Letter From George Ford Regarding Vickki Ford Cook

October 10, 2002

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is George Ford. This statement concerns my mother, Vickki Ford Cook, and the false allegations she has made about me, my welfare and my state of mind.

According to my mother, I am a missing person whom she is going to great lengths to locate. In truth, I am not missing, nor have I ever been. My wife and I reside in Los Angeles, California, and my mother has always known where and how to contact me.

My mother has carried on a one year campaign, writing letters to the LAPD, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, and even the L.A. County Coroner, insisting that I am missing and suggesting that I may either be in harm’s way, or even at some point turn up dead. All of the above allegations are complete fabrications.

I am a grown man, 25 years of age, healthy and of sound mind, who has been happily married for seven years. Whatever motivations my mother may have for creating and perpetuating lies to the contrary have nothing to do with concern for my health or safety. The following record of my upbringing will shed some light on my mother’s current behavior, for what she is doing now, I believe, is simply part of a lifetime pattern.

I was born George Lampton Harvey on October 13, 1977 in Jackson, Mississippi. My father is [name deleted]. I have never met my father. My parents were divorced when she was pregnant with me and my mother raised me as though my father never existed. She changed my last name to Ford. Over the years, whenever I asked about my father, she told me that he died. She said I wouldn’t want to know him anyway because he had been an alcoholic, a gambler, and a womanizer. Finally, when I was a teenager, she admitted that my father was alive but still refused to allow me to meet him.

What I now know of my father is that he is the very wealthy owner of numerous successful businesses, has since remarried with children and still living in Mississippi. He is well respected by friends and business associates. He is described as a devoted husband and father.

As a result of slanderous allegations my mother recently made about me in the press, I engaged a lawyer to represent me and help me get my questions about Vickki’s bizarre behavior fully answered. I gave him the facts of our relationship – that I had lived through a string of Vickki’s broken marriages, all of which appeared to me to be money-motivated and that, far from being a great mom, she engaged in sexually promiscuous behavior in my presence when I was a child, and shipped me off to private schools and a military academy so that I wouldn’t be around to interfere with her private life. Her current husband, David Cook, is someone I have never cared for. Regardless, my mother insisted that David adopt me, even though I was 15 years of age at the time. Because I so disliked David I refused to legally take his name.

My attorney had three of my mother’s known former husbands located and consulted. My natural father in Mississippi, [name deleted] in Colorado and [name deleted] in California. He also obtained the court divorce records for these marriages.

All of her former husbands had very few nice things to report about my mother. The only consistent positive attribute they found in Vickki was that, when she was young, she was very beautiful and this was the only reason they married her. Each husband was adamant that they never again wanted to have anything to do with her and was glad she was out of their lives. The court records I was provided corroborate why they feel this way.

I discovered that my natural father was, and is, quite wealthy. When they met, my mother was a beautiful lounge singer without money. At the time, he owned one car dealership and was a building contractor. He was in good financial condition and owned his own home. After falling in love with Vickki’s beauty, he married her.

Court records indicate that my natural father wanted to divorce Vickki, or Victoria as she was known then, after only one month of marriage. He left Vickki on May 23, 1977, when she was 4 ½ months pregnant with me. He said he just couldn’t stand living with her anymore and filed for divorce on the grounds of Vickki’s “habitual cruel and inhuman treatment and irreconcilable differences.” Vickki demanded to have my natural father thrown out of his own home and demanded huge support payments from him. Apparently she dragged the court proceedings on for years, all the while living in my natural father’s home and being financially supported 100% by him. In order to obtain substantial support payments, Vickki told the court that she was unable to work as a professional singer because of a throat operation and because she was limited in education she wouldn’t be able to do other kinds of work as well.

Court records also state that while she was still married to my natural father, Vickki committed adultery with two different men, including her own divorce attorney.

In one deposition transcript filed on November 1, 1978, my real father testified about his marriage to Vickki:

“…at the time that Mrs. [name deleted] became pregnant and told me, ‘I’ve got you now, you son-of-a-bitch, you can do what you want to do.’……… After the marriage had proven to be completely over, I will admit that I started getting up early and going to work. I’ll admit I was putting in longer hours working, something to occupy my time, besides a woman that had evidently married me for no other reason than money, when she had expressed that to me after she became pregnant, she told me, said, “I’ve got you now. I’ve got your house. I’ve got you hooked. You can do whatever you want to do.’ …..she was only there for one reason, and that was for money and no love for me……….”

