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Sexual harassment and tax problems for dehlin or not?


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Since the other thread this was posted on was to be focused on child abuse and this controversy has a chance Imo of turning into a legal case and mainly since I am wondering about the legal implications of Dehlin getting his mundane expenses taken care of through donations to the OS Foundation, I decided to devote a thread to the topic. 
 

Tax experts....what are the limitations for using donations for one’s mundane expenses, groceries and tuition for example?  Just to be clear, Dehlin didn’t hide he was going to use donations for these purposes, he was asking people to donate specifically for this.  The only issue in that area I see is if there were donations made prior to these requests or which were made to support an OSF project, perhaps a specific podcast for example.

But it appears even if open about the purpose, the IRS might feel differently about collecting for such.

____________

Sexual harassment issue:  summarizes imo as Dehlin tied RB’s future employment to his personal comfort level, she either volunteered and he accepted or he had her promise that if he asked her to leave, she would.  When the affair was over, he did require her to leave, but she refused at that point.  She was later fired.

Quote from Dehlin on this will be in a post below.

___________
 

I want the thread topics to focus on legal implications mostly, let’s avoid where possible the gossip side of things that can only be he said, she said at this point. And for those who wouldn’t appreciate it, please avoid any graphic details...I don’t believe they will be needed to discuss legal or even moral implications of the controversy. 
 

The Dear John Dehlin blog has the most detailed in one place information and most important, provides quotes and references, also avoids language issues. It is biased against Dehlin, strongly I am guessing given the content of the blog overtime, so be aware of that....but iirc I don’t remember it leaving out relevant information.  There are other places discussing the controversy, but no news articles that I am aware of. This appears to be a very in-house issue.
 

There are several of their blogs on this specific controversy.  I will post links to the most relevant.  If you are not familiar with the case, the blog should provide enough detail Imo, but if someone is aware of documented stuff they missed, please share. 
 

Please use “Rosebud” or RB and “Dehlin’s wife” or DW and other such substitutes in order to accommodate those who I am guessing don’t want to be linked forever to the controversy.  It is easy to find almost all the names involved (RB’s name is published by the blog I am linking to) or at least was before they removed the documents for better redacting, so this is not about hiding the names but limiting exposure. I am iffy on RB’s name given her previously vague accusations of Dehlin over the years, but let’s be generous for her family’s sake at least. If there is a non salacious  need to reference/quote something with her name on it, I am not going to ask mods to ban you...

summary of background:

https://dearjohndehlin.wordpress.com/2021/05/11/the-john-dehlin-papers-project/

https://dearjohndehlin.wordpress.com/2021/05/13/john-dehlins-interaction-with-rosebud-in-light-of-osf-harassment-policy/

https://dearjohndehlin.wordpress.com/2021/04/30/john-dehlins-rosebud-pruning-dividend/

https://dearjohndehlin.wordpress.com/2021/04/30/john-dehlin-doxxes-rosebud-via-bill-ree-confirming-her-relationship-allegations/

Background on prior money issues involving women:

https://dearjohndehlin.wordpress.com/2017/05/25/john-dehlin-and-the-women-problem/

Edited by Calm
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First issue I am curious about legal implications....

Possible tax issue:

Quote

Rosebud also describes Dehlin engaging in inurement. This is effectively use of OSF funds for personal purposes. The incident in question is when Dehlin is going to school and essentially says that his listeners can donate to the 501c3 to pay for his schooling and groceries and other household expenses. She alleges that he was warned that this wasn’t allowed under tax law, and did this anyway

https://dearjohndehlin.wordpress.com/2021/05/04/rosebuds-cognitive-interview/


There was, prior to removal for redacting, a document from an accountant or lawyer warning Dehlin there could be problems with him using the Foundation to solicit donations for mundane expenses, so he was apparently aware of potential issues when asking for such.  When the documents get back up (assuming they aren’t now, haven’t checked), will hopefully be able to provide the relevant email.  My memory says I read it, but I don’t trust it fully. I could have read references to it instead. I did not read all the documents RB put up originally, though I read many of them. 

Edited by Calm
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Second issue...what are the legal implications?  Is there really a case for sexual harassment?  The romantic relationship itself appears to have been consensual, at times RB was pushing Dehlin to become more involved.  That does not appear to make a difference if she was a subordinate.  Dehlin pointed out she was also a board member and that could be interpreted as not being his employee.  However, it was also pointed out that with small nonprofits, a person may hold multiple positions.  If someone is an employee in any way of another, so that one’s employment is dependent on the other, seems like that would qualify as sexual harassment if one lost a job because of a sexual relationship.

This was posted on a site I cannot link to by John Dehlin.  
 

