An Update On The Ongoing Saga of The Everchanging Qualifications of The Punk Rock Therapist
Round And Round We Go
In the first part of my editorial coverage of The Punk Rock Therapist I pretty clearly set up for a second part which still has not been released. My intention had been to do a fairly quick follow up, but there were some developments almost immediately after the first part’s publication that I made the decision to hold off for a bit to see how they shook out before I pushed forward. I decided to give it a month and then just work the related updates into Part 2. However in the past few days or so there’s been enough movement that I think all the updates from the past month have to be moved into this standalone piece. My writing is long enough as it is, and I don’t want Part 2 to balloon into something unwieldy or lose focus. Part 2 is still in the works, I apologize for the wait, and appreciate all the support and swell of interest that has accompanied these stories. So without further delay, let’s dive in.
Pouzza Fest
The first development is that Sarhadi’s May 17th speaking engagement at the Canadian Punk Festival Pouzza Fest was cancelled, specifically because of the issues I highlighted in my coverage. I had contacted Pouzza fest back in April and linked them to the original piece, but never heard back, assuming Pouzza would just be one of the many institutions more than happy to stick their head in the sand regarding Sarhadi’s qualifications.
On May 16th I made a sarcastic instagram post tagging Pouzza Fest asking if any of them could get answers on the questions my piece brought up, because I sure wasn’t getting anywhere, expecting to hear nothing back. However, they reached out to me very quickly after that . They informed me that they had received my email but had spoken to Sarhadi about it, and felt there was really no issue since there would be no fundraising at the event as it was free, and that they would speak to them again at the event. I pointed out that fundraising was far from the only issue with Sarhadi’s whole venture. I also pointed out that for a festival that has no problem removing bands accused of unverified misconduct in their personal lives it’s a bit strange to overlook an extensively documented case of professional misconduct tied directly to the work they’re doing at the festival.
Pouzza got back to me quickly and told me they were cancelling her appearance. I obviously had no way to check, I wasn’t attending, they could have (understandably) just been telling some rando what they thought they wanted to hear so that they’d move on. While Pouzza never made an announcement of the cancellation to my knowledge, The Punk Rock Therapist instagram account made this post the following day, confirming that the event had in fact been cancelled.
I want to be clear about something, I didn’t feel particularly good about them cancelling her event. After about 30 seconds of feeling like I had finally scored a point in what had been a months long cat and mouse game that had only felt like me banging my head against a wall, a deep sadness set in. I’ve been there, having a big opportunity snatched away from you suddenly. I think Sarhadi is a liar and an opportunist, I don’t think she should be allowed to fundraise and build her brand that I feel is fraudulent at it’s core, but I also have little desire to play cop. My point in all of this has been to illustrate that these public accountability spectacles are irresponsible, animated by mob rule, and rely on incomplete reporting; not that I need to be some self appointed T-800 constantly making sure Sarhadi is in check at all times. As I’ll get into eventually in part 2, I think it’s the journalists, news outlets and podcast that uncritically parroted the things she says and refuse to acknowledge the discrepancies that are far more reprehensible than anything Sarhadi has done anyway. The information is out there now, people can decide what they want to do with it, she can do whatever events she wants that will have her, I’m not interested in enforcing anything. This whole thing, for me, is close to wrapping up.
Sarhadi finds herself in a difficult place as far as how to respond to any of this and to her credit, she’s being smart about it. She’s made a single reference to “men attempting to stop us from providing free support to their victims” in a recent instagram post, but that’s as far as she can go. Generally speaking the playbook when dealing with people who question narratives surrounding these situations is for someone like Sarhadi to mobilize supporters to attack me in her defense. However, she can’t be forthright about the reason her event was cancelled, she can’t rally the troops and mount an offensive to paint me as an “apologist harassing a brave survivor”, because she knows that doing so would ultimately draw attention to my work. As it stands the greatest advantage she has over me is reach (well that and journalists protecting her), and engaging with me would disrupt the control she has over the narrative. So all she can do is pack as many pop psyche buzzwords into an infographic and pretend she’s not showing up because of “self care” or whatever, but the reality is that slowly, the truth is getting out there.
To be fair to Pouzza Fest, they’re not really to blame for any of this. They aren’t journalists, they’re booking an event, a pretty massive one at that and put someone on who insisted they were a mental health professional and it’s not like anyone in the media, the people whose actual job it is to verify this kind of stuff, had reported any different. As it stands they’re the only institution that’s done anything other than ignore the reporting, which is commendable.
