Advocates of restraining orders consider this standard too demanding.
The previous post addressed American standards of evidence and observed that with a single exception, the standard that’s applied to restraining order adjudications, “preponderance of the evidence,” is the least demanding.
Both the award of restraining orders and their being made “permanent” are at a judge’s discretion. (One of the meanings of discretion is “freedom to choose.”)
Even in Maryland, the exception to the rule, where final decisions to approve restraining orders must meet the intermediate standard of “clear and convincing evidence,” issuance of restraining orders is discretionary.
In other words, it’s pretty much up to whether judges feel plaintiffs’ allegations are more probably true than not. (Some states call this “good cause” or “reasonable grounds.”)
As previously remarked, this means the legitimacy of restraining order claims is always iffy. This is beside the fact that issuance of restraining orders proceeds from brief, one-sided interviews between plaintiffs and judges, and hearings to finalize them, which may be held mere days later, may themselves be nearly as cursory. Prejudice in favor of complainants, furthermore, has been conditioned if not explicitly mandated, and is all but universal.
What must be emphasized is that in a significant number of cases, despite their bearing criminal imputations or implications, the word evidence isn’t actually applicable.
This is the standard according to which restraining order allegations are “vetted.”
The phrase standard of evidence is misleading, because we’re accustomed to equating the word evidence with proof.
A restraining order may be approved on no more ascertainable a basis than an accuser’s alleged emotional state, that is, the claim of fear may be sufficient. Even when “evidence” is adduced, it may of course be misrepresented—and easily. Doctoral candidates’ oral exams are far more rigorous than restraining order hearings.
Worthy of note is that their tolerance of an absence of proof is both the reason why restraining orders are criticized and the reason why restraining orders are defended.
The only “justification” for restraining orders is the absence of proof.
This isn’t as counterintuitive as it sounds. Crimes alleged on restraining orders are prohibited by criminal statute. Assault, for example, may of course be tried in criminal court.
In that case, however, satisfaction of the standard “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” is necessary.
Restraining orders are stopgaps. What do you do if someone’s threatening you or knocking you around, but you can’t prove it? You apply for a restraining order. It takes an hour—or at most an afternoon—and gratification is immediate. The provision of instant relief was one of the germinal motives of restraining order laws.
All well and good, and there’s no question that people are abused all the time in ways they could never prove in criminal court. But what if an accuser is neurotic, mentally ill, or maliciously lying to gratify an ulterior motive?
There’s no failsafe built into the system. Recognize this, and the limitless potential restraining orders have for abuse becomes obvious.
What restraining orders do is make it easy for the system to dispense with a great number of complaints in short order that would otherwise gum up the works. They also keep a number of special interests happy and a lot of people busy and flush.
This wouldn’t be a big deal if their consequences were minor and restraining orders left no traces once their terms expired. This, however, isn’t the case. Restraining orders, which are prejudicially presumed by the public to be issued to stalkers and batterers, are public records that are not only preserved in the databases of the courts that issued them but in those of state and federal police.
This assertion, which originates from the Maryland governor’s office and which presumes only genuine victims apply for restraining orders, argues that allegations ranging from “serious bodily harm” to “rape or sexual offense” should be adjudicated according to the same standard as contract or insurance disputes (as they are in every other state).
Direct consequences to their recipients, besides harassment and public humiliation, may include eviction from their homes and denial of access to kids, money, and property; and proximal consequences may include loss of employment and employability—along with all of the psychological effects that ensue from such losses, among which may be loss of enjoyment of life. Victims of delusional or malicious accusers may moreover be subject to arrest and incarceration if additional allegations are filed.
Pretty big deals, all of them, especially when the precipitating allegations are trumped up. Lives are undone by less.
Few suggest that restraining orders should be abolished, because no one wants to be accused of indifference to victims of domestic violence. The justification for restraining orders, finally, is coercive (and maybe always was).
Restraining orders should be abolished—or radically reconceived.
It’s true that restraining orders help victims out of abusive situations, and this is huge; but in a nation founded on the principle that all people are equal, no group’s interests excuse injury to other people. Aid to those in abusive situations, including children, must not come at the expense of others whose entitlement under the law is the same.
