A not insignificant reason for judges’ pandering to women who claim to be afraid of this man or that man is their consciousness of the impact that a feminist backlash would have on their careers if they were to discount a woman’s allegation of fear and then that fear were to be proved valid. So long robe and gavel.
It’s happened.
Knee-jerk feminists, to quote philosopher and feminist scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, are “brilliant work-shoppers, networkers, [and] organizers…. There has never been a more effective army of busybodies. And they know how to work the system.” They’re a political force to be reckoned with and one today’s society has been conditioned to truckle to. Seven or eight years ago, Harvard President Larry Summers was given the bum’s rush for making statements construed as derogatory to women at a conference on gender imbalances in science. And a judge is no less vulnerable to the feminist chopping block than a university president.
In theory, civil rulings are based on a preponderance of evidence. In practice, at least in the fast and loose arena of restraining order administration, they observe the rule that it’s better to err on the side of caution.
And it isn’t only men who suffer the consequences of this dereliction. Because the court must be seen to be fair and balanced, women are conversely victimized by unscrupulous men in accordance with the same politically slackened evidentiary standard. (In fact, though only one in five restraining orders is issued to a woman, at least as many women as men have submitted comments to this blog chronicling torturous restraining order ordeals—and some of these women even report they’ve been victimized by other women.)
The rationale echoes that of the witch trials: if a person was never a threat at all and doesn’t violate the restraining order, s/he appears to have been tamed by it, and the court can congratulate itself; if s/he was a threat and violates the restraining order, the court was right to intervene…and can congratulate itself.
Bottom line: We did our job.
Which is of course untrue. The court’s job isn’t to protect and serve the public. That’s the job of the police, which is why it says so on their cars. And it certainly isn’t the court’s job to protect and serve the career interests of its judges. The court’s job is to protect the dignity of our legal system and to impartially and diligently serve the cause of justice.
And none other.
Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com
TALKING BACK to restraining orders 
Time and time again, I’ve considered that there should be a filing fee for restraining orders. For some restraining orders, there exists a filing fee. However, in Illinois, an Order of Protection and an Illinois Stalking No Contact Order does not cost anything. That bothers me, as an individual can use them to legally harass another individual. I believe that it is reasonable to request a filing fee if an individual, at the time of filing, truly lacks the capability to pay the filing fee (say their possessions are in the home/apartment with the abuser, something reasonable). Otherwise, it tends to be a trend of barratry existing within the courts: Two people arguing without any real need to argue, as the issues are too petty to truly warrant the need for a restraining order. Although, their utility during divorce is understandable, as two individuals living in the same household competing for resources could potentially generate violence amongst each other, in many other situations, they do not see a reasonable legal object to use to defend one’s self, where defense is not necessary.
LikeLike
You’re totally right, of course. If the same $200 to $400 were charged for a restraining order that’s charged to file a lawsuit, applications would drop by 50% to 80% overnight.
Awards of federal grants to local courts ($500,000 average) mandate that those courts provide restraining orders for free. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that these grants issue from the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women.
LikeLike
One of the reasons that women like to use restraining orders is in order to attack the personal character of the male they were with. Perhaps the woman has probable cause from the relationship, whereby domestic violence occurred, and the boyfriend recently broke up with them.
It’s not an issue, whereby the ex-boyfriend is a danger to the ex-girlfriend. It’s not an issue where the boyfriend is going to cause irreparable harms to the ex-girlfriend. It’s about the ex-girlfriend attacking the ex-boyfriend based on allegations.
It’s an opportunity for the woman to be vindictive and seek an Order of Protection as a reparable and preventative injunction.
LikeLike
Lots of people have written who have ex-spouses who’ve done the same thing, often out of jealousy. In one case, this sort of thing was still happening 10 years later. Multiple applications for restraining orders to poison an ex-husband’s relationship with his new fiancee and keep their (shared) children from attending the wedding. The ex-wife (restraining order petitioner) was an attorney.
LikeLike