However, the cancellation of her appearance did signal one thing for me: my reporting about Sarhadi’s qualifications is correct. There was always a small part of me worried that I’m wrong, Sarhadi’s comment to me that "real journalists, investigators, documentarians, and politicians will pay this no mind and will quickly discredit you, as they have the information you believe doesn’t exist.” rings in my head often as she intended. I’ve been worried that there’s just something I don’t know or can’t know, something I overlooked, that’s going to blow this whole thing up in my face. But the cancellation was pretty much the final piece I needed to put that to rest. Sarhadi had allegedly been spoken to previously about my reporting by Pouzza fest even before the event was cancelled, and while she won’t publicly acknowledge the reason why her appearance was cancelled, she absolutely knows the reasoning for it. If Sarhadi actually had the qualifications that she claimed it stands to reason she would’ve shown them to Pouzza organizers in order to salvage her appearance, which would’ve been her most prestigious speaking engagement within the Punk community to date.
After the Pouzza cancellation Sarhadi and The Punk Rock Therapist organization went more or less silent as they had indicated until last week.
The Disappearance of A Social Worker
At some point within the last week or so (I admittedly don’t check every day) The Punk Rock Therapist website quietly underwent a massive overhaul with regards to the language used to describe both the organization and Sarhadi’s qualifications, most notably an almost complete disappearance of Sarhadi’s claims of being a Social Worker or a Therapist. While still full of the kind of hedging language Sarhadi loves to employ her description on the website are is far more consistent with the qualifications I found months ago that launched this coverage; qualifications far below the level Sarhadi repeatedly insisted she had and built her brand on.
The largest overhaul exists on homepage, though if you want to directly compare the multitude of changes you can find the archives here. The most notable change being the drastic reworking of Sarhadi’s biography, which now has no direct claims of being a Social Worker, a claim she had repeated ad nauseum for a year everywhere from the Enough. podcast that launched her into the spotlight as well as Sarhadi’s social media profiles and this very website only a week ago. Also the term “therapy” as the service The Punk Rock Therapist offers has now been replaced by “holistic counseling”.
Sarhadi’s biography has ballooned in length, going from one to now seven paragraphs, the biography now including much more information about Sarhadi’s “qualifications” and awards, yet still full of the kind of language games she always has engaged in. Sarhadi is claiming she has completed Masters level Training and Certificates in “Social Work” and all the resume stuffing “approaches” she claims to be proficient in. Notably missing is a claim or proof that she actually has completed a masters or any other meaningful clinical achievement, in any of these things despite the “thousands of hours of practice in clinical and non-clinical settings”. You’ll remember that until two months ago, Sarhadi frequently and publicly claimed she had received a Masters of Social Work from USC before that suddenly disappeared.
My personal favorite new bit however is Sarhadi describing her total lack of any clinical qualifications as “a DIY approach to mental health”. Now some readers may be quick to point out that this is just the same relaundering of pseudoscience talking points from the life coach factories that Sarhadi called home, but the good news is I got a great deal on a car battery and will now be offering a DIY approach to ECT therapy under the local overpass. This is all made doubly funny and absurd based on how insufferable the Punk scene was, and to some extent still is, about vaccines and masking, the same kinds of morons who demanded you “trust the science” are now running cover for this quack. The next time some blue haired dork demands to see your papers so you can go to a house show just let them know you’re following in the steps of The Punk Rock Therapist and are taking a DIY approach to epidemiology.
[update 6/20 3pm] Sarhadi changed the language of her bio to “Iranian-Italian American” at some point in between me writing this section and publishing. The original archive has it simply as Iranian-American. I wrote the below passage when it said “Iranian-American” but I initially attached a screenshot with the new language that I quickly took today before publishing, not realizing it had changed. Both are now attached. It has been difficult to monitor every change, but it is still my error. Her choice to update her bio does to some extent render the below point moot, however for the sake of transparency I’m not going to delete it and act like I never wrote it.
An entirely new bit of biographical information is Sarhadi claiming that she is an “Iranian-American”. Generally speaking the convention of [nationality]-American usually refers to someone who is either themselves an immigrant or at the very least holds dual citizenship. Sarhadi however was born and raised in the United States, a wikipedia article about Sarhadi would refer to her simply, and correctly as an American. While Sarhadi is half-Iranian, she is also, by her own admission, half-Italian, yet that descriptor is conveniently missing. While this isn’t full blown Dolezalism, it’s and at the very least the kind of half-truth language manipulation that Sarhadi continually traffics in. A more cynical person could see this as a blatant attempt by Sarhadi to adopt a some kind of POC/immigrant identity in order further shield herself within the progressive stack.
An additional new update is this preamble over on the team area of the website (this area still has Sarhadi listed as a social worker), another shining example of Sarhadi’s mastery of language game bullshit. This passage tries to paint The Punk Rock Therapist as an organization of many professionals across a wide variety of disciplines, but that of course isn’t true. The staff “treating” patients is Sarhadi, the crystal healing reiki master, and only Sarhadi. And even if there were a licensed therapist on the roster it wouldn’t suddenly make Sarhadi qualified to treat these patients, nor change the underlying issues regarding the conflict of interests surrounding Sarhadi seeing patients who claim to be assaulted by the same person she was, nor the significant ethical questions of using your therapy charity to source complainants for your ongoing civil suit. It really is a shame she’s devoted herself to medical fraud because she’d have such a bright, and probably more lucrative future applying her skills to the world of advertising or crafting disclaimers that shield drug companies from liability.