Quote

Rosebud made multiple personal promises to me from the very start and throughout to “go away” if our relationship ever got to the point where it was hurting me or the Open Stories Foundation. This was a personal agreement we had made, which she agreed to prior to joining the board or coming on as an employee. I was only asking her to keep her promise. Frankly, I was stunned when she refused. I honestly thought I could trust her. But that was a personal plea.


RB and possibly Dehlin himself posted texts/email (can’t remember which) from Dehlin stating he was hurting, his family was hurting, it was too hard to keep working with RB because of their mutual attraction and therefore she needed to leave.

When she refused, she was locked out of the communities she was a part of and needed access to in order to do her job by Dehlin himself.  His view of OSF was that it was his.

Apparently an agreement about  employment tied to a romantic/sexual relationship qualifies as sexual harassment. 
 

Because it appears to make a difference to Dehlin and RB, let me clarify that their physical relationship did not go as far as intercourse, but there were significant physical/sexual interactions, enough to label their interaction as an affair and not just an emotional affair, imo....in case that makes a difference to anyone in regards to sexual harassment. 

Edited by Calm
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20 minutes ago, ttribe said:

There is no 'good guy' in this situation; it's all a train wreck.

I was hoping for some legal/tax experts on the subject to chime in...don’t you fall into that category? I didn’t read all of that thread, so if you commented there on that subtopic I missed it. 
 

Iirc, Dehlin states he was the one who came up with a solution to the conflict. That also indicates to me along with his ability to deny her access to her work that he saw himself as and was the one in charge. 

Edited by Calm
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I am not a lawyer, nor am I any kind of an expert on tax law (and no, those two categories do not overlap perfectly), but if one wants to start (and to run) a 501(c)(3) and to make the running of the 501(c)(3) how one makes one's living, s/he's welcome to do so:  One should simply pay himself or herself a salary and pay one's living expenses from that.  I'm sure there are myriad complexities and intricacies that I'm missing, because that, of course, seems way too simple.  Accountants and lawyers, please feel free to rip my reasoning to shreds.  Thanks! ;) :D

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51 minutes ago, Kenngo1969 said:

One should simply pay himself or herself a salary and pay one's living expenses from that.

In the past, OSF and Dehlin have done some weird representations of his salary, not including for example his family’s medical insurance and one other thing I need to remind myself about (someone else who referred to it in the quote below said “groceries” but that wasn’t it iirc).  My memory is he did not specify how much more he got for these.  Most people imo would calculate income including these, so it appeared to me like he was trying to downplay the compensation he was receiving from OSF. 
 

So the fact he just didn’t accept the base salary or whatever he was getting and instead solicited for donations for his expenses does not surprise me.  Am curious if legal though.

Edited by Calm
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From a comment of the DJD blog, part of the potential issues of taking donations directly for expenses:

Quote

When it comes to finances, though, I believe there is enough in these docs to corroborate, and perhaps even prove beyond reasonable doubt, that JD was acting illegally or (at the very least) in a deceptive manner. I know JD (and some of his proxies) have repeatedly said that the bargain he struck with his listeners was always clear: that he would continue creating high-quality podcast content if donations allowed him to make a living.

But this is gaslighting. That was not how the arrangement was articulated in the early days. At the start, the plea to listeners was for donations that would allow the fundamental work of Mormon Stories to go forward. I am confident that many (and probably most) donors in the early years assumed that their donations were going to things like reimbursing the travel of guest speakers, buying equipment to improve the production values of the podcasts, and covering the admission to conferences of listeners who couldn’t afford to pay it themselves. That was certainly my assumption during the months that I was a donor.

I remember the first time I grew skeptical. It was when JD justified what he was taking in by saying something like “After you exclude groceries and health insurance for my family, I am only making $X.” It just struck me as odd that those things would be excluded. I thought how much better off I would be if I could keep my current salary and receive a separate allowance for groceries and health insurance. Also, I found JD’s repeated insistence that he could have made more money by staying at Microsoft irrelevant and obnoxious.

Anyway, my feelings about JD’s representation of Mormon Stories’ finances are beside the point. What’s important is that JD’s accountant told him that if Mormon Stories was going to be run as a non-profit, then what he was doing was wrong. And it’s clear from these docs that she told him that more than once.

https://dearjohndehlin.wordpress.com/2021/05/11/the-john-dehlin-papers-project/

Edited by Calm
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1 hour ago, Calm said:

I was hoping for some legal/tax experts on the subject to chime in...don’t you fall into that category? I didn’t read all of that thread, so if you commented there on that subtopic I missed it. 
 

Iirc, Dehlin states he was the one who came up with a solution to the conflict. That also indicates to me along with his ability to deny her access to her work that he saw himself as and was the one in charge. 

I am a CPA, but taxation is not my area of specialization.  In fact, I'm on record as stating that I would prefer to chew glass rather than doing people's taxes.

