Letter - Claims of misrepresenting employment are false and injurious

To the editor:

Regarding a letter printed in the Echo Press on September 26, 2012:

To Howard Goldman, Minnesota State Director, Humane Society of the United States, Washington, D.C.

It has come to my attention that letters to the editor signed by you published in two Minnesota newspapers accuse me of “misrepresenting” my employment history with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), when in fact I have done no such thing. Specifically, in the Albert Lea Tribune and the Alexandria Echo Press you write:

“She continues to misrepresent her employment history, and was never a director for HSUS in the two years she worked for one of our affiliates.”

I served as director of the education department beginning in 2006, which operated the internal humane society university (HSU) program as well as online training and workshops for humane professionals. The department of training and education was not a separate organization and still is not one. HSU was incorporated in 2008 to get around a legal issue (HSUS’s Delaware incorporation forbids HSUS to become an accredited educational body). I was never an employee of this separate entity.

As an article in Chief Learning Officer noted in August 2007, HSU “began in 1999 as a separate learning department of the Humane Society of the United States.” HSU’s first tax return, filed for calendar year 2009, states under penalty of perjury that it is an “initial” tax return and that HSU was “incorporated in 08 as a private, non-profit institution.”

In multiple HSUS publications still accessible online, I am listed as a “director” for this internal HSUS program and, more to the point, my paychecks came from HSUS.

Your claims that I “misrepresent” my employment history are false and injurious to my reputation. By this letter I demand you cease and desist making these false statements and write a letter retracting them to the publications in which your defamatory statements were made.

Diana Culp, director,

Humane Society for Shelter Pets

Frederick, MD

Tags: opinion, letters