Tim Szazynski--Warning Signs

The Honest Story

C. Szazynski's Unedited Letter to the Editor of Indianapolis Monthly

For those who read Tony Rehagen's smear piece, "Warning Signs"... I'm Tim Szazynski's ex-wife and what has been written in that article is a big lie motivated by dark, vindictive behavior as a cover up to retaliate. Tim was NOT some victim who LOST his family. Tim did a fine job all by himself of pushing away his responsibilities on others for 18 years. And "unaffectionate" is a laughable accusation of someone who carried six of his children for a decade and a half. Also, from those whom he now accuses of such outlandish behavior, he was given thousands of dollars in down payment money so that we could own a house, food was given and bills were paid as he embarked on several unsuccessful entrepreneurial jobs, and vehicles and transportation GIVEN to his family since we and our 6 children had no family car for 15 years. Tim drove up credit and rolled it into our mortgage so many times that we owed $10,000+ on the house beyond its worth. This, too, was paid for by the Christians accused in your article. Our move to KY was hoped to be help toward Tim's need to embrace his own responsibilities. Instead, he became a religious madman, vindictive and hateful, demanding we obey his every command and believe exactly as he did. After seeing my children upset and in tears often, I pleaded for him to stop his bullying, name calling, and fits of rage. But, to no avail, I ended up in a women's abuse shelter for a week with the children. They were so afraid of Tim that they said they would rather stay in the abuse shelter than go home. I chose to go home anyway, but Tim sought divorce. Because I am a Christian, I contested the divorce and told Tim that I thought anything could be worked out. Tim told me that he WANTED me to move back to Indianapolis to be with the church here after he threw us out by terminating the lease. Within weeks of the divorce becoming final, he married another woman. I came to find out that his relationship with this woman was known to many via the internet even before his pursuit of the divorce. Since the divorce became final he is thousands of dollars behind on child support payments and has not made a payment in several months. His story in this article is lie after lie. To salve his own conscience, Tim has sought to shift the blame for his messed up life by attacking the very people who tried to help him get his life together for 18 years. I've been close friends with Mike Peters and with those in the church referred to in the article for MANY years, and I have NEVER witnessed any abuse or group control. There are no "rules" or "hierarchies" among them. Those who I know and love, including Mike Peters, have been examples to me of daily, loving devotion to others in sacrificial and extravagant ways. I've read numerous letters back and forth between the author of this "story" and Mike, and since Rehagen and Indianapolis Monthly left out many facts and contradictions that were in their possession, clearly this is not journalism at all. Rehagen even knowingly took testimony from those with criminal records and institutionalized mental illness, with "hate-crime" motives, in order to create a fact-less "UFO" story that no one with sense would believe. This was dishonest and malicious, nothing less. While Mr. Smulyan named the Emmis organization after the Hebrew word for "Truth," Rehagen proved his disdain for the truth by colluding with some with very questionable legal and moral backgrounds (according to the cackling and mockery of his "sources" before the article had even come out), and by the fact that Rehagan had in his possession a mountain of recent letters from many places locally and worldwide telling "the other side of the story"--and he refused to acknowledge or quote anything that discredited his sources or their slander. That is dishonest, not a concern for "Truth" as Mr. Smulyan had demanded of him. Shame on you Indianapolis Monthly, for giving outlet to such an unreliable source toward so many upstanding Indianapolis residents. There are many of us who know and love the people who were lied about in the article and we are deeply concerned.

C. Szazynski (A Penn State graduate)

Note from a person who manages this website...

Those who slander the church here in Indianapolis brag that Tony Rehagen is "a respected journalist" and the Indianapolis Monthly a "reputable magazine." However, if you were to investigate, Mr. Rehagen is not known as a respected journalist but has had many people complain about various articles of his being fabrications and insulting, as well as downright vile and pornographic in nature. While Indianapolis Monthly might contain some good cooking recipes at times, Mr. Rehagen seems to want to write in a tabloid type writing style, lacking the integrity and principles of true journalism. He and Szazynski have shown the marks of conniving paparazzi by stalking and deceit. Rehagen purposely contacted those with criminal records, family destroying pasts, and mental illness for his "sources," while disregarding the testimony of world-wide sources including corporate vice presidents to homemakers.