“…I was very disturbed over the fact that she had an abortion. I was very disturbed over the fact that she let me know when she got pregnant …that this child was being used to use my term ‘to trap me’; I was very disturbed over her attitude toward mind control, talking to the spirits, very concerned over the fact that we were sleeping in different bedrooms, very concerned over the fact of her mother being in our affairs at all times; remarks that she made at me made me believe that the only reason she married me was for security and money and she did not love me and does not love me.”

Regarding mind control: “I don’t know a thing in the world about it…I will be honest with you. All I know about it is, the energy sessions, and they would be talking to the spirits, and going to heal her uncle with mind control, and all this kind of stuff. That stuff is foreign to me, I don’t know a thing in the world about it.”

“…Mary D. (Vickki’s mother) is separated from her husband and all she wanted to come up and talk about was being separated from him and finding her a rich man, and drink my whiskey, and talk to Vicki about hating her husband, which is her (Vickki’s) father, hate, hate, hate, hate, and this is not good for anybody…and I don’t like that type atmosphere around my wife and in my home.”

Finally in 1979, [name deleted] caved in to Vickki’s financial demands and the divorce came to a conclusion. She finally agreed to let him live in his own home, however, only after he agreed to buy a home for my mother to live in rent-free. He agreed to pay for all of her court costs and attorney fees. He agreed to pay thousands of dollars in one lump sum of cash to Vickki in addition to paying substantial monthly alimony and child support payments. He agreed to pay for all of my medical and dental bills and to carry $100,000 of life insurance on himself with me, his son, as beneficiary. He also agreed to provide my mother with a new 1979 Ford T-Bird and then allow her to change it for a new model every six months or 8,000 miles, whichever came first. Apparently, he agreed to all this to get Vickki out of his life.

In the years that followed, my mother’s bitterness about my father, and the denial of his existence, quite naturally created friction between us. Unhappy that this was affecting her and my relationship, she had me evaluated by doctors at St. Mary’s hospital in Galveston, Texas. I was 11 years of age at the time. I recently requested my medical records of the evaluation and found that she had claimed that I was being “turned against her” by a family member.

The records of Ben G Raimer, MD and Emily Ginsberg, MSW, confirmed that at the time I believed my natural father to be dead, he was in fact alive. His whereabouts, in my medical records, were recorded as being “unknown.” The records also show that my mother perpetuated the lies she told me about my father, by repeating them to the doctors. They also revealed her motivation for marrying her second husband, as follows:

“The mother’s history related that she had a very turbulent marriage with the patient’s father which culminated in her becoming pregnant and subsequently giving birth to the patient. Shortly thereafter, their divorce was final. She described the patient’s father as a very controlling person with a cyclothymic personality, prone to numerous confrontations with authority. It was obvious from her history that she and patient’s natural father did not get along well. Following this very unfortunate and unpleasant relationship, she became obsessed with securing the best possible home for the patient. She met and married a gentleman in Colorado in approximately 1983 who was described as very affluent and a person who provided for the patient and her all of the social and monetary security possible….”

After my mother’s first divorce, the throat operation that disabled her from singing professionally when she was going through divorce proceedings with my real father, suddenly disappeared and she began singing professionally again at the Wigwam Resort in Arizona. I have vivid memories of Augie Mendoza, my mother’s piano player, frequently sleeping the night with my mother during this time. I was five years old. My mother and Mendoza remained very close after this time period.

One night, in about 1982, while singing at the resort, my mother met her next husband to be, [name deleted] from Colorado, who apparently gave her a $500.00 tip for “singing.” They dated for the next year. Mr. [name deleted] is more than twenty years older than Vickki. He is the wealthy owner of a chain of supermarkets in various Colorado ski resort towns and also owned expensive homes in Colorado and Arizona.

The last Court records in my mother’s divorce case with my real father, [name deleted] , show that in the end of 1983, while Vickki was still dating [name deleted] in Colorado, her lawyers contacted my real father in Mississippi. Vickki wanted my father to give her $25,000.00 cash and enter into an “absolute release” regarding future alimony payments, child support payments, medical and dental payments, etc. The court files indicate that the arrangement was that if my real father paid my mother $25,000.00 in cash, and furnished her with a new car on a periodic basis, plus paid for its upkeep, she would forever be out of my real father’s life “as if Victoria and George had never been born.” Court papers filed on my mother’s behalf also state that “Victoria is now self sufficient… and earns enough to be sufficient for George… that George is now a healthy male of almost six years of age and requires no special maintenance…and that Victoria contemplates marriage within the foreseeable future and intends for her new husband to adopt George after a sufficient length of time…” My mother was also allowed to change my last name from [name deleted] to Ford. [name deleted] immediately agreed to the conditions and paid Vickki the $25,000.00.

