Talking Back to Irish Feminist and Misandry-Denier Taryn de Vere

Since the publication of this post, feminist Taryn de Vere’s criticisms of Men’s Voices Ireland have been deleted from the Internet.


“Misandry, n. hatred of men.”

World Book Dictionary

“[A] satirical imaginary concept.”

—Taryn de Vere

This post is inspired by mockery of a group called Men’s Voices Ireland, which in November held a conference titled, “Challenging Misandry.”

Feminist Taryn de Vere, whom we might call “Miss Andry” for fun, felt compelled to remark beforehand, “In what could possibly be a first for Ireland, a conference has been arranged on the theme of a satirical imaginary concept.”

I don’t know for Men’s Voices Ireland or Irish feminists, but I do know something about semantics.

First, all concepts are imaginary. “Women,” for example, is a concept. It represents nothing that is real. It’s an idea. Real are this person and that person and that other one over there. We form the concept “women” by observing that this person and that person have common contours. That’s it.

If that’s difficult for feminists to hear, so much the better.

Second, “satirical” means sarcastic. Ms. de Vere may use “misandry” sarcastically; Men’s Voices Ireland plainly wasn’t.

So there’s her acid characterization neutralized. While I don’t have the resources of the late Bill Safire to trace the provenances of words, I’m assured by consultation with Webster’s New International Dictionary (second edition, which is the only edition I own) that the word misandry was around before Ms. de Vere was born and was not coined by the men’s rights activists she ridicules.

Ms. de Vere endeavors to support her dismissal of any societal manifestation of misandry today by quoting some academics who know nothing about the law, which is something I know quite a lot about after being the butt of serial prosecutions and false accusations for 12 years.

Ms. de Vere:

It is impossible to have an “ingrained prejudice” against men when we live in a world made by men for men.

For this to be true, there would have to be no such thing as “women’s law,” a phrase that explicitly expresses a prejudice in favor of women by the part of society’s machinery that no citizen can safely resist or defy.

For decades, law monograph after law monograph has charted the evolution of “women’s law” (see left for citations of a few): progressively harsher statutes with progressively broader definitions of “abuse” and progressively reduced thresholds of proof; judges and police officers, who’ve received inducements in the forms of massive federal grants, being “trained” according to tailored social science; etc.

That’s “engrained prejudice” to a tee.

The laws themselves are the stuff of satire. Accusers, who are predominately female, are nominated “victims” based solely on their say-so, and they may move a court to dismiss their allegations while defendants, who are predominately male, may not. Defendants are railroaded through.

That’s in the United States, but it’s likely laws and court custom in Ireland aren’t so different, and they should inspire protest. Ms. de Vere, who is the mother of five, might feel very differently very promptly about men’s plaints if she were abruptly to find herself the mother of none based on some random allegations (of child abuse, say) made to a judge during a few-minute interview to which she wasn’t invited.

For many or most of those who constitute Men’s Voices Ireland, the perception of misandry is probably empirical, that is, based on experience.

It’s Ms. de Vere’s concepts, which are ignorantly based on emotions, that aren’t concepts at all but fantasies.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*“I’ve had a lot of super awful stuff happen to me in my life like multiple rape & domestic abuse,” Ms. de Vere says of her own experiences, which, however sympathetic, only make her willingness to understand men’s experiences that much more suspect. Most disappointingly, Ms. de Vere is a gifted humorist who calls herself “The Joy Bringer” yet is immune to stories like the one here—which is desolating and largely unexceptional. The “joy” she brings to her fans may derive, in part at least, from her derision of others’ agony.

New York Magazine Writer Jonathan Chait Says “the Feminist Police Haven’t Gotten Around Yet to Tormenting the Innocent”

The absurd quotation in the title of this post comes from a critique of an essay of Katie Roiphe’s published in Harper’s last month, which New York Magazine writer Jonathan Chait calls “alternatingly brilliant and incoherent.” Whatever the merits of that characterization (which will be considered in a future post), it could certainly be applied to Mr. Chait’s lopsided and out-of-touch perspectives.

[Roiphe’s] complaint about the tenor of discussion, and the way in which angry and extreme rhetoric crowds out more nuanced thought, has some merit. Social media has made this dynamic more acute—not only in feminism but across the political culture, which has grown more polarized into communities in which the most strident iteration of the community’s shared belief is assumed to be the most authentic.

A self-contradictory implication of what Mr. Chait noncommittally acknowledges as a valid criticism of extremist feminist rhetoric is that by influencing the political—and thus legal—culture, the feminist police have gotten around to tormenting the innocent. Actually, they got around to that a long time ago.

Mr. Chait fails to recognize that among the “feminist police” are the police, the ones with badges and truncheons and guns. Judges also qualify.

What would the world look like if the kinds of militant, uncompromising views Roiphe is grappling with had controlling power?” he naively wonders. Well, it might look something like this:

That’s the title of a law journal monograph by Russ Bleemer published almost 25 years ago—whose subject was not then localized to a particular state and definitely is not today. It pointed up gross injustices in procedures that had been instituted in the 1970s with the best of intentions.

Many a revolution has started off persecuting only the wicked, only to veer off track later. Perhaps the troubling signs Roiphe detects are portents of a dark future.

Mr. Chait’s conclusion would be less speculative if he took his nose out of the The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker and opened his blinds.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*The concern of Mr. Chait’s article is to defend the #MeToo movement, whose revelations condense to “power corrupts.” Mr. Chait seems to feel that a corruptive influence by radical feminism is only an ominous possibility yet to be realized—which is a view that was last excusable in about…

If Restraining Orders CAN Be Abused, then the PROCESS Is Abusive—and Should Be Repealed

This post addresses a block its writer has noted even in the commentaries of those profoundly injured by unjust or false accusations. That block typically runs something like this: “I’m totally for restraining orders when they protect the violently abused, but….” This perspective is blind, and this post will explain why.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

—Proverb

“You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don’t alter their views to fit the facts; they alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.”

Dr. Who

I was accused of a number of unsavory things in the spring of 2006 by a disturbed and very married woman who had hung around outside of my house in the dark for a few months the previous fall. She filed multiple police reports then complained to a judge in my presence that my request for “an explanation of sorts” had caused her grave upset and interfered with her work. (Also, she was concerned she might be “attacked”…and her husband might be…and her friends might be…and her mother might be…and….)

Michael Honeycutt TCEQ, Michael Honeycutt EPA, Michael Honeycutt PhD, TCEQ, EPA Science Advisory Board, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Environmental Protection Agency

This man, Dr. Michael Honeycutt, Ph.D., testified to the Superior Court of Arizona in 2013 (by phone) that the government department he heads (in another state) had instituted special security measures to protect a woman from me whom I hadn’t seen or contacted in seven years. When I found this self-styled damsel in distress standing outside of my residence in 2005, I was a practicing children’s humorist who fed birds and had a pup who wore a pink collar. The same woman who would accuse me of stalking and violent intentions had come to my door one night seeking a defender against men she feared were stalking her and had violent intentions. This established a relationship that included her plying me with conversation about her breasts and underwear and trying to follow me into my house after midnight (minus her wedding ring).

That was 12 years ago, and this woman has dramatically and broadly misrepresented me ever since. She’s also induced others to join her in her hoax.

I tried to find you in our system,” I was told in my initial police interview many years ago (when I still had plans and dreams of my own), “but there was nothing. At all. That’s really rare.

Over the four years I’ve maintained this blog, begun five years after my interviews with the cop, I’ve heard repeatedly from others who allege they were falsely accused and who report they had had no prior acquaintance with police precincts or courthouses, either.

Consider how this jibes with the assertion that restraining orders protect victims of violent abusers. It plainly doesn’t, and only “the very powerful and the very stupid” would say otherwise.

Public sentiment has been coerced by “the very powerful and the very stupid” to the extent that even those who know the procedure is a travesty feel compelled to allow that there are cases when restraining orders are necessary.

Changing the minds of “the very powerful and the very stupid” has to start with changing the minds of people who are neither powerful nor stupid, and who know better. There is no justification for bad law. It should be repealed.

What victims of that bad law mean when they say “there are cases when restraining orders are necessary” is that they acknowledge there are people in abusive relationships or imminent danger who need relief. They should appreciate, though, that it isn’t restraining orders that are necessary; something is. Rejecting bad law doesn’t obligate its critic to propose what that something should be. Clearly, however, what that something should be should never have innocent casualties. A law that’s supposed to protect the innocent but may destroy them is both wildly flawed and dangerous.

These are facts: Restraining orders deny defendants their constitutional right to due process; justice rendered in drive-thru procedures that may deprive defendants of employment, security, home, and family can only ever be dubious at best; and being misrepresented in a court of law, scourged by a biased judge, and gibbeted on grounds that may be trumped up or cunningly fraudulent is hurtful and possibly ruinous, and shouldn’t be possible…ever.

If you acknowledge these facts, then you must be against restraining orders, and you must be against them categorically—no ifs, ands, or buts. They’re not the answer. They were a stopgap that has become an institution. That doesn’t mean their engineering was ever sound.

Sure, it may be correct to say that you’re certain not all petitioners lie and that some desperately need protection and deserve it. It’s politically correct to say so, certainly, and it’s sympathetic to say so, too. And, sure, it may be correct to say that sometimes justice does prevail.

But if you own that rulings can be manipulated and that pitfalls are built into the process itself, then you cannot be for restraining orders under any circumstances, because the very same procedure that sometimes assuredly works good also assuredly works evil (and more easily).

Lives are at stake. A process that’s inherently corrupt is inherently wrong, regardless of whether its intentions are good and regardless of whether rulings may be righteous.

Put simply, you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Constituent of #MeToo Politician Sunny Reynolds Describes a Phone Response by the “Victim” Mayor as Dripping with the “Vilest Truculence and Hostility”

Previously remarked here, Virginia’s Fauquier Times reported last month that Warrenton Vice Mayor Sunny Reynolds was granted a restraining order against one her constituents, local real estate investor Keith Macdonald, for allegedly displaying aggression toward her in a restaurant during a verbal exchange lasting a few minutes. Ms. Reynolds testified she was “afraid” and complained to the press that she felt she was picked on because she was a girl.

This week, the same news outlet ran a letter to the editor by another of Ms. Reynold’s constituents, Robert Bowman, which contrasts with her self-representation to the police and the court as a fragile flower (emphasis added).

In the last city council election, I ignored friends’ advice and not only voted for Sunny Reynolds, but also allowed her to be the only candidate ever to place a campaign poster in my yard.

Since the election I have had three occasions to contact Reynolds.

On the first two incidents she did not call or respond in any way.

On a third issue I wish she had, yet again, ignored me. She responded to [it] by [phone] with the vilest truculence and hostility.

To say she was less than helpful would be a grave understatement.

Robert Bowman
Warrenton

Feminists are oblivious to the obvious, and no one else could fail to miss the implications, which spares this writer any obligation to comment further.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

There Are No “Sides” to a Story That’s BS: How Restraining Order Policy Turns Lies into Realities

A mathematician would dismissively tell you that you can’t describe one-half of zero. The project is absurd.

Yet civil courts, as a matter of policy, demand that defendants perform this nonsensical exercise every day.

This advice about telling “your side of the story about what happened” is offered by the California Court System, and it presumes that something must have happened to inspire some accuser to petition a restraining order. No tips are included about what to do if “what happened” was that this accuser had a malicious impulse to lie or is crazy.

