Category Restraining order abuse

Turnabout is Fair Play: Scrutinizing the Character and Conduct of Officers of the Court

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Fair is a word that appears prominently in ethical canons drafted to define the methodologies and behaviors expected of judges (which canons are consolidated into states’ codes of judicial conduct, compendia of rules and principles that in the administration of restraining orders are more often paid lip service than scrupulous attention). An obligation of using the word fair is tolerating having done to you what you do to others.

Among the unfair aspects of how restraining orders are administered is the judicial application of a generic standard to defendants (that is, recipients of restraining orders). Positive matches are facilely constructed (sight unseen) between any John or Jane Doe who’s had a finger pointed at him or her—very possibly by a malicious accuser—and some paradigmatic caricature bad guy, the “Grim Creeper,” the original template for whose debauched and demonic dimensions was the much-hyped domestic batterer of 30 years ago.

Anyone targeted by this process, based on real allegations as innocuous as texting too much or on completely false allegations, is treated like the Grim Creeper.

By this standard, the scorn and ignominy earned by some judges should be borne by all of them, that is, if judicial logic is that because some restraining order defendants are bad eggs, all restraining order defendants should be regarded as bad eggs and publicly vilified, it only follows that if some judges are rotten egg omelets, all judges should be suspect. Fair is fair.

This is all a very circumspect introduction to my sharing that in randomly Googling “crazy judge,” I stumbled upon a page on “5 Shockingly Crazy Judges Who Presided Over Modern Courts.” It answered my query with the following case studies:

  • A Michigan judge, who reportedly handled sexual misconduct cases and was married, is distinguished for having texted a shirtless photo of himself to one of his female bailiffs and later responding to the alleged impropriety, “Yep, that’s me. No shame in my game.” He went on to sleep with a defendant who appeared before him to settle a child support dispute (and, she says, knock her up), allegedly repaying her sexual favors with preferential treatment.
  • An Oklahoma judge attained infamy by repeatedly exposing himself in his courtroom over a period of years and using a penis pump on a number of occasions during jury trials. Semen stains were turned up not only on his robes but on the carpet and the chair behind his bench.
  • A Florida judge responded to a threatening comment made by a defendant by producing a .38-caliber revolver and declaring, “There’s one bullet in the cylinder. Do you want to take your best shot? If you’re going to take a shot, you had better score, because I don’t miss.” He then rested the gun on his bench for the remainder of the proceeding.
  • A Georgia judge pulled a firearm during a trial and prompted a witness, the alleged victim of a sexual assault whose attacker had held a gun to her head, to shoot her attorney.
  • An Illinois judge whose tenure on the bench had already spanned 18 years, 18 years marked by allegations of mental illness, was reelected in 2012 despite being found “legally insane” by a psychiatrist. She was in court the next day on charges of shoving a court deputy (following her being ejected from her courtroom for engaging in a 45-minute rant and followed by her throwing a set of keys at a security checkpoint). Her annual salary: $182,000.

And the list goes on.

Consider that all restraining order defendants may feel treated like sex offenders, violent menaces, and nuts irrespective of what they have or haven’t done, and consider it in light of these judges’ actual conduct.

Two of these judges were suspended (only one without pay), one was transferred, and one resigned. Only one of these judges was sentenced to prison. And none were issued restraining orders, which make millions of people vulnerable to incarceration every year based merely on finger-pointing.

Aside from this quibble, do these cases really signify anything but that no occupation is immune from attracting the odd screwball?

Yes, in fact they do. Significant is that in more than one of these cases, the behaviors that eventually drew censure were allowed to continue for a period of many years (and were obviously known to members of their staff). This fact highlights the laxity of judicial oversight. A more significant implication of these cases is that only extreme judicial misconduct really gets zeroed in on. Practitioners of rhetoric (essay writers, for example) will use extreme or even wildly fictional scenarios (hyperbole) to emphasize implications, because we perceive best what’s writ large and luridly, and seeing the big implications allows us to grasp the smaller ones. If judges are capable of engaging in and getting away with the extreme misbehaviors exemplified in the cases enumerated above, possibly for years, it follows that less sensational infractions and lapses occur all the time and are winked at. This is not only significant but significant to hundreds or thousands of peoples’ lives every day.

Get it?

Having now concluded this excursion, let us return, shall we, to that never-never land we’re supposed to occupy where defendants have black mustachios they twist between their fingers, and judges, properly tasked with corralling the bad guys, have gleaming teeth, flaxen motives, and minds as white and wide as the Lone Ranger’s Stetson.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Psychopaths at Law: On the Likelihood That the Psychopath in the Courtroom ISN’T the Defendant

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“In the courtroom, I have literally rubbed people out, crucified them in the witness box. I have absolutely no problem at all reducing an alleged rape victim to tears on the stand. You know why? Because that’s my job. That’s what my client pays me to do. At the end of the day, I can hang up my wig and gown, go out to a restaurant with my wife, and not give a damn. Even though I know that what happened earlier might possibly have ruined her life.”

—From The Wisdom of Psychopaths

Last year on NPR I heard about a book titled, The Wisdom of Psychopaths. I also heard an interview with its author, Kevin Dutton, an Oxford don who’s the most implausibly professorial person I’ve ever listened to. He was cool. And funny.

The quotation above is from a British barrister (attorney) questioned for the book that appears on its interactive website.

I mentioned Professor Dutton’s book in a page on this blog titled, “What Is a Sociopath (or Psychopath)?” The reason I mentioned it is because in it Dr. Dutton identifies the proportion of the population who qualify as psychopaths as being much broader than most people reckon. Dr. Dutton also differentiates psychopathy from homicidal mania. Psychopaths do like exerting power over others, but it’s only the rare psychopath who’s violent and only the statistical freak of nature who keeps human organs in his icebox.

I took a test on the webpage for the book that assesses how psychopathic visitors are (“The Psychopath Challenge”). It’s highly unlikely that I’ll end my days in a straitjacket and a hockey mask. In fact several of the jobs I’ve had or plied myself at are ones said to be least attractive to psychopaths: teacher, craftsman, and creative artist (I earn my crust today as an arborist and gardener).

The reason I’m revisiting Dr. Dutton’s book in this post is that several of the jobs it identifies as most likely to draw psychopaths are ones in the legal profession and government.

Everyone’s quick to quip that lawyers are psychopaths. What’s useful for anyone to know who’s contesting restraining order injustice, or government or legal abuses in general, is that lawyers are psychopaths. To qualify that, understand that there are clinical psychopaths (individuals who might be diagnosed as psychopaths under rigorous examination by psychologists), and there are those with psychopathic qualities. There’s no perfect paradigm: “psychopathy” is defined according to particular traits and tendencies like ruthlessness, fearlessness, single-mindedness, confidence, a lack of conscience and empathy, and mental toughness, any number or all of these combined with charisma. (Dr. Dutton opens his book by identifying his own father, a huckster who was immune to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as a psychopath.)

I’ve never read a book about how to succeed as a lawyer, but it would surprise me if these traits weren’t ones such a book urged baby attorneys to cultivate.

Besides lawyer, police officer and civil servant are listed among the top jobs for psychopaths.

Judges are at least two of these and may seem like all three rolled into one. I’ve known a retired judge who was a very kindly man who doted on his grandkids and their poodle. And I’ve met some exceptionally decent cops. I even know a couple extremely humane attorneys (both of whom left the law for academic posts). Clearly there can be dramatic departures from any attempt at categorization.

My encounters with judges generally, though, tells me that they do tend to esteem themselves exorbitantly, do lack empathy (or resist it unjustly), are prone to consider themselves above the rules, and do evince more than a little gratification from talking down to those who stand before them and even from making those parties blanch and cower (justly or not). Even judges I’ve met in casual encounters have come across to me as alpha types. (If you reach out to shake the hand of one, check twice that it’s his hand that’s being extended to you—this warning goes double for attorneys.)

Ted Bundy: psychopath, serial killer, and law student.

Law is a very political arena, that is, one that’s all about power and jockeying for position. Its daily practitioners—even the ones who aren’t immune to human feeling—lose perspective on the consequences of their actions on real lives. Or don’t give a damn (an attorney’s favorite word is prevail). There’s a lot of gamesmanship present and rarely any fellowship at all (except among one another).

Since I’ve never met a practitioner of law who was particularly gifted at critical reasoning, anyway, I think less emphasis on this aptitude on qualifying tests for admission to law school and more attention to psychological screening would be worthy of consideration. If officers of the court can’t relate to plaintiffs and defendants, and if power holds more appeal for them than serving the cause of justice, they’re not only in the wrong job; they’re dangerous.

Legal decisions have real and lasting consequences on real and lasting lives. And lives aren’t things that should be toyed with.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

“Breaking the Glasses”: One Blog Writer’s Metaphor for Exposing Restraining Order Abuse

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A highly intelligent and sensitive woman I’ve been in correspondence with in recent months, one who’s been put through the legal crucible and left badly scalded by it, remarked to me that despite what may be their best intentions, a lot of those on the Internet who protest abuses committed through the courts and by the courts sound like nut jobs. I’m personally in awe of anyone who’s weathered court travails and emerged even reasonably sane. I’m not sure I qualify myself. But I take her point.

That’s why I’m particularly impressed when I encounter writers whose literary protests are not only controlled but very lucid and balanced. One such writer maintains a blog titled Breaking the Glasses, and anyone with a stake in the issues this blog concerns may appreciate a female writer’s perspective on them. See her posts on “Restraining Order Abuse and Vexatious Litigation.” She really gets it. Her section on “Mantrapment” (marvelous for its title alone) is dead on in its analyses, and she does a stellar job breaking down how the restraining order game works by the sedimentary accretion of lies.

Here’s an excerpt from an article of this writer’s that chronicles one man’s “Seven years in hell” (published on AVoiceforMen.com). It summarizes the horrors of restraining order injustice and may resonate with the experiences of visitors to this blog:

“After these first accusations failed to get Amy what she wanted, she changed tactics. She would go to the county courthouse first, using false claims of stalking and assault to obtain another emergency Civil Protection Order. A hearing would be set for a date within 30 days to determine whether the order was merited. This hearing would carry two possibilities: either the order would be dropped, or it would be upheld. If the order was dropped, the charge of violating it would also be dropped. If upheld, it would be in effect for 5 years, and Rodger would face limitations and penalties, including the permanent loss of his legal right to keep and bear arms. Any contact he had with Amy after that, even if it was accidental, could result in his being sent to jail.

