Lyn Duff
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Lyn Duff is a journalist with the Pacific News Service and KPFA radio's Flashpoints, an evening drive-time public affairs show heard daily on Pacifica Radio.
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[edit] Early years
Born in California in 1976, Lyn Duff began her journalistic career as the founder of an underground school newspaper, The Tiger Club, while an 8th grader at South Pasadena Junior High School [1] in 1989. After five published issues, she was suspended from school by principal Ed Tucker for refusing to stop disseminating the newspaper.
After seeking help from the ACLU, the South Pasadena Unified School District agreed to allow Lyn Duff to return to school. She completed her 8th grade year and was then accepted as an early entrance student to California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA), which she attended for a year and a half.
While a student at Cal State LA, Lyn Duff was on the staff of another alternative newspaper published by Los Angeles art-critic Mat Gleason who, at the time, was a graduate student in the school of journalism and president of an alternative Greek organization, Omega Omega Omega.
In 1991, at the age of 14, Lyn Duff came out publicly as a lesbian.
Reportedly concerned about her daughter's sexual orientation, Lyn Duff's mother had her transported against her will to Rivendell Psychiatric Center (now known as Copper Hills Youth Center in West Jordan, Utah. [2] During the drive from California to Utah, Lyn Duff managed a quick call to journalist Bruce Mirken, a friend who then wrote for both the Los Angeles Weekly and The Advocate. The two had had plans to meet for dinner before her "kidnapping" and upon hearing of her plight, Mirken quickly phoned Public Council, a public interest legal aid society which secured the pro bono services of corporate attorney Gina M. Calabrese of the Los Angeles firm Adams, Duque & Hazeltine to advocate on Lyn's behalf.
Lyn Duff was admitted to Rivendell Psychiatric Center on December 19, 1991. She was 15 years old.
Although the treatment center was not officially affiliated with the Mormon Church, Lyn Duff later said that she was visited by LDS missionaries during her six months at the Utah facility and that the treatment she received had strongly religious overtones. Duff says that Rivendell therapists told her that a homosexual orientation was caused by negative experiences with people of the opposite gender and that having a lesbian identity would lead her to sexually abuse other people or engage in bestiality. [3] Duff was diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder and depression.
Lyn Duff was subjected to a regimen of reparative therapy, also called aversion therapy, which consisted of being forced to watch same-sex pornography while smelling ammonia, [4] hypnosis, [5] psychotropic drugs, solitary confinement, and therapeutic messages linking lesbian sex with "the pits of hell."[6] Behavior modification techniques were also used [7] including: requiring girls to wear dresses, unreasonable forms of punishment for small infractions (punishments included trimming grass with small scissors and scrubbing floors with a toothbrush),[8] and "positive peer pressure" groups in which patients deemed and belittled each other for both real and perceived inadequacies. [9][10]
On May 19, 1992, after 168 days of incarceration, Duff escaped [11] from the Rivendell Psychiatric Center and traveled to San Francisco. [12]
While in San Francisco, Duff was homeless, living on the streets [13] and attending high school at the Larkin Street Youth Center and Central City Hospitality House. For a time she also lived in a series of safe houses through a network of gay adult advocates who had created a modern underground railroad for youth in her position. [14]
In late 1992, with the help of Legal Services for Children and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and with legal assistance provided by the National Center for Youth Law, Lyn Duff petitioned the courts to have her mother's parental rights terminated. She was one of a handful of children who "divorced" their parents that year; [15] an issue that gained national attention when reporters revealed that first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had completed her master's thesis on the legal right of children to divorce their parents. [16]
In October 1992, a lesbian couple in San Francisco adopted Duff. She lived with them until the age of 18, when she began living independently and returned to college.