This doesn’t mean those in abusive situations should be written off; it means the present “solution” needs to be revised, because it’s unconscionable.
Coercive influences on law related to violence against women have generated wild imbalances in how allegations of stalking and domestic violence are treated, and have besides promoted unreasonable expansions of statutory definitions (“domestic violence,” for example, can mean a single act, which may not even qualify as violent). Our laws have become rattletraps.
Adjudication of restraining orders, catchalls that bear the stigma of stalking and violence and which may include these allegations among an assortment of others, is particularly problematic, because criminal allegations as severe as rape may escape being answerable either to a jury or to the standard to which they should properly be subject.
That standard is “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com
TALKING BACK to restraining orders 
Reblogged this on .
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Dear Todd:
This past Thursday I was in court under compulsory process and a $5,000 bond in another of two prosecutions for cyberstalking waged by my neighbor from hell. This was my 27th appearance in court because of this woman. Although I have mixed emotions about it and wished to take the case into the appellate system to get a ruling on the constitutionality of restricting content-based speech to the whole world on the internet, the judge threw Grist out of court and dismissed the charge of cyberstalking. She got caught perjuring herself about the libel she had published on Robert Borzotta’s NEIGHBORS FROM HELL Facebook pages (discussed here).
Now I have remaining another hearing with this demonic entity on July 3 on my motion to set aside the restraining order she obtained by default and by fraud and perjury.
I’ll try to write more as time goes by. I wrote comments about the witch hunt under the title “Dismissed” in usenet’s alt.appalachian.
Thanks for your support and your splendid courtesy during this ordeal.
Larry Smith
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Congratulations, Larry, that’s great news. Was that you on the recording on your blog crisply pronouncing in court, “Objection—calls for speculation,” repeatedly? (I’m working with a beater laptop, and the sound isn’t great.) I wish I’d had your command of procedure when I was (last) in court (I still hadn’t been dispossessed of my faith that sincerity should count for something). You sounded like you should still be doing this professionally. You sounded sharp.
I can’t believe this has ground on as long as it has.
Hearing your antagonist (vaguely) was interesting, too. What it’s impossible to convey to others is that people who act irrationally can sound totally collected and plausible. I could at least detect her tone and calm. It’s was hard for me to listen to, because hers reminded me of my own accuser’s monotone. And that dead-air quality of courtroom recordings creeps me out, besides.
I’ve been trying to absorb your saga. It’ll take a little more doing than I anticipated. Yours would be a great story for a New York Times Magazine piece. Its writers do such a fine job.
If you made yours a multimedia blog with audio, incidentally, you might be an instant sensation. You make me wonder what I must sound like as a purely print presence. I just wanted to live a quiet, writerly life (birds and dogs have always been sources of joy to me, too), but I’m beginning to appreciate why a lot of people video blog.
Resist, don’t resist—either way your life gets laid out on a vivisectionist’s table.
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That voice you heard was Attorney Keith Hanson, who did a pathetic job of representing me in the first cyberstalking case in a nonjury bench trial before Judge Cathey. He may have sounded sharp, but let me tell you: He tried over and over to muscle me into pleading guilty, and even tried after I had given notice of appeal to Superior Court, after Cathey had found me guilty, to scam me into accepting Cathey’s judgment and over $500 in court costs. I stood up to him and refused, and the case was dismissed in Superior Court, a jury court, after four attendances there and I had sent a letter to our corrupt DA (We call him Moe Ron Moore-on) that I was planning on demanding he be indicted in Federal Court for pursuing this frivolous case against me in violation of my First Amendment rights and 18 U. S. Code, Section 242, Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law. In just a few days after that letter in longhand was clocked and posted to the DA, he permanently dismissed the charge. Soon I’ll post a copy of the first cyberstalking warrant on my blog. And I’ll also post salient portions in MP3 of the recent cyberstalking prosecution which was dismissed at the end of the state’s evidence by Judge David K. Fox.
Hostilities started in early spring of 2011 and have raged ever since. Other than posting accurate material, and a tad of parody, on my blog to expose her to the whole world as a thief and a charlatan, I have done nothing to the woman.