I’m not a mathematician; I was trained as a critic. While a mathematician would almost certainly pronounce that trying to articulate one-half of nothing is meaningless and a waste of time (and then wave you away), a critic, arching an eyebrow, would tell you that the act of trying to articulate one-half of nothing raises the expectation that nothing is something after all. The act of explaining, in other words, creates meaning; it exerts an influence. It says there is “a story.”

To describe “your side” of nothing gives substance and dimensions to zero; it turns zero (a lie or lies) into something real—and this is what the civil court forces defendants to do…then it faults them for the stories it makes them tell about what was BS to begin with.

This sorcery goes on routinely and n-n-n-duh-mbly. The presumption of civil courts that accusations are “facts” that have “sides” is a grave blindness. This prejudice can, and it regularly does, turn nothing into “something.”

A defendant could answer honestly: “Your Honor, it’s bullshit, wholly bullshit, and nothing but bullshit.” But the judge would reject that answer out of hand and would, besides, threaten the speaker with penalties for insulting the court’s “dignity.” The judge could even rule that a defendant is “guilty” of allegations that are bullshit to punish him or her for saying the allegations are bullshit.

Fun, huh? Lives are intruded upon by judges (who are paid lavishly to warm chair seats), and then these judges produce reams of records to make people blameworthy for nothing they’ve actually done.

The mindset of judges is that there must be something, which means they find something where there was nothing. They “find” something even if they have to make it up.

This is all (yet another) explanation of how civil process is (1) stupid, (2) corrupt, (3) stupid, (4) noxious, (106) absurd, and (5) reprehensible.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*People are daily deprived of their liberties, livelihoods, and even their reasons for living based on equations like this one: 0 = 22.

One Way to Convince a Judge to Appoint You Free Legal Counsel

Persuading a judge to appoint you free legal counsel in a civil case isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible, especially if the plaintiff of plaintiffs are seeking to have you incarcerated (for contempt of court, say). You have to be prepared to invest dozens of hours and to work at it daily. You have to write, and you have to write a lot. You have to draft as many legal motions as you can possibly find a plausible justification to file. These might include, besides a Motion for Appointment of Counsel:

  • Motion to Continue
  • Motion to Dismiss
  • Motion for Bill of Particulars
  • Motion to Quash the Warrant (if a criminal case)
  • Motion to Strike (the plaintiff’s exhibits, for example)
  • Motion for Medical Examination (alleging your accuser is batshit crazy and a danger to you)
  • Motion for Jury Trial

To quote a former attorney, you have to “paper the shit out of the thing.” You’re a bombardier whose mission it is to make it a bigger pain in the ass for the judge to deny you counsel and read your reams of documents than to grant you a lawyer (who’ll make the judge’s job a lot easier). For every legal case (or statute) you cite—and you should quote dozens—include its full, highlighted text as an exhibit attached to the particular motion to which it applies. Include all relevant evidence as exhibits, too. Remember, this is defense by blitzkrieg.

Your exhibits should be considerably longer than the “briefs” of yours that they’re appended to. Your Motion to Dismiss could accordingly exceed 100 pages. This is completely justifiable: You’re including full case law citations, because you’re not a lawyer, and you know the court can’t take it on faith that your citations are apposite. It’s not just a ploy, and there’s always a remote chance the judge will read your motion.

Don’t pad your filings like they’re sophomore essays. That won’t avail. Look for models online to use as templates, and try to be as precise and “lawyerly” as you can. Expect the judge to read what you submit, even though s/he won’t.

Judges enjoy an eider-down-and-satin comfort zone. Your object is to disrupt it by throwing a greasy wrench in the orderly, antiseptic workings they’re accustomed to.

By making this investment, besides causing a judge to groan, you contradict the impression immediately formed by judges who see you’re defending yourself (the phrase pro se is regarded with contempt by officers of the court). That immediate impression is that you’re negligible and that they don’t have to worry about being caught with their pants down if you appeal. You create the idea that you’re going to put up a fight, that you’re secure in your faith that the plaintiff or prosecutor is wrong, and that you will preserve your appellate rights and exercise them.

Don’t neglect to tell the judge that, either.

Chances are if the judge does consent to appoint you an attorney, s/he will summarily deny all of the motions you just sacrificed 100 hours and drove yourself to the edge of exhaustion to compose. Don’t be surprised or scowl. That was the payoff.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*The author of this post has been serially prosecuted for 10 years, including three times in 2016. The plaintiffs sought that year to have him jailed in civil court and criminal court, and one of the monsters besides applied for a civil injunction. Both of the trial judges denied the writer’s numerous pro se motions (which fill a crate and were probably wholly unread) but granted him court-appointed attorneys. Restraining order cases are typically too accelerated to apply the advice this post recommends, and service of documents on the plaintiff is hairy. On the other hand, it never hurts to try provided you mind the no-contact rules. Legal process is supposed to be equitable (fair), and a judge may be sensitive to that even if s/he’s callused to everything else legal process is supposed to be about (like, for instance, telling the truth).

“Men Lie” v. “Women Lie,” as Represented by Google News in November

I took the screenshots below in November, when I was still inhibited from publishing anything on this site pending a judicial ruling. Stuck spinning my wheels, I must have performed the searches on a whim. Google returns different results for the same search terms today.

These screenshots are shared because they speak more effectively than words can.

About 3,880 results (0.86 seconds)”:

1 result (0.51 seconds)”:

Women, per Google News on Nov. 7, 2017, right about the time the #MeToo movement was in full swing, only lie about their age. Also noteworthy is that the phrase “women lie” appeared in two of the top four results for “men lie” on this particular date, but neither of those was returned for the search “women lie.”

It could have been a fluke or a limitation of my laptop, which was salvaged from the trash five years ago, but it’s almost as if returns for the phrase “women lie” were squelched.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*It didn’t occur to me to try the phrase “Google lies”—because that’s just crazy. Google’s returns for the same search terms yesterday were “about 3,450” results for “men lie” and “about 3,500” for “women lie.” The reader is urged to consider whether the almost exact equivalence is any less suspicious.

“What Would Mrs. Grundy Say?” Has Nothing to Do with the Law: Scrutiny of the Restraining Order Case against Blogger and Political Activist Derek Logue as Reported by Writer Peter Schorsch

The law is a two-way street. Those who violate it are answerable to it. So, too, though, are those who exploit it. It’s canonical that administrators of law not play favorites. The defendant in the case this post scrutinizes was convicted of a sex offense against a preteen girl in 2001, and the author of this post, a would-have-been children’s writer, is ambivalent about the defendant’s cause, which is articulated here (and is not without valid and urgent points). The plaintiff in the case, however, is not a child. She’s an adult representative of the people whose job is to negotiate issues of concern to society, no matter how thorny or repugnant. And it’s this writer’s opinion that she has abdicated that responsibility and abused the law. Also criticized in this post is a self-styled reporter whose job is to relate facts without bias. It’s this writer’s opinion that he, too, has failed to meet his ethical duties.

No allegation is more prejudicial today than “abuse.” Forty years of slipshod and slapdash legislation, and the pumping of billions of federal tax dollars into police precincts and the court system are among the reasons. Priorities have been bought. And the propaganda that has motivated this investment has been no less effective at influencing the public.

“Abuse” isn’t an allegation these days; it’s Revelation—and skepticism is tantamount to heresy. The torch-bearing mob doesn’t answer to the system. It owns it.

Accordingly, attorneys for plaintiffs alleging abuse are free to exercise dramatic license, and both judges and cops know what’s expected of them and strive to please.

Journalists who report and comment on investigative and court findings in “abuse” prosecutions typically know the least about the law but may be the most arrogant in their judgments.

Enter Peter Schorsch, who introduced me to the restraining order case of Florida Sen. Lauren Book v. Derek Logue in a jaundiced account on the website Florida Politics, which bills itself as a “statewide, new media platform covering campaigns, elections, government, policy, and lobbying in Florida.” Mr. Schorsch is its publisher.

Mr. Logue, the defendant in the case, was issued a permanent restraining order this month, based, apparently, on political speech, which is protected in our country above all other kinds. It seems his entitlements under the First Amendment were deemed negligible, however, because he committed the cardinal sin of profaning a woman—and because he’s a registered sex offender. Mr. Logue pleaded guilty to first degree sexual abuse of an 11-year-old girl 17 years ago. This is his account from his blog, Once Fallen:

I kissed an underage girl. She was somebody I knew, and I knew better. I am what you call a “situational offender.” I was arrested in 2000 and convicted in 2001 (I sat in jail a full year before my conviction). I served 37 months of a six-year sentence in an Alabama State Prison, and was released in April 2003. I never chose to become an activist, but after I spent years in vain [lying] low, working and paying bills, and bothering no one, I was targeted by local politicians determined to use registrants like me to further their careers. I was forced out of one residence formerly pre-approved by the authorities, and had to fight to keep my second residence. My activism was inspired by my struggle to survive.

That activism, Mr. Schorsch reports, has included R-rated criticisms of Sen. Book since 2009 on a variety of Internet media, as well as in-person protests of her positions at public events where Sen. Book was present. Mr. Logue is said to have “heckle[d]” her at one last year.

Although there’s no mention in Mr. Schorsch’s story of Mr. Logue’s having issued threats, brandished a weapon, or cast literal brickbats, Mr. Schorsch quotes Sen. Book’s restraining order petition as stating: “[B]ecause of the anger and hostility targeted at Ms. Book during the session by Mr. Logue, she had to be quickly escorted off stage by security for her safety.”

The logical non sequitur is obvious, but legal interpretation has been conditioned in “abuse” cases to treat alleged emotional impressions as incontrovertible facts. Why words from a distance required that Sen. Book be rushed off of a stage is a taboo question.

Plainly Mr. Logue has been implicated by implication—and not even his own implication.

Mr. Schorsch reports “he posted a video on Twitter entitled ‘You are a C**t’ that included lyrics saying he would ‘f**k up [Book’s] face.’” If Mr. Logue said he would “f**k up” Ms. Book’s face, then why does “Book’s” appear in brackets in Mr. Schorsch’s story? The referenced video is by Australian singer-songwriter Kat McSnatch (note the stage name).

The video has nothing to do with Sen. Book, nor is Mr. Logue its author. The allegation is that the hyperlink republication of the video by Mr. Logue on Twitter implied violent intent and ignores context. Unreported by Mr. Schorsch, what Mr. Logue tweeted was this: “I think I found the official…Lauren Book theme song.” The meaning of the statement is unambiguous.

Even if it weren’t, though, implication is not a true threat, which must “communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals” (Virginia v. Black). Nevertheless, Mr. Schorsch reports that a hyperlink to a cartoon was “deemed a credible threat to Book’s safety by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.”

Here’s Mr. Schorsch:

Logue claims his lyrics, his website and in-person protests are within his First Amendment rights, though Book’s attorneys vehemently disagree.

Were the lyrics his? Are Sen. Book’s attorneys correct in their interpretation of First Amendment protections? These are questions to which a journalist might have pursued answers, particularly one who has fallen under criminal suspicion himself, as Mr. Schorsch reportedly has.

