Having interviewed Survivor‘s original winner a couple of months back, I have found myself appalled and incredulous at the mistreatment suffered by Richard Hatch at the hands of America’s judicial system. Sure, you could argue that this is just the one side of the story, but let me just say this – Richard has stuck to the same version of events for the past 23 years of this ongoing debacle, and I don’t believe for one second that a guilty man would do such a thing. I absolutely 100% support Richard in this and would like to see him finally get justice.
Penned by Richard himself, this is his story…
Our Rusted, Unsafe Pick-up Truck – The Analogy
Our pick-up truck looked shiny and new when we bought it ages ago, but the factory paint job was hiding a misaligned and corroded frame upon which inferior-quality parts had been assembled improperly. We loved our truck, and we were giddy. After all, we weren’t mechanics, and our adept salesman had convinced himself (and us) the faulty wiring, unreliable braking system, and high-speed shudder were no more troublesome than any other trucks’ issues. Heck, he even threw in undercoating, fabric protection, and a set of floor mats. What a deal! We were proud of our new truck.
Still, given our truck’s main purpose transporting family members along America’s legal highways, we knew many would believe themselves above riding along with us. So, we arranged for the after-market installation of heavy-duty eyebolts welded to the frame everywhere possible. This way, when seats in our cab are occupied and space in the bed is unavailable or when we are transporting disenfranchised members of the family from whom we want distance or believe we need protection, we can just chain them to an eyebolt and drag them behind us.
We found the most amazing insurance. In fact, I don’t know anyone else who has found better. Our drivers are insured, no matter what, so long as the drivers, themselves, claim they aren’t liable for any damages that arise. We’re lucky; there is no requirement to appear as if any independent or objective review has been undertaken. Even when incontrovertible facts arise impugning our drivers, their biases, or the complicated system through which we are traveling, no problem. Aggrieved parties are subjected to an incomprehensible set of rules limiting both what can be challenged and the number of times any challenges can be made. Here again, there is nothing practical in place to ensure reviewers’ objectivity isn’t wobbly, their power or other influences haven’t compromised their ethics, and the actions they take aren’t inequitable. In fact, competent translators of the rules and the most skilled practitioners, capable of timely and deftly making what few challenges are allowed to be made, are only available to the wealthiest of the wealthy, so, really, we have nothing to worry about.
Or so I thought…
Rewind – The Reality
Early in life, I realized I was different. Preoccupied with observing and understanding the patchwork that is our American family, I’d neither fully realized all of the ways in which I am different nor what would be the effects of those differences when I would need to make use of our beautiful pick-up truck.
I’d done well in school, served honorably in our military, attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, earned college degrees, participated in our Big Brother program, and even adopted a behaviorially-disordered 7-year-old who had spent most of his life in Rhode Island’s foster care system. I’m not just a good guy, but after enduring many challenges (parents’ contentious divorce when I was 11, 13-year-old brother having been killed by a drunk driver when I was 15, and a lifetime of focused introspection), I question everything, appreciate meaningful engagement, and consider myself to be as honest and ethical as any human of whom I am aware.
Coincidentally, I am also the gay, oft-naked, atheist who won CBS’ original Survivor series. Life didn’t just change for me in 2000 after so-handily winning that game before 54 million viewers. Life, as I’d been living it, was over. People, at a distance, rather than with access to engagement around what they believed they’d learned about me, saw some of the ways in which I am different. The petri dish in which prejudice flourishes was seeded, and I would soon find myself chained to our own pick-up truck. Who I am has mattered little, if at all, to any of our truck’s powerful drivers along this seemingly unending journey of more than 23 years so far.
After accounting for the $1M prize I’d won in Malaysia and other earnings that year (2000), and while preparing my 2000 tax return in 2001, my accountant and I noticed there was no paper trail or IRS record of my winnings, so we contacted the IRS. We would later learn CBS had transposed digits in my social security number somewhere in their communications with the IRS. Regardless, we informed the IRS I’d received the S1M and inquired as to what taxes had been paid by whom and to whom. The bulk of tax owed on the $1M prize, we were aware, was owed to Malaysia and was required to have been paid by CBS, SEG (Survivor Entertainment Group), and/or Mark Burnett before we left Malaysia about a year or so before we were preparing my US tax return. My accountant explained that any difference between the Malaysian tax rate and the US tax rate (if it were higher) would generate an obligation of that difference being owed by me to the US. I’d never met any of these early-days’ pick-up truck drivers (decision makers in positions of power), and I could only guess from whom they were receiving their own instructions. Certainly, I assumed, they were communicating with CBS’ accounting department and Mark Burnett, and guidance would soon be forthcoming.