Yes, Marty Tackitt-Grist’s testimony is hard to hear. I used Audacity to enhance it for my old half-deaf ears, and that helped. But I posted the testimony unenhanced so that it would not appear that I had done anything to alter the recording of her testimony.
Thanks for your kind remarks, Todd. I wish you the best now and for the future, and I certainly can empathize with someone like you who has suffered the envenomed sting of false accusations. Call me or email me any time. teecrafter@yahoo.com five eight two, two eight two eight, AC 828.
Total gantlets for me: two restraining orders, three show-cause orders, two cyberstalking arrests, and a failure-to-appear arrest and jailing despite faxes from two doctors that I was too crippled, disabled, and suffering from herniated discs to be able to attend court. But at least the latter charge of failure to appear washed out when Judge Fox dismissed the second cyberstalking warrant.
And by the way, the last 15 or 20 minutes, especially during cross-examination, were electrifying for me and the judge — I began to see him bristle at her — because Marty Tackitt-Grist got caught redhanded lying under oath that day. Perjury is a felony in our state, but $100 to a nickel says she’ll never be prosecuted for it. At least I got to hear the judge tell this evil woman, who has now been exposed like Potiphar’s Wife for her false testimony, that she “came into court with unclean hands.”
Have a great day! You and I both deserve it, don’t we? I feel like I am partially back together again after being sadistically dissected into parts like a frog in anatomy lab.
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I figured you represented yourself. Sounds like you’d have been better off. Ignoring anguish and lost years, then, how much are you out of pocket because of this nonsense?
I wish I knew enough about court procedure to estimate how much an ordeal like yours will have cost the state (i.e., taxpayers) by now. Maybe you can guess.
Crazy how just one judge’s belated acknowledgment of your travails makes all the difference, isn’t it?
You sound cheerful. That’s something. Yeah, that’s been my daily refrain for years: “I need a f*ing vacation!”
I’ll get in touch at some point, because I think your neighborhood feud illustrates better than any case I’ve heard of how lives are unraveled by nothing.
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Mr. T, I see that in a recent article of yours, always well-written, that you have taken on the judges. Good for you. Now you know that the biggest part of this vast collusion in the states, and with the feds, is with the judges; and of course, a causative force is the huge revenue stream from Washington that finances these state courts ravenous for cash.
I want to explain to you something about that quote of Judge Patricia Young (above). You won’t find it on the internet, I don’t think. Back a few months ago, I had this lawyer, now discharged because he is largely a wimp and a fixer who has given me sloppy erroneous advice several times. He has an office in a building owned by Judge Young’s husband here in Asheville. Because of my terrible bad back and diseased discs and a curvature of the spine called scoliosis, I was unable to attend court in the latest cyberstalking witch hunt. He asked me to send faxes of my crippling condition from my doctors, which I did. But the faxes disappeared, and the judge had me ordered arrested for failure to appear on an utterly worthless warrant which is void on its face and drafted by an illiterate magistrate. Sometime later he texted me and said another lawyer in his building had grabbed up the faxes and taken them. I really don’t believe that, but at least the C&F (called and failed) was finally stricken, although the next time I was to appear on the same bum charge, I could not attend court, sent faxes, and the prosecutor and judge ignored them and ordered me arrested and jailed. And I was indeed arrested, roughed up, and jailed until a friend went my bond. So I took a poke with that statement at Judge Young because I have a sneaking suspicion that shenanigans caused those faxes to disappear. As a matter of fact, I have a feeling Judge Young would love to give me a good flogging in court. She has pulled a few dirty little fast ones on me so far, but has been unable to do anything damaging to my substantive rights except by gaming the calendars and on one occasion having deputies arrest me and bring me to her courtroom to give me an idiotic lecture when I was legitimately trying but without success to obtain a court order of discovery in one of my many cases in which I have had the hell frivolously lawed out of me. As you know, due process is not available to defendants in these cases, while tsunamis of law are available to the plaintiffs. And the judges serve as their attorneys. This I have witnessed time and time again, and A. H. Caplan describes the shameful phenomena eloquently in his law review article.
In short, our courthouse here in Asheville is a little Tammany Hall full of corrupt Boss Tweed machine politicians who are fueled with ruthless politics, filthy VAWA lucre, and chicanery, not law.
