Opinion
2:21-cv-00203-BHH-MGB
10-28-2021
Alecia Ghouralal, Plaintiff, v. Hung Nguyen; Scott Hendrix; Thomas Nelson; United States; and John Travers, Defendants.
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
MARY GORDON BAKER UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
Alecia Ghouralal (“Plaintiff”), proceeding pro se and in forma pauperis, brings this civil action alleging broad violations of her constitutional rights. Under 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1) and Local Civil Rule 73.02(B)(2) (D.S.C.), the assigned United States Magistrate Judge is authorized to review the Complaint and submit a recommendation to the United States District Judge. For the following reasons, the undersigned recommends that this action be summarily dismissed, without issuance or service of process.
BACKGROUND
The undersigned notes at the outset that the nonsensical, incoherent nature of Plaintiff's allegations makes it is difficult to discern any true causes of action from her Complaint. Based on the undersigned's most liberal construction of the pleading, however, the Complaint appears to allege general violations of “constitutional laws” on the grounds that Plaintiff was the victim of a global sex trafficking ring involving the CIA and Defendants-whose roles are somewhat unclear. Plaintiff seems to suggest that she was “used to breed a child without [her] knowledge” after being drugged by Defendant John Travers (“Travers”) with a substance that causes “penal gland opening.” (Dkt. No. 1 at 1, 4, 10.) According to Plaintiff, Travers then took her to the hospital where she received “electro-shock treatment without consent.” (Id. at 4.) Plaintiff's Complaint is largely comprised of similarly fantastic, incoherent allegations. For example:
• Defendants are engaged in “soul harvesting, organ trafficking, sex rings, extortion, murder, and kidnapping.” (Id. at 2.)
• Plaintiff refers to the alleged sex trafficking ring as “a satanic cult tied to the Illuminati” (id. at 3) and a “system where hijackers can hijack a person's consciousness” (id. at 5).
• Plaintiff has “been a victim of an illegal MK-Ultra mind based torture program” (id. at 5), and was “human hunted like some sick game” (id. at 12). She was also “used for identity theft of foreigners” (id. at 12), and “groomed by a cult for a snuff film” in relation to the CIA's sex trafficking ring (id. at 16).
• Travers is “a homicidal killer, ” and his actions were “racially motivated due to Germany/Nazi papers found.” (Id. at 11.)
• “These men have children on purpose to sell, traffic, and human hunt later stealing their documents and causing illegal entrapments.” (Id. at 16.)
The Complaint also includes a 48-page article titled, “Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry, ” written by Dr. Sue Arrigo on June 15, 2007. (See Id. at 17.) With respect to relief, Plaintiff asks the Court “to protect [her] and [her] children, and have these families held accountable.” (Id. at 8; see also Id. at 16, “I want to take my child and live in peace.”)
Notably, the origin of the article is unclear, and it does not reference Plaintiff or her personal allegations in the instant case.
STANDARD OF REVIEW
Plaintiff filed this Complaint pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915, which permits an indigent litigant to commence an action in federal court without prepaying the administrative costs of proceeding with the lawsuit. To protect against possible abuses, the court must dismiss any complaints, or portions of complaints, that are frivolous or malicious, fail to state a claim upon which relief may be granted, or seek monetary relief from a defendant who is immune from such relief. See 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B).
A complaint is frivolous if it lacks an arguable basis either in law or in fact. Denton v. Hernandez, 504 U.S. 25, 31 (1992). Thus, a claim based on a “meritless legal theory” or a “fantastic or delusional” factual scenario may be dismissed sua sponte at any time under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B). Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 324-25, 327-28 (1989); see also McLean v. United States, 566 F.3d 391, 399 (4th Cir. 2009) (noting that examples of frivolous claims include those whose factual allegations are so “wholly fanciful” as to be simply “unbelievable”) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). The United States Supreme Court has explained that the statute “is designed largely to discourage the filing of, and waste of judicial and private resources upon, baseless lawsuits.” Neitzke, 490 U.S. at 326.
As to failure to state a claim, a complaint filed in federal court must contain “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2). In order to satisfy this standard, a plaintiff must do more than make conclusory statements. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (explaining that the court need not accept as true a complaint's legal conclusions). Rather, the complaint “must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'” See Id. (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). When “it is clear that no relief could be granted under any set of facts that could be proved consistent with the allegations, ” Hishon v. King & Spalding, 467 U.S. 69, 73 (1984), the complaint fails to state a claim.
Pro se complaints are held to a less stringent standard than those drafted by attorneys. Gordon v. Leeke, 574 F.2d 1147, 1151 (4th Cir. 1978). A federal court is therefore charged with liberally construing a complaint filed by a pro se litigant to allow the development of a potentially meritorious case. Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007). Nonetheless, the requirement of liberal construction does not mean that the court can ignore a clear failure to allege facts that set forth a cognizable claim under Rule 8(a)(2). See Weller v. Dep't of Soc. Servs., 901 F.2d 387, 390- 91 (4th Cir. 1990); see also Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 684 (outlining pleading requirements under Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for “all civil actions”). Such is the case here.