That being said, based on my brief reading of the tax issue, he seems to be in a real grey area.  As @Kenngo1969 pointed out, if he took the money out in the form of salary and was upfront about the purpose of the donations from the beginning, he might be able to get away with it.  But, it's a murky grey it seems to me.  It doesn't have great optics and gives his critics just that much more ammo to work with.  That being said, the area of taxation may be second only to the law in terms of the number of hidden esoteric rules that could apply, so I'm hesitant to speculate more than I already have.

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on a different sub forum someone recently posted about RB and JD and it seemed the general concensus was "we dont have all the facts". It was interesting to see how quickly people did not the topic discussed or dismissed it claiming that JD and RB both being board memebers did not create and a power imbalance and thus JD and RB were fully consenting adults

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IANAL but from what I have read this is a very gray area. If the money comes out of the organization as a salary and he uses it to pay his bills that is fine. If he ups his salary to a level that makes paying his legal fees the primary purpose he could get in IRS trouble. Legal fund donations are generally not tax deductible.

Assuming you are not pursuing tax benefits it would seem to fall under gifting laws.

There are exceptions there too. If the donation goes to a legal organization dedicated to protecting civil liberties or human rights it is tax deductible. So donating to the ACLU and similar organizations is tax-deductible. Donating to Stan on the other side of the country is probably not. In that case it is more like helping your kid or a sibling out. You can do it but you don't get a tax benefit.

Again, not a lawyer so don't do anything based on my advice. Also, my favorite YouTube lawyer has not weighed in on the topic so I don't know.

Still, have him ruining Batman.

 

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Quote

thus JD and RB were fully consenting adults

From the way FAIR has operated, the CEO/President, was always considered at least in practice as able to direct board members who functioned as volunteers.  Dehlin has claimed to be the founder of Mormonstories, so even if RB was a founding board member of the OSF, there is an assumption by him and others it seems to me, that he was more powerful than others who worked on the various projects associated with Mormonstories.  
 

Even if mutually consensual, her employment was tied to his choice on what he wanted their personal relationship to be and whether she should stay or go in his own view rather than hers or anyone else’s. She was to go because he didn’t want to work with her anymore because it hurt too much and was too hard not to stray according to him. 
 

Even if equals in all else, that seems to qualify for sexual harassment to me...originally he agrees to/initiated an oral contract that her employment is dependent in some way on a sexual relationship.

Edited by Calm
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35 minutes ago, Danzo said:

I am not going to go through all of the weeds in this particular case but a director of a non profit can take a salary, and as long as the salary is reported and taxes are taken out, that is legit.

His salary should be reported on the form 990.

The salary needs to be for services performed to the non profit

The non profit still needs to be for its "exempt purpose" which is the purpose for which the non profit status was originally applied. 

In extreme cases, an organizations non profit status can be challenged if the company engages in "private inurement", meaning that the funds are just going to support an individual's lifestyle and not for the organization's exempt purpose.

I always recommend that he director of the organization not set his or her own salary, that the board members review it reguarly, that he board members are independent and not related to one another to prevent the possibilty of this occuring. 

At the very least, he shouldn't be signing his own paychecks.

He was, as far as I remember when this happened, receiving a salary. He asked for additional donations to go towards his tuition and living expenses on top of what he was originally contracted to receive. 
 

That is why there is debate over whether this is private inurement or not.
 

Possibly relevant facts:  

1) He was warned before he did it that it was potentially problematic. I am assuming though his being aware of issues beforehand doesn’t make a difference legally, but only morally to some.

2) There was at least one donor whose expectations were not that his donations would go solely to Dehlin’s additional needs at that time (the quote I posted where the donor says Dehlin is gaslighting).  This would seem to indicate while he did solicit such funds openly, he did not ensure that all donors knew about the funneling of donations to him rather than the usual expenses for running conferences, podcasts, and such.

3) He also used OSF funds to pay for RB to come to SLC, ostensibly to introduce a podcast guest who was a stranger to her and which she could have done long distance. RB claims he used the funds therefore to bring her out for furthering their personal relationship (graphic details available elsewhere, but I don’t see it as necessary to be precise on this and some readers will not be expecting it, so choosing vagueness intentionally).  Would the IRS look at that and say ‘could have been done as well and cheaper long distance, so it was not for the foundation, but was a personal expense’?

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My understanding is that Rosebud and Dehlin had a consensual relationship ten years ago, no intercourse, then Rosebud claimed that it wasn't consensual, well after the fact, and Rosebud has been after Dehlin ever since.  Dehlin also had her fired after the relationship ended and that may have warranted some money being paid to Rosebud.  However, this is a really old claim and maybe it is time to move on.

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23 minutes ago, Harry T. Clark said:

maybe it is time to move on.