Apparently almost immediately after my mother received the $25,000.00 “absolute release” money from my natural father, she married [name deleted] from Colorado and moved us both into Mr. [name deleted] ‘s mansion in Glenwood Springs.

Mr. [name deleted] said that Vickki suddenly “changed” as soon as he married her, so much so that he moved out after only twelve days of marriage and filed for divorce. My mother refused to move out of his house. That divorce dragged on for five years.

My mother demanded spousal support and other forms of financial support. She also began demanding money from [name deleted] to reestablish her singing career – the one she previously claimed in her divorce from my father that she could no longer do because of her throat surgery.

The first time [name deleted] learned about my mother’s phony claim of previously not being able to sing was when he was consulted recently.

For me, the worst part of this divorce is that, during the proceedings, my mother went to the police and falsely accused Mr. [name deleted] of sexually molesting me. This was a total lie. No such thing ever occurred. However, great harm was already done. Mr. [name deleted] had to take a police polygraph to clear himself but apparently, to this day, according to what he recent explained when consulted, still lives under a cloud of suspicion due to the nature of the allegations which dragged on and on. In fact, this accusation came about because both my mother and grandmother were seeing a psychic whom they claim “informed” my mother that I had been molested. My mother only agreed to drop the child molestation allegations after Mr. [name deleted] agreed to pay my mother a substantial sum of money.

My medical records from the later evaluation in Galveston also corroborate this. The doctors conclusion states:

“In my interview with the patient on admission, he presented as a cooperative, oriented, young man who knew the reason for his admission. …When I asked the patient specific questions regarding his step-father, he denied specifically that any form of sexual molestation or abuse had occurred.”

“The most overwhelming symptom that brought the mother to this consultation is the fact that this child in 1983 or 1984 underwent extensive and prolonged alleged child sexual abuse from his stepfather.”

“During session with this child he specifically denied past history of sexual abuse and further more stated that he simply admitted this on previous occasion in order to get his mother off of his back.”

“Actual therapy originally was aimed in addressing George’s therapeutic modalities based on the presumed diagnosis if post traumatic stress syndrome secondary to previous child sexual abuse. However, after a very complete diagnostic work up and diagnostic psychotherapy with this child, it became quite clear that his primary problem was that of a central auditory processing disorder for an impairment of auditory discrimination, not a primary psychological disorder.”

[name deleted] from California, my mother’s third husband, stated that he met Vickki in Los Angeles in 1991. Mr. [name deleted] owned his own successful plumbing business. Vickki had been working as a para-legal. He said that Vickki was beautiful and he fell in love with her. They briefly lived together before deciding to get married. Vickki told [name deleted] that she would continue working after they married, but quit almost immediately after the ceremony.

My mother was always sending me away to school when I was little. By the time I was eleven I had been living in a military academy for a couple of years. [name deleted] said that my mother told him that she sent me to live at the school because she didn’t want me around anymore because she was unable to deal with me. To his great credit, Mr. [name deleted] tried his best to be a good step-parent. I had injured my back at school but hadn’t received proper treatment. My mother didn’t seem too concerned. When [name deleted] found about this, he immediately took me to a specialist who diagnosed the injury as severe and one that could easily cause paralysis if it wasn’t immediately treated. When my mother was just beginning her relationship with him, she shipped me off to live at another private school.

Apparently my mother became pregnant while married to Mr. [name deleted] and, over his objections, had an abortion. She told [name deleted] that she didn’t want another kid because it would interfere with a singing career she was fixated on having.

[name deleted] stated that he was “blinded” by Vickki’s beauty and his love for her and would do anything for her to make her happy. He stated that Vickki pressured him, against his better judgment, to sell his established plumbing business in Los Angeles and move with her to Georgia. Vickki convinced him that she could establish a singing career there. She told him that someday she would be a rich and famous singer and that all she needed to do was reestablish her relationship with her former singing agent in Georgia. Upon arriving in Georgia, the agent refused to meet with Vickki, apparently because Vickki, years earlier, had broken promises to him.

[name deleted] explained that when he and Vickki arrived in Georgia the only money they had was a partial payment the buyer of the plumbing business had given to him. [name deleted] had to sell a trailer he owned to raise cash. Vickki began spending the little money they had in promoting herself and having publicity photographs taken. The money was quickly running out and Vickki was unable to find work. [name deleted] had a difficult time finding clients needing plumbing work. Because of the actions Vickki had taken regarding their finances, [name deleted] actually began sleeping with his wallet to prevent her from stealing what little cash he still had. After about six months [name deleted] ‘s money finally ran out and he told Vickki she would have to find employment, Vickki told him, “Well, then that’s it. It’s over. We’re through.”