“After requesting the order, Amy would wait until she was informed that the order had been served, and within a day or two, she would accuse Rodger of violating it. Each time, officers would arrive at Rodger’s home and take him into custody without reading him his rights. They informed him that they could do this because he was not under arrest – merely ‘going in for questioning.’

“However, despite not being under arrest, he would be transported to the station in handcuffs, riding in the back of a cruiser rather than on his own. Officers would place him in a holding cell before and after questioning him. He would be held for hours. The department would not release him without bail. Officers told Rodger’s family that they were permitted to do all of this under a combination of the Patriot Act and the Violence Against Women Act, explaining that the Patriot Act allows police to detain citizens suspected of domestic terrorism, and VAWA treats domestic abuse as a form of terrorism. However, VAWA does not treat domestic abuse as a form of ‘domestic terrorism’ as described in the Patriot Act. That assertion was an incorrect interpretation of the two laws, one which is being fed to local departments by the advocacy group from which Amy was receiving assistance, but the fact that it’s incorrect has not stopped local police departments from acting on the advocacy group’s advice when detaining area men accused of domestic violence.”

It digests much of what’s most defective and destructive about the restraining order process and underscores how easily and extremely this process can be abused.

Besides this writer’s blog, I want to direct interested parties to Restraining Order Blog, maintained by Chris Tucker, whose own treatments are reasoned and conscientious. Many detailed and revealing firsthand accounts of restraining order abuse can be found here.

It’s said that knowledge is power. This isn’t particularly true when applied to the state legal apparatus, because all the know-how in the world can fall victim to base lies. In the legal arena, the only sure power is political pull (which usually equates to money). And the only virtue in knowing this is knowing to steer clear of the legal arena. There is much to be said for speaking truth to power, however, because information is influential. And the tides of change will only be roused by that information’s spreading.

And this finally is contingent upon those in the know feeling secure enough to pronounce what they know. This is how the power of knowledge is realized. Fortune doesn’t in fact always favor the brave, but in the fullness of time it may dependably respond to their summons.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Not Evil Geniuses but Brats in Slacks: On Narcissists and Restraining Order Abuse

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Pathological narcissism is apparently a titillating topic.

A growing number of visitors to this blog are brought here by search terms that include words and phrases like narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder, and NPD. More commenters, too, have lately reported abuses by narcissists through the courts, typically restraining order abuse. This surge is less likely due to an uptick in abuses by narcissists than to a dawning awareness of the psychological motives that underlie many vicious legal assaults. More Internet support groups and websites devoted exclusively to exposing abuses by narcissists are emerging, and the same words and phrases glossed above are now appearing in headlines, such as those on The Huffington Post and Salon.com.

My own opinion, on reflection, is that narcissists are banal. Evil, as Hannah Arendt famously noted, usually is (Arendt was a teacher and writer who fled Nazi Germany). The truth is the sorts of legal mischief narcissists get up to only work because our courts are accustomed to crediting lies (however painfully transparent they might be to a disinterested party). Narcissists assuredly congratulate themselves on their courtroom triumphs (congratulating themselves is among narcissists’ principal preoccupations). Yet any precocious child would see through their counterfeit dramatics.

Narcissists aren’t, in fact, epic anything; they’re pathetic. You may perceive narcissists’ pathological lies as devious; you’d more usefully perceive them as compulsive. (A compulsion is an irresistible urge.) What gives their frauds that aura of grandeur is the astonishing ease with which they’re committed, particularly on authorities and judges, and the facility with which narcissists enlist others in those frauds or convince others that they’re true. (Narcissists’ allies and pawns are more often than not morally normal people, that is, “neurotypicals.” Sometimes they’re even seemingly intelligent and discerning ones.)

Casual charlatanism, though, is hardly an accomplishment for people without consciences to answer to. And rubes and tools are ten cents a dozen.

There probably are some narcissistic masterminds out there. None of the narcissists whose conduct I know of, however—and I’ve had dozens of stories shared with me and read scores of other accounts, besides—has ever impressed me as more than a child in big-boy pants or a big-girl skirt. Narcissists succeed by virtue of soulless inveiglement and outward plausibility, neither of which bears up under close scrutiny. (Courtroom decisions made in restraining order cases are the products of a few minutes.)

I’ve read many people differentiate between narcissism and “mental illness.” Narcissists aren’t crazy, they’ll write. I’m unconvinced. I think it’s more accurately pronounced that narcissists don’t seem crazy and that most people are taken in by narcissists not because there isn’t something about them that alerts the antennae of others that there’s something off about them than that what’s off about them doesn’t match any of the familiar paradigms of craziness.

I’m not a psychologist, but my personal opinion is that narcissists are mentally ill and, when their frauds and ploys are resisted to any significant extent, that that mental illness becomes more prominent and perceptible, particularly to those whom they’ve abused. Normal people won’t run themselves ragged defending such frauds and ploys. A narcissist will.

Narcissism is about surface. And surface, despite the warning of that adage about book covers, is what we judge by. Narcissists are good with audiences. They’re also good with stress. They don’t slide into that state of neglected personal hygiene that we associate with “madness” even when pushed to an extremity. This isn’t a reflection of their interior hygiene, however.

Scratch beneath the surface, and you will find disorder.

Contrary to what many online writers counsel, people in legal contests with narcissists shouldn’t think of their opponents as reasoning beings in possession of highly developed albeit wicked minds; they should reckon themselves to be in struggles against recalcitrant children. Much ado is made of the cunning of narcissists. That apparent cunning is really just a manifestation of obsessive-compulsive self-justification combined with infantile rage provoked by the narcissist’s not getting his or her way.

Narcissists aren’t Hannibal Lecters; they’re brats in permanent temper tantrums who recognize no moral boundaries or authority.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

What HE Said: On Why Once a Restraining Order Fraud Has Been Put Over on the Courts, It Sticks like Pigeon Scat on a Car Hood

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A principle of law that everyone ensnarled in any sort of legal shenanigan should be aware of is stare decisis. This Latin phrase means “to abide by, or adhere to, decided things” (Black’s Law Dictionary). Law proceeds and “evolves” in accordance with stare decisis.

Anybody who’s read a Grisham novel or seen its screen adaptation knows that precedents are evoked to establish the merits of legal arguments. Precedents are cases whose judicial opinions imposed some novel tweak, limit, or elaboration on previous opinions. Law “advances” by means of this sort of accretion and seldom backpedals. Lawyers inform judges of precedents to persuade them that such-and-such was agreed upon by another judge, so you guys need to form your rulings correspondently.

The orientation of the courts is toward accepting that what’s previously been found to be the case must remain the case (or “the truth”).

Victims of restraining order fraud express amazement at the courts’ unwillingness to acknowledge obvious lies by designing plaintiffs (applicants). The fact is that once a restraining order has been successfully petitioned, and this is simply a matter of a plaintiff plaintively persuading a judge of his or her need in a 10-minute interview, it becomes a (presumptively) decided matter. Court rhetoric would have it believed that no final conclusion is made until the defendant can be heard in opposition, but all things judicial lean toward the notion exemplified by stare decisis, that is, what’s decided is decided.

Translation: “It’s true, because we said it was.” This is called a tautology (the assertion that a fact is its own reason) and would get a practitioner tossed out of Critical Thinking 101.

Defendants who opt to contest false allegations on restraining orders only to have judges belittle their efforts in the brief, half-hour hearings afforded them often report being horrified by judicial bias, laziness, or indifference, and leave courtrooms feeling like the outcomes were preordained.

That’s because in a very real sense they were.

Ex parte rulings may well be done deals, because judges, consciously or not, follow the precept that they should adhere to precedents and not unsettle things previously established (“stare decisis et non quieta movere”). And all restraining orders are approved ex parte, that is, without judges even knowing who defendants are, so what has previously been established has been established unilaterally (that is, prejudicially or one-sidedly) and in the absence of due process of law.

Restraining order appeals, which may climb successive rungs of the court ladder if defendants possess the financial means and moral fortitude to keep resisting, face this prejudice all the way up. So too do lawsuits seeking damages for restraining order abuse (especially if litigants are self-represented).

If you ever receive an apology from a judge, frame it.

Truth may literally be irrelevant. Procedural rules trump it and incline and authorize judges not merely to discount contradictory evidence provided by defendants but to ignore it entirely. Some disturbed person’s incriminatory fantasy, therefore, can drain the quality of years of a restraining order defendant’s life. This is the grotesque reality of the restraining order process and underscores its inherent corruption.

Government studies have concluded that a majority of restraining orders (80% by at least one reckoning) are issued unnecessarily or on false grounds.

It’s clear then that unless due process is retrofitted into the system, and defendants are granted the opportunity to be heard prior to restraining orders’ being issued so that they’re not forced to enter the process having to clear the hurdle of an unfair prejudgment (on top of feeling betrayed and menaced by the state), restraining orders will necessarily continue to do more harm than they arrest.

It would also be nice if the statutory consequence of prison time for those who lie to the courts were once and while enforced.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Presumed Guilty: On How Restraining Order Laws Enable and Promote Abuse

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I’ve had occasion in the last few months to scrutinize my own state’s (Arizona’s) restraining order statutes, which are a study in prejudice, civil rights compromises, and politically coerced naïvety. Their outdated perspective fails even to acknowledge the possibility of misuse let alone recognize the need for remedial actions to undo it.

Restraining orders are issued upon presumptive conclusions (conclusions made without judges ever even knowing who recipients are—to the judges, recipients are just names inked on boilerplate forms), and the laws that authorize these presumptive conclusions likewise presume that restraining order applicants’ motives and allegations are legitimate, that is, that they’re not lying or otherwise acting with malicious intent.

That, you might note, is a lot of presuming.

