I remarked to a commenter the other day that when I became a vegetarian in the ’80s, I was still a kid, and my family took it as an affront, which was a common reaction then. Today, everyone’s a vegetarian or “tried vegetarianism” or has “thought about becoming a vegetarian.” Other subjects that were outré or taboo in my childhood like atheism, cross-dressing, and depression—they’re no longer stigmatized, either (in the main). Gay people, who were only 
whispered about then, can marry in a majority of states. When I was a kid, it was shaming for bra straps or underpants bands to be visible. Today they’re exposed on purpose.
It’s a brave new world.
While domestic violence is no more comfortable a topic of conversation now than it was then, it’s also hardly hush-hush. When restraining orders were conceived, it was unmentionable, and that was the problem. It was impossible for battered women to reliably get help. They faced alienation from their families and even ridicule from the police if they summoned the courage to ask for it. They were trapped.
Restraining orders cut through all of the red tape and made it possible for battered women to go straight to the courthouse to talk one-on-one with a judge and get immediate relief. The intention, at least, was good.
It’s probable, too, that when restraining orders were enacted way back when, their exploitation was minimal. It wouldn’t have occurred to many people to abuse them, just as it wouldn’t have occurred to lawmakers that anyone would take advantage.
This isn’t 1979. Times have changed and with them social perceptions and ethics. Reporting domestic violence isn’t an act of moral apostasy. It’s widely encouraged.
No one has gone back, however, and reconsidered the justice of a procedure of law that omits all safeguards against misuse. Restraining orders circumvent investigation by police and the vetting of accusations by district attorneys. They allow individuals to prosecute allegations all on their own, trusting that those individuals won’t lie about fear or abuse, despite the fact that there are any number of compelling motives to do so, including greed/profit, spite, victim-playing, revenge, mental illness, personality disorder, bullying, blame-shifting, cover-up, infidelity/adultery, blackmail, coercion, citizenship, stalking, and the mere desire for attention.
Restraining orders laws have steadily accreted even as the original (problematic) blueprint has remained unchanged. Claims no longer need to be of domestic violence (though its legal definition has grown so broad as to be virtually all-inclusive, anyway). They can be of harassment, “stalking,” threat, or just inspiring vague unease.
These aren’t claims that are hard to manufacture, and they don’t have to be proved (and there’s no ascertaining the truth of alleged “feelings” or “beliefs,” anyway, just as there’s no defense against them). Due to decades of feminist lobbying, moreover, judges are predisposed to issue restraining orders on little or no more basis than a petitioner’s saying s/he needs one.
What once upon a time made this a worthy compromise of defendants’ constitutionally guaranteed expectation of due process and equitable treatment under the law no longer does. The anticipation of rejection or ridicule that women who reported domestic violence in the ’70s and ’80s faced from police, and which recommended a workaround like the restraining order, is now anachronistic.
Prevailing reflex from authorities has swiveled 180 degrees. If anything, the conditioned reaction to claims of abuse is their eager investigation; it’s compulsory policy.
Laws that authorize restraining order judges, based exclusively on their discretion, to impose sanctions on defendants like registry in public databases that can permanently foul employment prospects, removal from their homes, and denial of access to their kids and property are out of date. Their license has expired.
Besides material privations, defendants against allegations made in brief trips to the courthouse are subjected to humiliation and abuse that’s lastingly traumatic. Making false claims is a simple matter, and offering damning misrepresentations that don’t even depend on lies is simpler yet.
What shouldn’t be possible happens. A lot. Almost as bad is that we make believe it doesn’t.
Just as it was wrong to avert our eyes from domestic violence 30 years ago, it’s wrong to pretend that attempts to curb it since haven’t fostered new forms of taunting, terrorism, and torment that use the state as their agent.
Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com
TALKING BACK to restraining orders 
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Reblogged this on falseaccusers.
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Excellent article. Yes, I was thinking about how even things like simple divorce were not looked on very well by society. Nor was reporting child physical or other forms of abuse. I even remember how in one state I lived in (New Mexico), you could not put both names on your mailbox is you were an unmarried couple or couple with different names (it could have been a relative or simple roommate, but different sexes just didn’t live together. That might have been in the early 60’s. Wow, remembering some of these things is really a shock. We’ve come a long way in so many ways.
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I guess in our progressive zealousness we’ve overcorrected. Just as there are a lot of complainants of false reports to the police and restraining order abuse, there are a lot of complaints of false reports to Child Protective Services (this can be another avenue for gaining custody leverage or exacting petty revenge—it just takes a phone call, and the reporter’s identity is protected, so you don’t even know who accused you). When you look at all of this closely enough, you see why there are so many angry and tormented people.
