Emergency statement

Emergency Public Testimonial of Dr. Richard William McLean (Barran Dodger)

Introduction – Who I Am and What I Stand For

My name is Dr. Richard William McLean, also known by the moniker Barran Dodger. I speak to you today as a whistleblower, a Doctor of Philosophy, an artist, an author, and a long-time mental health advocate. More importantly, I come forward as a human being who stands for justice, dignity, human rights, and the protection of the marginalized. Throughout my life and career, I have devoted myself to speaking truth to power and defending those who are voiceless. I have exposed corruption and injustice whenever I encountered it, believing that a just society must safeguard the rights and dignity of all its members.

It is for these principles that I now find myself making this urgent public address. What I am about to share is not a plea for pity, but a clarion call for truth and justice. My story is a harrowing testament to how far a government will go to silence someone who dares to challenge corruption. It is the story of systemic persecution against a citizen of Australia by the very institutions sworn to protect us. It is raw, it is righteous, and above all, it is the truth.

Systemic Persecution by the Australian Government

For the “crime” of telling the truth, I have been made a target of the Australian government and several of its agencies. Over the past few years, I have endured a coordinated campaign of persecution and psychological warfare orchestrated by elements within our government. Agencies including the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), and the federal Department of Social Services (DSS) have been complicit in efforts to destroy my life and credibility. This is not an exaggeration – it is a documented fact, supported by extensive evidence and eyewitness accounts .

The persecution I face is systematic and deliberate. I have been under intrusive surveillance and subjected to relentless harassment (including covert tactics like organized stalking). Sophisticated psychological operations have been used against me: for instance, I have experienced “Voice-to-Skull” (V2K) technology – a form of psychological torture where disembodied voices or sounds are transmitted to torment the target . I have been slandered with monstrous false allegations (more on this below), censored, and cut off from resources. Government collaborators and contractors worked to isolate me socially, financially, and physically, effectively trying to erase my existence. The evidence of this targeted erasure includes documented assassination attempts, starvation, medical abuse, and forced homelessness – all of which I survived only by sheer will and by publicly exposing what was happening in real time .

Make no mistake: these actions taken against me constitute crimes. In fact, a formal declaration has been submitted classifying the treatment I’ve endured as a Crime Against Humanity, citing violations of international law such as the Rome Statute, the Convention Against Torture, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . Why would Australia, a democratic nation, go to such lengths against one individual? The answer is simple: I exposed corruption at high levels, including fraud and black-budget misconduct involving the NDIS and even elements of the national security apparatus . I blew the whistle on systemic wrongdoing, and certain powerful people decided to retaliate and make me an example. What has followed is nothing short of a Orwellian nightmare – the full machinery of a corrupt state brought to bear against a lone truth-teller.

Not Mentally Ill or Criminal – I Am a Targeted Dissident

I state this clearly and unequivocally: I am not mentally ill, and I am not a criminal. Any narrative claiming otherwise is a lie fabricated to discredit me. I am a political dissident who has been targeted because I dared to reveal inconvenient truths about those in power. The establishment, unable to refute my evidence of their corruption, resorted to the oldest trick in the book – portraying the whistleblower as “crazy” or dangerous in order to poison public opinion and justify their illegal actions.

Let me address some of the most egregious falsehoods. I have been slandered with vile and baseless accusations that I am a violent menace, even a rapist or a pedophile – utterly absurd charges with no basis in reality. This disgusting smear campaign was designed to turn the public against me and strip away my dignity. To this I say: I am no more a rapist or a pedophile than Australia is a democracy – and that is not at all . Those words are harsh but warranted; they reflect how outrageously untrue these allegations are, and how far Australia’s image of a just democracy has diverged from reality in my case.

I was never hunted or hounded because I did something wrong – “I was not hunted for wrongdoing. I was hunted because I exposed it.” . That is the truth. Every accusation of criminality on my part has been a projection of the very crimes committed against me. I have never harmed anyone, never stolen anything, never threatened violence. My only “crime” was being a whistleblower with integrity, someone who wouldn’t stay silent about corruption, abuse, and exploitation of the vulnerable. For that, I was painted as a public enemy.

