From:  Louise  ---->                                                                                                                                                         

Sent:   Wednesday, March 21, 2001 2:11 PM

To:       donna laframboise

[Here is what Ms. Malenfant told the reporter the day before the reporter called the ECMAS-Calgary president.]

Hey there,

Had a lengthy talk with Mike LaBerge and he is on the freaked out side of
things
. He is coming to Edmonton to investigate the matter this weekend, in
addition to some family duties he has hear. He agrees that it is not
appropriate for  Adams to be the VP, or for Adams to charge fees for
legal advice under the auspices of ecmas.
                                                      ---->

Though he certainly encouraged me not to go public, I told him that I have
tried for months to clean this up with no success, and I'm not prepared to
walk away and let this motley crew represent themselves to the constituency
of the falsely accused, or even to the system itself, as I believe this
harms everyone involved. I indicated that while I do appreciate his fears
that Calgary and Lethbridge ecmas will be tainted with the brush of the
Edmonton chapter, leadership in this city does not have the will to address
these issues, and I won't walk away from it. Off the record, he did talk
about the possibility of withdrawing Edmonton's right to use the ecmas name
if they don't clean this up
, but I don't know how serious he is about that.
[This is one of Ms. Malenfant's many confusions; ECMAS-Edmonton had the rights to the

name. But he was clearly talking about separating his group from the Edmonton group.]                                                                                                                                 
Ultimately, I reminded him that I had brought these issues to his attention

last month, and nothing happened until the possibility of media attention
became a reality. I did, however, advise that I was not speaking to local

media about the issues, and did advise that you were looking into the matter
and would likely do a story.
  This is not easy, and it is ugly, but
something has to be done to protect the desperate folk of family court, it
is not our right to represent them but a duty we take on, and if we can't
fulfill that duty, then we shouldn't make their problems worse. He is aware
that you are looking into this, though, so I imagine he would return your
call at this point.
   [Note: even if the reporter hadn't been explicitly told his reactions beforehand, she still had as much advance reason to believe this ECMAS leader would have things to say about the whole affair as she did that those two former leaders would have something to say--and when she telephoned each of them, she got her tape-recorder running at the beginning. Now see the claim she made of not doing the same with him:]              [Back]


Did you see my Hilton letter? I think the Edmonton Sun is starting to like
me:)

Louise