Being Charitable
Then of course we arrive at the contentious charitable status of The Punk Rock Therapist organization itself. Sarhadi has continually insisted that The Punk Rock Therapist is a tax-exempt charity organization despite the fact that the organization does not appear in any of the databases the IRS keeps of approved 501(3)(C) entities. The website overhaul does also extend to the donation page, which now features more circular language but very few answers regarding how exactly the organization is recognized.
Here Sarhadi claims that The Punk Rock Therapist was incorporated last year. While in previous correspondence Sarhadi provided a scan showing that she had received the EIN tied to the organization, as I pointed out in my last piece, that simply means she received an EIN number, which can be requested by anyone and doesn’t mean anything other than that number was issued. There still remains no record of The Punk Rock Therapist as an active entity, either as a corporation or non profit. A search of the New York Department of State Corporation and Business Database returns no results for “The Punk Rock Therapist”, a search of New York State Attorney General Charities Registration returns nothing with the EIN Sarhadi provided.
Interestingly, a search of the California business database DID return a registered corporation under the name of The Punk Rock Therapist Inc by TPRT CEO Samantha Maloney, however the corporation was DISSOLVED at the beginning of this month. Now, there could be many different reasons for dissolving this corporation, maybe they’re trying to move the registration to a different state, maybe they’re changing the kind of entity they’re registered as, I don’t know. But the fact that the ONLY piece of verifiable evidence that this organization even exists in any formal sense is proof that it was in fact terminated raises a great deal of questions.
And there is still no explanation provided as to why there is no record of The Punk Rock Therapist being a charity. Based on the IRS’ own website, 501 (3)(C) status takes less than 22 days for 80% of applicants, larger organizations can take up to 6 months, but by Sarhadi’s own admission, The Punk Rock Therapist is a small operation. In an instagram post Sarhadi claimed that it would take 6-8 months for them to be added to the database, but the IRS’ website clearly states the database of charities is updated monthly so if they are already incorporated, it’s unclear why the delay exists. By all known metrics if The Punk Rock Therapist was a tax exempt charity it would be operational and verifiable by now. If there are some extenuating circumstances that have actually made this organization a charity that can solicit tax exempt donations without any record of them being such an organization, I am not privy to them nor is anyone else in the public. Sarhadi at one point offered to put me in contact with their tax attorney who would explain exactly how the charity was laid out, but she never made good on that offer. It’s perhaps possible that some confluence of rules would somehow allow donations made to be retroactively tax deductible if they do receive charity status in the future, but the responsibility to explain that would fall on Sarhadi.
Sleight of Hand
All of this is a fairly clear admission that Sarhadi lied about her qualifications to the public; qualifications that she built a brand on, solicited donations on, and treated “patients” under despite never having them from the start. These false qualifications were also a significant part of her allegations of sexual assault that vaporized the livelihoods of a band and their employees overnight without charge, trial, or conviction. Sarhadi has of course made no public acknowledgement of any of this, just stealth editing the website and acting like it’s always been that way. Sarhadi threatened that I would discredited by countless people who had the qualifications I knew she didn’t have in order to throw me off the story and then simply quietly admitted she never had them once it was published. Sarhadi and her boosters demand “accountability” and statements from anyone they believe to have done wrong immediately. If you’re one of the people they think has “caused harm” or whatever you’re required to submit an immediate groveling apology (that will never be enough). Meanwhile, Sarhadi is allowed to lie on a massive scale almost entirely unchallenged. Sure, the new website is more in line with the actual truth of Sarhadi’s qualifications, though still hedged in obscuring language; but it’s not “telling the truth” if you never acknowledge you lied in the first place. Sarhadi isn’t owning up to it because she’s well aware of the fallout that would come with her owning up to the truth, so she’s simply ignoring it and pretending it never happened hoping it will go away to protect her career and status, just like all the “predators” she and her ilk target and have appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner over. I suppose any of the poor people she’s managed to con into beliving she’s a therapist can take some comfort in knowing Sarhadi has an extensive knowledge of the kind of gaslighting they constantly levy accusations of at everyone else.
You would think that the central figure in a story admitting that they grossly lied about their qualifications and charity in the public statements they gave would be of interest to all of the publications that breathlessly covered and promoted Sarhadi’s claims and practice, but strangely the enough. podcast, Rolling Stone, and all the other publications have been completely silent. It seems that they are more than happy to launch unverifiable allegations of wrongdoing from decades prior that destroy reputations, lives, and careers, but when it comes to reporting on actual verifiable fraud that they enable they’re much less interested in “speaking truth to power”.
Kristina Sarhadi has not responded to request for comment.
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