One editor of another local magazine actually extended his apologies...apologizing on "behalf of the journalist community" for the LACK OF JOURNALISM used in Rehagen's article. Many have found Rehagen's writings offensive and at times downright filthy. Here are two letters to the editor found in the April 2008 issue of Indianapolis Monthly regarding an explicit porn article Rehagen wrote.

"What were you thinking? Of course, I am referring to (filthy degrading porn content) in the February issue. The photo of an adorable dog on the cover was sure to draw the attention of children and unwary adults, only to have them stumble across the explicit language in Tony Rehagen's article.... Shame on you. All that is left to say is, 'Cancel my subscription.'"

"I wanted to express my disappointment with your lack of editorial common sense in the February issue. Why must the f-word be included in one of the stories? Do you realize how including the one little word ruins your magazine's reputation? .... Be sensible!"

A man Rehagen deceived and slandered in a 2007 "gencon" article has pursued legal advice for libel and fraud on Rehagen's deceptive misrepresentations and intentional omissions in that article written by Rehagen. Who knows what other libel and defamation he has attempted to inflict on innocent people so that he can have a laugh harming others, in his disrespectful and destructive perversions of morality and human decency.

Rehagen, and his published immoral articles is the type of filth that Tim Szazynski clearly had no difficulty yoking with.

Letter about Tim Szazynski's long-time fanatical and abusive life, from Laurel, the children's aunt

I am Laurel, the aunt of Charis, Aletheia, Titus, Gabrielle, Megan and Chloe Szazynski, and Cathy's sister-in-law (Tim Szazynski's brother is my husband). I feel compelled to make known as much information as I can in order to provide a complete picture of what these children have endured throughout their lives with Tim Szazynski (sometimes also calling himself Tim Shaz). They have all been very near and dear to me, and I have been painfully aware of the traumatic events Tim has brought into their lives over the years. I hope that I can be of some help to you and the children, in guaranteeing for them the best possible future. To help you understand my perspective, I graduated Cum Laude from a private college with a B.A. in Psychology. My husband and I lived in the same house with Tim and Cathy in 1990, just after we were married. I saw and experienced Tim and his fanatical ways first-hand.

Of all the people I have ever met, Tim Szazynski is the most controlling person I have ever known. His wild, religious, fanatical get rich quick and spending ideas, and domineering personality have made the life of those he felt he had dominion over painfully chaotic and senselessly difficult, and in some cases even threatened the life of his wife and children.

In the early years of their marriage, long before moving to Indianapolis or knowing anyone here, he was a religious fanatic, with food and strange obsessive controlling doctrines, subjugating females and other strangeness that frightened most who knew him in Pennsylvania where he lived, and elsewhere. He asked those in Indianapolis if he could move there with his wife, Cathy, and did so. As the years progressed, so did his insanity - in spite of many people in the church here in Indianapolis continually opposing him and his freakish behavior and religion. Just as one example of hundreds, when Cathy was trying to buy food on the budget Tim provided (Tim held ten jobs in thirteen years, according to his W-2's), she bought a typical, well-known brand of peanut butter and cooking oil instead of the more expensive health food version. When Tim got home and found the products, he threw them in the trash with such a show of anger that the children recall the incidents. Their journals are filled with years of his freakish behavior and domineering ego, in spite of the good people who tried to help him turn his life over to Jesus. Cathy was being "unsubmissive" if she questioned Tim's religious and fleshly obsessions.

While in Kentucky (after the church finally asked Tim to leave after many years of supporting him financially with tens of thousands of dollars and every form of help imaginable), Cathy found a letter in the printer at their house. In this letter, Tim was writing a divorced woman that he worked with. She was a waitress where he worked, and she had questioned him as to how he dared to be making flirtatious advances towards her, since he had a wife and six children. He defended his advances towards this woman (whom he would soon move in with) by twisting the Bible to suit his desires. His daughter also read a letter left in Tim's truck suggesting questionable behavior out of wedlock, prior to his divorcing Cathy and the children. Tim took away Cathy and the children's van, their only mode of transportation for medical emergencies or library trips, and gave it to another young woman. Of their own accord, by the time they were old enough to notice, both of the older girls had approached Cathy about their discomfort over how Tim looked at females.