The material you have highlighted above puts me in mind of the plaintiff and complaining witness in all the cases in which I have attended court, now 26 times and counting. I have read eagerly about the Dark Tetrad, and all the personality disorders, and she fits, and overlaps into several of them, most particularly Histrionic Personality Disorder. Her derangement emerged conspicuously in a recent hearing which she lost because the judge finally had her figured for someone who is mentally ill, sort of like David Letterman’s persecutor. She got caught in several lies and a load of exaggerations.
There is so much more to tell, but I’ll talk more later.
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This is monstrous, Larry. No one gets that these “tsunamis” start with a wheeze of halitosis from some malefactor with nothing better to do.
I posted links to the Volokh and Caplan articles you’ve mentioned.
How did all of this start, Larry? I mean, was there an angry exchange or a slight or something that set this off? Let me know if you’d mind if I posted a piece here on the blog. I saw in your blog that you mentioned to the ABC producer that you’d been in and out of court 20 or 25 times. What was all that about?
I’ll put up something this week if you don’t object. I’m not going to use this person’s name, because even though the immunities you’ve cited to me might be the law, I know only too well that it’s anything goes if someone decides to target you.
FYI, I was contacted in early 2012 (I think) by a woman whose name had been included in a comment on the blog. The man who named her was an alcoholic, and after corresponding with the woman for a week or so, it was clear to me that she was a decent person who was only reluctantly pursuing charges against a former roommate who seemed to be the real source of the conflict. We concluded the exchange friends, but she did intimate when she first wrote that she’d pursue action if I didn’t remove the offending comment (which was apparently one of many the man had made).
I don’t think you’re a crank, but I know too well that judges are authorized to be careless. I also know that if a complainant is represented by an attorney, that’s an extra license for a judge to rule with a Crayola.
From a précis I was just reading:
How to manipulate judges and bosses
Strangers to these processes have no idea how prejudicial they can be (based on a lie—or a handful of them—long since buried beneath a heap of paper bullshit).
To give you a peephole into my own case—which is all I can give you publicly—in the spring of 2012 (on April Fools Day, no kidding), I was contacted by someone who apologized to me for past conduct and its effects on my ambitions and earnings (six years later); met with me and “comradely” hugged me; “solicitously” phoned and emailed for months; said she was eager to assist me with raising funds for a surgery for my dog, an agility athlete who had then been crippled and hobbling on three legs for half a year (and who would now be vegetative but for the aid of some genuinely good people); said she wanted to confab about creative writing projects (what I’d meant to make my life’s work, as she well knew); and then abruptly went silent and eight months later testified against me as a surprise witness in a libel case based significantly on information she had fed me the previous summer, which she smoothly denied. The court thanked her for her testimony and ignored the emails of hers that I submitted into evidence (and even had some of the comments of hers that I quoted redacted from the record because of their potential to cause scandal).
Hang in there, Larry. I wish there were something more encouraging I could say.
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Somehow I have never come around to the fact that some humans are the very essence of evil. I grew up in a little arcadian valley here in Western North Carolina with the nicest people, mostly farmers; and I guess my youth just left me naive about some people. I always saw the good in them.
I went off to school and then to law school and began practicing law in Asheville in 1973. It was after a few years of this that I began to be shocked that our institutions of government, of law and the courthouse, of cities and counties, of our courts and legislators were corrupt — at least those here. So by 1986 when I began to see that law was merely window dressing for the corruption in our institutions, and I was slowly going deaf, I just quit paying bar dues and quit law.
For 25 years I have lived on this street with lovely people. We always got along, although one or two you had to watch. During most of that 25 years there have been three different owners of the house across the street. The other two we dearly loved. The last one, the incarnation of purest evil, moved here in 2005. She was a divorcee who volunteered that her divorce was especially nasty, the first red flag which I foolishly disregarded: She constantly badmouthed her ex. For the first few years we were friends, but as time went by she became an almost insufferable mooch and just way too friendly, expecting more attention from her neighbors, and from us, than we wanted to give. Sometime in early 2011, I left her a voicemail and told her I didn’t want to be close friends with her any more. She was a hoverer, she manipulated, she was a narcissist. And the message meant that I did not want to be called on to mow her lawn any more, or help her trim her trees, or lend her tools, or watch her pet while she was gone, or help her move heavy loads like furniture, or listen to her constant whining. I just wanted to cool it with her.
