The following represents the advice of a man who was persecuted in the courts for over 12 years by a soulless liar. It is the advice of a defendant who has been in the hot seat many times. It is not, however, nor does it purport to be, the advice of a qualified practitioner of law.
For answers to specific questions regarding the civil injunction process, the reader is directed to this site’s Q&A page. The same caveat applies to all information and opinions found there.
- The truth doesn’t matter.
- The truth DOES NOT matter. You may have been lied about egregiously. The lies may multiply and intensify when you appear in court. Reconcile yourself to this reality and soldier on with your head erect.
- You may not think of yourself as a criminal, but everyone else will. Legal experts even refer to civil injunctions as “quasi-criminal.” Accordingly, you must think like a criminal defense attorney. A legal defense is a narrative tailored to place a defendant in the best possible light and to cast doubt and suspicion on his or her accuser. A criminal defense team doesn’t rack their brains trying to figure out how to most effectively tell the truth (“Well, Your Honor, that’s true but…”). A criminal defense team formulates a strategy to win.
- Your story must be wholly yours and not merely a rebuttal of the plaintiff’s accusations. Simply answering what the court has already accepted as true will not make you look innocent. It may just reinforce the position the court assumed before you ever showed up.
- Citizens are often warned: Never talk to cops. The same reasoning applies to judges. Resist admitting anything that it isn’t going to serve you to admit. The objective is not to satisfy a judge’s preconceived expectations; the objective is to confound them.
- You have a brief window of minutes in which to present your defense. You may recite it, submit evidence (bring extra copies), and ask the judge to allow you to question the prosecuting witness (the person pointing a finger at you). You may have to insist upon your right under the basic rules of adversarial process to examine your accuser. Don’t hesitate to assert that right. (And if you’re denied that right or any other, obtain a recording of the hearing, and promptly file an appeal. Retain this information: your case number, the time and date of your hearing, the location, and the name of the judge.)
- Know what you’re going to say. Know what you’re going to ask. But come as prepared as you can so that you can adapt and improvise as needed.
- You may opt to flatly deny the allegations against you. You may opt to deny the validity or the factuality of whatever evidence the prosecuting witness has presented. These are choices you must make bearing in mind that your aim is to win and not to make an indifferent judge who won’t remember your name like you better. You occupy the same status in his or her eyes as a cockroach.
- The phrase, “Yes, but…,” is one you should strive to avoid pronouncing. The only thing the judge will hear is your agreement that you did something s/he may condemn you for.
- Use basic, straightforward language. Judges are never the discerning jurists they’re represented to be on TV. Your judge may be a nitwit. Nevertheless, s/he won’t like feeling condescended to: Judicial egos are epic. Be clear not smart. (The relevant lawyer’s acronym is KISS: Keep it simple, stupid.)
- Never take it for granted that a judge will perceive your meaning. Tell the judge what you want him or her to know in no uncertain terms. You may preface your account this way: “This is the truth, Your Honor.” Or you might begin by saying, “The plaintiff’s representations to the court are completely false.” (These terms are interchangeable and refer to your accuser: plaintiff, complainant, prosecuting witness.)
- Be calm, cool, and collected but not meek. You must believe in yourself and your story, which is your defense. Address the judge as “judge” or “Your Honor.” Do not show anger or spite. Do not whine, snivel, or plead. You are a rational person dealing with the wrongful accusations of an irrational one. Remember: calm, cool, and collected but not meek or resigned. (A judge is not God; s/he’s a government employee whose salary is paid with your tax dollars: You accordingly have the right to expect civil treatment.)
- Your goal is to tell and support an effective narrative, choosing what facts you present and what questions you ask to suit that end.
- The truth doesn’t matter. If you’ve been accused by a liar, and you’ve been summoned to court because of lies, then this has already been proven to you. If the law were genuinely concerned with ascertaining the “whole truth” (whatever that means), you would be granted more than a few days to prepare a defense, and the process would be allotted more than 30 minutes on a judge’s docket.
- You’re in a contest. Prevail.
Copyright © 2023 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com
*When the writer was first trying to come to terms with being serially accused in and out of court, he consulted a nonprofit that was dedicated to exposing the inequities of so-called “women’s law.” The writer sought advice by email. The man who agreed to speak with him insisted that the writer call him, presumably so that there would be no paper trail. Fear and intimidation taint every aspect of this arena of law. They must be confronted and ignored. The reason psychopaths are the most credible witnesses is that they’re not emotionally inhibited; they’re machines that don’t qualm about slanting the truth or outright lying.
TALKING BACK to restraining orders 
Having studies law more actively since my first Domestic Violence Order of Protection, I can assert with surety that DV restraining orders are weapons of the state that cause barratry between parties. Not only that, but there is a lot more involved when a person starts generating allegations of domestic violence against another person. For instance, there is the presumption that the person had compatibilist free will to commit the alleged misconduct. And then there is the arbitrariness with which the judge claims that the standard of proof has met without any absolute certainty to such: And no judge can provide evidence (except but to speculate) that a reasonable person would find that the burden of proof for the domestic violence allegations to succeed has been met.
Yes, restraining orders are dirty. And they’re meant to rake in money for the government. And they rake in money for the government by causing barratry in the process, getting one of the parties (at least) to think that some grave misconduct occurred that the legal system should take care of (that may not necessarily be morally justified).
Judges bet on the idea that neither party to the restraining order case will be able to make sense that the government ordeal ends up screwing them both over for the sole benefit of the government. Sure, there may be the illusion of justification that a restraining order is granted: And maybe the plaintiff will be able to be deluded by the Court into such being true. But when the plaintiff does such ignorantly without care as to the defendant’s well-being, this becomes an act of arrogance that ends up hurting another person for selfish gain. And the judges mean to enable such selfish gain, hoping all the while that neither party will wise up to barratry that they are enabling.