In criminal law, the state must presume that defendants are innocent; in civil law (restraining orders are civil instruments), defendants may be presumed guilty. What’s outrageous about this with respect to restraining orders is that public allegations made on them may be criminal or criminal in nature, and violations of restraining orders—real or falsely alleged—have criminal consequences. Due process and the presumption of innocence are circumvented entirely; and with these safeguards out of the way, a defendant may be jailed on no valid evidence or for doing something that’s only illegal because a judge issued a restraining order on false grounds that made it so. (A parent who’s under a court-ordered injunction may be jailed, for example, for sending his child a birthday present.)

One of my motives for consulting my state’s restraining order statutes is having absorbed a broad array of stories of restraining order abuse over the past two years. Common themes among these stories are judicial bias; lying and fraud by plaintiffs (applicants); restraining order plaintiffs’ calling, emailing, or texting the people they’ve petitioned restraining orders against (or showing up at their homes or places of work—or following them); and restraining orders’ being serially applied for by plaintiffs whose past orders have been repeatedly dismissed (that is, restraining orders’ being used to harass and torment with impunity).

Those who’ve shared their stories want to know how these abuses are possible and what, if anything, they can do to gain relief from them. The answer to the question of how lies within the laws themselves, which are flawed; the answer to the question of what to do about it may well lie outside of legal bounds entirely, which fact loudly declaims just how terribly flawed those laws are.

Arizona restraining orders are of two sorts, called respectively “injunctions against harassment” and “orders of protection.” They’re defined differently, but the same allegations may be used to obtain either. Most of the excerpted clauses below are drawn directly from Arizona’s protection order statute. Overlap with its sister statute is significant, however, and which order is entered simply depends on whether the plaintiff and defendant are relatives or cohabitants or not.

“[If a court issues an order of protection, the court may do any of the following:] Grant one party the use and exclusive possession of the parties’ residence on a showing that there is reasonable cause to believe that physical harm may otherwise result.”

This means that if your wife/husband or girlfriend/boyfriend alleges you’re dangerous, you may be forcibly evicted from your home (even if you’re the owner of that home). The latitude for satisfying the “reasonable cause” provision is broad and purely discretionary. “Reasonable cause” may be found on nothing more real than the plaintiff’s being persuasive (or having filled out the application right).

“If the other party is accompanied by a law enforcement officer, the other party may return to the residence on one occasion to retrieve belongings.”

This means you can slink back to your house once, with a police officer hovering over your shoulder, to collect a change of socks. Even this opportunity to recover some basic essentials may be denied defendants in other jurisdictions.

“[If a court issues an order of protection, the court may do any of the following:] Restrain the defendant from contacting the plaintiff or other specifically designated persons and from coming near the residence, place of employment or school of the plaintiff or other specifically designated locations or persons on a showing that there is reasonable cause to believe that physical harm may otherwise result.”

This means defendants can be denied access to their children (so-called “specifically designated persons”) based on allegations of danger that may be false.

“[If a court issues an order of protection, the court may do any of the following:] Grant the petitioner the exclusive care, custody or control of any animal that is owned, possessed, leased, kept or held by the petitioner, the respondent or a minor child residing in the residence or household of the petitioner or the respondent, and order the respondent to stay away from the animal and forbid the respondent from taking, transferring, encumbering, concealing, committing an act of cruelty or neglect in violation of section 13-2910 or otherwise disposing of the animal.”

This means defendants can be denied access to the family pet(s), besides.

Note that the linguistic presumption in all of these clauses is that recipients of restraining orders are wife-batterers, child-beaters, and torturers of puppies, and recall that restraining orders are issued without  judges’ even knowing what defendants look like. This is because restraining orders were originally conceived as a deterrent to domestic violence (which, relative to the vast numbers of restraining orders issued each year, is only rarely alleged on them today at all). It’s no wonder then that judicial presumption of defendants’ guilt may be correspondently harsh. Nor is it any wonder that in any number of jurisdictions, an order of protection can be had by a plaintiff’s alleging nothing more substantive than “I’m afraid” (on which basis a judge is authorized to conclude that a defendant is a “credible threat”).

“A peace officer, with or without a warrant, may arrest a person if the peace officer has probable cause to believe that the person has violated section 13-2810 by disobeying or resisting an order that is issued in any jurisdiction in this state pursuant to this section, whether or not such violation occurred in the presence of the officer.”

This means you can be arrested and jailed based on nothing more certain than the plaintiff’s word that a violation of a court order was committed. More than one respondent to this blog has reported being arrested and jailed for a lengthy period on fraudulent allegations. Some, unsurprisingly, have lost their jobs as a consequence (on top of being denied home, money, and property).

“There is no statutory limit on the number of petitions for protective orders that a plaintiff may file.”

This observation, drawn from Arizona’s Domestic Violence Civil Benchbook, means there’s no restriction on the number of restraining orders a single plaintiff may petition, which means a single plaintiff may continuously reapply for restraining orders even upon previous applications’ having been denied.

Renewing already granted orders (which may have been false to begin with) requires no new evidence at all. Reapplying after prior applications have been denied just requires that the grounds for the latest application be different, which is of course no impediment if those grounds are made up. As search terms like this one reveal, the same sort of harassment can be accomplished by false allegations to the police: “boyfriends ex keeps calling police with false allegations.” Unscrupulous plaintiffs can perpetually harass targets of their wrath this way—and do.

No restrictions whatever are placed upon plaintiffs’ actions, which means that they’re free to bait, taunt, entrap, or stalk defendants on restraining orders they’ve successfully petitioned with impunity. And neither false allegations to the police nor false allegations to the courts (felony perjury) are ever prosecuted.

“A fee shall not be charged for filing a petition under this section or for service of process.”

This means the process is entirely free of charge.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Rape and Restraining Order Fraud: On How Men Betray Women, How Women Betray Men, and How the Courts and the Feminist Establishment Betray Them Both

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I had an exceptional encounter with an exceptional woman this week who was raped as a child (by a child) and later violently raped as a young adult, and whose assailants were never held accountable for their actions. It’s her firm conviction—and one supported by her own experiences and those of women she’s counseled—that allegations of rape and violence in criminal court can too easily be dismissed when, for example, a woman has voluntarily entered a man’s living quarters and an expectation of consent to intercourse has been aroused.

Her perception of judicial bias against criminal plaintiffs is one shared by many and not without cause.

By contrast, I’ve heard from hundreds of people (of both genders) who’ve been violated by false accusers in civil court and who know that frauds are readily and indifferently accepted by judges. (Correspondingly, more than one female victim of civil restraining order abuse has characterized her treatment in court and by the courts as “rape.”)

Their perception of judicial bias against civil defendants is equally validated.

Lapses by the courts have piqued the outrage of victims of both genders against the opposite gender, because most victims of rape are female, and most victims of false allegations are male.

The failures of the court in the prosecution of crimes against women, which arouse feminist ire like nothing else, are largely responsible for the potency of restraining order laws, which are the product of dogged feminist politicking, and which are easily abused to do malice (or psychological “rape”).

In ruminating on sexual politics and the justice system, I’m inexorably reminded of the title of a book by psychologist R. D. Laing that I read years ago: Knots.

In the first title I conceived for this piece, I used the phrase “can’t see eye to eye.” The fact is these issues are so incendiary and prejudicial that no one can see clearly period. Everyone just sees red.

Under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), federal funds are doled out to police precincts and courts in the form of grants purportedly intended to educate police officers and judges and sensitize them to violations against women, which may have the positive effect of ensuring that more female victims of violent crimes see justice but simultaneously ensures that standards applied to the issuance of civil restraining orders slacken still further, allowing casual abuse of a free process to run rampant and destroy lives. The victim toll of false restraining orders negates strides made toward achieving justice for female victims in criminal prosecutions. What is more, though restraining orders are four times more often applied for by women than men, making women their predominant abusers, the laxity of restraining order administration allows women to be violated by men, too.

Not only was a woman I’ve recently been in correspondence with repeatedly assaulted by her short-term boyfriend, a charming and very cunning guy; he also succeeded in petitioning a false restraining order against her, alleging, among other things, violence. She had even applied for a restraining order against him first, which was dismissed:

There are no words for how I felt as I walked to my car that afternoon. To experience someone I had cared deeply about lying viciously in open court, to have a lawyer infer that I’m a liar, and to be told by a judge that, basically, he didn’t believe me (i.e., again, that I’m a liar), filled me with a despair so intense that I could hardly live with it. You know how, in trauma medicine, doctors will sometimes put grossly brain-injured patients into medically-induced comas so as to facilitate healing? That afternoon, I needed and longed for a medically-induced emotional coma to keep my skull from popping off the top of my head. I don’t know how else to describe it. It was that day that I learned that the justice system is rotten, that the truth doesn’t mean shit, and that to the most depraved liar go the spoils.

As many people who’ve responded to this blog have been, this woman was used and abused then publicly condemned and humiliated to compound the torment. She’s shelled out thousands in legal fees, lost a job, is in therapy to try to maintain her sanity, and is due back in court next week. And she has three kids who depend on her.

The perception that consequences of civil frauds are no big deal is wrong and makes possible the kind of scenario illustrated by this woman’s case: the agony and injury of physical assault being exacerbated by the agony and injury of public shame and humiliation, a psychological assault abetted and intensified by the justice system itself.

The consequences of the haywire circumstance under discussion are that victims multiply, and bureaucrats and those who feed at the bureaucratic trough (or on what spills over the side) thrive. The more victims there are and the more people there are who can be represented as victims, the busier and more prosperous grow courts, the police, attorneys, advocacy groups, therapists, etc.

What’s glaringly absent in all of this is oversight and accountability. Expecting diligence and rigor from any government apparatus is a pipedream. So is expecting people to be honest when they have everything to gain from lying and nothing to lose from getting caught at it, because false allegations to civil courts are never prosecuted.

Expecting that judges will be diligent, rigorous, and fair if failing to do so hazards their job security, and expecting civil plaintiffs to be honest if being caught in a lie means doing a stint in prison for felony perjury—that, at least, is reasonable.

The obstacle is that those who hold political sway object to this change. The feminist establishment, whose concern for women’s welfare is far more dogmatic than conscientious, has a strong handhold and no intention of loosening its grip.

