Final wishes

 End of life will mean decisions for the family; And problems with another government agency

By David Baker

Alison Carey is 60 years old. Her mother, Patricia Carey, turns 85 this week and has been reported to be in declining physical and mental  health.

   Alison realizes that she will probably never see her mother again. She has mixed feelings about that.

  “She is an evil woman,” Alison says. “Nobody should be subjected to what she did to me when I was a child.”

    Alison was referring to being taken by her mother to terrifying 2 a.m. satanic rituals, where she was sexual abused.

   “But she is my mother. Sometimes I think I would like to speak to her, to ask her why she did it.  But most of the time I never want to see her again.”

   Patricia is reportedly living in a high-end facility in Florida with a team of aides to assist her. Alison is not sure that when her mother dies she will be told.

   With her own deteriorating health, Alison also thinks about the end of her life.  She says she often wonders if anyone will be at her funeral. She assumes none of her family members will be there. And certainly it would be the height of hypocrisy of if they attend after ignoring her for the latter part of her life, particularly since 2015 while she has struggled with a serious brain injury that left her with permanent damage to her short-term memory and vision.

   Alison also wonders if the family will pay for her funeral. Coming up with the money after she was gone would also be hypocritical. But refusing to do it would look bad, too. Either way, the decision will likely generate another set of headlines.

*** 

   

Three years ago, all Alison’s teeth had to be removed, and then a set of dentures were broken in a fall. A Go Fund Me page seeking donations has raised $840, far short of the $2,500 needed for a new set. There is no indication that anyone in her family - siblings or offspring - has made a contribution.

***

Back in December, the Social Security Administration got some embarrassing publicity after ignoring for three months Alison’s repeated letters informing the agency that she was living in an apartment, not in a nursing home, and reducing her benefit to $30 a month.

  Now the county department that administers SNAP payments - food stamps - is doing something similar. In a notice sent in January, the department states that Alison’s SNAP benefit is being cut from $250 a month to $25. The reason, the notice says, is that the oil that heats her apartment and her electricity are both included in the rent.

   Both statements are wrong. 

   The notice also says that Alison is entitled to receive copies of the documents on which the decision to cut the benefit was made. A written request for these documents was made last week. So far none have been received.

   Maybe it will take another newspaper story to restore this benefit. 

***

   

Mariah Carey apparently didn’t consider that when she had her memoir written she was also creating her legacy. The book - with its attacks on her brother and sister - and the permanent public record on the Internet and in legal filings will determine how she is viewed long after her career is a fading memory for most people.

   And because of her own actions, much of that legacy will be largely dictated by her tragic and possibly by-then deceased sister and a former journalist from the U.K who was there for Alison when her family turned away.

********

The Go Fund Me page for Alison’s dentures is at: https://gofund.me/9030f169

***

Briefs

Ruling imminent in Mariah Carey book lawsuit; and stolen songs claims that the singer ignored

By David Baker

   Eleven months after the lawsuit in which Morgan Carey claims statements in Mariah Carey’s book The Meaning of Mariah Carey caused him to loose potential income, a judge may be about to issue a decision on Mariah Carey’s request to dismiss the case.

   “The shutdown of the courts due to the pandemic has delayed lots of cases,” a staff person in the office of state Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe said last week. “But I think there will be a ruling soon.”

  Normally, by this point, discovery - the exchange of information prior to trial - would have been underway for several months. But in this case numerous motions and motions in opposition have been filed, and the deadlines on several of them have repeatedly been delayed by agreement between attorneys representing on one side, Morgan Carey, and on the other side, Mariah Carey, Mariah Carey’s co-writer and the publishers of the book. 

   Adding to the delay was that some documents were filed on paper, the staff person said.  Almost all papers are now filed electronically.

   Mariah Carey is asking the judge to throw out Morgan Carey’s claim before it starts. Morgan Carey wants to conduct limited discovery  - to include deposing Mariah Carey and other defendants in the case. He also wants copies of any emails and other documents that refer to the decision not to give him an opportunity to respond to statements about him in the book before it was published.

****

      In the book, Mariah Carey refers to allegations that she stole songs.

     “A couple of people have come for “Hero” and for me, with both royalties and plagiarism claims. Three times I have been to court, and three times the cases have been thrown out.

   “The first time, the poor fool going after me had to pay a fine,” she claims, without explaining who imposed this penalty and why. 

    But she somehow forgot to mention the $500,000 that was paid to songwriter Kevin McCord to settle his claim that she copied his song  “I Want to Thank You” for her 1992 song “Make It Happen.” Or the $1 million that went to Sharon Taber and Ron Gonzalez, who claimed that her 1991 song “Can’t Let Go” was lifted from their composition “Right Before My Eyes.”