In the spring of 2011, she had been converting her home to a sort of boarding house and brought in tenants, and among them they had two cats that constantly prowled, especially the tenant’s. What became very irksome to me was the tenant’s cat creeping into our yard and killing our baby birds, which we always looked forward to in the spring. And the minute I brought it up with her, she pitched a fit, and so did the tenant. So for the first two months of baby bird season Martha’s cats killed all our fledglings and the mother songbirds — wrens, cardinals, robins, mockingbirds, towhees, mourning doves, even the hummingbirds, just wiped them out. I finally got in touch with our Animal Services officers but by that time bird season was over with, and you know something, the old bitch began going about telling neighbors that I was a disbarred lawyer (a particularly nasty slander). One thing led to another, and finally the tenant with the marauding cat moved away, but the irreparable damage was done and all through the summer I had been warned by other neighbors that the neighbor from hell was plotting revenge. I went to her one day and asked her if there was anything I could do to make it so we could at least drop all the nasty hostilities. She exploded. Next thing I knew she had three police cruisers here with a false tale that I was “harassing” her and calling her names. This was no surprise because early on I learned not to believe a thing she said because she just made up the most unbelievable tales about her personal crises. One of the 5 cops who came spoke with me in the yard, and I thought this would all blow over, but in a few days a process server was banging on the door with papers to serve me. I met him in a commercial parking lot nearby and accepted the lawsuit, an application for a restraining order, a TRO, and, well, a great big wad of lies. It was a shocker. And little did I know that the very day I received this horse-choking wad of papers, at around 10:15 a. m., the crazy old beldam was back in the courthouse filing another affidavit to have me ordered to show cause why I should not be jailed for contempt. In other words, before I even had notice of the TRO she was trying to have me jailed for violating it. That’s just how damn mean that woman is. [end of first intallment]
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You know, we all shell out to watch movies in which the (anti)hero pacifies conflict by brandishing a 2 x 4 but react with horror at someone’s proposing this kind of resolution in real life. We have the authorities and courts to resolve differences “civilly.” Harrumph.
A refereed grudge match would be worlds more civilized.
We’ve created this records-based world in which people’s value is based on GPAs and test scores and résumés. Yet most don’t seem to appreciate how damaging it is to have allegations against y0u permanently parked in public databases.
Here are some visitor search terms from the past week:
a restraining order prevented me from fulling an agreement
are restraining orders public
are restraining orders public record
are restraining orders public record in new York
can a restraining order affect your record
can an order of protection damage your reputation
can i get fired from job for protective order served in va.
do restraining orders in ny go on record
does a restraining order go on your record
does an expired restraining order stay on your record
does restraining order show on you record nj or is it confidential
does restraining order stay on permanent record ma.
lost my job because a false restraining order
what happens if a firefighter gets a restraining order
will a protective order impact license as therapist?
Anyhow, Larry, let me know if you’d mind if I chronicled this in a post. No one gets how willing state agencies are to abet this kind of conduct. Or how “crazy-making” it is. They don’t even know this stuff happens. Sometimes turning a first-person account into a third-person account makes it more credible.
One of the earliest responses I had to the blog was, “Why would somebody lie about that?” People (seemingly including judges) don’t understand attention-seeking and wanting to hurt others gratuitously as motives for lying. Which is silly. Those have to be among the most common motives for lying. As every little kid knows.
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I don’t mind if you chronicle my woes. I am too old to worry about having my reputation sullied by malicious libelists. (not you but so many others with corrupt motives) I have found from bitter experience, though, that like Sicilian mobsters, public officials will even get down in the gutter to harass and terrorize members of your immediate family if you criticize them. Two of my children have been viciously attacked, one stalked by publishing her email in an internet forum and inviting men to contact her for sex, and one accused of running a meth lab when both of them are respected, virtuous members of their communities with good work records and no brushes with the law. I asked them when they were little children not to go to law school because law has been corrupted in this country, and especially in this vicinity, since the seventies.