Typically both criminal allegations of assault or rape and civil allegations in restraining order cases (which may be of the same or a similar nature) boil down to he-said-she-said. In criminal cases, the standard of guilt is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, a criterion that may be impossible to establish when one person is saying one thing and the other person another, evidence is uncertain, and there are no witnesses. In civil cases, no proof is necessary. So though feminist outrage is never going to be fully satisfied, for example, with the criminal prosecution of rapists, because some rapists will always get off, feminists can always boast success in the restraining order arena, because the issuance of restraining orders is based on judicial discretion and requires no proof at all; and the courts have been socially, politically, and monetarily influenced to favor female plaintiffs. However thwarted female and feminist interests may be on the criminal front, feminists own the civil front.

And baby hasn’t come a long way only to start checking her rearview mirror for smears on the tarmac now.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

“restraining order is bullsh*t”: A Lesson in Lying

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The previous post concerned lying to get restraining orders, how easily frauds are put over, and the possible value to recipients of false restraining orders of lying better than their accusers.

The quoted phrase in this post’s title, slightly censored, represents an actual search term that has brought several such recipients to this blog.

Among those with no firsthand knowledge of how restraining orders are abused or why, there’s an assumption that by lying, complainants of restraining order fraud mean exaggeration, inflation of allegations that at least bear some correspondence to fact.

This assumption is mistakenly based on the belief that courts only act on proof. Proof is not the standard by which civil matters are judged or the criterion upon which civil restraining orders are approved. Restraining order interviews between applicants and judges are five- or 10-minute screen tests, nothing more; proof is unnecessary.

“But surely you can’t just make things up!” You surely can. Anything. There are no consequences to lying to the police, lying under oath to a judge, or lying on a sworn document unless the district attorney’s office opts to prosecute you, and this seldom happens in civil matters and never in those as low on its list of priorities as restraining order fraud. Statutes that threaten penalties for false reporting or committing perjury are like padlocks: they’re only meant to keep honest people honest.

Not only can people lie to the courts—and with impunity—they can lie BIG.

Not many years ago, philosopher Harry Frankfurt published a treatise that I was amused to discover called On Bullshit (which predictably mounted the bestseller list on the allure of its title alone).

In his book—which is brilliant, in fact, and well-deserving of acclaim—Dr. Frankfurt distinguishes “lies” from “bullshit.” Lies, he explains, have a basic or tangential relationship with the truth, that is, they’re not purely imaginative; they fandango the truth. Bullshit, in contrast to lies, lacks even a passing acquaintance with truth. It’s wholly improvisational. The bullshitter doesn’t “reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all.”

False allegations on restraining orders may not be lies simply; they may be bullshit, fabrications that are utterly divorced from reality. A number of respondents to this blog who have been accused of violence, for example, are vegetarian or vegan women who scruple about the welfare of insects and regard violence as unthinkable. Their accusers haven’t merely misrepresented them but reinvented them. The motive? Sheer malice. What correspondence restraining order applicants’ bullshit may have with the truth is antithetical: they allege falsehoods—ones completely estranged from the truth—that they know will most searingly damage their victims.

Success in leading anyone who hasn’t been abused in this way toward realizing that accusers can and do lie is tricky enough; getting them to perceive that allegations may be out-and-out bullshit requires forceful eye-opening.

I can’t responsibly advocate lying. I do, however, acknowledge that since opportunities afforded restraining order defendants to expose the bullshit of unscrupulous accusers may permit them all of 15 minutes to work a miracle, defendants’ following the dictum “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” has something to recommend it.

The logical extension of there being no consequences for lying is there being no consequences for lying back. Bigger and better.

It could be advantageous, speaking practically not morally, for defendants of false restraining orders to embrace this premise and—instead of trying to deflect turds flung at them—to respond in kind (and even less kindly). Fairness, one of our courts’ fundamental procedural principles, dictates that if judicators are willing to tolerate monkey-cage antics from one side (and moreover reward those antics), they can hardly be averse to bilateral flingfests.

Maybe the only way to prompt this process to evolve is to expose it to its own degeneracy: Monkey see, monkey doo-doo.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Lying Back: On Taking the Low Road against Restraining Order Abusers

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One of the most common questions that brings recipients of false restraining orders to this blog is how to prevail in an appeals hearing against an unscrupulous liar.

Because restraining orders are easily applied for and typically cost applicants nothing but a lunch break, they’re unparalleled as instruments of malice. With a few strokes of a pen and some calculated fictions conveyed to a judge with the right touch of hysteria, a liar can undo a target of his or her wrath in short order, permanently sullying his or her reputation, subjecting him or her to public disparagement and disgrace, and possibly denying him or her access to home, children, pets, and property. If word gets out, that target may lose his or her job and moreover have a highly prejudicial blot on his or her record that impedes him or her from getting a new one. More than one respondent to this blog has reported being jailed on fraudulent charges or left homeless and destitute.

Multiple restraining orders against a number of people marked for vendetta can even be applied for back to back by a single plaintiff.

False allegations are routinely accepted by the courts at face value—the attention paid to such allegations is scant at best—and if those whom false allegations are leveled against are heard from by the courts at all, it’s only after the allegations against them have been presumed true. An appellant may furthermore be granted no more than 15 or 20 minutes to try to convince the court that it erred in its initial decision. The expectation of a fair and just hearing, therefore, is next to nil.

I’ve spilled a good deal of digital ink over the past 26 months articulating the manifold and manifest problems inherent in the restraining order process, and I’ve offered what limited information and modest advice I could to those who’ve been abused by it.

In doing so, I’ve tried to toe the ethical line: “speak to the allegations and show that they’re false,” “explain to the judge any ulterior motives the plaintiff would have for lying about you,” etc. I’ve counseled, in other words, fighting fire with water.

The more familiar phrase, of course, is “fight fire with fire.” I can’t endorse lying and won’t. But admitting that lying more effectively than your accuser may be the best defense against a false restraining order isn’t a lie.

The sad and disgusting fact is that success in the courts, particularly in the drive-thru arena of restraining order prosecution, is largely about impressions. Ask yourself who’s likelier to make the more impressive showing: the liar who’s free to let his or her imagination run wickedly rampant or the honest person who’s constrained by ethics to be faithful to the facts?

A fraud enters an appeals hearing with the advantage of already having had his or her lies recognized by a judge as true. An honest defendant not only faces the obstacle of disproving what should never have been taken for fact to begin with but must also fend off whatever new lies his or her accuser may have concocted in the meantime or may invent on the spur of the moment.

And that defendant may have all of 15 minutes in which to accomplish this, since restraining order appeals hearings may be allotted no more than half an hour on the court’s docket. A fraud knows exactly what facts to anticipate from an honest person (and can prefabricate false defenses); an honest person flies blind (and in this process, injured), never knowing what’s coming or from what direction.

Unscrupulous restraining order plaintiffs, who may be sociopaths or have borderline personality disorders, may falsely allege violence, bizarre sex acts, stalking, death threats, or worse. And they do so with complete indifference to the effects these allegations (and their being made publicly) have on their victims. Some liars are horrifyingly imaginative and color their frauds with lurid details that would inspire the envy of a professional screenwriter. Some liars—pathological narcissists, for example—are magnetic personalities, besides, who may have devoted followers willing to abet them in a fraud or who may readily persuade those who don’t know any better to take their side.

Should defendants lie?

This question has two possible interpretations:  1. Is it ethically conscionable? Or 2. Is it the only way to defuse an improvised explosive device that could shatter their lives? Depending on which of these interpretations is meant by the question, the answer could be negative or affirmative.

Should citizens in the civilized world ever be placed in the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t position of having to lie to the courts to counteract lies to the courts? The answer to that question is easy:  Hell no.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

What to Do if You’ve Been Abused by a Judge

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Judicial misbehavior is often complained of by defendants who’ve been abused by the restraining order process. Cited instances include gross dereliction, judge-attorney cronyism, gender bias, open contempt, and warrantless verbal cruelty. Avenues for seeking the censure of a judge who has engaged in negligent or vicious misconduct vary from state to state. In my own state of Arizona, complaints may be filed with the Commission on Judicial Conduct. Similar boards, panels, and tribunals exist in most other states.

Citizens of other countries are encouraged to hunt up the equivalent regulatory bodies in their own provinces or nation-states.

Such commissions won’t retry a case. Complainants looking for fairer treatment or relief from an unjust decision by an independent body of arbiters will be disappointed. These panels will, though, investigate allegations of ethical violations by judges. Those readily responded to are glaring ones: slovenliness, for example, or drunkenness or the use of vulgarities or racial epithets. Misbehaviors like these are indefensible and reflect poorly on the dignity of the courts.

Favorable treatment toward one party or the other (that is, preferentialism or sexual bias), abuse of power, disparagement, and slackness, however, also contravene judicial performance expectations, and they are equally valid reasons for censure. Defendants’ feeling scorned by judges of restraining orders is common and a frequently expressed source of gnawing outrage. Odds are complaints about such treatment will be discounted or even offhandedly dismissed. But complainants cannot be punished for reporting judicial misconduct, and there’s always a chance that a compelling petition may be heeded (especially if the same allegations have been made against a particular judge previously).

There may be value, too, in more abused defendants voicing beefs and thereby arousing awareness among oversight commissions of the breadth and severity of judicial malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance in the restraining order arena, because it’s complacency, ignorance, and indifference by those empowered to make a difference that preserves the status quo.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

“Why Would a Narcissist Put a Restraining Order on You?”

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Questions about the motives of the narcissistic brain like the one that titles this post bring visitors to this blog almost daily (related search terms that have drawn readers here can be found cataloged at the end of this post). Among the blog’s most clicked-on links are those to short essays on the subjects of narcissistic malice and vengeance by Dr. Linda Martinez-Lewi like those I’ve provided in the comments to this page. Dr. Martinez-Lewi is an expert on pathological narcissism (also called narcissistic personality disorder or NPD) who hosts the blog The Narcissist in Your Life. (Investigators into this subject may also find enlightening the writings of Stanton E. Samenow, Ph.D.; Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.; Paul J. Hannig, Ph.D.; and the late and very astute Joanna M. Ashmun.)

Below are some excerpted paragraphs from Dr. Martinez-Lewi’s essays that, contemplated as a series, will lead a person a long way toward an understanding of why malicious abuse of restraining orders to defame, discredit, and demolish targets of their wrath is so attractive to narcissists. (Italics are added.)