   Then there was an undisclosed sum paid to Maurice White over her song 1991 “Emotions” which he claimed was a rip off of his song “Best Of My Love.”

   And there are just the claims that went to court. There are likely other songwriters who believe their work also was stolen by Mariah Carey but don’t have the resources to start a legal battle with someone who has a team of lawyers to beat them down.

*********

A deliberate tragedy

 Terrifying satanic rituals, an abusive husband, a life-changing traumatic brain injury and family rejection; Alison's Carey's struggle to survive

By David Baker

   The unspeakable abuse Alison Carey endured as a child at the hands of a mother who forced her to attend and be sexually abused at terrifying late-night satanic rituals has impacted all of her life. But as bad as it was, it wasn’t the only cruelty that has been inflicted on her.

   At age 15, Alison met a 19-year-old military man and became pregnant.  Resisting family members and others who wanted her to abort the baby, she soon found herself with a new born child thousands of miles from home on a military base in the Philippines.

   But what may have seemed like an escape from a dysfunctional family and the horror of her childhood quickly turned into a nightmare with an abusive husband.

  “He hit me almost every day,” Alison says.

   Her husband eventually was detained by military police; Alison was flown back to the U.S. - without the baby, who remained with social services.

  But Alison was not about to abandon the child named Shawn.  A short time later, still a teenager, she hitchhiked across the country to Los Angeles for a flight - paid for by her father - back to the Philippines.

  The return journey to the U.S. with Shawn was not easy, first transiting through a war-torn Beirut, then getting replacement documents for her lost passport in Tokyo.

   But Shawn has not appreciated her efforts: He recently dismissed her as his “…mother in name only.” With the tuition for his Harvard law degree reportedly paid for by his aunt, Mariah Carey, he nevertheless is unbothered that his mother struggles without teeth and is reduced to asking strangers for contributions to a fund for dentures.

***

   In 2018, Shawn announced his upcoming marriage to Brielle Strohmeyer.  In a text message, Alison told Shawn she would really like to be at the wedding of her first-born child.

   Shawn’s response was as hurtful as it was brief: “That’s not going to happen,” he wrote. Then, adding to a rejection that felt like a stabbing, he twisted the knife by sending Alison photos of himself, his bride and Alison’s three other children at the Beverly Hills, California ceremony.

     Alison's four children pose for a photo. (l-r), 

   Michael, Carmela, Shawn, Shawn's bride 

Brielle Strohmeyer and Dominic. 

   

   Strohmeyer - who is worth a reported $1.9 million -  is from Manhattan, Kansas. A story about the ceremony in the local newspaper The Mercury names Shawn's father. Then it adds,  “His aunt is singer Mariah Carey.”

    His mother, Alison, is not mentioned.

    The story says Monroe Cannon  - who is Mariah Carey’s daughter  - was a flower girl, and Moroccan Cannon - Mariah’s son - was a ring bearer.

   It would seem strange that Mariah would have had her then-7-year-old twins attend her nephew’s wedding without her. But if she was there, it was kept a secret.

   This week came a further rejection: Alison learned that she became a grandmother - nine months ago.

   The news was revealed when research for this story located Brie Strohmeyer's Twitter account, on which in a recent tweet she referred to a "...nine month old baby"  One of Shawn's relatives confirmed the birth, telling Alison that the child was born in March, and that his name is Tatum.

***

   The second most traumatic event in Alison’s life - after the unspeakable horror inflicted on her by her mother  - was the attack by an intruder in her Long Island home in 2015 that left her with a debilitating brain injury.

   Five months after the attack, while Alison was near death following surgery to stop a hemorrhage in her brain, her brother Morgan traveled to the hospital Albany N.Y. from his home in Hawaii. Not having had any contact with his sister for many years, they were almost strangers.

   The following year, Morgan sold stories to two British newspapers in which - in one calling Mariah “an evil witch” - he slammed the multimillionaire for not helping their struggling sister. 

   Morgan likely received several thousand dollars for the stories and an interview on a TV show. From it, he paid $800 for two months’ rent of a room for Alison in a house owned and occupied by an active drug user.

   In March 2021, Morgan filed a lawsuit against Mariah, vaguely claiming in legal papers that statements in her memoir had caused him to lose an opportunity to get a movie script he had written produced.  Forced by Mariah’s lawyers to be more specific, his attorney submitted an affidavit from an Italian movie producer, who wrote that Morgan’s script was called “Devil’s Hollow.”  This has led Alison to suspect that the script was based in part on a phone conversation Alison had with Morgan in 2016 in which he aggressively questioned her about the abuse she endured as a child.  Alison became extremely distressed during the hour-long call, and after several days of increasingly erratic behavior, was taken to a hospital for a month-long psychiatric evaluation.