Instead Mr. Schorsch contents himself with quoting Sen. Book’s attorneys:

“To even flirt with the notion that Mr. Logue’s words directed at Lauren Book are anything less than profane insults or ‘fighting words’ would be nonsensical,” the argument reads. “Mr. Logue’s mission, which he continuously reemphasizes over several social media platforms…has been to target Senator Book because of her political views and her attempt to pass more legislature relating to violent sexual offenders, such as Mr. Logue.”

Without exception, “profane insults” are fully protected by the First Amendment, and the dated phrase “fighting words” (1942) hardly applies. Fighting words are those “which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace” (Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire). In the age of HBO, there is no conceivable sequence of words Mr. Logue could have strung together from a distance of yards, possibly many yards, that could have inspired a brawl, and tweets to the world at large, for example, can never be qualified as “fighting words” (or “stalking,” a characterization Mr. Schorsch uses in his article’s headline). If Mr. Logue’s “mission” had been to criticize President Trump’s policies “over several social media platforms,” there would be no story. The allegations only survived scrutiny because Mr. Logue committed a sex offense in the distant past, which is “continuously reemphasize[d]” because it’s highly prejudicial. (The website Florida Bulldog reports that Sen. Book’s initial request for a temporary restraining order was rejected for “insufficient evidence showing she was in immediate danger.”)

Finally, Mr. Schorsch reports:

The court approved the restraining order, which requires Logue to stay at least 500 feet away from Book’s house and car, 1,000 feet from her person, and prohibits him from contacting her directly or indirectly in any way.

Finally, I have to wonder, has Mr. Logue ever been anywhere near Sen. Book’s “house and car”? From the reported facts, it seems improbable. So Mr. Logue has been indefinitely prohibited from attending public events to engage in constitutionally protected political protest, and he has effectively if not explicitly been prohibited from criticizing a politician by the court’s misinterpretation of harassment laws, which cannot be applied to one-to-many speech…even if it uses “bad words.”

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*On his blog, Mr. Logue writes that in “2007, [he] received a partial pardon from the state of Alabama in recognition of [his] rehabilitation” and has “been ‘free’ for over 14 years without a single accusation or suspicion of re-offense.” He expresses the belief that the pardon signified “hope for redemption, even for those with the label ‘sex offender.’” It granted Mr. Logue the restoration of his “civil and political rights”—as long, apparently, as he declined to actually exercise them.

What Massachusetts Law Firm Dane Shulman Associates Says about Restraining Order Abuse and Divorce

Below is Massachusetts law firm Dane Shulman Associates writing about the game of false accusation. Lawyers know this happens. They know it very well.

Various feminist advocates doggedly assert that restraining order abuse, particularly to gain leverage in family court, is insignificant—or worse, that claims of it are merely men’s rights propaganda—and such assertions are made even by professors of law. Practitioners of law (the lawyers in the trenches, not the ivory tower) report otherwise.

Restraining Order Abuse in Divorce Cases” (emphases added):

Unfortunately, some people are abusing Massachusetts’ restraining order laws and using them as a divorce tactic. An individual involved in divorce proceedings may file a temporary restraining order against [his or her] spouse, alleging abuse of him or [her] or of the couple’s children. This would prevent the alleged abuser from having contact with his or her children during the 10-day temporary order, and if the allegations stick, the restraining order would last up to a year after the accusations were made. Often, such allegations are false, and only a way to put a wrench in the divorce proceedings and for the accusing spouse to gain custody of the children involved.

To prevent the restraining order from being extended, it is imperative that the alleged abuser present evidence [in] the second hearing that the allegations made against him or her are false. This is the first and only time an alleged abuser can present his or her case. If he or she fails to appear, chances are that the restraining order will be extended, and the accusing spouse will gain custody of the children.

A restraining order can have disastrous effects on the alleged abuser. The order is put on his or her criminal record, and any violation of the order results in criminal charges. The alleged abuser is also listed in the statewide Domestic Violence Registry, a record that never goes away. All of these actions greatly impact an alleged abuser’s ability to secure new employment, especially jobs for the government or jobs that involve working with children.

Massachusetts’ courts issue restraining orders to protect victims, not so the orders can be used as frivolous tactics to gain the upper hand in a divorce or a child custody matter. Restraining orders have serious consequences for the alleged abuser, and also for the relationship between the alleged abuser and his or her children, since the order could put strain on the parent-child relationship. A restraining order is something no one should consider obtaining without a serious, truthful cause.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*One of the most outspoken critics of restraining orders, attorney Gregory Hession, also practices in Massachusetts.

Previously Paddled Attorney Chris Scileppi Tells an Arizona Superior Court Judge That This Blog’s Author Has “Terrorized” and “Demonized” His Clients with Computer Code—and Isn’t Jeered out of the Room

What this post relates is typical of prosecutorial conduct in restraining order cases, besides generally. The imperative, which is both profligate and malicious, is simply to win. Neither merit nor justice has anything to do with it. The post revisits a 2016 hearing whose object was to have the writer jailed. To remind those who need reminding, namely, liberal proponents of wasteful litigation whose advocacy is based on sensationalized abstractions, jailed means locked in an iron-and-concrete kennel.

lizard

“See attached Exhibit A—wherein Defendant, via letter to one of Dr. Bredfeldt’s then supervisors [at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality], explains that the intent of his blog is not to speak on restraining order abuse, as would be implied by its name, but rather to expose ‘Tiffany’s conduct and frauds…the ploys Tiffany used to camouflage her hanky-panky…so long as I’m burdened with Tiffany’s frauds, however, I intend nevertheless to keep lighting candles where I can as my time and energies allow.’”

—Tucson attorney Christopher Scileppi

Quick note: Excepting my bracketed interpolation, the quotation above is unaltered. That’s exactly how it appears, ellipses and all, in a brief to the court. Short addendum: Speech about misconduct that includes the abuse of restraining orders is speech “on restraining order abuse.” Superfluous postscript: Obviously.

This is one of several posts that enlarge on aspects of the writer’s most recent cases, which have concerned citizens’ constitutional right to freedom of expression. Procedures forerunning the July 15, 2016 hearing encapsulated here have been numerous and all of them related to the conduct described in the letter to Roberta Grant, Ph.D., quoted in the epigraph. That conduct is what inspired this blog. To conceal that conduct, I’ve been serially accused and prosecuted for 12 years.

A synopsis of the backstory, with links to corroborating statements given in evidence to the court by my accusers, Tiffany and Phil Bredfeldt, can be found in the preface here.

(In short, Tiffany Bredfeldt, a married stranger who hung around my house up to and past midnight for three months in 2005, told various courts over a seven-year period that I had been “nice” to her and a “friend,” that she “would not wear a wedding ring” while she was there, and that she had “never felt the need” to tell me she was married; but that I had made “several physical, romantic advances toward her,” “propositioned her,” and “ask[ed] for” or “offered her sex”; and that I was a “danger” to her husband and shouldn’t be allowed to talk to him. Readers without Ph.D.’s in science, at least, might detect some inconsistencies in these statements and wonder about the reason for them. Such readers might even think the reason is self-evident.)

The syntactic goulash quoted at the top of this post is the work product of the Law Office of Christopher Scileppi, the Tucson-based attorney employed by the Bredfeldts. Mr. Scileppi is distinguished for having been given a little squeeze by the mayor of Nogales in front of jurors at a rape trial, in which he represented one of the alleged assailants of a 15-year-old girl. The mayor who hugged him was later sent to prison for public corruption. Mr. Scileppi represented him, too. In 2014, Mr. Scileppi was suspended for 60 days and placed on six months’ probation for violating various ethical rules (ERs).

Christopher Scileppi, Chris Scileppi, Phil Bredfeldt, Philip Bredfeldt, Tiffany Bredfeldt

Dr. Roberta Grant—to whom the letter quoted in the epigraph was addressed and from whom I never got a reply—keeps classy company.

I was represented a specialist in constitutional law who has never been embraced by a politician in court—during a rape trial or otherwise.

The epigraph is a statement of Mr. Scileppi’s excerpted from a supplemental briefing to the court on a motion to dissolve a 2013 “prior restraint” that violated my First Amendment rights with shameless gusto (and that was issued by an Arizona Superior Court judge, Carmine Cornelio, who has since been shamed off the bench). It was the reason I’ve previously been circumspect about how I talk about my own case history on this site (pointlessly: The court’s order forbade me from publishing anything, ever, including by “word of mouth”). A prior restraint prohibits publications before they’ve been made; it extorts silence and conformity. The unlawful order of the court was the handicraft of Jeffrey Marks, another unscrupulous Tucson lawyer who represented the Bredfeldts in the most recent action…right up until the judge consented to appoint me counsel, whereupon Mr. Marks discovered he had more pressing concerns to attend to. Noteworthy is that Mr. Scileppi, Mr. Marks’s replacement, is a criminal lawyer (he represents, for example, alleged rapists).

The trial strategy of the plaintiffs has been a study in workarounds: If the law isn’t on your side, find ways to persuade the court otherwise.

In this instance, the plaintiffs alleged that the court shouldn’t consider my words on this site as “speech” but rather as “conduct.” Speech is protected by the First Amendment; conduct may not be.

Relative to this case, there is a clear difference between posting a blog entry to the Internet about the very real debate about whether restraining orders can be abused—which is what the Defendant claims to have been doing—and utilizing one’s blog to terrorize, demonize, harass, and defame another—which is what the Defendant has actually been doing since 2008. While this case involves Defendant’s use of the Internet broadly and tags specifically to make contact with and harass the Plaintiffs and their family, it is not the first time this issue has arisen in the law.

Mr. Scileppi’s argument was that “tags,” the keywords at the bottoms of posts that identify its topics, serve to “contact” anyone whose name appears among them. Tags don’t actually link to anything external to the website, so Mr. Scileppi directed the court’s attention to a case about a woman against whom a restraining order was issued who subsequently tagged comments she made on Facebook with the plaintiff’s name. In the comments, she called the plaintiff “sad” and “stupid.” Mr. Scileppi:

In People v. Gonzalez (New York Supreme Court 15-6081M) the victim had been granted an order of protection against his ex-girlfriend Maria Gonzalez, which ordered the defendant to “refrain from communication or any other contact, directly or indirectly through third parties, by mail, telephone, e-mail, voicemail, or other electronic or any other means.”

The plaintiff, in fact, was a woman, Gonzalez’s former sister-in-law. Either Mr. Scileppi was careless (for which he has previously been spanked), or he just adapted the details of the case to suit his purposes.

Facebook: “Tags in photos and posts from people you aren’t friends with may appear in Timeline review where you can decide if you want to allow them on your Timeline.” The woman who prosecuted her former sister-in-law for calling her and her family “sad” could instead have requested of Facebook that comments tagged by her not be included on her Timeline. One can’t but conclude that she wanted her to be punished by the criminal justice system…for calling her “sad.”

Ignoring the questions of what a miscreant someone has to be to want a woman jailed for calling her “stupid,” and whether such an allegation is worthy of the court’s time—which questions say a lot about both the value of restraining orders and why they’re sought—tagging on Facebook does cause a contact with the person tagged. That’s its purpose.

Tagging in blogs is in no way related (and even tagging on Facebook is defensible as protected speech; the court has held that “where comments are made on an electronic medium to be read by others, they cannot be said to be directed to a particular person,” that is, they cannot be called “contact” and therefore cannot be called “harassment”). Mr. Scileppi, whose law firm is on Facebook, knew that what’s called “tagging” on Facebook is distinct from what’s called “tagging” on a blog. Mr. Scileppi again:

While tags on Facebook may differ from the tags employed by the Defendant—the former are primarily understood to be direct contact while the latter are likely indirect contact—the fact remains that they are contact nonetheless.