Tim was willing to jeopardize the very lives of Cathy and his own children with his twisted religion, also. He considered "the medical industry" with "the serpent on a staff" as evil. When Cathy became pregnant with their first child, Tim's "religion" was that "home birth" was the only "spiritual" way to have a baby. Tim was willing to allow his firstborn to die, and perhaps his wife, before fifty people in the church opposed Tim and insisted that he take them to the hospital. Not one person out of dozens supported Tim's freakish life-threatening religion. Only Tim thought it was "satanic" to have access to the latest advancements in technology on hand for the safety of the baby and Cathy as the birth had turned into a medical emergency. Tim chose to disregard and defy these warnings and pleadings and continued to insist that "GAWD" had told him to have the baby at home. Eventually, when the baby (Charis) was near death, people insisted an ambulance be called, in spite of Tim's religious jargon, and the baby was rushed to the hospital.

To prove that this was Tim's fanatical doctrine and his alone, numerous children in the church were born in hospitals before Tim arrived in Indianapolis, and hundreds more have been since Tim's arrival. Tim alone held and tried to brain-dirty others and propagate, unsuccessfully, this strange doctrine, even seducing Cathy temporarily with his weirdness.

Tim continued his fanatical, weird tirades at the hospital. His irrational demands of "no medicine, no unnatural procedures" caused a policeman to demand custody of Charis to guarantee proper care was received. As a result, a social worker visited their home to check the conditions because the threat of partial custody of the state arose as a result of Tim's negligence in providing for Cathy and Charis.

After the birth of their third child, Tim was still acting as a religious fanatic, unlike any of those in the church he desired to be a part of. In this memorable situation, Cathy was running a fever and not recovering. Tim was only allowing Cathy to use homeopathic attempts at remedy. Unfortunately, the combined effect of those she took caused Cathy's intestines to swell until she was in miserable pain and called friends for help. Finally, Cathy talked Tim into stopping the herbal pills, and she did recover to take care of her two-week old son and two daughters.

Add to all of this the degrading and manipulative way he treated the children ("You have nothing upstairs in your brain!" as one example Tim said to his first-born son, a teenager at the time), and you have a small picture of the vulgarity that is Tim Szazynski. Many such incidents of Tim's hostility and cruelty are captured and dated in the children's journals over the years. Tim's notorious puppy dog eyes and smooth-talking are reserved for those outside of his house whom he wishes to manipulate. Behind closed doors, he turns into a high volume, bug-eyed fanatical, opinionatedly religious angry monster, as many who have known him for years, and his own family, myself included with first-hand observation, attest. He loves to babble strings of religious nonsense that he's literally borrowed from books to impress others as a "religious speaker," but obviously the maniacal quality of life in his heart is what is at stake for his wife and children, whom he put out on the street and now owes $20,000 in child support. Add this to the $60,000 that others spent on him for a house for he and the children to live in and many other such gifts when Tim was unemployed or between jobs.

Tim is the most blatantly controlling person I have ever known. He was asked to leave the church here, after 18 years of trying to help him and his family. His form of religion is not Christianity, and even after 18 years of him wanting to be in the church, he had not turned to Jesus or the Bible in repentance. His version of christianity was a wild, controlling, religious "I'm the head, Cathy!", and other chauvinistic, bombastic remarks. He continually manufactured (or gorged on the library internet, or books) crazed and unfounded ideas which carried no origin in the Scriptures, nor support from anyone I know, then or now. I only know of people trying to help him cease to be controlling and energetic about crazed and nonsensical preferences about what to eat, what to wear, hair styles, using medicine, home-birth, hospitals, doctors, etc. In summary, Tim Szazynski has been for two decades a control-freak, religious fanatic with bizarre behavior and freakish religious doctrines. He brought these to Indianapolis when he moved from Pennsylvania, as his wife and the infamous religious school he "attended" prior to knowing anyone in Indianapolis would attest. People here have continually tried to extricate him from his abusive treatment of his family and his freakish religion, to no avail. Finally, he was "put out of the church" (as the Bible commands, Titus 3:10 and 1 Cor. 5) for his obsessions that are nothing whatsoever like Jesus. He did not "leave the church" but was put out for his big talk but Christless and loveless extremism and bug-eyed fanatic humanistic health food and body worship, and evil behavior. He did not make any effort to leave, but was asked to leave. That is very revealing, obviously. Tim was thrown out for his ridiculous life and weirdness which misrepresented Jesus.

