An Open Letter to the Members of This Forum

I know many of you and know many of your stories. I have considered this forum a home for many years and look forward to coming here daily (much to my husbands dismay) to see how everyone is doing. Last weekend, some of our members were faced with making the devastating decision to leave their home along the Gulf Coast and head for safer and higher ground. In an effort to help at least one of our members get the items and help she needed, I posted my email address for members to use as they needed it. Now, I feel incredibly stupid for posting this, but I feel that I must in order to clear the air. As a result of me posting my email address, someone has joinedӔ an adoption newsgroup in my name and has posted false and inaccurate information about me and my family. Additionally, someone who has been banned from the forums has picked up one these posts and has proceeded to send me incredibly nasty emails about me, my birth family, my adoptive family and my family (husband and son). Now, I know, as a moderator, I make people mad with my decisions from time to time. I also know that I open the door to things like this by being as public as I amfor a long time, I was the only moderator of these forums and because of that, I have a lot of enemies. If this were just nasty emails being sent directly to me, IŒd be perfectly fine with itbut its not. Its emails being sent to a public newsgroup, searchable via any search engine, about me and my family (birth, adopted and otherwise). IŒm not looking for sympathy in all of thislike I said above, I opened this door by simply being a moderatorŅbut I do want to say, here and now, I am not ashamed of the posts that I made to isurvive.comI am a survivor of abuse, and the only people who should be ashamed of that are the ones who made my story what it is. I also donŒt appreciate my son and my husband being dragged into this your beef is with MEŅtheyve done noting to you҅ About a year and a half ago, I banned a member from the forums for being a paid searcher (again, she had been banned COUNTLESS times before)she was very mad at me for doing thisŅand her method of retaliation was to post embarrassing and false messages on several message boards dealing with sex, drugs, aides, STDs and pedophilia. I was successfully able to get the messages removed from all but TWO forums, but the two left up DO come up in search engines. As a result of these two posts, my name is being dragged thru the mud yet again (by a recent bannee on the newsgroup) I want to set the record straight, so there is no question about who I am or what my motives are here on the forums. First, I am a survivor҅I did post the message on Isurvive.com more than a year agoguilty, hang me out to dry. Second, there was a time, not so long ago, when I did look into Wicca (I am also being condemned for posting a message on WiccaNetŒs MSN Group) because I wanted to learn more about it. Ive made it no secret here on the forums that I donҒt consider myself a Christianbut I also donŒt feel I have to make excuses for my personal decisions outside of this forum. Third, testiclesoh yes, cat testicles to be specific (although the person posting this on the other group is confused, I believe I was talking about hamster testicles, not cat testicles)Ņyes, its true, you can sex a male hamster (or cat for that matter) by looking at them from behind and locating their testiclesI donŒt know why that makes me a bad person, but this person seems to be stuck on it, so I thought I should at least address it LOL Finally, sleep sex this is one of those left over ֓troll posts made by the angry banned paid searcherԅI wont go into details, its really none of my business to be honestbut this is an issue being drudged up as well, and I thought it better to address it than ignore it and pretend it doesnŒt exist. Rest assured that there are no issuesӔ involving my familyalthough, if there were, IŒm not sure why that would be an issue*sigh* The person creating these issues has also œconfused some facts of my story, most notably that my SON was the one who had urethral surgery this past Wednesday, not my husbandԅand also that I had placed TWO children for adoption, rather than one, M. Really, this seems so petty, but its quite frustratingand I know that at least a few of our members here read the trash over on the newsgroup, so I thought it would be better to address them head on, than let them go. I also want to take a minute to say that outside of Isurvive.com, AdoptionForums.com and the yahoo/msn groups I NEVER post as BrandyHagzŅI learned my lesson LONG ago that its far easier to keep my private and personal information off of the forums (because, lets face it, it happenspeople get mad at me) if I donŒt post my private information to other support forums as BrandyHagz. Thanks for taking the time to let me ventthis has really frustrated me the last few daysŅand after finding all this BS posted on public newsgroups, I thought it would be better for me to go public, rather than try to deal with this behind closed doors. Thanks again!