[edit] Reporter, Activist, Academic
[edit] Youth rights activist
From 1992 through 1998, Duff was an outspoken critic of the mental health system, appearing on CNN, ABC's 20/20, and numerous print, radio and television media outlets. She also spoke at a number of human rights, civil rights, mental health and youth services conferences [17] about her experiences and the rights of young people to live free of discrimination and oppression on the basis of their sexual orientation. [18] [19]
During these years she also served on the board of several national organizations including the National Center for Youth Law (board member from 1994-2001) and the National Child Rights Alliance (board member from 1992-1993, board chairperson from 1994-1999). In 1996, Duff was honored as a keynote speaker and given a human rights award at the international conference of the Metropolitan Community Church.
During these same years, Lyn Duff was emerging as a talented journalist in her own right, writing for Youth Outlook (a weekly column in the San Francisco Examiner) and the Pacific News Service. She joined the staff of Flashpoints, a daily hour-long drive-time show broadcast on Pacifica Radio's KPFA in 1994. Her writing appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, Salon online, the Utne Reader, Sassy Magazine, the Washington Post, Seventeen Magazine, the Miami Herald and the National Catholic Reporter.
In 1995, Duff traveled to Haiti where she established Radyo Timoun ("Children's Radio"), that country's first radio station run entirely by children under the age of 17. [20] She reportedly worked closely with Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide. [21] [22]
In 1998, Duff graduated with a BA in International Affairs and Labor Law from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.
[edit] International journalist
By the late 1990's, Duff was a well-established international journalist with postings in Haiti, Israel, Croatia, several African countries, and Vietnam. After the United States invaded Afghanistan, she traveled to the front lines as one of the few non-embedded Western journalists.
In early 2000 she began to cover religious affairs from her posting in Jerusalem, writing widely on the problems and conflicts between Christians, Jews and Muslims. In 2002, Duff earned a MA in Theology.
In February 2004, Duff, who was then living six months out of every year in Jerusalem, was home in the United States on a brief visit when a group of ex-soldiers overthrew the democratically elected government headed by President Jean Bertrand Aristide. She quickly traveled to Haiti, arriving in Port-au-Prince when the coup was only days old and reporting on the situation extensively for several national media outlets.
Since that time, Duff has regularly covered the situation in Haiti for the San Francisco Bay View[23], Pacifica Radio's Flashpoints, and Pacific News Service. Her reporting is a blend of in-depth investigative reports and "as told to" first person commentaries by Haitian nationals. Subjects have included politically motivated mass rape [24] , the United Nations mission in Haiti, killings by American Marines in Port-au-Prince[25], civilians taking over the neighborhood of Bel Air [26], murders of street children by police and ex-soldiers [27], presidential/legislative elections [28], and the general human rights situation.[29]
[edit] Academic researcher
In 2006 Duff completed a second master's degree at Wayne State University School of Social Work in Detroit, Michigan. While at Wayne State, she changed her name from "Lyn Duff" to "Athena Kolbe." "Athena" being her given first name and "Kolbe" being her father's last name.
While still a master's student, Kolbe coordinated a random survey of nearly 6000 residents of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which examined human rights abuses against Haitian citizens after a violent coup overthrew the democraticially elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide. In August 2006, Kolbe (with advisor and co-author Dr. Royce Hutson), published some of the findings from this study in the British medical journal, the Lancet.[30] The study used Random GPS Coordinate Sampling (RGCS), a methodology which was essentially created by Kolbe and Hutson, who adapted sampling methods used in botony and public health research to randomly sample households in developing countries which lack the household identifiers (such as census lists) traditionally employed in random sampling methods.
The study found that an estimated 8000 individuals were murdered and 35,000 women and girls sexually assaulted in Port-au-Prince during the 22 months after the coup. Gross human rights violations were committed by criminals, ex-soldiers from the demobalized Haitian army, members of anti-Lavals (Lavalas being the political party led by the Aristide) paramilitary groups, police, and foreign peacekeepers.[31]
Athena Kolbe currently splits her time between Detroit, Michigan, where she works as a researcher in the Wayne State University School of Social Work, and a home in the Delmas neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