A comment from a woman who wrote yesterday spans all of this territory. She was falsely reported by a spiteful landlord (who lied with great calculation and imagination) and says she was removed from the premises and had to leave her daughter’s ashes behind, and they won’t let her retrieve them. She says she’s disabled and had just fled from an abusive relationship only to have this happen. Her comment begins, “My life is over,” and ends, “I’M GOING TO JUMP OFF A BRIDGE”—“PLEASE HELP ME.” If you have any solacing words for her, please communicate them.
https://restrainingorderabuse.com/what-is-restraining-order-abuse/#comment-53944
Incidentally, Anne, I touched on your thought about arbitration in the reply to Nathan below.
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What specific reforms should we ask our federal and state lawmakers to enact? Should we ask that they scrap the entire system of restraining orders, or are there some marginal reforms we should ask for?
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The question, I guess, is whether the same architecture can be made to yield fairer results. The problems with that architecture are that it prescribes hasty, biased, and yet damning rulings (that can be the catalysts of years of conflict—based on claims registered in minutes). The standard that’s applied, namely, judicial discretion, licenses judges to do what they want (if it’s not illegal for a judge to do what s/he wants, s/he can). It’s possible that bias could be neutralized, but turning a “fast food” process into a deliberate one is a tall order.
My personal opinion, Nathan, based on (unavoidably) thinking about these things for years now, is that the process is vexed and should be repealed. Revolutionary change, though, seems unlikely. Law follows the tide of politics, and probably the best that can be hoped for is a gradual revision. There was a bill proposed in Oregon to make it possible to petition the court to reverse restraining order decisions if it were convincingly demonstrated that claims were false. I don’t know how it fared. Starts like this would be significant.
My belief, though, is that if you’re implicating someone as a criminal (and all restraining orders basically do implicate their defendants as criminals) then rights that attend criminal allegations should apply, including investigation and representation by a public defender. If we’re being honest, the stigma of a restraining order is a criminal stigma. Even if records are kept from public sight, employers may explicitly ask, “Have you ever been the subject of a restraining order?” They ask, because they consider it a big deal—and it’s certainly neither illegal for them to ask nor illegal for them to perform a background check. If restraining orders were really regarded as ho-hum-de-dum, these measures wouldn’t be taken.
It’s categorically unjust that a bystander can report an incident and spur a “domestic violence” prosecution that the adult “plaintiff” objects to (this can happen if a couple has a heated argument on the side of the road), and it’s categorically unjust that people can casually spew some falsehoods to a restraining order judge and derail their target’s life.
Bringing accountability to the restraining order process is next to impossible, because there’s no “disproving” claimed feelings or beliefs like “I’m afraid.” Even if the state were to prosecute alleged acts of perjury, many false claimants would still dodge scrutiny—and prosecuting perjury would be too costly, anyhow.
If measures required a “cooling off” period or arbitration—as a thoughtful woman I’ve just been corresponding with suggests would improve the fairness of the process—the number of false restraining orders would probably diminish appreciably. This, though, runs counter to the reason for their enactment in the first place: “immediate relief.” These orders were conceived to get an abuser out of the picture right away. That’s their reason for being. So in a domestic situation, even if arbitration were required, you’d still have situations where a wrongly accused defendant was put out on the curb, possibly left with no means of self-support, and forced to “shower” in public restrooms and sleep in his or her car.
I really don’t think the process is supportable; I think it’s conceptually flawed. It only “works” for the legitimately abused person who needs that immediate relief to be safe from harm. I don’t discount that person’s needs—and I’d go to that person’s help myself if s/he were someone I knew—but his or her needs aren’t more important than everyone else’s (and that’s the idea that perpetuates the status quo: that the interests of some are more important than the interests of others). You and I shouldn’t be obligated to sacrifice our hopes and dreams and good names and health for people we didn’t injure and will never know. The restraining order process says that because there are abused people out there, tough sh*t. It’s not fair, and judicial process must be fair. Otherwise the principles of “rule of law” are just blah, blah, blah.
Forty years ago, if you had a complaint, you took it to the police, and they looked into it (ideally). The procedure certainly wasn’t immune to officer bias, false reports, etc., but at least somebody was looking into something (and it was usually more than one somebody doing the looking, and this makes a difference, too), and the accused had a day in court instead of 10 minutes. Damning records weren’t spontaneously generated and fed into registries and other databases, and people weren’t being thrown out of their homes and exiled at a moment’s notice.
The real question might be what would be the most effective request to motivate change. Maybe it would be calling for repeal. Maybe that would work a greater effect than requesting half-measures. The political investment is probably too great for anything like that to succeed, but there’s something to be said for stirring the pot. Liberal sway is at an ebb right now, and restraining orders run counter to conservative values like preserving family and conserving money. Even to get a few pols talking about reform would be big.