It is verifiably true that I have been dragged into court in Asheville under compulsory process 26 times now. I have two upcoming court dates, one on an absurd and unconstitutional cyberstalking warrant on Thursday, 26 June 2014, and another on 3 July 2014, a hearing on a civil nondomestic restraining order obtained by fraud and deceit and without notice while I was at home lame and invalid from scoliosis and advanced disc disease.
So have at it, Todd, and the best to you and yours.
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I saw the chronicle of October reports to the police on your blog. How does this not suggest “crank” to authorities? Have you tried applying for a restraining order against this person, or are you loath to play her game? It sounds like your kids could accompany you and make a pretty persuasive case.
I’ll put something together for next week. Best to you guys, too, Larry, and good luck tomorrow. Just thinking about what you have in store makes me queasy.
For the benefit of anyone else who reads this thread, below are seven (7) reports filed by a neighbor over a 12-day period last fall on a man with a degenerative spinal disorder out with his dogs, three toy poodles he calls his “house babies.” The same neighbor has had him summoned to court 26 times in recent years on sundry allegations, besides identifying him on the Internet as, among other things, a disbarred attorney, a diabolical hacker of phones and email accounts, a “mooner,” and a malicious dog whisperer who’s coaxed unseen “plott hounds” to bay at her relentlessly.
This is a toy poodle:
These are plott hounds:
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Do as you wish with it, Todd. You have my full cooperation.
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Don’t worry. You won’t hurt my feelings by not publishing my comment about Judge Cathey because of your concerns about liability. However, as a host, you are held harmless by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That federal law provides safe harbor to such dirt-mongers as Topix and Reddit for leaving pernicious speech in their forums.
BTW, UCLA Constitutional Law Professor A. H. Caplan has written a white paper published on the net that the civil nondomestic restraining order laws now in effect in most of the states are unconstitutional. These laws are every bit as intolerable to our republic as their cousin domestic violence laws that punish (mostly) men. Drafters of these laws have redefined the words “stalking,” “abuse,” “harassment,” “battering,” and “violence” to criminalize behavior — usually speech — that just a few decades ago was normal in every household, in the neighborhoods, and on the streets.
We are living in another period of McCarthyism, but this version is more dangerous to the way of life of civilized Americans and their Constitution. I never would have dreamed that it would happen, that even our courts would be corrupted in the service of a gender war the women have won.
— no need to publish this. Just consider it an email.
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Larry, I found this that references the paper you mention:
http://www.topix.com/forum/law/domestic-violence/TGPHOFKJ9D09VPDOS
It doesn’t have any links, though. Do you have any? Notice that in this Topix post, like I was talking about before, there’s a quotation from a judge that you won’t find anywhere else on the Internet.
I did reply to your earlier comment. I just needed some time to take in the background. Now I wish I could vomit it back out.
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You’re exactly right, Larry, and I think what your “email” says is important for others to think about. After taking in your unflinching blog posts, though, I’m less worried that you’ll get sued than that you’ll get shot! Stay safe, Larry.
Also, check out “Cyberstalking” by Jessica Smith (UNC School of Government Blog):
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Hello, T, and I see you’re especially busy and eloquent these days with getting the message across. If you have not seen this, you should read it. As an ex-lawyer, retired, I found it both amusing and consoling to know there are so many others who are beginning at long last to stand on their hind legs and put impertinent questions to the fascists passing, peddling, pimping, and enforcing these RO laws which are so repugnant to the First Amendment, due process, the burden of proof and presumption of innocence, equal protection, the right to be let alone, and so many of the other protections in the Bill of Rights.
I have been run through the mill, so to speak. I fought and lost in the appellate courts on a F&M restraining order, and successfully fought and defeated 3 evil show-cause orders by the rabid plaintiff.
In addition, she has had me arrested twice on cyberstalking warrants. And no, I never had any romantic interest in this evil woman, although she has tried that canard in court over and over again. She is the proverbial sociopath neighbor.
The first warrant was finally dismissed after I had been dragged through the criminal courts about 8 or 9 times. That is one of the objects of these monstrosities — to wear you down with constant court appearances, and unrelenting stress. So then the angry sociopath swore out another warrant. And I am presently dealing with that one and another fraudulent restraining order cobbled up by corrupt court officials and a judge who is a felon and a forger.