   Alison’s last contact with her brother was in 2018.  His response to her text said:  “If this is about $ I don’t have any.”

****

   By the late summer of 2020, Mariah Carey had finally completed dictating her memoir to a hired writer.  With its publication set for the end of September, she needed a way to get maximum attention for the book.

   She did it by kicking her brain-damaged penniless sister in the face.

   Highlighting a section of the book in which she claimed, without presenting any evidence, that when she was 12 years old, Alison, then 20, fed her Valium, offered her cocaine, and tried to set her up with a pimp, she brought it to the attention of media outlets.

   It worked.  In the week before the September 29 publication date, stories about the Mariah’s accusations began appearing in newspapers, on TV and across the Internet.  In a TV interview with Oprah Winfrey, Mariah almost jumped out of her chair when, in an obviously prearranged part, Winfrey referred to Mariah's claims about Alison, and then read out the entire paragraph.

   Alison was devastated by her sister’s callous attack, descending into a deep depression and misusing alcohol after a long time sober.  She vehemently denies her sister’s claims.  But she didn’t get a chance to say so before she was trashed in sensational headlines around the world.  She was blindsided; not one of the news outlets even pretended to have reached out to her for comment, instead publishing the baseless allegations as undisputed facts.

   Mariah certainly knows Alison is vulnerable; Just before her media blast she was quoted as saying Alison is “damaged” and “very broken.” And she certainly knows all about the horrific abuse that destroyed Alison’s life. How could she not know; it’s been reported numerous times by the media, and in 2021 her own mother was accused in a legal filing of causing Alison to be sexual abused.

  But that Alison was repeatedly subjected to unimaginable psychological and sexual abuse by the one person a child expects to defend and protect her - her mother - and left with terrifying images that haunt her to this day? 

   Not a word.

***

  December 25, 2021.  A day when families connect, if  not in person, then at least by phone or video chat.

   Alison has four children.

   But from each of them them to their mother on Christmas Day at the end of a year in which Alison barely survived a medical condition requiring overnight emergency surgery?

   Silence.

**************

Alison's GoFundMe page for dentures: https://gofund.me/9030f169

******************************************

Benefits restored

After four months, newspaper story gets quick action from the SSA on Alison's withheld benefit payments  

By David Baker

   One day after a story was published in the Albany Times Union - and four months after the Social Security Administration was told that it had incorrectly reduced Alison's SSI to $30 a month - the agency said the error had been fixed, and a deposit of some of the withheld money was in her bank account.

   The reduction in the benefit amount apparently was made because the SSA somehow believed that Alison was still in a nursing home, where she had been following a hospitalization, for physical rehab. And despite a letter sent by Alison to the agency's Hudson office in early August saying that she had moved into an apartment, the benefit payment remained at $30 on Sept. 1; the letter did not get a response.

   A copy of the letter was set on Oct. 1.  That too was ignored, as was a third letter sent via certified mail on Oct 18. 

   Then last week, the Times Union published a story about the SSA's non-response.  And with 24 hours the agency had emailed a letter detailing the new monthly amount.  By that afternoon, part of the withheld money was in Alison's bank account. 

    Missing from the SSA letter was any apology or even an explanation for the agency's failure to respond to the three letters from Alison.  The letters said Alison was in an apartment, not in the nursing home; a simple phone call to the nursing home would have confirmed that she was no longer there.

  But that call was evidently never made; Alison's letters - three of them - were ignored.

  The question now is was it just Alison's statement about her residency that repeatedly was ignored? And if so, why? 

  Or are there dozen's of other people out there, who don't have a famous sibling and someone to assist them in presenting the situation to a newspaper, whose protests about incorrect cuts in benefits are dismissed?

   One day after her benefit was restored, Alison received a call from the office of the SSA's inspector general. The caller wanted to know if Alison's matter had been resolved. She said it had.

    The hope now is that the AG will also investigate what happened in Alison's case, and take steps to see that other claimants' communications are not also routinely and callously ignored. 

****

Read the second Times Union story here: https://bit.ly/3DCdk58

**********

In the news again

 The Albany Times Union with its exclusive story about Alison's fight to get her SSI payments restored.

https://bit.ly/3CmGYKg

An update: Soon after this story was posted Tuesday afternoon a spokesman with the Social Security Administration contacted the reporter to say that the issue with Alison's benefit payments has been rectified. Presumably this means she will now receive the withheld money. 

After four months and three letters.

The power of the press.

Calls by the reporter to the SSA and the office of U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer were not returned.

