Rev. Dr. Michael Tino And UUA Child Sex Abuse Cover-Up Legal Bullying - What's The Connection?

In an email I sent to the UUA's very aptly named Ministerial *Fellowship* Committee yesterday I wrote: 

If I remember correctly, and it seems that I do. . . 

https://www.uuworld.org/articles/trustee-tino

your current Co-Chair Rev. Dr. Michael Tino was a UUA Board Trustee when that dishonest UUA Board "official apology" for clergy sexual misconduct was written and delivered in mid-2014 ("2024" typo corrected). Rev. Tino is thus totally 100% complicit in the misleading misinformation and demonstrably false lies contained in that deceitful and thus worthless UUA Board "apology". This is not a good look for the MFC, so I suggest that you persuade Rev. Tino to resign as MFC Co-Chair during next week's MFC meeting, and seek to replace the not so good Reverend with someone who has never been implicated in UUA minimization, cover-up, and even official denial of child sex abuse committed by pedophile*rapist UUA clergy such as Rev. Mack Wallace Mitchell and Rev. William Alexander "Sandy" McEachern, both of whom were convicted of sex crimes against children, and removed from fellowship by the MFC, which is a sub-committee of the UUA Board of Trustees. . . decades before the UUA Board pretended that no children had ever been sexually abused by pedophile*rapist UUA clergy in its deceitful aka mendacious "official apology for clergy sexual misconduct". I will add that, as far I am concerned, Rev. Dr. Michael Tino has been (at minimum) passively complicit in UUA concealment of clergy sexual misconduct that includes child rape in the period between mid-2014 and the present. He needs to go, as do any other members of the Ministerial *Fellowship* Committee who have been implicated or actively involved in UUA minimization, cover-up, and denial of clergy misconduct in the past.

 

end quote

 

It seems I was mistaken about a thing or two in what I wrote about current Ministerial *Fellowship* Committee Co-Chair Rev. Dr. Michael Tino yesterday and, UNlike most of the "less than perfect" UUA leaders and UUA clergy I know, I responsibly correct my mistakes, often even before someone else calls me on them, as I am doing right now. . .

 

It turns out that current MFC Co-Chair Rev. Dr. Michael Tino was no longer a UUA Board Trustee when the UUA Board's dishonest and deceitful "official apology" for clergy sexual misconduct was written and delivered in mid-2014. I reasonably assumed that Rev. Dr. Michael Tino was still a UUA Board Trustee in early 2014 because his term as a UUA Board Trustee began in June 2011 according to the UU World article linked to above, which reported that "Tino joined the Board of Trustees of the Unitarian Universalist Association in June 2011." It's not clear why Rev. Tino's term as a UUA Board Trustee was less than 4 years, but that seems to be the case, based upon the fact that his name does not appear in official UUA Board documents in January 2014. The UUA World article is dated February 20th, 2012, so we can reasonably assume that Rev. Tino was a UUA Board Trustee until at least June 2012, and more likely until at least June 2013, assuming he served a term of at least 2 years. 

 

So my quite reasonable assumption that the not so good Reverend Tino was a UUA Board Trustee in the first half of 2014 appears to be a mistaken assumption, as assumptions often are. . . even quite reasonable ones. It appears Rev. Tino did not actually play any significant role in the writing of the UUA Board's "official apology for clergy sexual misconduct" that was delivered by UUA Moderator Jim Key in his first Moderator's Report during 2014 UUA GA in late June 2014, but he is never-the-less passively complicit in it because there is no evidence he ever publicly repudiated it after it was delivered. The same can be said of ALL other UUA ministers who knew that rather more than just "a small number" of misconducting UUA ministers were guilty of "ignoring professional ethics and boundaries" and "preyed on vulnerable congregants", to say nothing of vulnerable teenage Tibetan refugees aka children and other NON-congregant victims of U*U clergy sexual misconduct. . . prior to June 2014. Rev. Michael Tino and ALL other UUA ministers who knew that Rev. Mack Wallace Mitchell had been removed from fellowship by the UUA's Ministerial *Fellowship* Committee after being convicted of raping a teenage Tibetan refugee, or knew about other child sex abuse committed by pedophile*rapist UUA clergy such as Rev. William Alexander "Sandy" McEachern, were well positioned to know that UUA Moderator Jim Key was disingenuous at best, and more likely just plain mendacious. . . when he said, "There were no incidents of abuse of children or elders in my investigations."

 

 

It's clear from the UU World article I linked to and quoted from above, that Rev. Michael Tino was still a UUA Board Trustee in late February 2012, less than a year after his term began in June 2011 and just over 3 three months before the UUA had me served with the "less than honest", and indeed highly questionable. . . cease and desist demand letter that threatened me with criminal prosecution for blasphemous libel for blogging about "such despicable crimes as pedophilia and rape" most certainly committed by "certain Unitarian Universalist ministers".

 

So the Big Fat U*U Question is. . .

 

Was current Ministerial *Fellowship* Committee Co-Chair Rev. Dr. Michael Tino still a UUA Board Trustee when I sent the following email to ALL UUA Board Trustees and UUA Moderator Gini Courter on Spirit Day October 19th, 2012? 

 

Because if Rev. Tino was still a UUA Board Trustee in late October 2012, he has been (at minimum) passively complicit in UUA child sex abuse cover-up efforts since late October 2012, not mid-June 2014, as I mistakenly assumed in my email of September 18th, 2025, aka yesterday. . .

