who have never had any contact or dealings with Ms Frisch, are among her unalienable rights.
And yet this is what Ms Frisch has done — over and over and over again, whenever she’s been allowed even a moment’s time to act on her own agency. It is her unique and twisted stratagem. And, along with her vulgarity and distaste for children, it is what most consistently and accurately buoys her.
Over the 12-years since we’ve had the misfortune or finding ourselves in Ms Frisch’s orbit, there have been scores of other victims — some of them in court today. Still, not every one of her victims has taken the time, nor expended the effort, to prevent her from continuing her criminal behaviors. Many in fact have thought — incorrectly — that if they ignore her she will simply grow bored and leave them alone. Her multiple arrests, however, speak to the reality of who she is, and to the futility of such an approach: Ms Frisch will not and has never ceased her pattern of stalking, harassment, and intimidation, save for those times when she has been physically prevented from doing so through incarceration or strict supervision.
In closing, please allow me to say this — a reprise of what I first said to the court over a year ago: My wife and I do not believe for a moment that Ms Frisch will EVER stop what to her has become a way of life. Her unwarranted sense of her own superiority and rectitude, which she’s displayed more times than one to the Court in this case, practically compels her to harass, to terrorize, to threaten, to intimidate, to libel, and to extort. These are the behaviors that define her. And while I have sympathy for those who suffer from mental illness, I will point out the very obvious fact that most people who do suffer from, for instance, bipolarity, don’t fetishize mass shootings and child murders, nor do they engage in the constant and repulsive sexualization of children — with the further need to publish those fancies.
In the course of our dealings with Ms Frisch, we’ve seen her make several plea deals: she’s been granted probation and mental health treatment. Neither of these courses of action changed her behavior, nor will they, we don’t believe.
My own doctoral work, the years I spent at Johns Hopkins and Cornell and the University of Denver, have provided no special comforts for me or my family as Ms Frisch’s victims; similarly, my wife’s status as a Phi Beta Kappa and scholarship recipient, hasn’t prevented her and our children from being dehumanized for over a decade by Ms Frisch. It follows, therefore, that a 30-year-old dissertation from the University of Pennsylvania should not count as a mitigating factor in Ms Frisch’s sentencing, nor as a signal for gravitas she’s long since exchanged for vulgar doggerel and strained sexualized and racialized limericks.
At some point, if her victims are to get any sustained relief, Ms Frisch needs to be treated as an adult with free will, and punished for what she freely and joyously does to harm others. And as other courses of action have failed to alter her disposition, we feel she needs to be put in prison.
Thank you.
Oct 26, 2018
Our stalker of 12 years, Deborah Frisch, was sentenced yesterday on two felony convictions. She received 4 years and 2 years, to be served concurrently in the Colorado Department of Corrections. She is guaranteed credit for time served. She'll likely serve half of that time in state prison. Upon her parole, she will then serve 3 years of mandatory probation. Whether she does so in Colorado or in another state will depend upon that other state's willingness to take her. She stated she wishes to return to Oregon to live, and that she is planning on writing a book. She also claimed to suffer from a personality disorder that cannot be treated with drugs, only with psychiatric ministrations. The judge denied defense counsel's request for probation, relocation to California, and mental health treatment.
Text of my sentencing statement in the case against Deb Frisch:
As I first did a year and a half ago at the initial sentencing hearing, I’ll note yet again that we’re not here today to decide on the guilt or innocence of Ms Frisch. She has pled guilty to a felony — and that plea comes in exchange for having other felony charges dropped, and the felonies she committed to secure those charges forgotten. Legally. But that nicety doesn’t change the fact of those crimes having been committed, nor my family’s position as victim of those crimes.
On numerous occasions, Ms Frisch has tried to trivialize the harm she’s wrought; she has huffed that she’s being persecuted for “Tweets,” and that her 1st Amendment rights protect her from the potential consequences of her 12+-year campaign of harassment, attempted extortion, and stalking. Like so much else Ms Frisch utters, however, such a claim is unvarnished rubbish. Again, I DON’T believe it to be among her rights to libel private citizens in writings that she hopes to be permanently archived by internet search engines; I DON’T believe it is within her rights to try to extort money from her victims in exchange for relief from her harassment and intimidation; I DON’T believe it is within her rights to track down personal information on the family members of her primary targets and to use that information to contact them, contact their employers, post that contact information to community message boards, rifle through their voter records, or use that information to submit baseless, scurrilous, and vulgar accusations to Child Protective Services, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, or the press.
I DON’T believe that posting pornographic stories about our children, who have never had any contact or dealings with Ms Frisch, are among her unalienable rights.
And yet this is what Ms Frisch has done — over and over and over again, whenever she’s been allowed even a moment’s time to act on her own agency. It is her unique and twisted stratagem. And, along with her vulgarity and distaste for children, it is what most consistently and accurately buoys her.
Over the 12-years since we’ve had the misfortune or finding ourselves in Ms Frisch’s orbit, there have been scores of other victims — some of them in court today. Still, not every one of her victims has taken the time, nor expended the effort, to prevent her from continuing her criminal behaviors. Many in fact have thought — incorrectly — that if they ignore her she will simply grow bored and leave them alone. Her multiple arrests, however, speak to the reality of who she is, and to the futility of such an approach: Ms Frisch will not and has never ceased her pattern of stalking, harassment, and intimidation, save for those times when she has been physically prevented from doing so through incarceration or strict supervision.
In closing, please allow me to say this — a reprise of what I first said to the court over a year ago: My wife and I do not believe for a moment that Ms Frisch will EVER stop what to her has become a way of life. Her unwarranted sense of her own superiority and rectitude, which she’s displayed more times than one to the Court in this case, practically compels her to harass, to terrorize, to threaten, to intimidate, to libel, and to extort. These are the behaviors that define her. And while I have sympathy for those who suffer from mental illness, I will point out the very obvious fact that most people who do suffer from, for instance, bipolarity, don’t fetishize mass shootings and child murders, nor do they engage in the constant and repulsive sexualization of children — with the further need to publish those fancies.
In the course of our dealings with Ms Frisch, we’ve seen her make several plea deals: she’s been granted probation and mental health treatment. Neither of these courses of action changed her behavior, nor will they, we don’t believe.
My own doctoral work, the years I spent at Johns Hopkins and Cornell and the University of Denver, have provided no special comforts for me or my family as Ms Frisch’s victims; similarly, my wife’s status as a Phi Beta Kappa and scholarship recipient, hasn’t prevented her and our children from being dehumanized for over a decade by Ms Frisch. It follows, therefore, that a 30-year-old dissertation from the University of Pennsylvania should not count as a mitigating factor in Ms Frisch’s sentencing, nor as a signal for gravitas she’s long since exchanged for vulgar doggerel and strained sexualized and racialized limericks.
At some point, if her victims are to get any sustained relief, Ms Frisch needs to be treated as an adult with free will, and punished for what she freely and joyously does to harm others. And as other courses of action have failed to alter her disposition, we feel she needs to be put in prison.
Thank you.
Oct 26, 2018