Meanwhile, the mention in the story of the GoFundMe page resulted in almost $400 being donated for new dentures.

**********************

Press release: Taking on the SSA

 

Mariah Carey’s estranged sister fights with the Social Security Administration over “mistaken” cut in disability benefits 

Alison Carey wants to know why the the Social Security Administration ignored  her repeated letters telling them that she lives in an apartment - not in a nursing home

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  Nov. 12, 2021

   HUDSON,  N.Y. — A Greene County women disabled by a devastating brain injury has been left with just $30 a month in benefit payments after the Social Security Administration incorrectly listed her as living in a nursing home and ignored her repeated letters telling the agency about the error.

   Sixty-year-old Alison Carey - who is the older estranged sister of pop diva Mariah Carey - was homeless for 14 moths before moving into an apartment in a town near Albany, N.Y. in April. Before the move, Carey had been in a Columbia County nursing home for physical rehab following a hospitalization. Just before she left the home Medicaid approved her to become a permanent resident.

   But Alison was not ready to give up some measure of independence and when an apartment suitable for her limitations was found she decided that with help she could live on her own for a few more years.

   And that’s when the problem began; In a letter dated July 20 the SSA said that because Alison was in a medical facility for which Medicaid was paying at least half the fees, her monthly benefit would be reduced to $30 a month. The letter stated - wrongly - that  Alison was a resident of a medical facility for all of April, May, June and July, but because she had received her full benefit amount for those months, the overpayment would have to be repaid by reducing her benefit from $841 a month to $30.

  And that benefit amount, it said, would continue “from August  on.”

  But Alison was not in the nursing home. In a letter to the SSA’s Hudson office dated August 3, Carey wrote that she left the home and moved into her apartment on May 1. 

   Alison says she received no response to her letter, and that the filing of a form appealing the cut - which under the agency’s rules should have stopped the reduced benefit until the appeal was decided - also produced no response; the payment for August was $30.

  On October 1 - after the September and October payments were also $30 - Alison sent a copy of her August 3 letter to the SSA via Certified Mail. Again, she received no response.

   In mid October, Alison contacted the office of U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer. A member of the senator’s staff contacted the SSA and the agency finally called Alison, describing the detailed proof it would need to begin investigating Alison’s statement that she was living in an apartment. But she could not explain why Alison’s letters had been ignored for three months. In the meantime, the Schumer staffer had, at Alison’s request and citing the long delay in responding to her August letter, asked the SSA to make at least one month’s payment while the question about her residency was investigated.

    No payment had been received by Nov. 11 and the staffer has not responded to an email asking about the agency’s response to the request. The delay has so far left Alison out $2,378 in withheld benefits. 

    Alison has been estranged from her multimillionaire sister for about two decades.  In September 2020 the singer made headlines around the world when she revealed that her about-to-be-published memoir would say that when she was 12 years old the then 20-year-old Alison drugged her with Valium and offered her cocaine - claims Alison denies.

   In February, Alison filed a legal notice of her intention to file a lawsuit against Mariah Carey.  A month later the sisters’ brother, Morgan Carey, filed his own lawsuit over statements about him in the book. 

   In addition to multiple health issues - in the spring Alison had emergency overnight surgery for a life-threatening perforated stomach ulcer - she also has been struggling for several months without teeth after her dentures were broken in a fall. Medicaid won’t pay for a replacement until 2026.  In October, a GoFundMe page was set up, seeking donations for the $2,500 needed for new dentures.

  It’s at: https://gofund.me/f561ad7a

Hush....

Mariah Carey's paperback

is out; just don't tell anyone

   By David Baker

   The paperback edition of Mariah Carey’s controversial memoir was quietly published Nov. 2, with no effort made to promote it. A Walmart store in upstate New York had no copies on its shelves Tuesday morning.  At a Barnes & Noble store in Albany, an employee had to go into the storage area in back Tuesday evening to get a requested copy.

   As for the statements in the book that have prompted one lawsuit and notice of another; they are also in the new edition because the defendants really had no choice; they could hardly remove them while claiming in response to Morgan Carey’s lawsuit that they are protected speech because they are in the public interest. 

   Paperbacks are published to reach a new audience, people who would not have purchased the more expensive hardcover edition. That makes this paperback a republication - which restarts the 1-year window in which lawsuits can be filed.

   And that raises a question: Why publish a paperback which then has to be all but disowned?  If it hadn’t been announced - as it was on Twitter back in the summer -  it could have been simply forgotten.

   

   Instead, the flat-out statements that Alison Carey committed several crimes 40 years ago are repeated, presenting further evidence of actual malice.

   

   Not promoting the new book doesn’t change anything; it’s still the work of a cruel and vindictive multimillionaire. 

****