How VAWA Has Turned Our Courts into Restraining Order Vending Machines

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Under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), our courts and police districts are awarded hefty federal grants (averaging $500,000) in return for having their officers (judges and cops) “educated” about how to respond to allegations of fear or violence.

Allegations made pursuant to the procurement of a restraining order, per the terms of these grants, aren’t to be questioned.

It’s a little known fact that qualification training for police officers is about a quarter of that required for certification to cut hair. It’s bad enough, then, that cops are licensed to act on impulse. Far worse is that judges are licensed to do so.

That’s because the belief that judges base rulings on facts is mistaken. Judges avoid this whenever possible. If principles of law (rules) authorize officers of the court to dodge making “judgment calls,” they will be dodged. Typically what a “just” ruling means is a ruling that can be justified according to the rules.

To give an example, imagine a bewildered restraining order defendant who’s been falsely accused. If s/he misses or blows his or her opportunity to defend, “claim preclusion” rules forbid him or her from having the case heard or reheard later. The facts don’t matter. The court is authorized to ignore them—and it will.

Remedial legislation has been proposed, such as Oregon House Bill 2966 (“Allows respondent against whom restraining order has been issued to request withdrawal of order based on false allegations of abuse”):

At any time after a restraining order has been issued under ORS 107.095 (1)(c) or (d), 107.716 or 107.718, and after the restraining order has been entered into the Law Enforcement Data System maintained by the Department of State Police and into the databases of the National Crime Information Center of the United States Department of Justice as required under ORS 107.720, and into any other manual or computerized database maintained by the Department of State Police for purposes of tracking restraining orders issued under ORS 107.095 (1)(c) or (d), 107.716 or 107.718, the respondent may request that the court withdraw the order on the grounds that the petition and order were based upon false allegations of abuse. The request may be made at a hearing requested under ORS 107.718 (10) or by a separate motion filed with the court by the respondent.

But as things stand, if false allegations are put over on the court, they’re put over for good.

Judicial process proceeds from rules first and facts second. Our entire system of law is based upon the principle of stare decisis, which says that what has previously been decided must be adhered to.

A restraining order, which is issued without a defendant’s even knowing about it and based on a few-minute interview between a judge and plaintiff, already represents a preliminary decision. If, on top of this influential fact, the rule impressed upon judges is that allegations aren’t to be questioned, then “decisions” to confirm restraining orders aren’t really decisions at all.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

3 thoughts on “How VAWA Has Turned Our Courts into Restraining Order Vending Machines”

  1. You know this isn’t really the truth….a temporary restraining order is issued and if the respondent wants to contest it they have a right to a hearing in fact even a trial I should know I participated in a restraining order trial we had mutual restraining orders and they both ended up getting dismissed, sure it may be easy for people to get an initial order but it still has to be proven in a court of law for it to become permanent . I think at this point your blog is misleading and fulfilling your own agenda…I don’t care to get anymore of your posts…I think the only thing that needs to be changed about restraining order laws is domestic abusers (convicted) should be able to get an order against their victim on behalf of the children…I could have lost my kids because of his lies…what it boils down to is people with cluster B personality disorders use the court system to abuse by proxy period…all involved judges, police, and others need to learn about personality disorders to make informed decisions.

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    1. Hi, Jill.

      I approved your comment and am replying to it on the assumption that your interest in the truth is sincere. You’re obviously feeling angry toward a man, and I can identify with your feeling perfectly.

      Your belief that a person can lie up a storm to get an “initial order” from a judge but that if the same person lies a second time, it won’t work is mistaken. Lies that work once will and do work twice—and many more times than that, too. Nothing “has to be proven” in civil court. Proof is a criminal standard, not a civil one. Excepting in Maryland, restraining orders may be issued if someone says, “I’m afraid.” If a judge requires any facts at all, there’s no measure for determining whether “facts” provided by a plaintiff are true. They just have to be persuasive. People can lie exorbitantly, and those lies may not be disprovable, don’t have to be proved to work, and can work even if disproved.

      Let’s say someone makes a slew of false allegations. A judge may perceive that some are false, but if the preponderance of those allegations (the weight of them) strikes a judge as “good enough,” that’s all it takes. That’s not my interpretation, Jill; that’s the law.

      Mutual no-contact orders? I don’t mean to discount your suffering, but there are people, including women, who are falsely accused of stalking, sexual harassment, domestic and sexual violence, and child-beating or molestation. And in the restraining order “trials” you’re talking about, it isn’t always required that the plaintiff even show up. I don’t think you appreciate the ordeals and torments other people endure.

      Also, restraining orders aren’t only petitioned between members of heterosexual couples.

      Women of all ages, including retirees, have malicious restraining orders sworn out against them every day by their mothers, by their mothers-in-law, by their fathers, by their sisters, by female friends, by their husbands’ or boyfriends’ former wives or girlfriends, by neighbors, and by strangers.

      The reason I know this isn’t because judges saw through the false allegations; it’s because they didn’t see through them. Some of these women are put out on the street, some are jailed, and some not only lose their jobs but are prohibited from working in the only fields they’re qualified to work in. A woman in her sixties from my home state wrote a couple months ago because she was thrown out of her house by her sister and was living in her car. The false restraining order she was issued meant she could no longer work in the industry (banking) that she’d worked in for decades. Maybe the order against her will be dismissed, but even if it is, she may not be able to return to her job.

      Last Christmas, I was contacted by the mother of a young black woman who was impregnated by her sometimes violent white boyfriend and then discarded. When she had the man’s child, she contacted him to tell him, pleading with him to take an interest. At his parents’ urging, the man had a restraining order issued, had the black woman jailed (more than once), and seized custody of the child. His allegations of “harassment” weren’t even lies; the girl did persistently contact him. Did that make this okay?

      The girl, who now has stretch marks and a criminal record, was basically used as an incubator. I don’t think her mom specified her age, but my impression was she was just out of her teens.

      Is this a victory for VAWA?

      You’re right that you could have lost your kids—and I’m glad for you that this didn’t happen—but if you know you could have lost your kids, then you also know lying works. If it didn’t work, you would have had nothing to fear, right? Think about this, and you’ll see that you’re reasoning with your emotions because you’re feeling intensely angry toward a man.

      The reason this man was able to nearly take from you what’s most important to you is because restraining orders are easily got by fraud. Easily. And that’s because of the lobbying and influence of the feminist establishment, which ensure a low evidentiary threshold. Actually read what grants dispensed under VAWA demand and think about the effects of those demands.

      I guess you must have been attracted to the blog because you thought it was about abuses by people with mental or personality disorders. It isn’t. It’s about government and legal abuses. It just happens that people with mental/personality disorders abuse legal process a lot. And it may be that all abusers of legal process manifest the traits of mental or personality disorders to some extent.

      The courts are influenced by the billions of dollars dispersed under the Violence Against Women Act, which also go toward influencing public perceptions. There are no billions with which to educate judges and the public about mental and personality disorders. Please think about that, too.

      If you imagine my “agenda” is Power to the Patriarchy, Jill, please know that it isn’t. Excepting in certain contexts, I really couldn’t care less whether a person’s genitals are convex or concave. This blog represents lost time to me and was conceived in reaction to stolen time. It’s no source of reward.

      Corruption, bullying, lying, hypocrisy, sanctimony—these things disgust me deeply. I don’t believe women are children, and I don’t believe women should be treated like children. But I don’t hate them, and I have no objection to reasoned criticism. If you don’t care to subscribe to the blog, though, unsubscribe.

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