You see how Mr. Scileppi’s style of lawyering works: You tell the judge what you want him or her to conclude. You sketch a false correspondence and only let on that the two things you’ve represented as analogous “may differ”…but not significantly.

They differ entirely. A section of my attorney’s competitive briefing to the court was titled, “Plaintiffs Misunderstand the Meaning of the Verb ‘Contact.’” I like this explanation from Chan v. Ellis (2015):

“To ‘contact’ is readily understood by people of ordinary intelligence as meaning ‘to get in touch with; communicate with’” (citation and punctuation omitted)). Although one may “contact” another…by communicating with the other person through any medium, it nevertheless is essential that the communication be directed specifically to that other person, as opposed to a communication that is only directed generally to the public.

Also readily understood by people of ordinary intelligence is that a tag isn’t even a “communication”; tags just identify keywords in a communication to the general public, and a communication to the general public is protected speech.

Mr. Scileppi’s case to the court relied almost entirely on these words and brief phrases at the bottoms of posts that summarize their topics. He even loosely equated the use of HTML metatags with harassing person-to-person telephone calls. The “operator” said to place the calls was Google. The explanation ran something like this: Tags used on this blog were detected by Google, whose algorithm allegedly made posts more prominent among search engine returns for queries that included the terms in their tags. This in turn hijacked the plaintiffs’ public images and “created” a contact…or whatever.

In fact, Google doesn’t use lexical tags at all, whether to determine webpage hierarchies or for any other purpose, nor has it done for almost 10 years.

Based on the foregoing science fiction, given the veneer of credibility by an expert witness and garnished with protestations of terror and trauma, it was argued that I should be incarcerated while my father was dying. (Contrast the robotic feminist refrain, which should be heard in the voice of a sententious child and is summarized thus: False allegations are extremely rare and seldom have serious consequences.)

Horrific is that BS like this can actually snooker trial judges who don’t know better. Almost as horrific is that it’s meant to.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*I was an aspiring author of children’s humor when my seclusion was invaded by my accuser and some equally disturbed girlfriends of hers 12 years ago. My initials, which I had considered using as a pen name, are T. A. G.

#MeToo Restraining Orders Petitioned by Politicians This Month

Some recent posts on this blog concerned a frivolous restraining order granted to Warrenton, Virginia Vice Mayor Sunny Reynolds. Curious, I took a look to see whether this was a one-off among politicians.

It wasn’t.

This post looks at other restraining orders petitioned at the people’s expense by representatives of the people (all women)—reported in one month (March 2018). The majority seem to concern disruptions of public speeches. Of note, especially considering the plaintiffs are representatives of government, is that at least one of the orders is patently unconstitutional.

From the various news stories digested below, my favorite quotation was this: “It’s hard to keep track of who is driving this clown car.


Republican Congresswoman Tarah Toohil was granted a three-year restraining order against fellow Republican state representative Nick Miccarelli, both of Pennsylvania, after alleging he abused and threatened to kill her during a relationship six years prior. Miccarelli, who was stripped of a badge that allows lawmakers to swipe into the Capitol complex and must enter with the general public through a metal detector, is being criminally investigated based on Toohil’s claims and those of another woman who prefers to remain anonymous.


Democratic Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham, a candidate for governor of New Mexico, was granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) against a former intern, Riley Del Rey, a transgender woman who alleges her termination was discrimination-based. Del Rey interrupted a Mar. 11 political speech, for which she was jailed, and was alleged to have “barged into a room” and “disrupted” a different event the month previous. A criminal investigation is pending in this case, which already required that Del Rey keep her distance from Lujan Grisham. The TRO was consequently tossed.


Cape Coral, Florida Mayor Marni Sawicki was granted a restraining order against her ex-husband, Ken Retzer. The only reported allegation was that he was “previously accused of attacking the one-term mayor last year during a conference in Miami.”


Florida Democratic Sen. Lauren Book was granted a permanent restraining order against Derek Logue for political speech (i.e., an unlawful prior restraint). Logue reportedly heckled Book at public events and published criticisms of her on Twitter and YouTube that included obscene words. (“Logue posted a video on Twitter entitled ‘You are a C**t,’” reports writer Peter Schorsch on the website Florida Politics, “that included lyrics saying he would ‘f**k up [Book’s] face.’” Schorsch also reports “[t]hat video was deemed a credible threat to Book’s safety by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.” The quoted lyrics are plainly those of Australian singer-songwriter Kat McSnatch, whose performance of the song is viewable here, and if Logue only linked to McSnatch’s video, the finding of “credible threat” by law enforcement, the court, and, most deplorably, Schorsch, is absurd.)


Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*In an instance of the people’s getting theirs back, the ex-husband of a woman said to have had an affair with Missouri Governor Eric Greitens, who was reportedly indicted in February on the charge of felony invasion of privacy for taking a nude photo of the woman without her permission in 2015, is seeking a restraining order against Greitens, a retired Navy SEAL, on the grounds he feels intimidated by him.

Most False Restraining Orders against Feminists Who Abuse Children Work

If you’re not sure what the title means, that’s the point.

It’s satirical and intended to emphasize that if you falsely accuse someone of abusing a child and the accusation sticks, there’s about a 100% probability that the restraining order will work to deter future abuse of that child by the falsely accused person who never abused the child in the first place.

As a feminist might reason, however, zero probability of abuse is good, and that zero probability recommends that all feminists be restrained by order of the court from abusing children…because how could that be a bad thing?

It’s certainly likely that there are feminist child abusers. If all feminists were put on notice, then, malefactors among them would be discouraged from committing further abuses.

Okay, sure, non-child-abusing feminists might resent the implication of a court order that prohibited them from abusing children. But so what? As a feminist might observe, the net effect of forbidding all feminists from abusing children would be enhanced protection of children. Unquestionably this would be worth some ruffled fur.

Now, do I mean the above as lampoon, or am I being serious? When it comes to the subject of restraining orders, both amount to the same thing.

These remarks and my choice of words in this post’s title were inspired by a 15-year-old “family violence special report” headlined, “Most restraining orders work.” It was written by Kristen Go for The Denver Post and published Sept. 12, 1999.

The headline’s assertion is the kind that makes people who’ve been falsely accused grate their teeth.

Imagine, just for argument’s sake, that most restraining order accusations are hyped or false. If that were the case, then naturally most restraining orders would “work” (to curb behavior that the accused never exhibited in the first place).

What Ms. Go’s report saliently relates is that three Colorado women who obtained restraining orders against “abusive husbands” were subsequently shot to death by those husbands.

While these recent high-profile cases in Grand Junction, Fort Collins and Colorado Springs make it appear that restraining orders don’t work, experts say that’s not the case. Enforcing a restraining order can be difficult but not impossible. And obtaining a restraining order is just one step toward leaving an abusive relationship and staying safe, experts say.

“The reality is that a restraining order is a piece of paper,” said John Poley, an assistant city attorney in Denver’s Domestic Violence Unit. “It’s not going to stop bullets. If you get a restraining order without a safety plan in a domestic situation, I think that’s almost asking for trouble.”

Translation: Restraining orders against violent people may not actually do a damn thing but make those violent people murderously angry, and those much-promoted pieces of paper may inspire a false sense of security in their applicants that gets them killed.

No one…keeps track of how many domestic-abuse homicide victims had restraining orders against their killers.

Translation: No one really cares what the consequences are so long as perception is predominantly positive.

Recent studies—which include data collected in Denver—are inconsistent about how often orders are violated. A 1994 study by the National Center for State Courts found that two-thirds of restraining orders are never violated. Yet a 1993 study by the Urban Institute reported that 60 percent of women said their abuser violated the order.

Translation: What the courts report contradicts what women report, and what women report contradicts what Ms. Go does (“Most restraining orders work”).

What the studies do agree on, however, is that about 70 percent of people who obtain restraining orders report feeling safer.

Translation: A majority of people who obtain restraining orders report “feeling” safer, and this means most restraining orders “work.”

The foregoing may be summarized thus: (1) Restraining orders against violent people may get their applicants killed; (2) no one takes a particular interest in how often this occurs; (3) most restraining orders “work”; (4) if most restraining orders are based on BS, it only stands to reason that they should; and (5) we know that three restraining orders obtained in Colorado in the late 90s were presumably legit…and ascertainably worthless.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*Ms. Go’s report also relates the following data: “In fiscal 1998, about 18,000 temporary and 3,300 permanent domestic-violence-related restraining orders were issued in Colorado counties.” If Ms. Go is correct, there’s no evidence in her reportage that she understands this means over 80% of domestic-violence-related restraining orders issued in Colorado counties in 1998 were dismissed. Of the approximately 18,000 petitions preliminarily approved by the court, that is, less than 20% (3,300) were affirmed (made “permanent”). Over 14,500 cases, then, may have been (tacitly) deemed frivolous, flimsy, or false by Colorado courts. Appreciate, besides, that a significant proportion of the 3,300 orders that were upheld may have had false grounds. Almost 20 more years of this charade have gone by since.

Alison Friedman and Karen Mallard: A Consideration of Two Congressional Candidates from Virginia Who Could Move for Reform of Corrupt Abuse Laws if Elected But Who Probably Wouldn’t

Two recent posts here have commented on a restraining order petitioned by Warrenton, Virginia Vice Mayor Sunny Reynolds. The order was grounded on an exchange of words in a restaurant that lasted “three or four minutes.” To critics of feminist-inspired civil court processes that reek of kangaroo, the absurdity of Ms. Reynolds’ complaint, for which a man is now registered in the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database, isn’t necessary to remark.

Misapprehended, though, almost by everyone, is that what makes such travesties endlessly possible are laws, laws made by the legislators who we vote into office (and can vote out of office).

This post rhetorically analyzes the campaign videos of two congressional candidates from Sunny Reynolds’ state. The women in the videos may be tomorrow’s lawmakers.

One message is by an activist mom and former State Dept. official, Alison Friedman (“Alison for Virginia”):

The other is by a schoolteacher, Karen Mallard (“Teacher for Congress”):

Both advertisements conspicuously center around children, and their appeals are emotional. Her voice trembles as Ms. Friedman narrates a series of stills. She describes her grade school daughter’s fear that the President would “[bring] his guns to [their] house” if news of a letter she wrote to him were leaked. Mrs. Mallard, who’s on camera throughout her ad, gets teary-eyed as she recalls learning that her father was illiterate and teaching him to read.

Adult male presences in the ads are tame or mute. Ms. Friedman seems to be a single mom. Mrs. Mallard’s husband, David, appears in her video, but how he appears is positively morose:

Mr. Mallard becomes animated later on—after he cooks dinner, which he’s filmed doing. Two young men, who seem to be Mrs. Mallard’s sons, are seen on the beach in her company but never speak.

The structure of Ms. Friedman’s video is provided by a homework assignment given to her daughter, Olivia, “to write a letter to the President.” Below are some of Olivia’s appeals to “Trump,” juxtaposed with images that will resonate with citizens who’ve been injured or crippled by false allegations of abuse.


Make sure everyone has freedom.


Love instead of hate.


No violence; only words.


Please remember everyone matters.