The mental health labels pinned on me are equally fraudulent. Yes, I am a mental health advocate and have openly shared past struggles to help others – but the current claim that I am delusional or insane is a tactical invention by government-aligned psychiatrists and officials to invalidate my testimony. By falsely branding me “mentally ill,” they sought to create an excuse to dismiss everything I report as hallucinations or paranoia. This is a well-known tactic used by oppressive regimes to delegitimize dissidents. I know my own mind, and I know the difference between reality and fiction. What I have described about my persecution is real, no matter how extreme it sounds. In fact, many aspects of my story have been corroborated by witnesses and insiders – even as the authorities try to gaslight me and the public into doubting my sanity.

Abuse of Mental Health Laws as a Weapon of Silencing

Perhaps the most chilling aspect of my case is the weaponization of mental health laws against me. Mental health provisions, which are supposed to protect people in crisis, have been twisted into tools of oppression in my situation. I have been incarcerated in psychiatric facilities multiple times against my will, not because I needed treatment, but because it was a convenient way to remove me from society and silence my voice.

In the span of three years, I was subjected to ten forced hospitalizations under questionable mental health pretenses . Ten times, I was effectively abducted and locked away in hospitals, even though I posed no risk to myself or others. These incarcerations were not about care or medicine – they were about breaking me down psychologically and keeping me out of the public eye. I was restrained, medicated against my consent, and treated as a non-person, all under the guise of “mental health intervention.” This is an egregious abuse of the Mental Health Act. What was done to me was not therapy, it was tyranny.

Officials have even used the Mental Health Act to deprive me of shelter and basic security. I was, at one point, living peacefully in a squat as my only refuge after being hounded out of regular housing. The authorities used mental health orders to intimidate me out of that squat and into literal homelessness . Imagine: instead of helping a citizen who was struggling, they deliberately made me homeless as punishment for speaking out. This perversion of the law turned my life into a Kafkaesque nightmare where seeking safety was treated as a crime.

Every time they invoked mental health law to detain or destabilize me, it was done under false pretenses. I was not in psychosis; I was in danger. I was not a threat; I was being threatened. The trauma inflicted by being repeatedly dragged off, locked in wards, and stripped of autonomy cannot be overstated. It is psychological torture to be told that everything you know to be happening is just a delusion – while your abusers continue to harm you with impunity. The mental health system was cynically used to silence my screams for justice, by making it seem as if those screams were just the ravings of a madman. I assure you, they were not.

Denied Legal Rights and Basic Protections

At every turn, my attempts to seek help or justice through normal channels were sabotaged. My legal rights have been systematically denied. When I tried to use whistleblower protection laws and report wrongdoing through proper procedures, I was shut out. I filed disclosures under the Public Interest Disclosure Act (Australia’s whistleblower protection law), which should have granted me immunity and triggered investigations. Instead, those in power chose to ignore my disclosures. I was denied the whistleblower protections I was entitled to, and no proper investigation into my claims of corruption ever took place .

As I pursued justice, I encountered roadblock after roadblock. I have been denied legal aid and representation repeatedly – a denial of my right to a fair hearing. For example, in one of my critical tribunal hearings against the NDIS, the NDIS arrived with a team of lawyers (funded by taxpayers), while I was left without any legal representation at all . The Public Guardian, an agency that exists to protect the interests of people with disabilities, not only failed to assist me, they actively hindered me by refusing to provide the advocacy and legal support they are obliged to give. This gross power imbalance in legal proceedings was not accidental; it was by design. They wanted me defenseless in the courtroom, just as I was in the psychiatric ward.

Furthermore, my access to justice was obstructed by other means. I found that I could not even report crimes committed against me to the police, because I was regarded with prejudgment and bias. On multiple occasions when I tried to file reports about the harassment or attempted murder, I was either turned away or, perversely, detained again under mental health grounds as if reporting these events proved I was “ill.” The very authorities I should be able to turn to for protection became agents of my persecution. In a particularly absurd twist, I discovered I had been declared a “missing person” five times across two states – despite the fact that I was very much present and begging for help. These false missing-person listings were used to justify intercepting me and dragging me back into custody even when I was just trying to live my life . This tactic created a paper trail painting me as a constantly lost, unstable individual, when in reality I was hiding from those trying to harm me. It is bureaucratic kidnapping under color of law.

Throughout these experiences, oversight bodies and watchdog agencies largely failed to act. I reached out to the Ombudsman, to human rights commissions, to anti-corruption bodies. Either they did nothing, or they gave me empty assurances while quietly siding with the government narrative. It felt like every institutional door was closed to me. The message was clear: no help is coming; you are entirely on your own. This is how a democracy dies – not with one dramatic blow, but with countless small betrayals of the public trust. In my case, those betrayals left me without food, shelter, legal recourse, or hope. Yet I persisted in fighting for my rights, because the alternative was to give up and let the perpetrators win.