What kills you is no one asks: Would reasonable people really be bitching about this stuff so vehemently if it weren’t effed up? Cathy Young just published a great commentary in Time titled “A Better Feminism for 2015” that calls for détente and consensus-building. If the dialogue weren’t so dominated by jihadists, I think voices of reason (like yours) could get a word in edgewise.
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Well said. The “desire for attention” aspect especially. Each and every time my abuser called law enforcment on me they came running to his rescue. He once accused me of violating the protective order because I updated my LinkedIn resume while working towards a significant raise at university that would’ve included union, benefits and retirement. As opposed to the internship position I held for 2 years. Well everyone at university received an automated notification from LinkedIn, despite the fact I deleted all his contact information long before this and had him blocked from every possible social media or email I had at the time. University police actually came to my office in the middle of my work day, accused me of violating a “restraining order” in front of my colleagues and supervisors, searched my computers, personal labtop, and cell phone. Of course I was exonerated of any wrongdoing (I am and end user of LinkedIn, not an administrator of that website. I do not control the algorhythms that connect people on LinkedIn). But the humiliation was excruciating. This was a turning point for me. Looking back, I see now that that day was the beginning of the end. I realized I could not even go to work and hold down my job without his incessent, endless, humiliating daily torture of stalking and harrassment. I tried to file a complaint about it. With both UPD and Alaska State Troopers. Nobody would do anything. UPD bullied me. AST patronized me. I got the DUI 2 weeks after that, when he realized I didn’t get fired from my job over it, he found another way to get me fired from my job. The intolerable injustice for me is that he has 3 DUI’s himself and still works at university.
And can you believe during all of this he auctioned himself off at the Talkeetna Bachelor’s Society Auction in Alaska to raise money for AWAIC (Abused Womens Aid In Crisis) the women’s shelter in Anchorage??? He actually got on a discovery show channel reality show for it. Playing his guitar on stage, sacrificing himself for all of Alaska’s abused women in crisis. I am a feminist, and I have been wrongfully accused. The nightmare continues and this will all be stapled to my ass for the rest of my life. Essentially he tatooed himself on me, not unlike a pimp does to his stable of women. Restraining orders are used by abusers as state sanctioned licenses to stalk, harrass and continue to abuse their victims. For life.
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God, I can imagine.
I live in Arizona, which still styles itself the Old West. My impression of Alaska, though—I’ve looked at some of the laws—is that it’s kind of a constitutional wilderness.
Like your accuser, my accuser and her confederates are all or have all been employed by universities and agencies of government. I wouldn’t ask for a job again at the university where I used to work or any other one. That environment has been contaminated for me. I don’t even know if I could stand to take a class again.
The women in my story were feminists, too (the doctrinal sort), with the exception of my accuser, who’s an opportunist. It’s easy to play on feminists’ prejudices. I wonder if you’ve considered how you might perceive complaints of false allegations, as a feminist, if you’d never been the target of them.
Have you read about personality disorders? I read a British sociopath say he knows the Academy is full of disordered personalities. This man had a blog that he’s since removed. Fiercely intelligent guy and supremely philosophical. Anyway, I wonder if the man you describe wouldn’t qualify as personality-disordered. Attention-seeking is a trait of some disordered personalities, particularly narcissists and hysterics. A narcissist could totally perform at a function to raise awareness of abuses that he’d committed himself. He could even do it without feeling there’s any hypocrisy or contradiction.
Funny, when I first read about narcissism and personality disorders, I was so gratified to have a way of understanding people I’d been injured by that I wrote to thank some of the psych Ph.D.’s I’d read. One of them actually mocked me for my compliment. He was, I believe, a narcissist himself. He tried to sustain a back-and-forth with me by email and then would query the blog for his name to see if I’d criticized him (he was also incidentally a musician and, I think, a composer). What compounds the horror of people with (what’s called “Cluster B”) disordered personalities (what the former blogger I’ve mentioned calls “low-functioning sociopaths”) is that they’re emotional infants (which makes them infantile in a lot of other significant ways, too). They may be, at the same time, completely plausible to other people, even seemingly exceptional. Narcissists, especially, may dress well, be single-mindedly industrious, have smart job titles, and be socially very polished. If you see them in photos, all eyes will be turned in their direction. They play intelligent people, including their colleagues and bosses, like thimblerigs and congratulate themselves for it.
“Tattooed” is so right, and I really believe this is part of the appeal for abusers like yours: leaving a lasting impression and impairment. “Branded” might even better capture the figurative scarring.
What you mention reminds me of this case:
“Man gets arrested after Google+ ‘sent an automatic invitation’ to his ex who had a restraining order against him”
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This is what people hear: “Domestic Violence Facts: Alaska.”
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