Narcissists expect everyone, through their words, gestures, and behaviors to mirror them perfectly. If you fail to do this in their eyes (and they are always looking for imperfection in others not themselves), it causes an unconscious bruise in their brittle egos. Even the smallest mistake or what the narcissist perceives as your mistake will result in the spewing of dark rage. If you do not go along to get along with them perfectly and buck them, you are bumping up against an inflexible, grandiose ego, and there will be hell to pay.

No one says “No” to the narcissist—unless they want to be the recipient of retribution. That is the narcissist’s mindset. These individuals have very rigid personality structures that do not change. They have unbending wills that insist they are always right, that their way is the only one, and…all of those who buck them will be discarded and punished severely. The narcissist plays dirty; [s/he] is a street fighter, a ninja. The narcissist picks the weak spots, the vulnerabilities in his [or her] opponent and knows exactly where and how to turn the screws. We become an opponent of the narcissist when we defy him [or her] and think for ourselves and let him or her know that they can no longer rule our lives. Most people are intimidated by the power and force of the narcissistic personality, especially if this is a person of high professional achievement, financial status, and powerful connections.

There are sociopathic narcissists who will not be satisfied until their “enemy” is completely vanquished—emotionally, psychologically, financially. They seek revenge, not for what has been done to them but what they perceive in a highly deluded way…has been done to them. Narcissists are never wrong—they are incapable of mistakes, because they truly believe that they are perfect. They are capable of persuading even intelligent people that they are the good guy, and their victim is the culprit. With the use of a fake charm, dynamism, [and] sexual wiles, they fool most individuals. A sociopathic narcissist will tear you to shreds….

[N]arcissists or their doubles contact your relatives, in-laws, friends, and anyone who will listen to broadcast blatant lies about your character. This doesn’t happen in all instances, but it is remarkable the lengths these malicious individuals exceed to trash you, putting you at fault and even leading others to believe that you are “crazy.” Even people whom you have trusted…can be flipped to the narcissist’s side, especially if [s/he] has influence where you have lived and deep pockets.

Narcissists never play fair. Narcissists are extreme competitors. Narcissists are very sore losers. When you cross a narcissist in business or your personal life, be prepared for some form of revenge.  Although the narcissist has a full-blown, grandiose ego, beneath the surface [s/he] is subject to narcissistic wounds. His [or her] ego bruises easily. If you beat him [or her] out of a business deal, it is likely that [s/he] will go after you in some way. If you choose to divorce a narcissist, it can go several ways. [S/he] may want to get rid of you and any children you have…and send you out of his [or her] life. In some cases, the narcissist is holding a deep grudge and is determined to collect on what [s/he] knows is his [or hers]. In divorce matters, [s/he] makes outlandish claims and tells outright lies about his [or her] spouse in order to win the battle.

The urge to take revenge runs deeply through the narcissist’s blood. Revenge is as prehistoric as life in the caves. Revenge is an act of retaliation for a perceived wrong or injury—payback time. I have been in contact with many spouses and ex-spouses of narcissists who were shocked by the unrelenting force of their former partner’s revenge tactics. During a divorce from a narcissistic partner, plans for revenge are hatched and played out. One classic ploy is the narcissist’s bullying tactics as [s/he] convincingly threatens to take you down financially and psychologically. Even after the divorce is final, the narcissist continues the Hundred Year War. Many narcissists cannot let go, not because they have ever loved their previous spouse, but for purposes of psychologically destroying the previous partner. Rumor campaigns are ignited to ruin the reputation and social standing of the previous spouse. Threats are made to change custodial agreements, not because the narcissist feels compelled to have more involvement in his [or her] children’s lives but to shake the cage of the ex-spouse. One of the most potent ploys of the narcissist is playing the victim role. When he or she has torn his [or her] ex-spouse’s life to bits for decades, [s/he] makes a quick switch, becoming the recipient of psychological and emotional pain not the narcissistic perpetrator.

Narcissists know how to manipulate their way out of trouble—even if there are serious ethical violations or illegal activities involved. Some narcissists finally tumble, and we watch them finally get their due and pay the consequences. This doesn’t happen often. If you are waiting for your ex-narcissistic husband or wife to be brought down due to his cruel, manipulative, and devastating behaviors toward his family, don’t hold your breath. We cannot put our faith even in the courts to obtain justice. Narcissists find clever ways around legal issues. If they have large sums of money at their disposal, there are situations in which they manipulate the outcome of legal proceedings. I know of cases in which a narcissistic spouse ended up wresting custody control from the other partner.

Dr. Martinez-Lewi’s therapeutic orientation is toward narcissists’ spouses and family members, but her revelations of basic narcissistic motives and tactics are applicable to the situation of anyone who runs afoul of a narcissist, irrespective of how intimate their relationship.

Though this advice of Dr. Martinez-Lewi’s is directed toward soon-to-be ex-spouses, its gist should be taken to heart by anyone in a legal contest with a narcissist: “[B]e sure you hire an attorney who is not only an expert in family law but who is exceedingly savvy about the ruses, tricks, and ploys of the narcissistic personality disorder. Your attorney needs to be highly professional but fearless in facing this relentless, cruel, and destructive individual. An excellent attorney in these situations must be like ultra-marathon runners. Regardless of any obstacle placed in front of them by the narcissist, they are undaunted. Their perseverance is golden.”

There are no depths to which a narcissist won’t stoop to injure the target of his or her wrath. A narcissist will lie to your face about things you did together, so expect him or her to have no compunction at all about lying to anyone else about you, including friends, associates, authorities, and officers of the court.

Because judges of restraining order applications are inclined to presume a plaintiff is telling the truth, they’re readily duped by narcissists, who not only lie glibly and persuasively but with a cold-bloodedness nothing shy of fiendish.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Just because Simon Says Someone’s a Danger Doesn’t Make It So: On the Playground Nature of Restraining Order Administration

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Restraining orders occupy an exceptional status among complaints made to our courts, because their defendants (recipients) are denied due process, that is, they have no say in the “preliminary” conclusions formed by judges.

A plaintiff (applicant) waltzes into a courthouse and makes some allegations against a defendant, who is just a name on a form. That’s it. And those allegations are subject to no special standard of verification, which is why the word preliminary in the first sentence is enclosed in quotation marks of contempt: presumed conclusions are seldom revised even when defendants pursue what meager opportunities they may be afforded to challenge and controvert allegations casually leveled against them.

Once a judge signs off on a restraining order, it’s typically a done deal. Which is a problem, because no due process means plaintiffs get to play Simon Says with the truth.

“Simon says he’s a danger.”

Check.

“Simon says she’s a stalker.”

Check.

The restraining order process has devolved into a playground game—all comers welcome!—that is provided a gloss of legitimacy by the stern and forbidding rhetoric and consequences that attend it and the earnest faith it’s afforded by those who don’t know any better, which certainly includes the general public and may include authorities and officers of the court, also.

It’s a sham, a scam, and a shame on our justice system.

Allegations of any nature, including assault (physical or sexual), can be made on restraining orders without applicants being charged a penny or having to satisfy any standard of proof (and these allegations may be permanently stamped on recipients’ public records for anyone to peruse—employers, for example—or entered into public registries). And they can be made straight to a judge who it’s usually the case has been instructed not merely to take those allegations seriously but to accept them at face value.

In fact, contrary to reason, the worse an allegation is, the less it’s to be questioned. The truth of an allegation of violence, especially, is to be accepted as given.

There are even “emergency restraining orders” that may deny their defendants any more than a weekend to prepare a defense (try finding a lawyer on a Thursday who’s willing to represent you on the following Monday), and the standard of credibility applied by judges to applications for these orders is no more demanding. Emergency restraining orders may likelier be approved on reflex because of the implications of the word emergency (I wish I were kidding).

Hysteria is not evidence, and finger-pointing is not fact. Parents scold their children: “Would you jump off a bridge just because everybody else did?” Little kids are exhorted to think independently and not to act on impulse or in sheepish compliance with convention.

Judges, I’m pretty sure, are supposed to do the same.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Statistics of Fraud and Misuse Are beside the Point: Restraining Orders Hurt People

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Inconvenient statistics have been cited in support of restraining order reform for many years, statistics like 8 in 10 restraining orders are obtained either on dubious grounds or downright fraudulent ones. This stat, drawn from a West Virginia study, was formerly cited on Wikipedia but has since been quashed. Unnecessarily, probably. Restraining order injustice is hardly a topic of broad public concern. Statistics like this are mainly cited among its victims—and to little or no effect.

Bruiting stats of this kind is sort of like throwing rocks at a tank.

The restraining order process has, over the last three decades, spawned a behemoth institution that spans not only the United States but much of the globe. Entire cottage industries have evolved around it. Restraining order administration entails not only court officers and staff but police, social workers, employees of women’s shelters, attorneys and their retinues, therapists, and many others. Livelihoods have come to depend on its perpetuation. And the volume of restraining orders issued ensures that public funds (in the billions in this country alone) continue to be dedicated to raising social awareness and sensitizing authorities and judges to violence against women. These funds go to sustaining additional swathes of Justice Department employees and advocacy groups and further guarantee that the number of restraining orders issued continues to grow, despite the fact that violence is seldom alleged on restraining order applications at all.

Critics of restraining orders are ragtag revolutionaries, often with very divergent motives. Some oppose reverse discrimination, some advocate for fathers’ rights or preservation of the family, some denounce violations of civil liberties.

Those most dramatically impacted by restraining order abuse, its victims, are typically only heard to peep and grumble here and there.

It’s their stories, though, that speak most persuasively to the need for restraining order reform. Pointing out the inconsistency, illogic, unfairness, and indecency of how restraining orders are administered is of limited value, because no one who hasn’t been victimized by the process has any urgent cause to care. And legislative interest is only aroused when a majority of constituents recognize a need for change and clamor for it.

Since I began this blog in the summer of 2011, I’ve learned a good deal about the manifold ways people prey on and injure one another. And having been collegiately trained as an analyst, I’ve noted and could reveal to you any number of themes that run through abuses of restraining orders.