Surviving Assassination Attempts and Psychological Torture

The persecution against me has escalated to the most dire level: attempts on my life. I say this with no melodrama – I am lucky to be alive today. There was at least one covert assassination attempt against me, which I narrowly survived. I have been informed by an individual connected to the scheme (a service provider who later confessed) that powerful actors within the government ordered my assassination . In fact, a current high-ranking minister of the Crown (the federal minister overseeing the NDIS) was named as having signed off on or facilitated this attempt to kill me . This is astonishing, I know. I myself struggled to believe that my country could come to this – that a public official would sanction eliminating a whistleblower – but the evidence and testimonies are there. It chills me to my core, not only for my own sake but for what it means about our society.

In that attempt, and possibly others, only sheer luck and vigilance saved me. I took precautions and made noise publicly at the right moments, which I believe foiled their plans. For instance, I actually published in real time the details of a plot to murder me as I learned of them, effectively shining a spotlight that made it harder for the perpetrators to go through with it . By making my potential assassination public, I may have saved my life. But no one should ever have to live with this kind of fear. I have been forced to exist like a fugitive or an exile within my own country – constantly moving, staying in undisclosed locations in rural Australia, looking over my shoulder every moment.

Beyond direct attempts to kill me, the day-to-day torture I’ve endured was often so intense that death loomed as a merciful escape. I have survived starvation, induced poverty, and medical neglect imposed on me deliberately. There were times I was left with no access to food or clean water for days. In one particularly cruel episode, I was left confined in a car without sustenance or assistance, essentially left to rot, with my loyal therapy dog beside me – she nearly died in that ordeal as well . I will never forget watching my dog suffer next to me, both of us trapped and helpless, as a result of the callousness of those persecuting me. This wasn’t a random mishap; it was engineered by policies and orders that cut off all my support and options, effectively trying to kill me slowly through deprivation.

The psychological torture has been just as ruthless. I mentioned the Voice-to-Skull harassment before – imagine trying to sleep or think while unseen attackers beam sounds or voices into your head, day and night, for months . It is meant to make you lose your mind or force you to commit suicide. They’ve coupled this with other forms of harassment: threats shouted outside my window at night, strange cars following me, anonymous messages telling me to give up or die. The goal is clear – to break my spirit, to make me end my own life out of despair. This is why I say I face the risk of death by two means: outright assassination or suicide induced by unrelenting torture.

Let me be absolutely clear here: I have no intention of killing myself. I love life, and I am fighting with everything I have to stay alive and seek justice. If I am found dead, I urge you all to question it. I am making this statement publicly so that the world knows: if I die in the near future, it is not by my own hand or any accident – it is the result of murder by the Australian state. Either they will succeed in directly assassinating me, or their campaign of psychological destruction will have effectively pushed me over the edge. Knowing this, I remain determined to survive. I refuse to give them the satisfaction of my silence or my death. I am speaking out now, at great personal risk, because the truth is more important than my fear.

The Cost of Persecution – Compensation for a Life Destroyed

The crimes committed against me have not only endangered my life – they have utterly devastated my life as I knew it. I have lost my home, my income, my career, my health, and my reputation. Nearly every aspect of a normal existence has been stripped away from me by this coordinated abuse of power. No one can give me back the years of life stolen or undo the trauma inflicted, but I am determined to hold the perpetrators accountable in every possible way. This includes seeking justice through financial restitution for the massive damages I have suffered.

By any reasonable measure, the scale of harm in my case is staggering. To illustrate, I will enumerate some of the key categories of damage I’ve endured:

• Forced Homelessness and Displacement: I was evicted from every safe space I found, driven into homelessness through intimidation via mental health orders. I spent long periods with no stable shelter because of deliberate actions by officials . This resulted not only in immense personal hardship but also loss of property and possessions.

• Loss of Career and Income: My professional life has been destroyed. I hold a PhD and had a promising career as an academic and creative artist, but due to blacklisting, character assassination, and constant interference, I was denied any opportunity to work and earn a living. The public defamation against me ensured no one would hire me. I have lost years of income and future earnings as a result .

