Traffickers of this blog will sometimes advise that complainants of abuse of so-called “protective orders” consider “the bigger picture.” They feel the matter is less about personal loss than about statutory and procedural derelictions (bad law and judicial bias, carelessness, and tyranny). They emphasize principle over individual privation.
For some, the bigger picture that’s stressed is denial of constitutional rights to due process (for example, the right to be heard before a judgment is entered, the right to court-appointed legal counsel, or the right to a trial by jury); for others, the bigger picture is the right to freedom of speech. Some underscore gender and race inequities; some the undermining of the family.
The obstacle to making whatever “bigger picture” is emphasized perceptible to the public at large is the phrase “restraining order” or “protection order,” which comes with a host of conditioned prejudices. It arouses images of violence against those helpless to defend themselves. Accordingly, even many who acknowledge the process is flawed nevertheless say they recognize it to be necessary…in cases.
So even those against the process may not actually be against the process. This has created a disjointed community of complainants, namely, a marginalized extreme labeled “misogynist cranks,” “angry white men,” or “restraining-order-Americans” and a fence-sitting majority who against all evidence and experience retains the faith that reason will prevail against unreason if we just talk it out long enough: “All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel….”
The monkey never catches the weasel, so there’s nothing to recommend monkeying around.
What needs to be stressed and comprehended, to this writer’s way of thinking, is that civil court is no place for the litigation of accusations that explicitly or implicitly allege violence, violent threat, or other criminal acts, and that in civil court, which applies no standard of evidence, fraud is too easily perpetrated. The exposure of falsehood or exaggerated claims of fear will not necessarily discredit a plaintiff’s claims, and findings in favor of a plaintiff who’s a proven liar are possible and acceptable to the court.
Therefore the procedure is vexed; it’s wrongly engineered. The concept is corrupt.
Instead of denouncing “restraining order fraud,” it’s civil court rulings that exact an unconscionable toll that should be denounced. It’s all about the words. Civil procedures should not result, ever, in people’s being placed in police databases. Civil rulings should not criminalize people or make them vulnerable to warrantless arrest (for alleged behavior that may not violate any laws). It should not be possible to have a person evicted from a residence he or she owns by a civil ex parte decision, nor should such a decision predispose a court to find against that person when s/he’s permitted to address the court in his or her defense (if such an opportunity is even practicable to the accused, who may preposterously be required to travel to another county or state to be heard).
Against policies of law and process so manifestly unjust, even improved due process rights would promise to be a shabby deterrent against abuse and miscarriages.
Not only have we become habituated to the reality of “restraining orders” to the extent that we believe they must be here to stay; procedural process has become rote (adjudication by rubber stamp). Yes, new “safety catches” could be installed, but what guarantee would there be that the conditioned habits of those who administrate the process would change? Economy would require that there continue to be minimal oversight and accountability, and the trial judge would still have the final (and absolute) discretion to make a determination, according to his or her own personal lights. So long as the process were conducted in civil court, rulings could still be arbitrary (anything goes), because the standard of evidence would remain whatever the trial judge chose.
Social and judicial impression cannot be overhauled—what’s etched on the brain stays there—and the preconceptions attached to the phrase restraining order will never be dispelled. Judgment by a single man or woman who has had his or her priorities conditioned by rhetoric and social and political expectations (possibly for decades) cannot be impartial. The implications of the process and dictates about how it’s supposed to be administered are too deeply ingrained. The phrase restraining order is by itself damning (right from the get-go). It stirs presuppositions of guilt, and this is inimical to fair and just process. Accordingly, the phrase must be abolished and the process reconceived from the ground up.
Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com
TALKING BACK to restraining orders 
You are so right on all of these issues, Todd, and I don’t think any of us who follow your blog have ever thought you were not correct. Unfortunately it is our society and the way there are so truly many really crazy people out there and evil people, who live to make others miserable. and the civil courts are making big money off of this. Otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it. I thought of going and sitting in Civil Court all day every day to hear the cases and hear just how many times the judges just rule against people who are innocent, without even giving them due process of law, a right to an attorney or anything that is supposed to be within the rights of ALL Citizens of the United States, not just the nuts who go to court against others with falsified claims. There needs to be a process of law in place to protect those of us who are suffering so much from such claims.
I too was one of those people who came close to ending it all because I was so dismayed. And the other horror is on the other side. You can get a misdemeanor expunged, but you cannot get a restraining order of any type expunged. i have heard that in some states you can get the records called, but apparently not in California where I live. Yes, I had PTSD so bad I thought I would never recover, and I think all of us who have suffered such major injustices will agree on these issues of how bad it is. Now that I am getting well, I am trying to do research to go forward to try to get a constitutional attorney involved and take it to the Supreme Court. The thing is, I know it sounds huge, but the issue is that is we don’t put a stop to it, it will go on and on like a record that has worn down into the groove and there is no way to get it out again without literally lifting up that needle and removing it.