Far more compelling, though, are the individual stories that respondents to this blog have shared. Here are some of them in digest form:

  • a man whose ex-wife is an attorney is serially pelted with restraining orders, because he’s remarrying, and his ex-wife jealously doesn’t want their kids to attend the ceremony and hopes, besides, to drive off the fiancée;
  • a young, female attorney’s career ambitions are derailed when she’s served an emergency restraining order by an older, male colleague who seduced her while concealing he was married and didn’t want the fact getting back to his missus;
  • a daughter is served a restraining order to deny her access to her paralyzed and dying mother by her father, an attorney, who verbally tormented her for decades and turned a blind eye to her brothers’ physically abusing her for the same period;
  • a former city official (a vegetarian single mom) is accused of domestic violence by a high school boyfriend she briefly renewed a Platonic friendship with decades later who had a very jealous wife;
  • a man is forced to dismantle his entire life, following his being charged with battery after he caught his wife texting her lover, and the two wrestled for possession of the phone for an hour;
  • a young woman is served with restraining orders petitioned from two separate jurisdictions by her ex-boyfriend in retaliation for her dumping him;
  • a grandma is served a restraining order by her former daughter-in-law because the latter is jealous of her sons’ affections for their nana;
  • a 20-year-old college student is served an emergency restraining order by her counselor, alleging stalking and danger, because the girl encountered her a few times in public (in a town of 2,000 residents) and said hi.

And that’s just a handful off the top of my head. (Browse this online petition for thousands more.)

What should be evident from these accounts is that the popular paradigm of restraining orders being issued to men who chronically beat their wives while in a drunken haze is a disco-era cardboard caricature badly warped with age that’s only rescued from crumpling by the vast number of people with an investment in preserving an outdated impression.

Beneath all the statistics and all legal and Constitutional arguments aside, the restraining order process cries for reform, because the lives of ordinary, decent people are being unjustly destroyed by it.

It’s really that simple.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

A Safety Seal: What Restraining Orders and Tic Tacs Should Have in Common but Don’t

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I’ve written recently about restraining orders’ circumvention of due process and remarked that at the time of their advent—the 1970s—this may have seemed to lawmakers like an urgently necessary evil.

The phrase due process, to recap, refers to granting defendants (like recipients of restraining orders) the opportunity to defend themselves before a judgment is entered on allegations made against them. Restraining orders deny defendants due process, because their guilt is conclusively presumed without judges’ knowing who they are (even so-called “appeals hearings” may afford a defendant no more than a 15-minute audience with a judge who already supposes him or her to be guilty).

To put it baldly, defendants are issued orders from the court that manifestly identify them as creeps and that may summarily (and indefinitely) deprive them access to home, children, money, and property based on the court’s knowing nothing more about them than their names and what someone alleged against them, which the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted to guarantee can’t happen.

The motive for denying restraining order defendants due process—for which legislators are to blame, not judges—was satisfying feminist outrage by ensuring female victims of domestic violence didn’t have to worry about their allegations being discounted or criticized by the police, as they well might have been in the ’70s (imagine being knocked around and terrorized at home then publicly ridiculed or excoriated by authorities—all men—for complaining about it). Restraining orders authorized battered women to take their allegations directly to a judge and thereby be granted immediate relief from unbearable circumstances.

Though social attitudes toward women’s rights and domestic abuse have shifted radically in 30 years (to a vulgar extreme, many might argue), no one, however, has looked back. Restraining orders continue to follow the same policies they did from the start (or laxer ones) and have only become more widely applied and sprouted more and sharper teeth.

The last commentary noted that at the time restraining orders were enacted, legislators assuredly never gave a thought to the possibility that they would be abused.

At that time, no one had considered that somebody might intentionally sabotage foodstuffs or over-the-counter medications, either. It never occurred to manufacturers or government overseers of product safety standards that somebody might poison others just for the fun of doing them harm—or just because they could.

Following Tylenol’s being tampered with in 1981, everything from diced onions to multivitamins requires a safety seal. Naive trust was violated, and legislators responded.

Legal lions, scholars, and journalists have denounced the injustice of restraining orders for 20 years now at least, and any number of lives fractured by wrongfully issued restraining orders have been publicly chronicled. Even government studies have concluded that a majority of restraining orders are sought unnecessarily or falsely and that only a small minority ever even allege violence.

How many more people have to be poisoned by a widely abused judicial process before the same cautionary measures applied to Tic Tacs are applied to it?

Time for a manufacturer recall.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Circumventing Due Process Isn’t Just What Restraining Orders Do—It’s What They Were Designed to Do

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detour
“Due process of law implies the right of the person affected thereby to be present before the tribunal which pronounces judgment upon the question of life, liberty, or property, in its most comprehensive sense; to be heard, by testimony or otherwise, and to have the right of controverting, by proof, every material fact which bears on the question of right in the matter involved. If any question of fact or liability be conclusively presumed against him, this is not due process of law.”

—Black’s Law Dictionary

The phrase due process (or due process of law) names those most fundamental legal entitlements that ensure an individual is provided the means and opportunity to defend him- or herself and his or her interests in court.

In the previous post, I observed that restraining orders skirt due process entirely—which I’m hardly the first person to remark.

As this post’s epigraph explains, whenever the court presumes that a person is liable for or guilty of some alleged transgression and enters a judgment against that person without first granting that person the opportunity to challenge the allegations against him or her, that person is denied due process.

Not kinda-sorta but flatly.

Since restraining orders (by legislative mandate) are issued ex parte, which means that the only parties judges hear from prior to entering rulings are restraining order applicants, every restraining order recipient is denied due process. Every one of them. Always. Restraining order defendants are just inked names on paper forms; judges have no idea whom they’re entering judgments against, and defendants have no idea judgments have been entered against them until a constable comes knocking.

Restated using legalese from this post’s epigraph, when a defendant’s guilt is “conclusively presumed,” as it is when a judge approves a restraining order, “this is not due process of law.” Restated simply, when rulings are made prior to defendants’ being given a chance to defend themselves, there’s no due process. Restated simplest, restraining orders = no due process = no adherence to the most basic principles of law = dirty pool.

This is an obvious and indisputable fact, and as I stated earlier, I’m hardly the first person to have noted it.

What’s more rarely observed is that denying defendants due process was the purpose of restraining orders’ being enacted. Restraining order legislation, by design, authorizes a plaintiff to communicate his or her allegations directly to a judge, without having to convince any legal authorities of the merits of those allegations, and requires that a judge enter a ruling on those allegations without a plaintiff’s having to face the person s/he’s accused. (Due process is a constitutional guarantee under the Fourteenth Amendment—except when lawmakers say otherwise.)

The motive for this circumvention of due process is now a very dusty one.

Restraining orders were born three decades ago in response to a pressing demand from female advocates for a process that allowed at-risk women, particularly victims of domestic violence, to avoid the pain and humiliation of having to take their claims to the police (who may have discounted those claims or even criticized women for making them) and go straight to a judge, that is, to have the opportunity to quickly and quietly explain their hardships in a situation of security and minimal scrutiny.

In the social climate that predominated in the 1970s, this made sense. Wives were still expected, by and large, to stay home, tend to their kids and kitchens, and mind their husbands. If husbands sometimes got a little free with their hands, that wasn’t something you broadcast to the world.

Restraining orders, which were legal finesses from the outset, were meant to arrest domestic violence and provide abused women with a discreet and minimally agonizing way to communicate abuse to the court and gain immediate relief from it. It certainly wasn’t on the minds of lawmakers at the time (or anyone else) that restraining orders would one day be applied to routine annoyances or that applicants might fabricate allegations or manipulate a free and convenient process for malicious or selfish ends.

Legislators bowed to social pressures for very sympathetic reasons. The problem is they’ve gone right on bowing for 30 years without consideration to how far restraining orders have drifted from their original intent or to whether their denial of due process to defendants is still justifiable.

Today, relative to the millions of restraining orders that are issued every year, it’s only seldom that allegations of violence are made on restraining orders at all.

Which doesn’t at all mean that the presumption of violence (stalking, sex offenses, etc.) isn’t applied to restraining order recipients universally.

Warrant for the continuation of a process whose nuclear cloud has gusted so far from its target demands a retrofit. This isn’t 1979, and there no longer exists any conscionable excuse for denying defendants due process of law. This is 2013, and violating defendants’ civil rights and burdening them thereby with criminal imputations for the rest of their lives is cruel and unusual punishment.

It’s vicious.

The restraining order process either needs to be dusted off and revisited or relegated to the dustbin of history.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Circumventing Due Process: On How Restraining Orders Personalize Law

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A frequent commenter to this blog, one with philosophical leanings, pointed out recently that restraining orders personalize law.

His point is that where prior to the advent of restraining orders complaints of abuse would have been vetted and either rejected or acted upon by the police and district attorney based on the evident merits of those complaints’ allegations, today the middlemen whose scrutiny formerly provided a safeguard against false or frivolous allegations’ unjustly contaminating a defendant’s life have been removed from the equation.

A plaintiff now effectively determines what should merit the court’s intervention him- or herself merely by filling out a boilerplate form and leveling allegations in a brief interview with a judge, which allegations (especially if made by a woman) judges have been trained to all but accept unquestioningly.

A plaintiff, whose motives can hardly be expected to be free of bias and may be wholly malicious, preempts the roles of the police and district attorney and is furthermore entitled not only to communicate his or her allegations directly to a judge but to expect that the judge will accept those allegations at face value—in the complete absence, moreover, of any contradictory testimony or evidence from the defendant, who is also bypassed.

Due process, a constitutional guarantee, is skirted entirely: a person walks in off the street and says it; therefore it is so.

Loan officers at banks were as easily persuaded six years ago that anyone who strolled through the door should be given a loan. They observed the same turnstile policy commonly followed by the courts in the issuance of restraining orders. Applicants were happy, because they weren’t disappointed, and officers looked good, because they met their quotas.

The result of this policy was that one of the systems that hold together the fabric of our society was bankrupted.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Restraining Orders and Bureaucracy Don’t Mix

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Restraining orders were designed to be easily obtained so that at-risk women could quickly and conveniently gain relief from dicey situations.

Conceptually, the motive behind their legislative enactment is pretty hard to fault.

Common sense, however, should warn us (and should have warned lawmakers from the start) that a government process that’s quick and convenient is one that’s going to be abused.