My accountant and I remained in contact and fully cooperated with the IRS over nearly two years of what had been labeled a “civil inquiry” (in response to our having asked for guidance) before, out of the blue (from my perspective) the civil inquiry was converted into a “criminal inquiry“, something I could never have predicted and had never imagined possible. Someone somewhere was claiming I’d been “attempting to evade taxes.” I’d already grown accustomed to how difficult (usually impossible) it is, with my being dragged on a chain behind this jalopy of a truck, for any of the drivers to even hear my concerns, let alone answer any of my questions. It wouldn’t take long for me to also understand how little, if at all, any of the drivers care about what I have to say or what is true. The “game” (as legal proceedings now appeared to me to be) is constructed as a win-at-all-costs venture rather than what I’d always believed was a search for what’s true.
Prosecutors charged me by information with “attempting to evade taxes” and wanted me to agree to plead guilty in exchange for a year or so in prison. Imagine what kind of monsters I believed these prosecutors must be. I’d imagined returning from Survivor to an America impressed with my game skills and respecting my honesty/directness the way so many are impressed with an MVP football player. It is difficult to understand, let alone communicate, the extent to which prejudices corrupt good people though, often without their having any awareness whatsoever they’ve been compromised and are no longer acting rationally, objectively, or fairly. Their disdain for me was palpable, and they approached me as their enemy. For my own part, I was enraged and unaware of how blinded were these prosecutors by their deeply held beliefs (religious, homophobic, cultural, etc.). I knew these prosecutors were currently driving our pick-up truck, but I mistakenly still believed they must care about those of us chained to the truck and what is true in each of our cases.
I refused to plead guilty, because I hadn’t attempted to evade anything. Prosecutors dropped the single charge, and eight months later tried to force a plea bargain by charging me again with attempting to evade taxes, plus bank fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, charity fraud, etc. – 10 counts in total. Again, I refused to plead guilty, because I wasn’t guilty, and this meant going to trial.
Judge Ernest Torres sat in the driver’s seat now. He held off his retirement to hear my case. Since in different, earlier proceedings, I’d successfully brought him before the Board of Judicial Tenure who concluded Torres had “overstepped his bounds,” this did not bode well for me. Little did I know how bad a driver this man would turn out to be. During voir dire, when prospective jurors answer questions, several jurors referred to me (in writing) as a “homo,” “queer,” and “faggot.” Given this obvious problem, my attorney pleaded with Torres to allow us to question prospective jurors with respect to their feelings about homosexuals and homosexuality. Torres refused and continued driving. Gulp. During trial, jurors heard multiple times about my being “non-religious,” “homosexual,” and “naked” on Survivor. No, none of these characteristics are relevant to whether any taxes were evaded, but Torres would drive unchecked over any jagged rocks and pass any prejudicial road signs he wanted. I could do nothing but endure the gashes and scarring.
Jurors eventually acquitted me of all charges, except two related to the original “attempted-to-evade-taxes” charge. Grateful as I am they’d seen through most of prosecutors’ intentional obfuscation and dissembling, I also realized the jury could not wrap their heads around the fact that IRS agents were blatantly lying to the court by ignoring that the taxes at issue were owed to Malaysia, not to the United States.
Torres wasn’t done exercising his bigotry and extracting his revenge though. Torres ignored and directly contradicted the jury’s finding [acquitting me of eight charges], by falsely claiming my testimony was untruthful and sentencing me to an additional two years in prison for perjury I did not commit and the jury did not believe I committed. Drivers can maneuver this pick-up truck wherever they’re determined to take it, and often there is nothing those of us can say or do to impact their woefully horrible and life-destroying choices. Despite countless horrors in evidence over time, this lack of accountability and destruction of lives is still prevalent. Torres is proof.