Yes, it IS a very personal issue to us that someone we generally know does these things to us, and yes, it does make us feel as though we have to somehow get justice from them, which we will never be able to do because the court itself is feeding off of these things. We have judges sitting in civil courts who are prejudiced, and who literally don’t care a fig for any of us. They want to get through all the cases on their dockets, so why not handle them like traffic issues.
There are a lot of places to start that can help us all to get better. One is that if we keep focusing on the people who did these ugly and unlawful things to us, we are empowering them. We are literally giving them power over us because we are acknowledging to them that they are hurting us. And psychopaths that they are, they love that sense of control and power over our lives. It makes them feel as though they can do this over and over again, ad infinitum, because they can. Already the people that hurt me went even further with another person in the same park. The one evil woman, who has a very psychotic background, and shot her lesbian lover in the stomach, after telling all of us in a gloating way that her girlfriend did not report her because she told the girlfriend if she did, the psycho would come back and finish the job. Now this was one of the people who was involved with going after me. And the person she went after made the mistake of going to her her door to ask her to stop telling people in the park bad things against her. People witnessed it, but all the psycho had to do was call the police and tell them the woman threatened her. Now do you know what THAT means? It means that if you threaten a person, that is considered anti-terrorism, and believe me, you do not want to go there ever because if you think your lives are ruined now, think what will happen with that label on you. And oh yes, you can go to jail for months even when nothing is proven.
It is what I keep saying, these people feed off of this. They feed off of it the same way a serial killer needs to become more and more violent toward the people he or she attacks because they thrive off of that rage and sickness. All of this behavior is truly a serious – really serious form of mental illness. We live in a dysfunctional nation, just as if we were in a huge dysfunctional family. We teach people to kill in the military and the police, and then can’t figure out why they kill innocent people. By the same token, I can pretty much assure you that most all of these people who do these things come from some sort of dysfunctional background. They might be on drugs and/or alcohol. And they might be one step away from becoming killers as many stalkers of celebrities have become or tried to become. If they can’t control what it is they want, which is us, then they will do anything to hurt us. Look at the school shooters. Every single one of them told people on campus beforehand that they were considering suicide and/or that they were going to hurt others. And the people that were told did nothing. How many of us saw the signs ahead of time, but never thought it would come to what it did? I know for sure I was bullied and saw a lot of psycho games and dysfunction going on in that park, not just with the people who did what they did, but a lot of others who ran with them. And when it was all over, they went back to their little psycho games.
I compare this crap to incest. The person who is doing it is not going to stop. The psycho is not going to stop. The dysfunctional society is not going to stop until someone says, “Stop. We have had enough, and we are not taking it anymore.” I am going to the constitutional issues because this loss of our freedom that most of us are now facing will get worse under poor political conditions. This kind of action brings with it a strong reminiscence of the Nazis and how citizens began to turn on each other because they were rewarded for it. We really have to get off the personal issues and turn to the government and show them the problems. If they hear enough of us, eventually someone who is capable of making a change will take up the call. I am going to write to the Cato Institute, which writes a lot of articles and books about similar wrongs in government. They are big and can get a lot of good education out there. And I am going to compose a letter about this and send it to every Constitutional Attorney I can find in my state and others. I have tried several times without success to put a petition up ion Change.org, and that is something we all can do without fear of reprisal as we still do have freedom of speech and that is something a lot of Constitutional Attorneys will fight for.
Bottom line is that we cannot give up. What good is it going to do for the cause or for our own selves if we all commit suicide? And we would be hurting others who DO care about us. Those dysfunctional psychopaths will win for sure in that case. So for once, it is up to all of us to try to turn the tide by fighting where we can actually at least hope to make a difference – a true difference. I never thought I would reach this point of fighting back big like this, but I tell you, it has made a huge difference in a lot of other areas of my life. I can go into my old town and shop where I used to shop without fear now. The very worst thing we can do is to make them so small, like the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz, who makes the bad Witch so small, she melts away to nothing. Do something positive in the cause. Start support groups, write to attorneys, etc. It can’t hurt and it can make all of us feel better. The squeaky wheel always gets action.
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Tiffany is too far away to come back and cause trouble now. The poor little narcissistic prickteaser is off in Texas with her henpecked husband and too busy doing grunt work to collect her 30k per annum way out in the rattlesnake-infested Texas boonies. The world is put on notice about her and her kind.
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Was doing well or better until I received that letter from Michael’s lawyer. As a person who already had PTSD this whole thing has just stirred it all up sgain. Early last Wednesday my son called the police as he was concerned I might be trying to kill myself due to this situation. A week and a half ago a friend in another state called the police because ofcthe same thing. I n Arizona your life is not your own. A month ago I was also in the hospital same reason. And now when I was finally making some progress here comes a letter fro Ms attorney. He can be excusex for not going to court. Can I due to the trauma of all this? His lawyer pled with the judge and told him hr eas not purposely trying to delay a hearing I have no knowledge about. I ditched the letter as I could not handle even seeing it..So who will the court listen to? I see a nurse practitioner for medd and will be once again seeing a therapist who has a masters degree as often as I can afford which won’t be much. The very word court makes my stomach turn and Michael is allowed to not appear because he has the money to pay a lawyer I do not if you have any question please let me know
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