At the very end of the marriage, Vickki withdrew all the remaining money in [name deleted] ‘s bank account without telling him which caused some of his checks to bounce. He had to borrow money from his mother to cover the checks and get back on his feet. His mother also sent him some certificates of deposit.

One day when Vickki was looking around the house for more money she found receipts for the certificates and tried to charm him into giving it to her. He told her that his mother had loaned him the money so he could leave her and return to California. It was clear to [name deleted] that she wanted every last penny she could get her hands on. He left her the next day.

[name deleted] stated that he later found out that Vickki had met David Cook, her next husband, before he and Vickki had even moved to Georgia. Now [name deleted] realizes why Vickki was adamant that their wedding vows not include the words “for better or worse” and had them removed before the ceremony.

Another aspect my attorney is helping me sort out is my “working relationship” with my mother and her husband’s business. After having received an unexpected letter from the IRS, which indicated I had earned money I had actually never seen, we started looking into this by contacting the IRS and the CPAs used by my mother and her husband; so far we are finding strong indications that she might have been using my name as a “ghost employee” in the context of some tax fraud. I am still in the progress of sorting this all out, but this might shed some light on my mother’s persistence in trying to get me under her thumb.

My mother has a history of lying for monetary gain. For example, throughout her recent campaign to embarrass and discredit me, my mother has stated that she has always been a very devoted and caring mother. The facts are unfortunately otherwise. She even has a website where she solicits money “to help people with missing persons” and directs the contributors to make out their checks to “Vickki Ford”.

The one good thing my mother and I shared for a time was Scientology. My mother joined the Church in 1990 and encouraged me to participate too. This brought happiness and stability in my life. I subsequently met and married a wonderful young woman. Then, years later in 2001, Vickki and David suddenly left the Church and are no longer members. At no time prior to the two of them leaving did either of them attempt to dissuade me from being active in my Church activities. On the contrary, they both supported everything I did in the Church including becoming a staff member.

Upon leaving, however, my mother suddenly changed her tune. Naturally, there was money involved. Vickki and David had made donations to the Church and wanted them refunded, which I understand the Church did. But my mother wasn’t happy with that. She wanted me to abandon my wife, my Church, my career, my home, my friends and my way of life and live with her in Georgia. Of course, I refused.

Suddenly the welfare of the son she couldn’t wait to get rid of as a child, and whom she routinely neglected most of his life, was terribly important to her. The next thing I knew my mother was running around telling law enforcement officials, the press, and anyone who would listen to her ravings, that I was a missing person being held against my will. I assume she thinks that by publicly shaming and embarrassing me and my religion, I will either leave my Church or be asked to leave. This will never happen.

Since 2001 my mother has made outrageously false claims against me and my religion in paid newspaper and magazine advertisements, on talk radio shows, on the Internet and in letters written to the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, the Los Angeles County Coroner, and to others. She actually made out a false Missing Person report with the Los Angeles Police Department, which caused me to leave work and go down to speak with the detective assigned to “find me.” This was very embarrassing to me as I then had to explain in detail the reasons why my mother and her 4th husband were being so disrespectful to me. After the police detective conducted his investigation he concluded my mother’s allegations were baseless, and told her so.

I have spent most of my life living with the repercussions of my mother’s reprehensible behavior. In exchange for quick cash and the promise of new cars, my mother severed my relationship with my real father, destroying any hope of growing up with a father in my life and forfeiting any “birth rights” I had with him. She refused to allow me to think well of him, even when claiming he was dead. I have never met my natural father and my brothers and, due to the misery my mother caused, probably never will. Understandably, my natural father is now afraid to have anything to do with me. My mother’s “gold-digging” marriages left me with a string of short-lived stepfathers, most who were never around long enough to even attempt a relationship. Then came David Cook, not a strong-willed man, whom she convinced to adopt me against my will, so much so that I refused to take his name as my last name. I cannot find any logical reason for her to insist so much.

My mother and her husband David had been members of the Church for 11 years. However they had also been engaged in activities that were not living up to the ethical standards required by the Church, and once this somehow came up, rather than fully cleaning up their act as requested of them, they choose to be expelled by the Church, and then used the excuse of the me wanting to stay in Scientology to blame the Church for their situation. I firmly believe that’s what this is all about.

George Ford