You may recall, I never attempted to evade any taxes. In fact, the IRS would not likely have even known of my Survivor winnings had I not reached out to inform them and seek guidance. Regardless, despite this being a first offense and despite, as Torres himself put it, my having “done some good things in [my] life,” and his being “unable to tell if [I] believed my own testimony,” Torres sentenced me to 51 months in prison, more time than that to which anyone in US history had been sentenced for the amount of tax prosecutors falsely claimed I attempted to evade.
I served the first 6 months in maximum security “protective custody” in Plymouth, MA, after which I was transported through Oklahoma City and Brooklyn, eventually to Morgantown, WV, where I served most of the sentence. Stories about the drivers in charge during these legs of my journey are too numerous to recount here. I would spend some time in a halfway house, some time in home confinement, and some time in Rhode Island’s Wyatt Detention Center and another RI facility in Cranston. All of the time I spent imprisoned everywhere was awful.
While on home confinement, my attorney arranged written permission for me to grant an interview to NBC. Matt Lauer arranged and conducted the interview along with two other NBC personnel, Tony Potts for Access Hollywood, and a local NBC reporter, Brian Crandall. The next morning, prison officials pounded on my door and dragged me away in handcuffs, waist chains, and leg irons, in my underwear, back to Plymouth County, MA, ignoring the written permission we’d obtained to grant the interview.
After fully serving my original prison sentence, I served three additional years of supervised release, a period of time, ostensibly, when officials are “supervising” in order to assist with re-entering public life by facilitating gainful employment. I was twice offered gainful employment during this period and invited to participate in Survivor (Redemption Island and Heroes vs. Villains), either of which opportunity easily would have enabled me to pay any amounts claimed to be owed, then totaling approximately $300K. Despite their having actively prevented me from then paying that debt in full, the government is now attempting to reduce to judgement an amount greater than $3M and to steal my sister’s property to pay some of that debt!
Judge Torres’ original sentence also included an order I amend my tax return. Unfortunately, neither Torres nor anyone else knew how that tax return should be amended. Despite Torres’ never having instructed how to amend the return or by when it should be amended, my accountant and attorney remained in full cooperation with the IRS in efforts to work through that process. Regardless, while on supervised release, prosecutors claimed I was violating probation by not having amended the return. Judge Torres’ protégé, Judge Smith, would hear the case. Despite a well-respected attorney’s (and former IRS official’s) sworn testimony amending a tax return is a process, and it was not yet possible for me to amend a tax return currently under audit, Judge Smith found me guilty of having violated probation. Prosecutors requested I serve six months in prison. Judge Smith sentenced me to nine months.
The bullying continues. It is now December 2023, and it has been more than 23 years since I won CBS’ original Survivor series. The current drivers of our pick-up truck (this kluge of a “justice” system) are a couple of young attorneys quite removed from any of its origins, yet they fully embrace and continue the unwarranted bullying of these past two decades born of a corrupt judge’s homophobia and other personal biases. Plus, their case this time will be heard by Judge Smith, Judge Torres’ protégé, the same judge who found me guilty of having violated my probation (when I hadn’t) and sentenced me to nine months in prison when the prosecutor requested I serve six. They are seeking to reduce to judgement a debt of over $3M, and they are attempting to steal my sister’s property, first wrongfully claiming she was my nominee, and now wrongfully claiming her purchase was fraudulent.
We’re in the “discovery” phase of this case now (Case No. 1:22-cv-332 in United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island). My deposition is scheduled for January 10, 2024, and trial will likely be held this coming spring. Those of us in America and chained to this rusted, unsafe, pick-up truck of a “justice” system are not entitled to legal representation in civil proceedings, so I have been proceeding pro se, so far unable to find or afford an attorney willing to represent me.
I’d certainly be grateful if a civil attorney were interested in representing me in the instant case, but I’m also wondering if there may be an experienced firm interested in holding the government (and its bigoted drivers) accountable for numerous constitutional violations, some of which have been laid out herein. I don’t know how we would establish the cost of their having stolen more than twenty-three years of my life, but terrible damages are continuing to be inflicted.
Thanks to Richard himself for supplying all images for this article, which relate by and large to its eye-opening content. If there are any documentary makers out there, I feel like this is a story that demands to be told.