DISCUSSION
As noted above, it is unclear what causes of action Plaintiff intends to assert in the instant case. While the Complaint generally references violations of “constitutional laws” and “human rights” (Dkt. No. 1 at 12), Plaintiff's rambling, incoherent allegations simply fail to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Indeed, even weighing the factual allegations in Plaintiff's favor, the delusional and frivolous nature of her claims precludes survival beyond this initial review.
When a plaintiff proceeds in forma pauperis, 28 U.S.C. § 1915 “gives courts the authority to pierce the veil of the complaint's factual allegations” and dismiss the case “when the facts alleged rise to the level of the irrational or the wholly incredible.” Denton v. Hernandez, 504 U.S. 25, 32-33 (1992) (internal quotation marks and citations and omitted). Examples of such claims are those “describing fantastic or delusional scenarios or claims which are otherwise manifestly ‘fanciful' or so wholly irrational as to lack any basis in fact.” See Kraim v. Virginia, No. 3:21-cv-00326, 2021 WL 3612305, at *2 (S.D. W.Va. July 26, 2021) (referencing Denton, 504 U.S. at 32- 33), adopted, 2021 WL 3610509 (S.D. W.Va. Aug. 13, 2021).
Here, Plaintiff's allegations of electroshock treatment, human hunting, mind control, and torture as perpetrated by a global sex trafficking cult involving the CIA plainly fall within the statute's definition of frivolity. To be sure, this Court has consistently dismissed similar claims as frivolous. See, e.g., Taylor v. Obama Admin., No. 1:10-cv-2214-RDB, 2010 WL 3276915, at *2 (D. Md. Aug. 17, 2010) (dismissing “fantastic assertions” of electronic torture, mind control without consent, organized stalking, and being used as a “human gambling event”); Boyd v. United States, No. 7:20-cv-178-BHH-JDA, 2020 WL 823099, at *5 (D.S.C. Jan. 27, 2020) (dismissing complaint as frivolous where plaintiff alleged that CIA was using a mind-control program on her and “shooting electromagnet impulses in [her] head”), adopted, 2020 WL 816077 (D.S.C. Feb. 19, 2020); Neal v. Duke Energy, No. 6:11-cv-1420-HFF-KFM, 2011 WL 5083181, at *4 (D.S.C. June 30, 2011) (dismissing action where plaintiff claimed that government agencies secretly placed a GPS device in her car and stalked her, noting that the allegations “appear[ed] to be the product of paranoid fantasy”), adopted, 2011 WL 5082193 (D.S.C. Oct. 26, 2011). In fact, this Court previously dismissed two very similar actions brought by Plaintiff, in which she likewise alleged that she was drugged and subjected to electroshock treatment as part of a human trafficking scheme involving the same Defendants. (See No. 2:20-cv-2875-BHH-MGB and No. 2:20-cv-810-BHH-MGB.)
A federal court may take judicial notice of the contents of its own records, as well as those records of other courts. See Aloe Creme Labs., Inc. v. Francine Co., 425 F.2d 1295, 1296 (5th Cir. 1970); Colonial Penn Ins. Co. v. Coil, 887 F.2d 1236, 1239 (4th Cir. 1989).
Accordingly, the undersigned finds that Plaintiff's allegations should be summarily dismissed as frivolous and for failure to state a plausible claim upon which relief may be granted. See, e.g., Adams v. Rice, 40 F.3d 72 (4th Cir. 1994) (affirming dismissal of plaintiff's suit as frivolous where allegations were nonsensical and conclusory on their face); Hagans v. Lavine, 415 U.S. 528, 536-37 (1974) (noting that federal courts lack the power to entertain claims that are “so attenuated and unsubstantial as to be absolutely devoid of merit”). The undersigned further notes that because Plaintiff has repeatedly abused this Court's judicial process by filing duplicative frivolous cases, she is hereby warned that any future actions raising fanciful allegations
similar to those described herein may result in the imposition of a pre-filing injunction and other sanctions as provided by law .
CONCLUSION
Based on the above, the undersigned RECOMMENDS that the Court summarily dismiss this action without prejudice and without issuance or service of process. The Clerk of Court shall not issue the summons forms or forward this matter to the United States Marshal Service at this time.
The undersigned finds that Plaintiff's allegations are “so detached from reality that there is no conceivable way for her to cure the complaint's deficiencies through amendment.” Kraim, 2021 WL 3612305, at *3; see also Boyd v. United States Cent. Intel. Agency, No. 7:21-cv-1133-BHH-JDA, 2021 WL 2482415, at *5 (D.S.C. May 26, 2021) (finding that it would be futile to allow plaintiff an opportunity to amend her complaint “given the preposterous and frivolous nature” of the allegations), adopted, 2021 WL 2477170 (D.S.C. June 17, 2021). This is especially true given Plaintiff's previous duplicative, frivolous lawsuits against the same Defendants. See Boyd, 2021 WL 2482415, at *5 (suggesting that amendment would also be futile because “this is at least the fifth action filed by Plaintiff making nearly identical frivolous claims”).
IT IS SO RECOMMENDED.
Plaintiffs attention is directed to the important notice on the next page.