So here it is:
http://www.weightiermatter.com/law/california-coalition-files-motion-enjoin-california-domestic-violence-restraining-orders-first-amendment-violation/2973/
I found the language of the denunciations at the site to be especially pungent, and absolutely justified. My kind of language.
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God, Larry, is that what your ordeal has been about? I figured it was something to do with an ex-wife or -girlfriend. I’m really sorry. No wonder you’re so outraged.
I posted the link you sent to the bibliography. I have noticed a lot of momentum in the last couple months. I wish I could motivate more public response, because that’s the only thing disinterested parties have to assess the situation by. Some days close to 400 people visit the blog, but you’d never guess it from comments and petition responses.
Like you say, people just get worn down, demoralized, and defeated. It takes such an investment, too, to comprehend all of the factors involved. I’ve gone back and read pieces I thought I’d absorbed a couple years ago and am only now able to understand the full import of what the writers are saying. Take this one, for example:
“One Brave Judge Resists Feminist Agenda”
As straightforwardly as Mrs. Schlafly writes, if you don’t know what “due process” means, the legal criticisms are likely to be opaque. And if you identify with liberal values, you’re liable to dismiss her arguments as politically motivated. I have no stake in gun rights myself, but certainly her arguments are indisputable.
The schisms—political (left/right), gender (male/female), etc.—are the major obstacle to exposing injustice. I listen to NPR, for example, and used to subscribe to The New York Times (and the only reason I don’t today is because the cost is prohibitive), but my leftist sympathies are a lot more reserved than they used to be. I still do the weekend crosswords.
Something that’s lately piqued my curiosity is that when you try to track down the sources of quotations in articles like Mrs. Schlafly’s, you often find they’ve disappeared. Criticisms of restraining orders by judges, especially, seem to vanish. I’ve seen negative statistics purged from Wikipedia, too (though the last time I looked at its “Restraining order” entry, it had changed for the better). People think the word “fascist” is applied ridiculously, but nothing says fascist to me more urgently than control of information and censorship. This is more than avoidance; it’s containment.
I blanked the judge’s name to avert our being hassled. I assume you’d get the heat, but even though as a public figure the judge would have to prove he wasn’t a forger and felon, I don’t think you want to risk being sued.
I don’t suppose you could turn the tables on this woman? It seems like you have more than grounds enough to establish harassment.
I say that, but I also despair of hoping for a reasoned response from the system. I could have appealed last fall (when I was last in court) but just wasn’t up for it. I may still file some complaints. If I do, though, it won’t be with high expectations. I think change is going to have to come from the outside.
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I have no fear that this crooked judge is going to sue me. He’s nailed, red-handed. Besides being manifestly corrupt, he’s a public figure, and then on top of that, truth is a defense in a lawsuit for libel.
I tell you what you do if you’d like to know about this raving flake who has been making my life hell on earth since 2011. Google her name and read her ravings on the FB pages of Neighbors from Hell and Anonymous News Network. She is every bit as dangerously insane as the woman who sued comedian David Letterman in NM, claiming that he sent signals to her in code through the television proposing marriage, and then later caused her to go bankrupt. She should have been wearing her tin helmet.
I’m going to get you links to those 2 sites I just told you about. Here they are:
ANN link: https://www.facebook.com/AnonymousNewsNetwork/posts/434314126648526
NFH link: https://www.facebook.com/NeighborHell/posts/10151836929533521
You can read my comments at those sites. I signed on with FB as a fluke in 2007 as Joel Bond Gunch and never went back to reveal my real name, although colloquium at my site would show my real ID.
What is “emotional rape-denial of our feminine existence?” (ANN) And then if you read on down in the queue apparently her god is a female. Which is fine with me, but typically weird.
What is especially horrid about this woman is her NFH FB posts which are malicious libel in each and every sentence; and I responded to them, both there and in usenet. And on my blog. Why would anybody stand in his yard and cause a dog to bark “for hours?” And then, we do not have a Plott hound in this neighborhood. I have lived here almost 25 years, and no Plott hound has ever blessed this street with his presence. I emailed Robert Borzotta of ABC’s 20/20 and asked him if she had responded to his request to email him. She did not, he said, although the site was set up by Borzotta to solicit victims of neighbors from hell to be a part of his 20/20 series of reports.
