Truth and Character Matter but not to MONTY ROBERTS who LIES. A Call for Justice — Lies Must Never Be a Justification of Anything!
The Truth About Horseman Monty Roberts. This site exposes the various lies crafted by horse-trainer Monty Roberts in his quest for money and glory in the horse world. Through these links you can access important information about the lawsuits against him. The sites also show a slew of inconsistencies by Monty himself.
URGENT MUST-SEE VIDEO REPORTS: MONTY ROBERTS ENCOURAGES BRAZILIAN COWBOYS TO REPEATEDLY BEAT A HORSE, TIE IT UP AND THEN BEAT IT AGAIN — the video posted to YouTube is so disturbing that Google requires you to log in to prove your age in order to see it. The second link we post here is a Brazilian news report about the incident. DISGUSTING! — click the links (hopefully Google/YouTube would not have removed them)
OTHERWISE — While we believe that Monty’s basic message against the abuse of horses is a good one, we do not believe he should be allowed to ride to fame, glory and profit by filling people’s heads with lies and exaggerations as to his background and other aspects of his life. Truth and character do matter. It’s time for the world to take notice.
He dubbed himself the “horse whisperer” with his first book “The Man Who Listens to Horses”. He not only does NOT listen to horses, he doesn’t even listen to their owners. Be advised: everyone associated with the movie “The Horse Whisperer” disavowed the notion that Monty Roberts was the model for the lead character played by Roberts Redford – even Redford himself basically called Monty Roberts a liar with respect to that.
Monty Roberts smears the reputations of his dead parents and deceives the world with outrageous lies in his books and public appearances around the world. Though he claims to have been an abused and beaten child, Monty led a pampered life showing horses and was loved by two parents who did everything they could to make life easy for him. “Horse Whispers and Lies” is a book written by his own family members who call him a liar.
Monty Roberts is a FRAUD.
“I must thank you for shining a light on Mr. Roberts. I often suspected he was making things up, especially in his books and I have found numerous insights into his character on the internet (especial at Citizens for Justice.org) and elsewhere that prove without a shadow of a doubt that he is indeed a fraud. I agree with others that ultimately his message (along with many others’) to not abuse animals is a good one, but that has absolutely nothing to do with his basic and base character and money grab! (received April 20, 2015 from Marjorie K.)
“I HAVE BEEN TAKEN IN BY LIES. MONTY ROBERTS WAS TO ME A MENTOR, A VALUABLE ROLE MODEL. I SAW THE VIDEO NOW AND I CANNOT BELIVE A MAN LIKE THAT. I HATE HIM, I AM 12 YEARS OLD AND I HAVE NEVER HATED SOMEONE SO MUCH. I LOVE HORSES AND THIS MAN DID TOO, OR SO I THOOUGHT. THANK tHaNk You SO much for showing me the LIES and CRUELNESS of MONTY ROBERTS!!!” — (received Feb. 2015 from Erika)
“My son recently worked at the Monty Robert’s Flag is Up Farms and left, disgusted by the inconsistencies, lies, fraud and mistreatment of horses. We personally rescued 2 horses from the farm that were going to be destroyed. One because it wouldn’t respond to Robert’s “method”, the other because it was “ugly”. We had learned of other horses that had been destroyed because they wouldn’t respond to his “method” and have nothing but disgust for him. One of the horses we personally rescued was a wild mustang named Thunder who would not conform to Roberts’ so called method of training. They would not allow anyone to go near the horse, calling it dangerous, and were going to have it destroyed.
My son challenged him and we took the horse to our farm where my son has gentled and worked with Thunder who is now a wonderful, perfect gentleman. As a trainer my son has spoken with others who have had horses destroyed because of Monty Roberts recommendation to do so. We observed personally the fraud in his Join Up training demonstration. He uses horses that have already been tried and tested and says he has never seen the horse before. It was terribly embarrassing for us when we realized what he was doing. Thank you for creating a website with the truth about this fraud. ” — (received Oct. 2013)
Monty has written internationally published books of lies: “The Man Who Listens to Horses” — “Shy Boy: The Mustang that Came in from the Wild” — “Horse Sense for People — From My Hands to Yours” — “The Horses in My Life — Ask Monty: the 150 Most Common Horse Problems Solved”. The fraud has been extensive and he’s been helped all along the way by his wife, Pat Roberts and his son Marty Roberts, who is actually a lawyer with very little in the way of legal skills. Plus there have many many Monty enablers throughout the years.
Visit Citizens for Justice.org for Monty Roberts fraud reports.
Related Tags: horse whispering, join-up international, flag is up farms, wild mustangs, horse sense, dually halter, equus horse language, natural horsemanship
MONTY ROBERTS: HORSE WHISPERS & LIES: BOOK REVIEW: The Book That Trumps Monty Roberts’ Own — by John Dolan w/Susan Harris
“Horse Whispers & Lies” answers the question it has emblazoned across its cover – Did Monty Roberts Trade Truth for Glory? – with a resounding ‘Yes’!
It details Monty Roberts’ life and times in his early years, the years in which he says he was viciously abused by his father, a man he describes as a racist and a murderer as well as an abuser of horses. The new book, written by Debra Ann Ristau and Joyce Renebome, Monty Roberts’ cousin and aunt respectively, successfully counters, point by point, tales told by Monty Roberts himself in his own best-seller “The Man Who Listens To Horses”.