In this still from Ms. Friedman’s campaign video, her daughter, Olivia (in the foreground), is flanked by predominately female protesters in pink, some holding up feminist signs, one with a clenched fist. Olivia’s sign reads, “EV[E]RY ONE Mat[t]ers,” and features a daisy chain of unified male and female stick figures.


Mrs. Mallard is endorsed by the People’s House Project:

We recruit and support excellent candidates in Republican-held congressional districts in Midwestern and Appalachian states. Our candidates are classically Progressive, true to their working- and middle-class roots, and focused on issues of consequence to those who work not for personal fulfillment but for a living.

It purports to be looking out for the interests of “working- and middle-class” America.

The president of the People’s House Project is described as “an author, activist, [and] social media innovator” who’s “central to Glamour magazine’s political coverage, where she concentrates on issues important to women.”

Her name is Krystal Ball…which is something no one should need to predict the future if the present course isn’t corrected.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

What Feminist Writer Sandra Newman Gets Right about False Accusation and Why That Disarms Her Contention That It “Almost Never [Has] Serious Consequences”

In a recent Quartz.com article titled, “What kind of person makes false rape accusations?” (commented on here), novelist Sandra Newman answers that, among others, people with (Cluster B) personality disorders do (sociopaths, narcissists, histrionics, and borderlines), which is true. People who exhibit the traits associated with these disorders, whether clinically or subclinically, are identified in the law as “high-conflict people.” Court process perfectly syncs with their drive to blame, and they may lie without compunction.

Here’s the problem: While psychological motives may be discerned in major criminal investigations, they are never detected in any “lesser” type of prosecution, particularly in civil court. “Investigators” like Ms. Newman, whose agenda is clearly to challenge the notion that false rape accusations are a serious matter, must discredit that notion while relying on the legitimacy of “lesser” so-called “epidemic” violations like stalking and domestic violence, which may also be alleged (and to a much greater extent) by high-conflict litigants. No one can know what quotient of violence hysteria is based on lies or distortions, and the Sandra Newmans out there have no interest in dispelling that hysteria or promoting a balanced perspective. Sympathy for “the adversary” is unthinkable.

The goal is to emphasize the victimization of women and to dismiss the victimization of the falsely accused (who include women, which is a fact that’s also ignored).

The title of Pulitzer-prize-winning columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz’s book, No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times, characterizes (false) accusation much more squarely, that is, damningly.

Here are some stories about false accusation and its effects:

Ms. Newman has elsewhere acknowledged what she thinks of liars and expressed how she feels society should regard them:

Yet the thrust of her Quartz arguments is not that liars are monstrous and should be stopped. It’s that lying, even about rape and even to people with guns and gavels, is unworthy of remark, because it “almost never [has] serious consequences.”

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*The link on Ms. Newman’s Twitter remark is broken because her account has been suspended since the publication of this post.

Warrenton, Virginia Vice Mayor Sunny Reynolds Explains What Legitimates the Protective Order Process

“[Warrenton, Virginia Vice Mayor Sunny] Reynolds called the protective order process ‘very difficult, both timewise and emotionally’ and said she ‘could not imagine someone [enduring it] if they didn’t have a legitimate complaint.’”

—Jill Palermo, Fauquier Times

The previous post examined Virginia politician Sunny Reynolds’ “legitimate complaint” to a court, indulged at a cost to the taxpayer possibly as high as $1,000 or more. A detective was assigned to the case. A statement was taken. Paperwork had to be filed at the court, data entered, and police notified of the court’s preliminary ruling. The respondent had to be physically served with her restraining order by a constable or law enforcement official. A judge had to hear her complaint, and another judge had to rehear it. Then more paperwork had to be processed, data entered, and police notified a second time (and more paperwork processed and data entered).

Ms. Reynolds alleged she was angrily addressed, had a finger pointed at her, and felt crowded during an exchange in a restaurant with a local real estate investor, Keith MacDonald, who was addressing a grievance to an elected official (albeit in an unofficial venue).

Ms. Reynolds’ complaint, in essence, was that Mr. MacDonald intruded on her meal, which somewhat contrasts with how advocates for the restraining order process tend to justify it:

Law, like language, follows usage. Certainly in the sense that a judge is licensed to entertain any petty gripe, Ms. Reynolds’ complaint was “legitimate.” By this standard, though, what occasion for hurt feelings or indignation wouldn’t legitimate a complaint to the court that incriminates its target?

A question arises: Is this the first time Ms. Reynolds has sought a restraining order? The statement of hers quoted in the epigraph would suggest the answer is yes. If a public exchange in a roomful of people is the most fear-inspiring interpersonal experience Ms. Reynolds has ever had, she has led a charmed life indeed. If it isn’t, then what were her motives really? It’s one thing to seek protection after an act of violence has been committed (or at least threatened); it’s another thing to punish someone for an act that only exists in the complainant’s imagination.

In a more detailed account of the incident than that reported by the Fauquier Times, one published on the website FauqueirNow.com, Ms. Reynolds is quoted as testifying: (1) “He just got more and more aggressive. I was afraid he might hit me.” That’s during a dialogue that her witness testified lasted “three or four minutes” with a gap in between. Then Ms. Reynolds is quoted as remarking: “He said, ‘I’m gonna get you. I’m gonna fix you. All it takes is 125 signatures’”—to get on the town council ballot, something Fauquier Now reports Mr. Macdonald has done. If the stated threat was political opposition, why was a physical blow “feared”? The alleged threat by Mr. MacDonald, which was probably emphasized in typical tattletale fashion because it contained the phrase, “I’m gonna get you,” actually exculpates him. It makes his intention clear: to unseat Ms. Reynolds in the May election (an intention that’s conveniently hamstrung by the protective order Ms. Reynolds petitioned).

In her Fauqueir Times interview, Ms. Reynolds described her filing for a restraining order as “very difficult…emotionally.” For her, being challenged, then (and offered a brochure), was very stressful and so was “having to” complain about it.

It’s a telling commentary on the system that it’s there to provide emotional succor to fragile politicians.

Ms. Reynolds also told reporters that she felt singled out because she’s a girl, and maybe she’s right. So?

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

BABY ON BOARD: Restraining Order by Virginia Vice Mayor Sunny Reynolds Kneecaps Town Council Election Rival Who “Pointed His Finger at Her”; Letter to the Editor Criticizes Conduct

The administration of restraining orders is a frequent target of censure by First Amendment scholar and UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh in his blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. That’s because restraining orders may be exploited, besides as gag orders generally, as SLAPPs to suppress political speech, which the First Amendment is there to protect above all other kinds.

This post shares a letter to the editor of the Fauquier Times that was recently submitted by Virginian Nathan Larson and that concerns an injunction sought by Warrenton Vice Mayor Linda “Sunny” Reynolds, whose nickname and whose evident hypersensitivity are strikingly incongruous. “Misty” Reynolds would seem to suit her better—or maybe “Runny.”

According to the Fauquier Times, Ms. Reynolds petitioned and was granted an obviously spiteful restraining order against Warrenton real estate investor Keith Macdonald based on the allegation that he “appeared to be ‘very angry’” and “pointed his finger at her” during a public exchange about a proposed municipal development project (a library) that occurred in a restaurant where both were dining with others. Ms. Reynolds testified that Mr. Macdonald “invaded her personal space, preventing her from leaving the table.”

Not clarified in the story is whether she ever asked to be excused or made a move to rise.

One of Ms. Reynolds two female witnesses in court worked for the newspaper that reported the story. The other, Ms. Reynold’s dinner companion, Crystal McKinsey, “testified that she could tell Reynolds ‘felt very threatened by the situation and was very fearful.’” What was characterized as a harrowing confrontation transpired in a populated eatery, and there was no report that voices had even been raised.

Mr. MacDonald represented himself in court; Ms. Reynolds had an attorney.

The judge, J. Gregory Ashwell, “decided in favor of Reynolds’ petition, saying he believed Reynolds’ testimony and that of her dinner companion met the legal requirement to issue a protective order.” He offered the explanation that it was “clearly an ‘awkward interaction.’”

Mr. MacDonald, who says he intends to appeal, opposes Ms. Reynolds in an upcoming town council election.

The Fauquier Times reports “[i]t’s not clear if the final order, which will be issued by the court, will…bar Macdonald from town council meetings or town hall.”

Ms. Reynolds’ reelection campaign is titled, “Sunny, for a Voice.” Her bio identifies her as the mother of two daughters but contains no reference to a father.


LETTER TO THE EDITOR

By Nathan Larson

The recent article, “Judge grants Warrenton vice mayor protective order against council opponent,” shows why we need to reform Virginia’s laws concerning restraining orders.

Warrenton Vice Mayor Sunny Reynolds was able to obtain a restraining order under a statute, Code of Virginia § 19.2-152.9, that required only that she prove she had been “subjected to an act of violence, force, or threat by a preponderance of the evidence.”

This is a much lower standard than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard which is used in criminal court. That higher standard exists because of the principle that a person’s liberty should not be taken away without strong evidence that he broke a law. Yet without having been convicted of any crime, Reynolds’ challenger in the May election, Keith Macdonald, has been deprived of his First Amendment right to petition his government (specifically, his vice mayor) for a redress of grievances. He also has been deprived of his Second Amendment right to possess a gun.

The article says, “Reynolds also said she felt taken advantage of as the only woman member of the Warrenton Town Council.” But it will have a chilling effect on free speech if men feel they could easily be deprived of their liberty just for confronting a female elected official about her public policies and threatening to run for office against her. The voters lose out too, because now any prospect of these two candidates’ appearing together in a forum to debate issues of public interest is gone.


Mr. Larson retracted his statement about Mr. McDonald’s being denied the right to own a firearm. In Virginia, he explains, a citizen may be slapped with a restraining order for an unwanted gesture, like pointing a finger, but to be denied gun ownership, Mr. McDonald would have to have been in an “intimate” relationship with Ms. Reynolds.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*Probably unsurprising to a reader here, Ms. Reynolds, the plaintiff in the case, called applying for a protective order, which requires filling out some forms and appearing in court for a brief hearing, “very difficult, both timewise and emotionally.” In contrast, proponents of the process argue that being publicly accused (and having one’s name indefinitely registered in local and federal police databases) is no big deal at all.

Using BREDFELDT v. GREENE to Illustrate How Courts Frame Facts

This post quotes a judicial ruling, which is a public document. This is worthy of note for two reasons. Defendants may believe it’s unlawful to air and criticize rulings of the court, and plaintiffs may believe they aren’t accountable for their pleadings and testimony because rulings of the court are secret. Both beliefs are mistaken.

“On March 27, 2013, Plaintiffs [Tiffany and Phil Bredfeldt] filed a lawsuit alleging [Todd] Greene ‘set on an intentional course of conduct since 2006 to constantly defame Plaintiff Tiffany and cause her emotional distress’ and ‘to have Plaintiff terminated from her employment, lose her credentials, be blacklisted in her profession, and have her marriage to [her husband] fail.’ Plaintiffs’ Complaint listed numerous examples, including sending a highly disparaging letter about Tiffany to the Inspector General of the United States Health and Human Services and an [i]nternet posting with a ‘concocted article’ referring to Tiffany’s vagina. According to the Complaint, the ‘harassments and defamations occur[ed] on a weekly basis….’”

