The graphic Vinczer used for his post on AVFM
The already plenty messy MRA divorce between A Voice for Men’s cult leader Paul Elam and his former “Activity Director” Attila Vinczer has just gotten a lot messier.
Taking advantage of his old editor’s account on AVFM, Vinczer today posted a 4600-word screed on Elam’s own site intended to expose the “innards of Paul Elam and AVFM.” In it, Vinczer declares that
I have observed this organization, AVFM, led by CEO Paul Elam, dong things that are in my opinion immoral, unethical and outright criminal. … They are harming people and harming men and boys they claim to be helping. The reckless behaviour of Paul Elam, the founder, and now CEO of AVFM LLB is akin to a cult leader, with followers who may be oblivious to what they are being drawn into.
Elam quickly removed the post from his site, declaring all of Vinczer’s “various allegations” to be false, but the internet does not so easily forget; archived copies of the original post are still available here and here,
Vinczer’s document contains a lot more invective than it does evidence, but he promises evidence will be forthcoming. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Vinczer declares, “there will be full disclosure to follow.” He says he will offer “hard evidence about the improprieties found within the innards of AVFM” to any journalist who asks.
I’m going to leave that to journalists who have a bevy of lawyers at their disposal, but what Vinczer has posted so far is … intriguing.
Let’s get the invective out of the way first.
To say that Vinczer is angry at his former boss is a bit of an understatement. Over the course of the long screed, Vinczer describes Elam, variously, as
- an “unabashed maniac”
- “unhinged and wreckless [sic]”
- “an alcoholic trigger happy imbecile”
- “a bully”
- “a cowering coward”
- “A yellow belly poison lipped scoundrel”
- “an utter disappointment”
- “a disgraced perjured individual willing to do anything in a rage of bitterness fuelled by pure anger for revenge”
- “a black hole that drains the life out of people who are anywhere near you”
I have no personal knowledge of Elam’s drinking habits or his mental health, but the rest of that sounds about right to me.
Vinczer’s accusations against Elam are numerous, if a little light on detail. His basic charge is that Elam is
[a] thief, [a] cheat, [a] con artist, who engages in smoke and mirrors refusing to be transparent with handling the massive amount of money donated to AVFM. … [a] seemingly ill minded deviant who it appears may be guilty of embezzling corporate/donated funds … .
Specifically, he claims that Elam may have used AVFM money to “secretly vacation … in Italy with his partner while having others believe he was impecunious.”
He also accuses Elam et al of wasting money they could have been using for activism to subsidize a men’s “retreat” during which, among other things, a drunken Elam led his comrades in a lively, er, discussion of the allegedly smelly vagina of an influential feminist journalist — then put a video of these drunken shenanigans up on Youtube.
AVFM, Vinczer declares,
is incapable of putting on a yearly conference, [despite] the vast amount of money it has received in donations. Instead they pay for flying David Miller aka David King in from the UK so a group of men can get drunk and do stupid things at a retreat putting the MRM into disrepute.
Vinczer demands that Elam fess up about where the money raised by AVFM goes:
I challenge the CEO of AVFM to give full disclosure of … how he spent 10s of thousands of dollars if, not 100s of thousands of dollars donated to AVFM for advocacy work. Without being transparent, we can only guess what the amounts are that you have spent. I know he took a salary from those donations, which is perfectly warranted. Question is how much money did he use for himself and how much was actually used for advocacy work, if any.
Vinczer also posts what he says is a transcript of a Skype conversation amongst AVFM’s top brass in which Elam gleefully announces his plans to put up videos from Vinczer’s financially disastrous Toronto DV conference this past summer without Vinczer’s permission, and with all evidence of Vinczer’s presence left on the cutting room floor.
In the alleged transcript, Elam allegedly says
I am uploading Tanveer Ahmens talk right now, with AVFM branding and Attila cut out of the video. … I am billing this as an AVFM production … and cutting any mention of Toronto DV Symposium.
Given that the alleged transcript is utterly free of the weird malapropisms that clutter up Vinczer’s own prose, I’m thinking there’s a pretty good chance it’s real. It’s worth reading, if only for the mustache-twirling villainy on display. [EDIT: Vinczer has now Tweeted a bunch of screenshots of the alleged conversation, which make me even more convinced that the transcript is real..]
Even if we assume that the transcript is real, the evidence presented so far doesn’t quite live up to Vinczer’s invective. Does he really have more evidence to provide?
Elam, for his part, says no, writing that
Vinczer has nothing to give the media other than his words, which are about as good as his promise to pay people he has conned. The man who is quick to tell everyone of his sleuth-like constant recording and record keeping of everything in his life will produce nothing of the sort.
On Twitter, Elam added an accusation of his own:
I guess we’ll just have to see where this all goes, huh?
EDIT: Added Elam’s tweets, changed the last line.