And when there’s money to be made from that process, moreover—in this case by everyone from attorneys, police departments, and courts to social workers, feminist advocacy groups, and psychotherapists—it’s one to be doubly dubious of.

Over the three decades since restraining orders were instituted, both their breadth of applicability and punitive force have steadily magnified.

If the standards that determine when a restraining order is warranted have changed at all, however, those standards have only slackened.

Practice has outstripped principle.

Restraining orders may now be issued to arrest any minor conflict—including, for example, Facebook annoyances—but still retain their original implications: violence, predatory stalking, and other extreme misconduct.

Even the paper applications remain the same. Restraining orders are one-size-fits-all documents.

And their residue never just evaporates. Restraining order recipients may be denied employment even years later, because the issuance of these instruments remains a matter of public record. They may even be recorded in registries for convenient public access. Some job applications, what is more, explicitly ask if a potential employee has “been the subject of a restraining order.” Doctrinaire advocates of restraining orders still perpetuate the illusion that they’re only issued to domestic abusers and other social malefactors, so the public presumption is that if you’ve received a restraining order, you’re a batterer, stalker, or some other form of sexual or criminal deviant—and clearly not a great candidate for employment anywhere. Nor a great candidate, for that matter, to adopt a child or share someone else’s life.

The law applies a double-standard. On the one hand, it regards restraining orders as civil misdemeanors and no big deal. Recipients of restraining orders are supposed to mind them for their duration and then shrug them off: c’est la vie. On the other hand, it won’t hesitate to judge a person for his or her having received a restraining order, and may regard and treat a restraining order recipient like a criminal.

As one respondent to this blog points out, the safeguards against criminalizing someone unjustly have been entirely circumvented:

Before these restraining order injunctions came about, it was up to the police and the district attorney to move forth prosecution. The police investigate crimes, and the district attorney helps prosecute crimes. If something did not appear to be severe, deserving punishment, and a problem to society or its individuals, it was brushed off.

In comes restraining orders.

Yes, restraining orders can help an individual develop criminal allegations against another individual in civil court. However, a judge generally has the power to rule over simple things, such as harassment, whereby a bench trial can occur. Many other things, such as assault, are criminal allegations, whereby a person is granted a right to a jury.

It is the right to a jury that has become degenerated throughout these proceedings. As such, members of society have been allowed to attack one another without any observation of a “reasonable person” standard. The judge, no longer impartial, becomes the reasonable person.

Restraining order legislation all but automates the process of saddling a person indefinitely with criminal imputations that are legitimated by a judge based solely on a brief interview with the restraining order applicant alone and that need never be proven at all, let alone to a jury of the restraining order recipient’s peers.

Restraining orders have made determining who’s a criminal and who isn’t a completely bureaucratic process. What should demand extreme deliberation has become an arbitrary call.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Restraining Order Laws Hold Nothing Sacred

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I’ve been in correspondence with a woman who was recently forced to abandon her home to make herself unavailable to further allegations of abuse from her neighbor, allegations that she reports aren’t just false but nuts (and that have continued to escalate and compound over weeks and months).

This woman, a solitary 65-year-old with no nearby family to turn to for support, has had to relinquish her independence and move in with a friend at great sacrifice to both her comfort and pride.

She has also, of course, had to retain the services of an attorney.

And chances are that no matter how the controversy resolves in court, she’ll never again feel safe and easy in her own house and will have to uproot.

Her situation emphasizes a number of the horrors that attend restraining orders and the policies that inform their administration:

  • Confounding the constitutional guarantees to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, restraining orders may deny defendants all rights to property, children, and home—or, as in this woman’s case, the right to feel secure in that home—based on unverified (and possibly unverifiable) accusations leveled by plaintiffs in a span of a few minutes. Aptly applying a quotation from Woody Allen to how easily restraining orders are obtained: “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”
  • The standard of proof is so meager that a lone defendant has little hope of defusing allegations by an aggressive and insistent plaintiff. (And it’s almost always the case that had the defendant been the first party in a dispute to seek a restraining order, the court would as likely have found the defendant’s representation to be the more urgent “truth of the matter.” Especially when, as in this case, both the plaintiff and defendant are women. Certainly the first party before a judge has the competitive edge—not least of all because the opposing party is never interviewed.)
  • Once an unscrupulous plaintiff gets a taste of what s/he can get away with, s/he may repeatedly up the ante. Harsher allegations, counterintuitively, are no more likely to be closely scrutinized by the court and all the more likely to be accepted. I say “accepted,” because their accuracy is irrelevant. Restraining orders aren’t approved based on the truth of a plaintiff’s individual allegations so much as on the forcefulness of their totality (even if some or all are bogus). Basically, the harder allegations are for a judge to ignore, the more likely they are to work. A person succeeds in getting a restraining order; s/he doesn’t get one because everything s/he alleges is true (though all allegations remain on public record, true or false—which of course means false ones become “true” by virtue of a judge’s signature).

The woman whose story prompts this post has been left with seeking solace from her faith, because there are no other sources. That a citizen of the United States of America must sooner trust in prayer than in the justice of her own government tells you everything you need to know about the iniquities of this process.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Also, Restraining Orders Don’t Work

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“Few lives, if any, have been saved, but much harm, and possibly loss of lives, has come from the issuance of restraining orders.”

—Justice Milton Raphaelson (upon his retirement)

There’s no denying that the restraining order is a forceful instrument and a nasty one to be on the receiving end of, especially when the behaviors alleged against you are trumped up. The question is, what good are restraining orders when they’re used legitimately?

Dr. Charles Corry, president of the Equal Justice Foundation, has compiled a horror-show list of examples in support of his thesis that court orders that purport to protect women only exacerbate the male rage they promise to defuse or avert.

In The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker cites two government investigations that support Corry’s conclusions: “In a study of 179 stalking cases sponsored by the San Diego District Attorney’s Office, about half of the victims who had sought restraining orders felt their cases were worsened by them. In a study done for the U.S. Department of Justice, researchers concluded that restraining orders were ‘ineffective in stopping physical violence.’” De Becker, whose book was published 16 years ago, offers this perspective: “Lawyers, police, TV newspeople, counselors, psychologists, and even some victims’ advocates recommend restraining orders wholesale. They are a growth industry in this country. We should, perhaps, consider putting them on the New York Stock Exchange, but we should stop telling people that a piece of paper will automatically protect them, because…it may do the opposite.”

How many women who trusted in the protection of restraining orders, I wonder, have been maimed, lamed, scarred, or killed since de Becker’s book was printed?

The restraining order’s advent arose in response to feminist outcry for legislative redress of domestic violence. It has since become a judicial quick fix for any complaint involving an allegation of harassment or even vague apprehension. Its original purpose, one for which it has never adequately served, has been obscured; and the ends to which it’s often wielded today are starkly less sympathetic.

Feminist scholars Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers, and Daphne Patai have publicly criticized the feminist influence that squelches a reasoned consideration of these issues; and conservative commentator Phyllis Schlafly  has published columns openly deriding the value and validity of restraining orders and the judicial processes from which they originate.

(I was unsurprised to find a page on Wikipedia entitled, “Restraining order abuse,” that had been deleted. The explanation for its removal reads, “No indication that this article…covers a notable and/or neutral topic.” A related article, “Restraining order,” did acknowledge that abuse of restraining orders “is claimed to be widespread.” That verbiage has been redacted. When I began this blog in 2011, it included these stats, also, which have since been edited out: “A 1995 study conducted by the Massachusetts Trial Court that reviewed domestic restraining orders issued in the state found that less than half of the orders involved even an allegation of violence [note that over 15 years have gone by since then]. Similarly a West Virginia study found eight out of 10 orders were unnecessary or false.” Once you could find an eHow article explaining, “How to Avoid Becoming a Victim of Restraining Order Abuse.” Its URL now redirects to “How to Get a Harassment Restraining Order in Chicago.”)

My own contempt for restraining order laws and how they’re applied couldn’t be keener. But I’m also angry for women legitimately at risk. Not only are restraining orders prone to casual abuse—making them a mockery—they don’t answer the problem for which they were enacted.

The dominant political influence in the perpetuation of the status quo in all matters related to restraining order legislation is that exerted by dogmatic feminists (a.k.a. “gender feminists”). And money talks. Feminism’s representatives have received billions in federal funding under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). A cynic might propose that the interests of the cause are being protected over the welfare of the victims of restraining orders, male and female.

If vengeance for past injustices and leverage over men are feminists’ intent, then defense of current restraining order policies certainly has a lot to recommend it (just ask any attorney who practices family law). Here’s where honest self-examination of motives by feminists, specifically those of the academic stripe (a.k.a. “The Sorority”), is due.

Feminists should realize, being in the main acutely intelligent women, that sexual discrimination and role reversals—however spitefully gratifying they may be—don’t signify an advance toward gender equality but rather a resignation to its unattainability that parades as social progress. Encouraging women to crouch behind the legs of parental policies, policies both biased and in some cases dangerously or even fatally ineffectual, isn’t encouraging them to stand on their own two feet. Feminist used to mean brassy and independent.

Let’s be clear here: assault is already a crime. The answer to it is a barred cage.

Let’s be honest, too. The common function of restraining orders is tactical terrorism. They don’t empower women; they just diminish men (and feminist and judicial credibility). They’re exploited as expedients—and often for ends ulterior to the ones their petitioners profess.

Turnabout may be fair play, but it’s still just gamesmanship that we’re talking about, not equity. If feminists are sincere when they say they want to be taken seriously, their aim should be nobler than dominance of the sandbox by baseball bat.

You know something’s gone very wrong when the question becomes, who’s battering whom?

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Why Judges Are Scared of Girls: On Sexual Politics and Restraining Order Injustice

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A not insignificant reason for judges’ pandering to women who claim to be afraid of this man or that man is their consciousness of the impact that a feminist backlash would have on their careers if they were to discount a woman’s allegation of fear and then that fear were to be proved valid. So long robe and gavel.

It’s happened.