Ruling of the Pima County Superior Court (Sept. 20, 2016)

The reason for the bracketed i in the quotation above (“[i]nternet”) is anyone’s guess. It isn’t an editorial correction of mine. Trial court rulings are seldom scrupulous—in any sense.

The quotation is an excerpt from a ruling returned against me after being the butt of 10 years of false allegations to the court, multiple police agencies (including the FBI), government officials outside of the “justice” system, and even staff at a former workplace of mine, the University of Arizona. This, of course, isn’t remarked in the ruling, whose author ignored the question of why a retiring, literate man would bother criticizing a former cheerleader named Tiffany who extols a Keanu Reeves movie as “[e]ye candy for your mind!”

In a future post, I may comment on the politics that make reportage of contradictory testimony by a female Trump-appointed EPA rep who works for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), an agency whose “science” favors polluters and is widely disdained, a matter that no left-leaning, environmentally sensitized reporter wants to touch. I’m frankly convinced that the feminist-dominated media would sooner spur a voter exodus to the right and damn the planet (which can’t cheep “Me too!”) than own that a woman is capable of unsavory conduct.

Here I want to show how courts frame facts (true or untrue) to serve a particular interest—which, in so-called “abuse” cases, may have nothing to do with the law. In this instance, the interest was mitigation of a judge’s flagrant violation of the law. (When citizens violate the law, it’s called a crime. When judges do it, it’s called an error.)

That story, about an unconstitutional speech injunction, or “prior restraint,” and how a judge who has since been shamed off the bench was manipulated into entering it, is here for any reader who’s curious. It exposes the estranged relationship between process and justice.

This post isn’t about the story but about the sketch artistry that typifies judicial rulings.

To perceive the technique, first consider a couple of phrases in the epigraph: “filed a lawsuit alleging” and “According to the Complaint.”

That these constructions appear in a judicial ruling about an earlier case creates the expectation that the cited allegations were ascertained at trial (like, with a jury and stuff). They weren’t. There was no trial. The statements are assertions only—quoted by a judge for the sake of expediency.

In the dozen years I’ve been accused in court and by the court, I’ve never had a trial, only some brief “hearings.”

Allegations are cited in this ruling to give it and the earlier ruling it endeavors to salvage some commonsense rationale. The purpose is to make alleged actions of mine sound “bad enough” to excuse censorship, which is always presumptively unlawful.

Now consider the allegations. They are untried histrionics and wanton conjecture by a plaintiff who has, in testimony to the court, acknowledged being in the care of a psychiatrist and whom I’ve had no contact with since 2006. The first of the two cited “examples” of harassment or defamation or whatever is a letter to a government official about a government official. It is in excess of any court’s jurisdiction to censure such a complaint; a judge’s disapproval is irrelevant. “The right to petition the government for redress of grievances is ‘among the most precious of the liberties safeguarded by the Bill of Rights.’” Balboa Island Vill. Inn v. Lemen, 156 P.3d 339 at 352 (Cal. 2007) (quoting United Mine Workers of Am. v. Ill. State Bar Ass’n, 389 U.S. 217, 222 (1967)). Significantly, the case I’ve just quoted is one the judge who issued the ruling against me cited himself (in defense of censorship), which presupposes that he read it.

This exemplifies the post’s point that courts practice selective hearing. Remarking that the letter was “highly disparaging” has rhetorical, tattletale value, and rhetorical, tattletale “evidence” is the sum and substance of most restraining order adjudications.

What the second cited example, a “‘concocted article’ referring to Tiffany’s vagina,” is supposed to import isn’t clear. “Concocted” means fabricated. The modifier could either mean made or made up. Nothing in the article was false, so nothing in it was defamatory. The article wasn’t directed TO anyone, so it can’t be called “harassing” by any legal standard. Nor, finally, did it discuss genitalia; it used the anatomical word vagina in its title as a metaphor for sexuality. The article contemplated motives for deception and concealment—a pocketed wedding ring and misrepresentations to law enforcement officials and the court are examples—and bore a headline that was intentionally inflammatory: “Tiffany Bredfeldt’s Vagina: On Marital Discontent and Restraining Order Abuse.” Is speech that’s intentionally inflammatory lawful? Yes. Speech that’s “offensive,” “insulting,” “upsetting,” “coercive,” or even “outrageous” is protected by the First Amendment, as the court had been well informed prior to issuing its ruling. (Also, both the judge and his law clerk graduated from law school.) The title doesn’t state a fact. It’s merely a label and can’t be called true or false. Therefore it can’t be called defamatory.

Lastly, consider this: “The ‘harassments and defamations occur[ed] on a weekly basis….’” By no standard of law have the words “harassments” or “defamations” ever been qualified. Furthermore, application of logic makes their posited “weekly” occurrence every seven days from 2006 to 2013 pretty tough for a reasonable mind to accept. Half of the claim is unsubstantiated; the other half is false.

Such a tissue of twaddle sounds grave, though, and that’s all that matters.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Psych Patient Tiffany Bredfeldt’s “Victim’s Impact Statement,” Presented to the Arizona Superior Court (2016)


Tiffany Bredfeldt, an inveterate liar, is a senior toxicologist at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), the second largest regulatory agency of its kind in the country after the EPA. You won’t find her name among its staff, though, because for years she has alleged she’s in danger.

She gave a presentation before the National Research Council of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in defense of fracking in 2013, was appointed to the Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board last April, and was interviewed in May on ABC News but the ruse is maintained nevertheless, and it has garnered her a private office and a wealth of special attention.

Bredfeldt’s title today is Dr. When the writer knew her, she was a Mrs. who represented herself as a Miss. The writer, then an aspiring children’s humorist, babysat Mrs. Bredfeldt, who invaded his seclusion and was routinely to be found outside of his residence up to and past midnight (minus her wedding ring), for three months in late 2005.

The writer has been in and out of court with Mrs. Bredfeldt again and again over the decade since he demanded an explanation for her conduct, and has variously been accused by her of stalking, sexual harassment, and posing a violent threat to her and others. Her boss at the TCEQ, Toxicology Director Michael Honeycutt, also a recent EPA appointee, testified in 2013 that special security measures had been instituted at the TCEQ to protect her against the writer, who lives in another state and has had no contact with her since 2006.

Tiffany Bredfeldt TCEQ, Tiffany Bredfeldt PhD, Tiffany Bredfeldt EPA, Bredfeldt TG, Dr. Tiffany Bredfeldt, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, TCEQ, EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Science Advisory Board, SAB, EPA Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee

Tiffany Bredfeldt, Ph.D.

Mrs. Bredfeldt’s claims, which she reports she has made to “multiple police departments, detectives, federal agencies, and other officials in several states” and with which the writer has lived every day, have been calculated distortions or frauds, and all have been made to conceal an extramarital indulgence and to demonize, terrorize, oppress, and defame the writer, who only ever treated her kindly.

Consequent to his responding to overtures from an obviously lonely stranger hanging around his house at all hours, the writer’s professional aspirations long ago flew to wherever dreams go to languish and expire.

This post shares Mrs. Bredfeldt’s characterization of the intervening years in a statement she gave in evidence to the Pima County Superior Court in April 2016. The object of that four-page Victim’s Impact Statement” was to have the writer censored and jailed.

The mentality of false accusers and the persistence of accusations and their toxic residue are among what critics of those who complain of misrepresentation invariably fail to comprehend. Scoffers imagine false accusation is over and done with as quickly as a mere physical violation, and they think violence is worse. To paint a contrast, the writer has been run down in the road by a 4×4 doing 45 mph. The collision, of a nature only 15 out of 100 survive, lifted him out of his shoes, gashed his face two inches above his left eye, tore ligaments and cartilage from bone, and shattered joints. Five days post-surgery, after he was released from ICU, the writer was hobbling on a broken leg and within six months was running. The number of times he’s thought about the driver in the intervening years is zero.

For social justice advocates with the stomach for unwelcome truths, a full account of this matter (to date) is here. What has become a 12-year ordeal was licensed by a commonplace, one-hour-in-and-out court process that anyone can exploit entirely for free and that generates a permanent public record registered in state and federal police databases.


Victim’s Impact Statement

Tiffany Bredfeldt, PhD

I am not sure how to begin this statement, even though I have told this story to so many people so many times. This ordeal has endured for nearly 10 years now. I have been pursued, harassed, and defamed since 2006, yet I see no end in sight. Even as I write, I know that this Victim’s Impact Statement will soon be posted online and used as fodder for group stalking and defamation among people I have never met. It will be intentionally tagged and ranked high in search engine results under my name, in an attempt to maximize its damage to me, my reputation, and my family. My words will be parsed out, obsessed over, and conspiracy theories and alternate meanings developed. That withstanding, the truth of this matter needs to be stated. This has all been alarming, disturbing, frightening and isolating. I have simply wanted to live my life in peace. Until this moment in time, I had all but given up that this would ever end. Even now, I am not confident that it will end unless the Defendant has significant consequences to encourage a different life path.

Since 2006, the constant cyberstalking and harassment has significantly altered the decisions and the direction of my life. It has also altered lives of my family members. Hundreds of people have been contacted by the Defendant about me, often multiple times. Contacts include both sides of my extended family, my employers and colleagues, my mother’s employer and colleagues, my father’s employer, my father-in-law’s employer, friends, church pastors, professional societies, and state and federal agencies. Essentially, anyone that can be confirmed by extensive online searching to have any real (or perceived) connection to me has been contacted by the Defendant and told that I am a fraud, perjurer, criminal, mentally ill, sexual deviant, etc. Literally thousands of pages have been written, emailed, and blogged to an untold number of people. I have been to the Court multiple times, talked to multiple police departments, detectives, federal agencies, and other officials in several states. It has cost me tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and related expenses (some of which the defendant has been ordered to pay and never has). This ordeal has caused diagnosed physical and psychological harm to me, including post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

In addition, these behaviors have been a major deciding factor in the path I have taken in my career and whether or not I consider employment opportunities. It has altered where I live and how I live. The ongoing fear, stress, and associated physical impacts have been a decision factor as to whether or not I have children. It prevented me and my family from moving back to Tucson for a job opportunity. It has damaged relationships with my family, friends, and spouse. I also know that it is one of the first things that people see when they conduct an online search about me, influencing their perception and first impressions. These impacts to me have not just happened by some accident—they are the intentional result of the Defendant’s purposeful actions over the past 10 years.

[Omitted here is a protracted interlude in which Bredfeldt chronicles “important events” from 2006 to 2016 and how she reacted to them, including by notifying the FBI, which rejected her complaint (possibly while the responding officer made vertical propeller motions beside his or her temple). Excepting the year 2006, what Bredfeldt terms “events” were either letters or emails from me to others asking for their help or online publications to the world at large like this one. None of these “events” included contact with Bredfeldt, who could only have culled publications from this site to implicate as “disturbing” by obsessively monitoring it for “untold hours” every month for five years.]