 

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From: Robin Edgar <robinedgar59@yahoo.ca>
To: "board@uua.org" <board@uua.org>
Cc: "gcourter@uua.org" <gcourter@uua.org>
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2012 3:05:19 PM
Subject: Blasphemous Libel My U*U

Friday October 19, 2012 aka Spirit Day 2012 

Dear UUA Trustee,

As much as I am deeply appreciative of the extraordinary honour and privilege that the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations chose to bestow upon me by falsely accusing me of the archaic crime of blasphemous libel on the unfounded basis that I have made "unfounded and vicious allegations to the effect that ministers of the Association engage in such despicable crimes as pedophilia and rape" I believe that it is in the best interests of the UUA and the greater Unitarian Universalist "religion" to formally withdraw that false accusation and to publicly and comprehensively apologize to me for having had that bogus criminal accusation brought against me by one of your "less than perfect" Canadian attorneys from Stikeman Elliott LLP Barristers & Solicitors, namely Maitre Marc-André Coulombe. In fact I firmly believe that the UUA Board of Trustees would be very well advised to take steps to ensure that those staff members of the Rev. Peter Morales' UUA administration who are responsible for hiring Stikeman Elliott LLP solicitor Maitre Marc-André Coulombe to draw up (if not dream up. . .) the highly questionable cease and desist demand letter, that is dated May 29, 2012 and which was initially sent to me via email on June 1st of this year, are help fully accountable for their "less than competent" and "less than ethical" to say nothing of "less than intelligent" behavior which makes a total mockery of many if not most of the purported principles and ideals of Unitarian Universalism. 

UUA Executive Vice President Kathleen "'Kay" Montgomery "supervises all senior UUA staff" and, perhaps more to the point. . . "coordinates the work of the UUA's legal counsel" which logically includes coordinating the work of any and all attorneys working for Stikeman Elliott LLP Barristers & Solicitors who claimed to be "the Canadian attorneys for the Unitarian Universalist Association" in the cease and desist demand letter that Maitre Marc-André Coulombe sent to me in early June of this year. I thus have very reasonable grounds to believe that Kathleen "'Kay" Montgomery is responsible for oversight and even approval of the highly questionable content of that legal document. Allow me to remind UUA Trustees that, in her capacity as the supervisor of the day-to-day management of the Unitarian Universalist Association and the coordinator of the work of the UUA's legal counsel for the better part of three decades since being appointed to that position in 1985, UUA Executive Vice President Ms. Kathleen "'Kay" Montgomery is very well positioned to know perfectly well that my (to date) comparatively few "allegations to the effect that ministers of the Association engage in such despicable crimes as pedophilia and rape" are anything but *unfounded* as the UUA has falsely, if not outright perjuriously, alleged in the cease and desist demand letter that it hired its Canadian attorney Maitre Marc-André Coulombe to have me served with. In that Kathleen Montgomery was responsible for supervising the negligent and effectively complicit manner in which senior UUA staff Rev. Dr. Tracey Robinson-Harris and Rev. Beth Miller arbitrarily dismissed my unbecoming conduct complaint against Rev. Dr. Victoria Weinstein aka Peacebang, and thus effectively okayed Peacebang's "sodomy fantasy" amongst other insulting and abusive behavior, "'Kay" Montgomery is similarly well positioned to know perfectly well that Peacebang's "sodomy fantasy", which obscenely (and indeed quite Sadistically) imagined Republican South Dakota state senator Bill Napoli "anally impaled on the Statue of Liberty's torch", is rather more worthy of being described as "threatening and defamatory conduct amounting to sexual harassment" of Republican senator William M. Napoli than my subsequent The Emerson Avenger blog posts which criticized and mocked Peacebang's "sodomy fantasy" and criticized senior UUA staff members Congregational Services Director Rev. Dr. Tracey Robinson-Harris, and MFC Executive Secretary Rev. Beth Miller, for pretending that Peacebang's insulting and abusive behavior was "outside of her professional role as a minister serving a congregation." 

Above and beyond this, UUA Executive Vice President Ms. Kathleen C. Montgomery has coordinated UUA Amici Curiae briefs including one which asserts that ALL blasphemy laws are unconstitutional. Indeed I would not be surprised if it was as a result of supervising that particular Amicus that "'Kay" came up with the cynical and just plain foolish notion to have the UUA's Canadian attorneys accuse me of the archaic crime of blasphemous libel which is still "on the books" in the Canadian Criminal Code. These and other outrageously hypocritical double standards exercised by Ms. Kathleen "'Kay" Montgomery on behalf of the Unitarian Universalist Association aka UUA are very well documented and they call into question the moral and ethical integrity of not only the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations but the greater Unitarian Universalist religious community which the UUA ostensibly serves and represents. I thus hereby demand that the UUA Board of Trustees must take steps to ensure that the role of UUA Executive Vice President Kathleen Montgomery in Stikeman Elliott attorney Maitre Marc-André Coulombe's aggressive, arrogant (if not outright hubristic), shamelessly hypocritical, and indeed just plain foolish legal intimidation is thoroughly investigated and that "'Kay" Montgomery is held fully accountable for her personal involvement in this utterly shameful and quite frankly embarrassing act of legal bullying on behalf of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

DO GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY

Robin Edgar aka The Emerson Avenger