I am actually more interested in the tax issues...both the possible private inurement and the accusation he used foundation funds to fly her out to SL so he could privately meet with her. 
 

If no one is interested in the harassment charges for whatever reasons (including accusations of hypocrisy and misrepresentation in order to be excommunication for apostasy), I am fine with it not being discussed, but got to admit the dynamics where so many critics of the church are saying “time to move on” while they see similar things as still relevant to discuss in regards to the Church interest me.
 

 The “business plan” of being excommunicated for apostasy highly interests me. Wondering if he and others involved actually were planning out years in advance what they wanted the public narrative to be in order to maximize Dehlin’s appeal. 
 

Also am really wondering what difference whether or not they had intercourse makes when it was admitted there was a physical relationship besides that, even to the point of being in bed together.  ‘They had sex, but not real sex’ doesn’t make much sense to me and sounds like another famous disclaimer. 

Edited by Calm
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1 hour ago, Danzo said:

I am not going to go through all of the weeds in this particular case but a director of a non profit can take a salary, and as long as the salary is reported and taxes are taken out, that is legit.

His salary should be reported on the form 990.

The salary needs to be for services performed to the non profit

The non profit still needs to be for its "exempt purpose" which is the purpose for which the non profit status was originally applied. 

In extreme cases, an organizations non profit status can be challenged if the company engages in "private inurement", meaning that the funds are just going to support an individual's lifestyle and not for the organization's exempt purpose.

I always recommend that he director of the organization not set his or her own salary, that the board members review it reguarly, that he board members are independent and not related to one another to prevent the possibilty of this occuring. 

At the very least, he shouldn't be signing his own paychecks.

 

34 minutes ago, Calm said:

He was, as far as I remember when this happened, receiving a salary. He asked for additional donations to go towards his tuition and living expenses on top of what he was originally contracted to receive. 
 

That is why there is debate over whether this is private inurement or not.
 

Possibly relevant facts:  

1) He was warned before he did it that it was potentially problematic. I am assuming though his being aware of issues beforehand doesn’t make a difference legally, but only morally to some.

2) There was at least one donor whose expectations were not that his donations would go solely to Dehlin’s additional needs at that time (the quote I posted where the donor says Dehlin is gaslighting).  This would seem to indicate while he did solicit such funds openly, he did not ensure that all donors knew about the funneling of donations to him rather than the usual expenses for running conferences, podcasts, and such.

3) He also used OSF funds to pay for RB to come to SLC, ostensibly to introduce a podcast guest who was a stranger to her and which she could have done long distance. RB claims he used the funds therefore to bring her out for furthering their personal relationship (graphic details available elsewhere, but I don’t see it as necessary to be precise on this and some readers will not be expecting it, so choosing vagueness intentionally).  Would the IRS look at that and say ‘could have been done as well and cheaper long distance, so it was not for the foundation, but was a personal expense’?

2011-2018 Form 990 filings can be found here: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/272026793

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3 minutes ago, bluebell said:

If you can have someone fired, are you really their equal?  It's kind of a weird dynamic.  

Well, to make it even more weird, he is listed as "Executive Director" on the listing of board members, and she was also a board member at the time this came to light.  So, depending which role each was acting in at any given time, one may have 'technically' reported to the other since the Exec Dir. would have been responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of the entity but he reported to the Board.  It's also worth noting that their romantic affair pre-dated her joining OSF.  It's very fluid and very confusing and a lot of finger pointing.  No clean hands in this thing, IMO.

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20 minutes ago, ttribe said:

 

2011-2018 Form 990 filings can be found here: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/272026793

Hmm...revenue went up $25,000 from 2017 to 2018, but Dehlin’s salary went up almost $100,000.

Quote

John’s base salary is currently set at $82,500 plus basic benefits (e.g., health insurance), and John is eligible for a board-approved annual performance bonus.

Dated May 2017

https://www.openstoriesfoundation.org/open-stories-foundation-financial-statement/

A annual bonus that is bigger than one’s salary.  Nice job. 

Edited by Calm
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8 minutes ago, ttribe said:

No clean hands in this thing, IMO.

Because she agreed to leave if asked for personal reasons prior to being hired?  Or something else?  Or maybe you mean something besides the sexual harassment when saying “this thing”?

Because it seems to me to be pretty cut and dried on defining whether or not sexual harassment took place. He had her fired because their sexual relationship was over in his view and he no longer wanted to work with her.  Even if she said he was right to do so, isn’t that a fundamental definition of sexual harassment...to have conditions of employment tied to sexual favours of any kind?  As soon as Dehlin made that tie where it would be his decision on whether or not she continued to receive a salary, even if it was her idea, that is sexual harassment, is it not?

Edited by Calm
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