CLOSING

I came to the Court and law enforcement for the first time approximately 10 years ago. What has happened since has been a continual rollercoaster of fear, disappointment and hopelessness. What I had been told would be easily fixed by an Injunction Against Harassment in 2006, placed on someone I only knew as an acquaintance for 3 months, has turned into a decade of vicious cyberstalking and harassment. It has injured my health and mental well-being, altered my path in life, and harmed relationships with those that I love. I have incurred enormous costs for legal expenses, court fees, travel back and forth to Tucson, legal insurance, and medical costs. I am tired. I have looked for help everywhere I could for 10 years. I have talked to more people at police departments, sheriff’s departments, and federal and state agencies than I can count. Meanwhile, the cyberstalking and harassment drags on and on and on. Through untold hours of online searching and contacts, the Defendant literally knows more about my extended family than I do. Disturbing and exhausting are not nearly strong enough words. I fear for my safety. Multiple people have told me that they also fear for my safety. I want my family and I to be left alone and live in peace. Why is that too much to ask? What I have gotten since the 2006 IAH has been the furthest thing from peace.

Thank you for your interest and consideration in this situation. Please consider all possible and appropriate actions and restitution to correct the Defendant’s ongoing behavior as soon as possible. It is very difficult to describe in these few pages the enormous impact this has had and continues to have on my life. I do not want the next 10 years of my life to be like the last 10 years. Please help this to finally end.


The highlights in the text, many of them meant to stress an irony, are added. Here is a letter the writer hired an attorney to prepare in 2009 to “help this to finally end.” Bredfeldt represented it to the court in 2013 as evidence of harassment.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*(Post-conviction) victim impact statements originated in the 1970s after the Manson murders. Their purpose is to impress upon parole review boards the impact magnitude of violent crimes on victims and those close to them. Their exploitation for the purpose of cover-up mocks the pain of people who have suffered unspeakable violations and losses.

Why Are Pro Se Defendants More Suspect in the Eyes of Judges than Lying Accusers?


Showing candor that was as unexpected as it was refreshing, a judge I stood before in August acknowledged that he knew restraining orders were “abused” by litigants who made “blatantly false” statements to the police and the court.

Doing the former is a misdemeanor crime; the latter, a felony.

The judge, Tony Riojas, besides being the presiding magistrate of the Tucson City Court, is a member of the Task Force on Fair Justice for All. Much of what he told me I already knew: Neither false reporting nor perjury is ever prosecuted, there are no “mechanisms” to stop false litigants, and there’s no statutory limit on the number of times they can file fictive complaints with the court.

(For the curious or indignant: This status quo owes to feminist politicking. See also VAWA. No act by government, women’s advocates insist, should be seen to discourage “true victims” from coming forward. It’s a sentiment whose use-by date expired at least 20 years ago.)

After my brief dialogue with the judge, he tossed out allegations brought against me 20 months earlier by a woman I’d only met once in the previous decade and who is reportedly diagnosed with a mental illness (bipolar disorder). I lived with her allegations, made in one of three legal actions she brought back-to-back in 2016, every day for most of two years. All of the actions were frauds, and all have been dismissed. (In 2014, she had initiated or instigated multiple prosecutions against her own husband, from whom she’s now divorced.)

This post formerly featured my accuser, Jennifer Terpstra, in a selfie she published on a website cataloging her professional accomplishments. A generous critic might call her countenance “forbidding.” This person, whom I first encountered hanging around my residence in late 2005 and who insisted I meet with her and give her a hug in 2012 (when she called herself my “avid reader”), told officers in multiple police departments in 2015 and 2016 that I had been stalking her since she invited herself into my house 11 years earlier.

When all of her and a friend’s legal actions began to unravel in 2016, Terpstra, who also uses the names Jenn Oas and Jen Oas-Terpstra, fled the jurisdiction.

(She had been employed for over a decade as a researcher in the University of Arizona College of Medicine. Today she has apparently returned to my home town and possibly to her old job but has assumed a new last name.)

I was a “pro se” defendant in the restraining order case Terpstra initiated, and after 11 years of false accusations, it was the first case I’d won—despite having been denied my lawful right to a hearing and having had my first notice of appeal dismissed by the judge quoted above, possibly because I was a pro se defendant.

Pro se is Latin for “for oneself” or “on one’s own behalf.” It means I was my own lawyer.

In court, where no phrase is used more pejoratively, pro se connotes unqualified, unworthy, or off-the-wall, and lawyers use it to remind judges that they shouldn’t trust anything their unschooled adversaries say. Pro se, in other words, means easily blown off.

It’s yet another excuse to deny the credibility of the accused in restraining order cases, which can be initiated by any scrofulous degenerate entirely for free. (See again VAWA.)

No one, of course, applies the phrase pro se derogatorily to plaintiffs who breeze into courthouses, fill out some forms, and recite narratives that may be arrant lies during a five-minute interview with a judge—which is all procurement of restraining orders demands. Accusers, who are largely pro se, are called “victims.” They don’t have to be competent to represent anything but their “torment.”

To prevail, in contrast, the falsely accused

  1. MUST appear in court to defend themselves already prejudged guilty;
  2. MUST defuse lies that may be incapable of disproof like “I’m afraid”; and
  3. MUST do it within rigid time constraints (usually minutes).

They may what’s more be prohibited from cross-examining the prosecuting witness, who may not even be required to show up. (In the prosecution against me referenced above, in which there were three hearings, the plaintiff never appeared a single time.)

On top of this, defendants may be treated dismissively based on their inability or unwillingness to shell out $5,000 to hire an attorney…to troubleshoot the court’s defective garbage disposal.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*As the reader might have predicted, remedying inequities like those sketched above is not the brief of Arizona’s “Task Force on Fair Justice for All.”

“INFEST ’IM”: Some Anagrams of FEMINIST with Commentary about Why It’s a Dirty Word

Feminism has been called a “cancer,” and there’s no question many of its manifestations are malignant. Or that its cells metastasize unchecked. Despite those cells’ being a minority in the body politic, they exercise a systemic and debilitating influence on the whole.

“Plague” might be a better metaphor yet.

While only 20% of the population “identifies” as feminist (according to the Huffington Post), feminism has proved an epidemic contagion—“infest ’im” feminists have, many ’ims and ’ers.

Alas, a pocketful of posies is no deterrent. Brandish a bouquet at a feminist, and there’s a good chance you’ll be accused of stalking (#YouToo?).

Which leads to another anagram of feminist: “fine mist”—like fog or like the spittle that might cloud your glasses when a rabid crank holds forth on “rape culture”…before retiring to her laptop to tweenishly  effuse about a male lead on HBO’s Game of Thrones.

This sort of self-ridicule makes the anagram “finite S&M” a pervect fit, though it may be optimistic in its appraisal of feminism’s longevity.

A final anagram of feminist is “mini-fest.” Feminists have certainly had their fun. Here’s hoping the anagram is auspicious and that their next “wave” is goodbye.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*The anagram “fistin’ ’em” was considered and then rejected upon consultation with an online slang dictionary. Apparently having a fist inserted in their rectums is considered pleasurable by many—which may account for a corrupted movement’s lasting as long as it has.

 

Feminist Writer Emily Lindin Explains How “Innocent Men Losing Their Jobs over False Sexual Assault/Harassment Allegations” Isn’t a Matter for Concern

Feminists manage to reap the best of both worlds. They enjoy the insulated life of the nursery but are patted on the heads and told what big girls they are. They purport to understand life’s grim realities better than anyone and arrogate to themselves the right to nominate which of them most urgently deserves attention. And they are parentally indulged.

Consequent fact: You can’t persuade feminists of anything they don’t want to believe. On the upside, though, you don’t have to prove to other grownups that feminists’ positions are vicious. You only have to quote them.

This sequence of “tweets” was brought to my attention by Dorothy Cummings McLean in an article that I chanced upon while dealing with the aftermath of 12 years of false allegations (including of sexual harassment), the effects of which are only comprehensible to adults who have also experienced them.

Emily Lindin, the author of the tweets, writes for Teen Vogue, a magazine whose title verbalizes the essence of contemporary feminism, a movement sustained by social media, where playground popularity determines value.

Here are Ms. Lindin’s Teen Vogue writing credits with some emphases added:

  • “Rob Kardashian Slut-Shamed Blac Chyna — and the Internet’s Response Is Part of the Problem”
  • “What You Need to Know Before Sending a Nude Photo”
  • “How to Get Your Parents to Stop Slut Shaming You”
  • Slut-Shaming Actually Makes Life Worse for Straight Guys, Too”
  • “6 Ways You May Be Slut Shaming Without Realizing It”
  • “Why Sexist Dress Codes Suck for Everyone”
  • “How to Say ‘No’ in the Middle of a Hookup Without Feeling Awkward About It”
  • “How I Learned the Definition of ‘Slut’
  • “Why You Should Stop ‘Playing Hard to Get’ and Start Masturbating”
  • “If You’ve Ever Ordered Pizza, Then You Already Understand What Consent Is”

Ms. Lindin writes in the magazine’s “Wellness” section—or did: Her last byline is dated July 5.

Assigned the same job, I would probably have encouraged today’s youth to read more (books, I guess I have to add). Being slutty is bound to be more fun, or at least less challenging, but there are some rewards to cultivating the mind. I’ll try to demonstrate some.

Ms. Lindin “identifies” as a member of an oppressed class. Oppressed is a word that means held down or held back by abuse of power or authority…such as men and women are who are falsely accused and arbitrarily vilified by the state.

Being able to discern contradictions in what people argue—and being outraged by them—is a hallmark of intelligence, and an instruction to a young woman that a feminist might have given when I was a child is this: “Intelligence is sexy.” (Such a feminist might even have counseled: “Self-reliance is sexy.”)

There’s probably a fossil exhibit about feminists like this in the Museum of Natural History.

Ms. Lindin, who was evidently never steered toward a library, insists that “false allegations very rarely happen.” Actually, false allegations never “happen”; false allegations are made, typically (but not always) by lying women. How often is unquantifiable but certainly a lot more frequently than “very rarely,” a judgment Ms. Lindin probably copped secondhand from another feminist source. On Twitter, maybe.

Consider the wording here: “The benefit of all of us getting to finally tell the truth + the impact on victims FAR outweigh the loss of any one man’s reputation.” A trained mind might pause and wonder: Who are “all of us”? And: A man whose reputation is ruined by lies isn’t a victim? And: What do you mean “one man”?

The face of “patriarchy”

Feminism purports to advocate for equality, which would make “us” inclusive of “innocent men losing their jobs over false…allegations.” The feminist “us” clearly means girls only, and the exigency of their “truth” makes all other truths insignificant. It makes all other people (one or 100 million) insignificant. A trained mind might observe that in a democracy, where “all…are created equal,” value judgments about who should be thrown under the bus have no place. No citizen is more important than any other, nor any class of citizens more important than any other.

Self-contradictory rhetoric like Ms. Lindin’s works, because it is supported by power and has been for a long time. It has determined, and it continues to determine, what lawmakers’ priorities should be, how statutes are shaped and sharpened, and how they’re applied by our courts, the Constitution be damned. So who are the oppressors really? The “patriarchy” that Ms. Lindin would have her “followers” believe is being undone went out with the fedora. The members of today’s “patriarchy” wear bras—or maybe they don’t, for which omission they absolutely should not be slut-shamed.

The hit to “some innocent men’s reputations” by lying women is a price Ms. Lindin says she, for one, is “willing to pay.”

At a cost to her and her family (and Tweetmates) of exactly nada.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

What’s Wrong with the Protective Order Policy “Better Safe than Sorry”?


“I was wondering if you have a rebuttal to the argument that restraining orders should be granted based on little evidence, because it’s ‘[b]etter [to be] safe than sorry.’”

—Recent query

The question implicit in the epigraph is this: What’s wrong with the policy “better safe than sorry”?