Knee-jerk feminists, to quote philosopher and feminist scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, are “brilliant work-shoppers, networkers, [and] organizers…. There has never been a more effective army of busybodies. And they know how to work the system.” They’re a political force to be reckoned with and one today’s society has been conditioned to truckle to. Seven or eight years ago, Harvard President Larry Summers was given the bum’s rush for making statements construed as derogatory to women at a conference on gender imbalances in science. And a judge is no less vulnerable to the feminist chopping block than a university president.

In theory, civil rulings are based on a preponderance of evidence. In practice, at least in the fast and loose arena of restraining order administration, they observe the rule that it’s better to err on the side of caution.

And it isn’t only men who suffer the consequences of this dereliction. Because the court must be seen to be fair and balanced, women are conversely victimized by unscrupulous men in accordance with the same politically slackened evidentiary standard. (In fact, though only one in five restraining orders is issued to a woman, at least as many women as men have submitted comments to this blog chronicling torturous restraining order ordeals—and some of these women even report they’ve been victimized by other women.)

The rationale echoes that of the witch trials: if a person was never a threat at all and doesn’t violate the restraining order, s/he appears to have been tamed by it, and the court can congratulate itself; if s/he was a threat and violates the restraining order, the court was right to intervene…and can congratulate itself.

Bottom line: We did our job.

Which is of course untrue. The court’s job isn’t to protect and serve the public. That’s the job of the police, which is why it says so on their cars. And it certainly isn’t the court’s job to protect and serve the career interests of its judges. The court’s job is to protect the dignity of our legal system and to impartially and diligently serve the cause of justice.

And none other.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Feminism and Gender Guilt: On Restraining Order Policy’s Encouraging Judges to Abuse Men

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A police officer’s job is to enforce policy, not interpret it. And policy respecting allegations made pursuant to seeking a restraining order, in particular allegations made by women, is to take the truth of those allegations for granted.

Judges, on the other hand, are paid—and quite handsomely—to interpret evidence and testimony, and to apply policy based on deliberated conclusions.

So how is it so many men are railroaded through a process that may be initiated on no evidence at all, may strip them of their most valued investments and every bit of social and financial equity they’ve built in their lives—kids, home, money, property, business, and reputation—and may ensure that they’re never able to recover what they’ve been deprived of?

Feminists don’t acknowledge their political might, because that would be disadvantageous to their accumulating more of it. They continue to plead victimization and to promote skewed or bogus statistics like one in four women are prey to rapists or attempted rapists, women earn a mere fraction of what men do, girls are ignored by their teachers, and battery is the leading cause of birth defects and increases by 40% on Super Bowl Sunday.

Enterprising journalists like Ken Ringle and dissident feminist scholars Christina Hoff Sommers and Camille Paglia have long ago debunked all of these claims, yet they continue to circulate. The feminist propaganda machine hums right along. And its malign and maligning influence has been very effective.

(Besides the aforementioned feminist scholars, journalist Cathy Young and Elaine Epstein, former president of the Massachusetts Bar Association, have called giving attention to restraining order administration long overdue—in articles published 10 to 20 years ago.)

Judges and the judicial system proceed in matters of protection of women as father-guardians (which mainstream feminists don’t seem to find patronizing or infantilizing). The rhetoric is defendants are presumed innocent; the practice is they’re presumed guilty. Judges—more often than not male—pander to the women who come before them to beg their intervention; men are treated like police suspects.

Judges of these matters, like the women who introduce them, aren’t bound by the same ethical restrictions that obtain in other sorts of cases (especially if there are no lawyers present). A detective in the county attorney’s office I spoke with put it this way: because restraining orders grew out of a clamor to address domestic violence, judges are inclined to let their inner vigilantes off leash when a male defendant appears before them. They’re glad to have a trussed target for their frustrated wrath and to play the white knight.

The slack standards that govern restraining order administration are defended as leveling the playing field. They’re in fact engineered to level men. The judges who do the administering are predisposed by policy and propaganda to regard male defendants through jaundiced eyes and to bring the gavel down on their heads.

It’s probably very cathartic for them.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Restraining Order Fraud and Female Victimization of Men

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It shouldn’t be any mystery why with millions of restraining orders being issued each year in the Internet age complaints of abuses aren’t louder and more numerous: stigma.

A woman’s having taken out a restraining order against him—particularly one alleging violence or fear of violence—isn’t something a man is apt to broadcast, even if the order was grounded on sheer lies (and especially if those lies aren’t ones he’s able to expose as such). Allegations of fear or threat by women aren’t held to any standard of substantiation. They can be completely vaporous (pardon the oxymoron), and judges are cool with that.

Also, the experience of being publicly shamed is a harrowing one and one a man isn’t likely to want to revisit. (There’s always, besides, the apprehension of incurring further malice from the courts. For many injunction defendants, ever again having access to home, property, or children is entirely subject to judicial impulse.)

An unscrupulous woman not only enjoys the gratification of being rewarded for her fraud by a paternal system that regards her as a fragile fledgling in need of special protections; she also enjoys the impunity guaranteed by her victim’s fear of humiliation and social and professional condemnation.

Society today condescends to give a sympathetic ear to women’s plaints; men are still expected to suck it up. Feminists promote a double standard they profess to oppose to reap the benefit: not gender equity but political advantage.

There are a number of sites on the Internet that advocate for “men’s rights” (see how even the phrase sounds absurd?) like A Voice for Men and Men’s Activism News Network. You’re unlikely to hear them cited on NPR. Feminism is chic and trendy: VAWA! NOW! AAUW! The Vagina Monologues!

“Masculinism” isn’t a word.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

“Why Would Someone Get a False Restraining Order?”

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This question pops up a lot.

Simply rephrasing it can dispel some of the wonderment: “What would someone have to gain by falsely accusing someone else of conduct society condemns?”

Satisfaction of a spiteful impulse might come to mind.

I remember looking at a book once by a guy named Hayduke. It was chock full of ingenious vengeance schemes—pretty much all of them criminal or bordering on it. Lying on a restraining order to sate a hurtful yen, while technically criminal, is never treated as such and may well succeed in criminalizing the target of that yen.

Common allegations on restraining orders are harassment, stalking, danger, and violence. Any of these—and especially the last—can doom a person’s employment or professional aspirations, tear relationships apart, and gnaw at and vex the innocently accused indefinitely (to his or her physical and psychological erosion). Allegations like this from a domestic partner can deprive the same victim of assets and access to loved ones. The use of fraudulent restraining orders to gain the upper hand in child custody battles is pretty much cliché.

And restraining orders don’t just vanish from public record when the expire. In some regions, there are even restraining order registries to make finding out who’s had a restraining order sworn out against him or her conveniently (and alluringly) accessible by the public. The political push is toward making such registries universal.

It’s possible that the question, “Why would someone get a false restraining order?” is prompted by a disbelief that a person could be so unethical. Such a disbelief betrays the questioner’s naivety.

People frame people for crimes or commit crimes to hurt others every day. Abusing restraining orders is just more fail-safe. Perjury (lying in court or on a sworn statement) is never prosecuted, and restraining orders are generally free for the asking. You get the state to exercise your malice for you, it costs you nothing, and everyone extends you their sympathies.

The worst that happens when someone lies to obtain a restraining order is that it’s overturned on appeal. And even if it’s quashed, the recipient of the fraudulent restraining order will have been put through hell (and possibly cost several thousands of dollars in attorney fees). In fact succeeding in having a restraining order vacated (canceled) doesn’t necessarily mean it disappears from public record. Even if a fraud loses, s/he wins.

Clearly then the answer to the question, “Why would someone get a false restraining order?” is “Why not?”

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

A Liar’s Dream Medium: On Why Fraudulent Restraining Orders Are So Effective

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vivid imagination

Restraining order allegations defy physics. They can self-sustain indefinitely fueled on nothing more than human credulity and their gratification of our appetite for the unseemly. They’re paid the same intently lurid curiosity as a wreck on the side of the road.

Auditors can’t avert their ears.

I read stories about the horrors endured by victims of false restraining orders every week, and I’d still listen with sensitivity to someone’s telling me s/he “had to get a restraining order.” It’s an irresistible impulse.

Just the phrase restraining order prompts a preconditioned reflex in the hearer. Live Pavlov’s dinner bell. It’s certainly one of the most prejudicial phrases in the English language, surpassing even “Beware of Dog.”

That’s why the restraining order offers liars a dream medium: whatever they write on one becomes “true.”

It’s that Pavlovian conditioning. We presume that someone who applies for a restraining order has a genuine need. Even police officers and judges, who encounter the unscrupulous and the scheming on a daily basis, take this for granted. They’ve been trained to. Hefty federal grants are provided to local police departments and courts in return for their mandating that their officers submit to that training and consent to accept allegations pursuant to obtaining a restraining order as factual.

And since restraining orders are approved by judges on the spot without the people whom they’re issued against even knowing about them, there aren’t any naysayers to interrupt or object to a liar’s allegations.

A fraud has a captive audience and can just let ’er rip.

The more outrageous a fraud’s lies, furthermore, the more effective they usually are. They’re not only that much likelier to bias police officers and judges but anyone else they’re told to. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, it’s assumed, and frauds who lie big blow a whole lot of smoke.

Counterintuitively, the broader the fraud, the more certain it is to go over.

Upon convincing a judge of his or her need for a restraining order—child’s play—a liar has an official document that says s/he’s a victim who’s weathered a grievous ordeal, and s/he can get even freer with the details when relating his or her “travail” to others. Say you “had to get a restraining order,” and all heads tilt in your direction, keen for the salacious details. Applying for a restraining order—which entails considerably less nuisance, for example, than applying for a driver’s license—creates a sensation (and waves of positive feedback and attention to nourish a liar’s ego).

And the damage to the liar’s victim is done possibly before s/he’s even had the restraining order brought to his or her attention.

To counteract a false restraining order requires that a recipient convince a second judge that the first one (his or her peer) screwed up or was hoodwinked. Not an obstacle easily surmounted. What a wanton fraud can accomplish in a 45-minute excursion to the courthouse may preoccupy and torment his or her victim for years to come.

A restraining order based on lies carefully, or even carelessly, stitched together is like Frankenstein’s monster: once a judge throws the switch, “It’s Alive!” And calamitous.

Unlike Frankenstein’s monster, burning a fraudulent restraining order won’t make it go away.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com