Restraining orders make the judges money. There is a whole philosophy behind law and why it is. I presume most plaintiffs are deadly ignorant of it. Yet they are arrogantly and ignorantly enabled to seek a restraining order, regardless of another person’s civil rights.
To the moderator/admin of this website, if you’re ever seeking to retaliate against someone, I think that the judges are the ones to retaliate against. The plaintiffs are deadly ignorant and don’t know any better. Not that ignorance of the law is no excuse, however. But these judges know better. They’re religious extremists that like to deny wrongdoing. They know better.
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I agree that it’s in judges’ professional interest to conform with expectations, and I’ve confronted a couple of judges who knew they would be preferentially regarded (politically) for being bullies (“hanging judges,” you might say). Of course, this would be favorably translated to something like “cracking down on abusers.” I’ve also had a fairly reasonable judge duck overturning a bad order before a retention election only to toss it two years later when it risked him no bad attention that could affect his job security. Certainly it’s true that there would be a lot fewer judges if there weren’t millions of PFA orders petitioned every year.
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It is a fact that restraining orders are appropriate in many, if not most situations. There are people out there who need protection from others such as a violent ex husband they cheated on.
But unlike criminal law, where the standard of proof is “beyond a reasonable doubt,” restraining orders are civil matters, where the standard is “by a preponderance of evidence,” which is much lower and easier to be met. It basically means that if two people are saying two different things, and both seem to be equally as credible, the standard is met, because it’s possible that the petitioner is telling the truth.
It’s an absolutely ridiculous standard to have because it allows the order to be weaponized with such ease by anybody who is willing to maliciously use the courts and law-enforcement for the purpose of revenge against somebody they feel wronged by. Anybody can fabricate an incident, write lies on the paperwork and obtain an order that gives them the power to completely control another person’s life. My ex who had an order against me saw me on a freeway on my normal route to work that I took every day for 7 years. She used her cell phone to record the back of my car as she followed me and she called 911 and pretended like she was having a panic attack and claimed I was following her. Three days later I have wannabe seal team six rejects break down my door and arrest me in front of all my neighbors for the third time that year because of this ex girlfriend of mine whom I cheated on. That particular lie cost a total of $180,000 in bail on top of the 100,000 I was already out on for the previous incident. This happened four days prior to the day she was scheduled to testify at the criminal trial I was finally going to have after two years of being subjected to her restraining order for all the charges she brought upon me with her claims of my violating it. She obviously didn’t want to have to answer to all of her contradictions and inconsistencies on cross examination, so she doubled down and just did what she was always doing to me but harder.
All of her lies were exposed at my trial and I was found not guilty of almost 20 charges. But what about all the perjury? Well, there was no perjury because she claims she actually believed all of her accusations. For there to be perjury, she would have to admit that she knew she was lying when making those claims.
The only people in my situation that made money was my lawyer and the bail bonds people.
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The ABA has stopped advertising evidentiary standards. See here: https://talkingback2restrainingorders.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/standards_of_proof_by_state-authcheckdam.pdf
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What does that mean?
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It means that it was probably a point of pride in the system that there was such a low evidentiary bar for “abused” women to have to satisfy. To emphasize that now is to bring fairness into question. Accordingly, this document can no longer be found on the Internet.
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These are all great points. Extra emphasis on the “calm, cool, and collected” part. It’s important to dress for the occasion in clothes that fit your body and to look like you care about your appearance as well as the outcome. Never interrupt when the other one is talking, don’t come off as angry, and most importantly, (and this is something a lawyer will never tell you), embellish the truth if it helps and also doesn’t contradict anything you’ve said in text messages, to police, or in court documents in the past. The thing with these orders is that judges grant them even when they believe the alleged victim is lying. They do it to protect themselves for a “just in case” scenario. The last thing they want is to be the judge that denied a restraining order to someone who ended up being killed by the person who they were trying to get one against. To circumvent this, you may want to flip the tables and accuse the petitioner of something outrageous enough so that she ends up losing her temper and becoming angry in front of the judge where you will then show no reaction to anything she says in response which comes off as “Oh it’s just Rebecca losing her temper again.”
Also, don’t let your case be heard by a court commissioner or “temporary judge” because those people are just incompetent lawyers who applied to fill-in for real judges when they’re too busy for stupid cases. They will usually have you sign a waiver right before the hearing if there’s a temporary judge. Don’t sign it and tell them you prefer to have your hearing postponed until a real judge is available. These temporary judges are usually idiots who can’t find work as a lawyer because they probably suck so much at being one. So when they all of a sudden put on that robe and get a gavel and get to pretend like they’re qualified to be a judge they go on a power trip. You want your case decided by a real judge.
Another important point is that if you’re able to hire an attorney, don’t hire one that has advertisements plastered all over legal websites because those are the bottom of the barrel attorneys who need to advertise their services and will probably mess your case up worse than you would mess it up if you represent yourself. If you want to hire an attorney, find one who is certified in the area of law you need (in this case it’s Family Law) from your state bar website. These attorneys have proven that they know what they’re doing, and in my experience have much more reasonable pricing than the unqualified ones you see on billboards.
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Sound advice. The original order against me, which spawned 12+ years of hell, was rubber-stamped by a judge pro tem (a “temp”).
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And the attorney my accuser hired (2010, 2013, 2016) was exactly the type you’re talking about: “And don’t miss our incredible October surprise!!!” That kind of social media advertising. He was a paunchy, unscrupulous bottom-feeder.
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