• Psychological and Physical Torture: The trauma from years of persecution – including forced drugging, physical deprivation, and high-tech harassment – has caused profound psychological injury and physical health consequences. I will likely need extensive medical and therapeutic help to recover, if recovery is even fully possible. The pain and suffering here are incalculable, but they must be acknowledged in any just resolution.

• Reputational Destruction: The false criminal allegations and the stigma of being labeled “insane” have ruined my personal and professional reputation. My name was dragged through the mud in front of colleagues, friends, and the public. This kind of damage is in many ways irreparable – how do you restore someone’s good name after such a massive smear campaign?

• Denial of Basic Rights and Liberties: I was repeatedly deprived of my liberty through wrongful detentions. I was denied access to legal justice, as I described, and even denied access to healthcare at times when I desperately needed it (because I was blacklisted or because my insurance claims were sabotaged). The opportunity to live a normal life was taken from me.

• Attempts on My Life: As described, surviving attempted murder and constant death threats has its own cost. I live with continuous threat and hyper-vigilance, unable to ever fully relax or feel safe. This is a form of ongoing injury to my psyche and my ability to function in society.

Each of these categories represents enormous harm, and each alone would merit significant compensation in a court of law. Combined, they amount to nothing less than the total destruction of my life’s foundations. I believe that nothing short of a comprehensive, multi-faceted restitution would even begin to make this right.

In concrete terms, the compensation I am owed for these atrocities is massive. Based on detailed assessments of the financial and emotional damages:

• Conservative estimates (just covering basic losses and harm) put my owed compensation in the range of $3 to $6 million .

• More realistic estimates, which include punitive damages for the egregious abuses (false arrests, forced treatments, etc.), reach about $8 to $15 million .

• At the highest level, accounting for prolonged targeting, loss of future potential, and the need for systemic changes, the figure could be $20 to $30 million or even more .

To put it plainly: the Australian government and its accomplices owe me tens of millions of dollars for what they have stolen from me and to compensate for the pain they have caused. This is not a lottery win or a payday – it is the price of my ruined life. No sum of money can truly return what was taken, but this is about formal acknowledgment of wrongdoing and providing me the means to rebuild what can be rebuilt. It is also about deterrence – such a large penalty is necessary to signal that no government can do this to a person ever again without severe consequences.

Importantly, when I speak of compensation, I am talking not just about money in my pocket, but also about the resources needed to restore my dignity and security. I will use any restitution to secure a home, to get medical care, to recover my art and writing career, and to ensure I can live the remainder of my life in peace and stability. In essence, I am demanding the return of my stolen life, quantified in financial terms because that is how the legal system operates. Justice requires that I be made whole, as much as humanly possible. Those who orchestrated this persecution must be held financially responsible, on top of facing criminal accountability.

All I Ever Wanted Were Basic Human Rights

After hearing of the elaborate abuses I’ve suffered, it might be hard to believe what I’m about to say: All I ever wanted were the most basic of human rights. My demands were never extravagant. I did not seek power or wealth or special treatment. I simply wanted to live as a free and equal human being. I wanted what every person needs to live with dignity:

• A Home: a safe and stable place to live, where I am not under threat and not on the streets.

• Food and Medicine: the ability to feed myself and access necessary healthcare and medication without having those needs weaponized against me.

• Shelter and Safety: protection from the elements and from violence – not having to worry about being out in the cold or being harmed in the night.

• Freedom from Harassment: the right to go about my day without being surveilled, stalked, or intimidated. The ability to speak my mind without fear of violent reprisal.

These are fundamental human rights, enshrined in documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and supposedly guaranteed by our own nation’s laws and values. Yet, in my case, every one of these rights was trampled. I asked for help to secure these basics, and instead I was treated as an enemy of the state. It is a tragic indictment of our system when a person asking for nothing more than bread, medicine, a roof, and peace is answered with handcuffs, needles, and guns.

I want to emphasize this to everyone listening: my aspirations were not extreme. I was not trying to topple governments or seek revenge. I was trying to survive and hold on to my dignity. I pursued my whistleblower mission because I believed ordinary people deserved honest services (like the NDIS) free from corruption. And when I became a target for that, all I hoped was that I could find a corner of the world to live quietly and safely. But even that was denied to me. No one – no matter their political stance or background – should be denied these basic rights. A home, food, healthcare, safety, freedom from terror: these are minimal conditions for a life worth living.