She is getting by with all this because I am not in good stead with the ‘Boss Tweed’ machine politicians who have corrupted our fair city of Asheville and Buncombe County, and very likely our entire state. I have no doubt that North Carolina’s judiciary is depraved from bottom to top.
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I’ve just been thinking about people like the one you describe, because I’ve encountered them repeatedly in looking at feminist rhetoric on the Internet. I’ve tried to find a psychological diagnosis that fits, and none is a perfect match. Certainly, though, such people qualify as high-conflict personalities.
Read this excerpt from a seminar prepared by two attorneys for a State Bar of Texas “Advanced Family Law Course,” Larry, and I think you’ll see a correspondence.
Feminist propaganda (much of which may originate from high-conflict personalities) provokes women with high-conflict personalities. It provides them with a “Target of Blame,” specifically, men/the patriarchy. It also provides them with a “community.” Your accuser’s use of the phrase “rape-denial” shows she’s absorbed this propaganda.
Feminists or those with feminist sympathies are liable to perceive high-conflict advocates—who are everywhere on the Net—as zealous compatriots, not recognizing that their motives may be pathological.
If a formal diagnosis would help you, consider talking with Dr. Tara Palmatier. She understands high-conflict behavior intimately and could provide you with some coping and defensive strategies. She also works in association with an attorney.
Something I’ve learned from experience is that high-conflict people can’t be shamed, and they’re immune to the persuasions of logic, morality, and reason. They thrive even on the most negative exposure (which they can easily turn to their advantage: “See what he says about me?! He’s crazy!”). I don’t know how to account for the bizarre allegations posted to Facebook, which are more than just paranoid. They seem like the stuff of mythomania (“morbid lying”/“pathological lying”). Something the seminar I’ve quoted to you misses that I’ve both witnessed and been told of is that high-conflict conduct isn’t necessarily a lifelong constant; it can be triggered (awakened). Chances are decent that the person who’s turned your life upside down hasn’t done this serially to others, at least not to this extent. Something I’ve noted is that formerly reserved, shy, or mousy women may become high-conflict types with the onset of middle age. It’s like resentment they’ve had bottled up explodes. Too, people of this age have less social engagement and a lot more time on their hands to “cogitate” (fume/stew). They’re accountable to the judgment of fewer people—sometimes none.
I was trained as a textual analyst. When I read the Facebook comments you sent the links to, I get the clear impression of fixation/obsession and a need to sensationalize. The accusations are plainly hyperbolic. Likewise the mention of “state business.” Politicians have state business; few others do. The use of the word “guests” also rings odd. The choices of people with normal social lives would be “friends,” “people I have over to the house,” and the like. Then there’s the reference to a “security camera.”
The comments suggest to me that their writer has an unsatisfying life and is using a manufactured drama to realize “celebrity.”
My amply informed suspicion, besides, is that court dockets sag under the weight of dramas manufactured by lonely, histrionic people. Restraining orders can be gotten in an hour with any panicked story. They’re an easy access point for hysterics.
Here’s why high-conflict people and court process are a hand-in-glove fit (excerpted from the same State Bar of Texas seminar paper):
I read your March 20 post after prepping this reply. Seriously consider calling Dr. Tara. She consults by phone or Skype, and this scenario is right up her alley. She also shares accounts like this in a series on her blog called, “In His Own Words.”
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Larry, what should this woman (Julie) be thinking about? She had charges filed against her by a person using an assumed name or impersonating someone else. Then he applied for a restraining order using his real name.
https://restrainingorderabuse.com/names-for-restraining-orders-and-what-they-mean/#comment-27131
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She has a case for getting the man prosecuted for perjury or some other crime of moral turpitude. Looks like he’s using the courts to stalk her. Question is, what state is she in? That means something. Restraining order applications are in cursive in North Carolina, so there would be no problem having a handwriting analyst prove that plaintiff A and Plaintiff B are the same.
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Thanks. That reassures me that what I recommended she consider and investigate was right. If I hear back from her, I’ll ask where she is.
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