Thanks for trying to sort this all out to help the children get on with their lives. I love them, as their aunt, but also just as a mother who has had to watch years of these beautiful children being abused by Tim.

Respectfully,

Laurel S.

From Tim Szazynski's grown daughter, regarding his abuse in their home and his hatred of those who disfellowshipped him....

"My dad's perspective of himself and other people has been distorted by his own sin. He's not a sane man, but because the severity of his delusion supernaturally empowers him to slander with confidence, people listen, thinking he must know what he's talking about because he sounds so sure of himself. Please don't believe the words he babbles in his 'drunken' state of mind. He sounds persuasive only because his supernatural delusion causes him to believe lies with all of his heart. Like King Saul, he is tormented in his soul, throwing spears at his friends. Don't mistake his audacity and rashness for righteous zeal or courage. Just as a man who creeps out at midnight to vandalize and write graffiti is not courageous, so my dad should not be hailed a hero for his mud-slinging. Though we're all looking for people who we can respect - people of action who are ready to 'do' something about the injustices of life, my dad isn't our man, for he lives by no code of Godly or moral ethics.

"My dad is saying all these cruel things about my friends because he's got a guilty conscience he's desperately trying to vindicate, and he's doing that by attacking innocent people, accusing them of the crimes he alone is undoubtedly guilty of. He says I'm controlled by my friends, but I'm not. Because he doesn't want to 'feel guilty', he conveniently says I'm 'controlled.' He has to BELIEVE I am 'controlled', and SAY someone else is telling me what to do and how to feel about him because he can't accept the fact that I've SEEN his life, and I LIVED with him for eighteen years, and with MY FREE MIND I have come to the conclusion that he is NOT a Godly man. He says he's concerned about the 'safety' of my environment, but truly, the only person I've ever felt endangered by is HIM. He accuses of 'marriage busting' because HE broke up his own to marry another woman. He accuses my friends of 'keeping' us here, but HE is the one who made us his virtual prisoners for MONTHS.

"No matter how many times I tell my dad that I am safe and happy and totally free and that no one has ever told me to do or not do anything, he continues to tell other people that I'm being suppressed and victimized. There's something fishy about the fact that to my face he says he believes me when I tell him I am happy and free and safe - he even tells me he is 'happy that I am happy' - but 'behind my back' he lies and says I am controlled and in a dangerous environment. He's not a man of truth or integrity - he prefers to terrorize other people's lives and refuses to take responsibility for his own abusive, negligent actions.

"My dad's accusations are not only absurd because HE is the one 'busted' for the very crimes he's accusing others of committing, but also because the stuff he's making up aren't even 'good' lies - they aren't even a bit 'logical'. Saying that I'm being 'kept from leaving', as one example, is just about the silliest thing I've ever heard of... This allegation is just dumb... like all the others.

"So, 'controlled?' 'In danger?' 'Hostages?' They're all just crazy accusations that my dad made up because HE is busted on the topic of 'control', and HE is a dangerous man, and HE broke up his own marriage. His finger should be pointing 'in', not out towards innocent people."

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NOTE: All these things are great to help give the other side of the story and give some additional Perspective. But, if you choose to approach these things with your *mind* and look for *information* or *explanation* to satisfy your "questions," then you are setting yourself up for much pain and turmoil. When you use your MIND instead of God's Spirit to resolve satanic "confusion", then eventually you'll be shipwrecked. One day you'll be thrown some "fact" that can't be "answered" to your satisfaction with a piece of "information." At which point, your mind will torture you with "facts" until you are eventually devastated.

A Revolution Without Dancing is a Revolution Not Worth Having