“Horse Whispers and Lies” is remarkable for the wealth of historical research and interviews with people who knew and loved the Roberts during Monty’s childhood. If you can believe what each and every person quoted in the book states, then Monty Roberts’ parents were truly larger than life. They appear as extraordinary role models for all their horse riding students, friends and associates. They taught their students self-esteem and moral values that these children carried into adulthood and then passed on to their own children. Monty Roberts’ parents were so revered, in fact, that the Red Pony Stall Exhibit at the John Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California has been recently dedicated in their honor.
So the question comes, how is it that Monty Roberts is the only person not to have been so positively affected by Marvin and Marguerite Roberts? It is indeed an interesting question and I’m not sure that Monty’s own brother, Larry, who is heavily quoted in the book even knows the answer.
Although Larry did not contribute in the writing of the book, he may as well have, because his quotes are some of the most powerful in their indictment of Monty’s tall tales and forgotten memories. It is Larry who sets the record straight on important points from Monty’s imaginary trip to Nevada where Monty says he learned the behavior of wild mustangs, to an imaginary boxcar that hauled Monty and his best horses to shows around the country to imaginary parental abuses, to the imaginary abuse of horses by his father to myriad other issues.
The authors even cast doubt on Monty’s story of how he came to own his state-of-the-art training facility Flag Is Up Farms in Solvang, California. What is especially remarkable, though, is reading the words of Marvin E. Roberts in his 1957 book “Horse and Horseman Training” and seeing how Monty’s own training techniques merely parrot what his father had previously established: fair and safe methods using line work in a round pen for starters. Perhaps Monty Roberts thought no one would ever drag out a old copy of his father’s book to compare notes.
Monty Roberts is painted as a spoiled child who was never happy enough with all the sacrifices his parents made for him. He is painted as a temperamental and greedy soul whose own actions caused death to one of his own horses and an injury to another’s horse. And lastly he is painted as a man with an enormously unnatural ego. There is a passage at the end of the book, a letter to Monty from another cousin of his named Cheri, it does answer the question of “Why” Monty Roberts would choose lies over truth, it is because his parents were larger than life, people whose talents Monty knew he could never exceed. And yet he so much wanted to do to just that. So he tore them down to build himself up to be larger than life as well.
But as much as the book is an indictment of Monty Roberts, it is also a glorification of two remarkable people, Marvin and Marguerite Roberts, his parents, and a mini-history of Salinas, California in the forties and fifties during which time his parents ran a horseback riding school on the rodeo grounds there. The parents’ history itself spans fifty years, however, and the book is chock full of interesting first hand accounts by relatives, friends, students and business associates.
I have heard charges by Monty Roberts’ supporters that the authors of “Horse Whispers and Lies” are ‘greedy’ or that they are trying to ‘cash in on Monty Roberts’ fame and want to make a killing by selling their book.’ But, isn’t that precisely what Monty Roberts himself has done in defaming his parents and exaggerating or simply making up stories in order to sell his own ‘non-fiction’ book (not to mention videos, caps, tee-shirts, posters, live demonstrations, etc.)? There are some people who insist that the ends always justifies the means. Others cannot fathom such a corruption of truth and honesty. Monty Roberts has claimed that his ends – the humane treatment of horses – is all that really matters. Whatever happened to: “Honor thy mother and thy father” and “Thou shalt not lie”? Exaggeration, lying, omissions and defamation: what an extraordinary means to an end! And money, while being a formidable motivator to many, is not the sole motivator to all.
I previously read “The Man Who Listens To Horses” and found it an interesting, even, exciting at times treatise but it is clearly a fiction as is the man himself. So, for all those people who read and loved “The Man Who Listens To Horses”, I urge them to read “Horse Whispers and Lies”. Because, as Ristau and Renebome so eloquently put it, ‘truth matters’. — (end book review)
AND FINALLY: Must reads
CitizensForJustice Report: How this organization exposed Monty’s lies, including his false accusations of extortion; two lawsuits against Monty Roberts for neglect, animal abuse, human injury, breach of contract, proving that Monty Roberts is a liar and a fraud.
Monty Roberts’ MISREPRESENTATION of the WIPO domain name dispute.
Monty Roberts is a FRAUDULENT AUTHOR
TIME MAGAZINE: Books: Horse of a Different Color
“To put the matter politely, memoirs are self-serving. Still, it’s something of a shock to learn that Monty Roberts’ enormously popular, enormously self-approving memoir The Man Who Listens to Horses may assay out as part fiction. Call it horse puckey for the soul, if charges by Monty’s younger brother Larry and others close to the author’s life are to be credited. By these accounts, backed up by TIME’s reporting, the stirring tale with more than 800,000 copies in print–out this month in paperback–contains an embarrassing number of seeming untruths, some harmless, others outrageous.” CLICK THE ABOVE LINK to read the whole book review article By John Skow and James Willwerth/Aspen – Monday, Dec. 14, 1998
HORSE WHISPERS & LIES AUTHORS RESPOND TO MONTY’S WEB DEFENSE
by Debra Ann Ristau & Joyce Renebome (February 22, 2000)
Monty Roberts recently made a statement regarding Horse Whispers & Lies on his website. It is a forty-six-page document addressing ten issues: READ MORE HERE
HWL: General Book Excerpts
HWL: Chapter 1 Excerpts
HWL: More Book Excerpt