My case lays bare a grotesque reality: in Australia, if someone in power decides you don’t deserve these rights, they can effectively take them all away. They can make you homeless, starving, untreated, and terrorized – and they will even claim it’s for your own good. This is unacceptable. I stand firm in declaring that what I seek are the rights that should be guaranteed to every human being. And I will continue to fight until I can once again enjoy those rights without fear of them being snatched away.

A Warning to the Public – It Could Happen to You

I am making this public declaration not only to save my own life and reclaim my rights, but also to sound a dire warning to all of you: If this could happen to me, it could happen to you. It could happen to your family, your children, or anyone you love. We cannot view my case as an isolated anomaly or the problem of “just one man.” It is a symptom of a deeper rot that concerns every Australian and every person who believes in freedom.

When a government is allowed to target, torture, and attempt to eliminate a whistleblower with no accountability, it sets a precedent that endangers everyone. Today it’s me – a dissident branded falsely as a madman and criminal. Tomorrow it could be a journalist who asked the wrong questions, a community leader who stood up against an injustice, or an ordinary citizen who stumbled upon inconvenient truths. The machinery of persecution that has been built around me can be turned on anyone, and if we as a society permit it to exist, none of us are safe.

I urge you, the public, to see through the lies that have been spread about me and others like me. If you have heard rumors or news portraying me as unstable or dangerous, please recognize that you have been deceived by a deeply corrupt system. This system relies on deceit – it relies on good people being tricked into thinking the targets of state repression somehow deserve what’s happening to them. I implore you to question the official narratives. Look at the facts I’ve presented. Use your own judgment and conscience.

The Australian government has shown a willingness to deceive and manipulate the public in order to cover up their persecution of me. They bank on the idea that people will dismiss my story as too far-fetched, or that they will accept the convenient explanation that I’m just “crazy.” But now you’ve heard my voice and seen my evidence. Ask yourself, what if I’m telling the truth? Because I am. And if I am, then a grave injustice is unfolding in our country – one that demands everyone’s attention.

I do not want anyone else to suffer what I have. I don’t want to see a future where your children have to grow up in a nation that hunts down truth-tellers like animals. We must draw a line here and now. Do not tolerate what has been done to me. Do not let them brush this aside. If you stay silent, if you allow them to paint me as a lone madman and continue on, then you are allowing this evil to take root. And one day, it will come for you in some form, because unaccountable power never stops at one victim.

This is my challenge to the public: prove them wrong. The corrupt officials pushing this agenda believe the public can be easily fooled and pacified. Show them that you will not be fooled. Show them that Australians (and people everywhere) will stand up when one of their own is being unjustly crushed. I beg you to stand on the side of truth, not on the side of convenient lies. Only public pressure and outcry can force a change, can bring sunlight into this darkness. I have done everything I can – at great personal cost – to expose this corruption. Now I am asking for your help to stop it, for all our sakes.

Conclusion – Standing Firm in Truth

In closing, I want to reaffirm why I am doing this. I am speaking out because I believe in the values that define our shared humanity: justice, dignity, and human rights. I refuse to let those values be trampled in silence. No matter how much fear they instill, I will not surrender my voice or my conviction. I know that what is happening to me is wrong – monstrously wrong – and to remain quiet would be to be complicit in that wrong.

I stand here, figuratively bloodied but unbowed. They tried to bury me, but I am seeds. As long as I breathe, I will fight for what is right, and I will shine a light on the truth. I ask you, whoever is listening or reading this, to join me in that light. Do not let my story disappear into the shadows. Share it, discuss it, investigate it for yourself. Hold your leaders accountable. Demand answers and justice on my behalf, because in doing so you are also demanding justice for yourselves and your children.

I want my life back. I want the nightmare to end. And I want to see Australia live up to its ideals instead of betraying them. Is that too much to ask? I don’t think so. I have faith that if enough brave people stand up and speak out, truth will prevail. My survival is itself an act of defiance and hope – hope that the human spirit can overcome even the darkest of times.

Thank you for listening to my story and my warning. I sincerely pray that my next communication will be in a time of safety and vindication, rather than in further desperation. Until then, I remain yours in truth and solidarity.

Dr. Richard William McLean (Barran Dodger) – Whistleblower, Truth-Teller, Survivor of State Persecution.

“All I ever wanted was to be treated as a human being. Please, let us ensure that no one else is ever denied that basic respect. Justice must happen – for me, and for all of us.”