The questioner refers to the judicial practice, long inculcated, of taking complaints of fear on faith and issuing protective orders “just in case.” Appreciate that these protective orders may be based on no substantial evidence and are effectively “mini-criminal statutes.” Their violation, real or alleged, leads to criminal prosecution. They are custom-tailored laws applied to individual citizens about whom the court knows nothing but is willing to presume the worst—and whether they’re violated or not, they may be accompanied by a host of privations like loss of access to home, family, property, and money (and even the ability to earn it).

There are a plenitude of reasons why the policy “better safe than sorry” is crass and hypocritical. Liberal feminism, based on whose politicking the policy originates, eagerly supports discrimination and stereotyping in one context. We see it applied almost daily in response to the #MeToo movement: Men are accused; men are fired. The same policy, in other contexts, is vehemently opposed by the left, however. Profiling to screen potential terrorists or catch illegal immigrants, denial of entry into this country by citizens of others associated with anti-American sentiment, and forced deportations of aliens who came here as children are nominated cruel and unjust.

People of the same political stripe oppose bullying. They denounce finger-pointing, name-calling, and humiliation (like “slut-shaming” and “fat-shaming”), which may inflict emotional harm and lead victims to commit rash acts, including violence or self-violence. But they decree finger-pointing, name-calling, and public revilement urgent and commendable when it’s done by a complainant of violation: “Believe her.”

So an evident double-standard demonstrated by its advocates—whose self-contradictory battle cry is “Equality”—is a compelling logical argument against the better-safe-than-sorry position. A compelling legal argument against it is that in a democracy, privileging the interests of one party or collective over the interests of another or others is unconstitutional.

The most forceful argument against it, though, is that it’s unethical:

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.

This 350-year-old formulation, which most of us have heard at one time in our lives, is attributed to English jurist William Blackstone but could as easily be credited to ancient sources (see, for instance, Genesis 18:23-32). Its point, as interpreted by Wikipedia, is that “government and the courts must err on the side of innocence,” that is, they must grant the benefit of the doubt to the accused, not to their accusers. “Better safe than sorry” is an inversion and perversion of this principle, and the argument is best dispatched on the grounds that it’s savage.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*To suffer, for those who need reminding (and they are legion), is to endure pain or distress, incur loss or damage, or sustain disability or handicap. All obviously apply in this context. The position that being falsely accused never causes suffering is monstrous.

Another Instance of a Restraining Order against a Woman Petitioned by a Man She Allegedly Talked ABOUT

Traffic was directed to this site Friday from another one intriguingly called ScamBoard.com. I followed the link. It led me to a 2016 complaint posted by Arizonan James Cukr, who says a woman has been making “false and untrue” statements about him “on every social media outlet available to her,” and that he’s sworn out a restraining order against her, which he includes in his complaint.

I had intended to leave reportage of my own case topmost while I rebuilt this blog. I’m led to comment on the Scam Board post, though, because it relates.

To see how, first consider Mr. Cukr’s “restraining order,” which is a public document:

Look at the case number: DV20160965. The prefix “DV” stands for “domestic violence.” In other words, in an affidavit given under penalty of perjury to the Superior Court of Arizona, Mr. Cukr alleged domestic violence against a woman who criticized him on the Internet. The closest thing to substantiation of his domestic violence claim that he offers on Scam Board is that she had a “temper.” The “OP” that you see in the lower right corner stands for “order of protection.”

Apparent is that Mr. Cukr was upset and wanted to intimidate his accuser into silence for remarks like this one posted on CheaterLand.com: “James Cukr trolls dating sites like POF, Match, and OKCUPID lying to U of A students and desperate older women to get sex…but he is married with a wife and child in France he is lying to.”

The protective order is almost entirely blank, and there is no indication that it was ever served (which does not necessarily mean the record was discarded).

In other posts on Cheater Land and elsewhere—presuming they’re all by the same person—Mr. Cukr’s accuser, who is anonymous, does make statements that might be qualified as defamatory (pursuant to a civil lawsuit that would demand a filing fee and a lot more effort than filling out a form). Since those comments were directed to the world at large, however, and not to Mr. Cukr himself, they cannot properly be characterized as harassing, never mind “violent,” and are not grounds for a protective order.

A reasoning person might deduce that effectively accusing someone of domestic violence is easily accomplished, irrespective of the facts or the law. Mr. Cukr might just as handily have alleged “stalking”—and maybe he did.

Here are two other cases chronicled on this site that reflect the same gender dynamic, similar facts, and an identical misapplication of the law/abuse of process:

The court wrongly arrogates to itself the power to censor speech to the world at large because it is alleged to be harassing to some party it criticizes.

To quote eminent constitutional scholar Aaron Caplan, a law professor at Loyola:

American law deliberately makes defamation difficult to prove…. By contrast, civil harassment is designed to be easy to prove…. A petitioner should not be able to evade the limits on defamation law (many of them constitutionally mandated) by redesignating the claim as civil harassment.

The highlighted cases exemplify how restraining orders are exploited as cheap workarounds, possibly to conceal any nature of objectionable conduct by plaintiffs, from deceitful to criminal.

To quash embarrassing criticism, you allege you’re in danger.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*See The Volokh Conspiracy for related stories and commentaries.

Restraining Order Lies Acknowledged by Chief Tucson Judge

The contents of this brief post are excerpted from the previous one. They’re highlighted separately here because of their almost unique significance. It’s very rare for a judge to frankly criticize the protective order process and the indifference of the justice system to false accusation. The occasion that prompted the judge’s candid discussion of the fraudulent abuse of court process was the dismissal of allegations brought by University of Arizona scientist Jennifer Oas-Terpstra (who today apparently uses an alias).

I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” Judge [Tony] Riojas told the writer on Aug. 25, 2017, “and I’ve never known a police [officer] or a prosecutor to charge someone for…false reports, no matter how blatant….” He added: “I wish they would, because I think people come in, and they say things that are just blatantly false—and lying.” A false or vexatious complainant “can keep filing [protective orders] as much as [s/he] wants,” Judge Riojas said (costing an attorney-represented defendant thousands of dollars a pop and his or her accuser nothing; application is free to all comers). “There is no mechanism to stop someone from filing these orders.” What may be worse, even a dismissed order, the judge explained, “can’t be expunged” (and anything may be alleged on a fill-in-the-blank civil injunction form, for example, rape, conspiracy to commit murder, or cross-dressing; whether heinous or merely humiliating, allegations that may be irrelevant to the approval of a keep-away order and/or that may never be litigated in court, let alone substantiated, will still be preserved indefinitely in the public record above a judge’s signature). Significantly, Judge Riojas, who is the presiding magistrate of the Tucson [City Court] (and a member of the Arizona Judicial Council and the Task Force on Fair Justice for All), agreed that restraining orders were “abused”. Of that, he said, “[t]here’s no doubt.”

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*In a given year, there are reportedly 5,000 active restraining orders in Tucson City Court, which recently added an annex dedicated to their administration exclusively—and the municipal court is just one of three courts in Tucson that issue such orders.

Sexual Solicitation, Assault Alleged by Texas Officials Michael Honeycutt and Tiffany Bredfeldt in Contradictory Testimony to the Arizona Superior Court, Implicating a Tucson Man Who’s Been Falsely Accused for 11 Years: ILLEGAL GAG ORDER GUTTED; “WOMEN’S LAW,” TCEQ DISCREDITED

This post, published on the first day of the year, was updated on July 9, 2018 (reflected in the new title), and content that had been unlawfully censored by the court has been restored. A recent respondent to this blog commented, “I think these injunctions violate the Constitution.” Despite the baggy parameters dictated by the law, it’s certain that many are impeachable as unconstitutional. The saga that follows relates the story of such an injunction. Readers merely interested in learning what unscrupulous plaintiffs can get away with (again and again for years) may skip the preamble and gain a clear picture by contrasting various sworn and unsworn statements by two such plaintiffs, who are quoted verbatim. Other quotations show how a witness, Michael Honeycutt, was induced to give misleading testimony, besides how willing attorneys may be to steer the court amiss…for the right price.


Michael Honeycutt TCEQ, Michael Honeycutt PhD, Michael Honeycutt EPA, Tiffany Bredfeldt TCEQ, Tiffany Bredfeldt PhD, Tiffany Bredfeldt EPA, Bredfeldt TG, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, TCEQ, EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Science Advisory Board, SAB, EPA Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee

Texas state toxicologists and newly appointed EPA reps Michael Honeycutt and Tiffany Bredfeldt gave testimony before an Arizona Superior Court judge in 2013 that succeeded in persuading the judge to issue an unconstitutional speech injunction against the writer. The court was told the writer had “propositioned” Bredfeldt (a married woman) in 2005, “wouldn’t take no for an answer,” and “had been harassing her ever since.” Honeycutt, who has never met the writer, recited this secondhand story with the same smug complacency that marks his expression above. Based on the fiction’s effectiveness, four additional legal actions were brought against the writer in 2016, two of which menaced him with the threat of incarceration for exercising his freedom of speech. One of the actions was aborted; two were dismissed. Despite an appeal in 2017, the 2013 gag order, which the writer was alleged in 2016 to have “continuously and contemptuously violated,” remained in effect until July 2018, when it was gutted. All charges brought against the writer in the past decade have been invalidated.

Numerous accounts related on this blog since its launch six years ago have contrasted what he said with what she said in testimony given under penalty of perjury. The account this post relates doesn’t have to. It contrasts what she said here with what she said there—and with what her statured witness said she said. Statements that should harmonize, conflict.

A lesson of what this post unfolds, valuable for anybody to learn who has been wronged by a judge and isn’t sure if s/he’s “allowed” to talk about it, is that when people get away with something in a courtroom, which is a public forum, that in no way immunizes them from being exposed for it in a different public forum (for example, Facebook, Twitter, a personal blog, or one sponsored by The Washington Post). The only legal surety against criticism in this country is square conduct. While a court can lawfully issue a restraining order that prohibits unwanted speech to someone (like phone calls or emails), it cannot lawfully prohibit unwanted speech about anyone. Critical speech directed to the world at large, however objectionable it may be to those it names, whether private individuals, public officials, or judges, is protected speech as long as it isn’t false or threatening (and opinions are sacrosanct); the Constitution doesn’t favor any citizen over another, nor does it distinguish between bloggers, pamphleteers, or picketers and the institutional press. The aegis of the First Amendment doesn’t even require that criticism be deserved. In this instance, however, blamelessness is a nonissue.

Eugene Volokh, First Amendment, freedom of speech, The Volokh ConspiracyThis post discredits a widely championed arena of law, as well as how it’s administered. Linked audio clips of one trial judge will make a seasoned courtroom veteran flinch; those of another, a presiding municipal court magistrate, acknowledge frankly that restraining orders “are abused,” no question, and that “people come in and…say things that are just blatantly false” but are “never…charge[d],” let alone prosecuted.

The post also discredits accusations made by a woman (women, in fact) against a man. To some, this will be its most compelling virtue. Men have traditionally been the butt of abused and abusive procedures, and by far continue to be their most populous feedstock. Assertions that men are “presumed guilty” and unfairly “demonized” are not exaggerations and never have been, contrary to the pajama punditry of demagogues like David Futrelle, Mari Brighe, Amanda Marcotte, and Lindy West, who would smother even the most righteous motives for male contempt beneath the blanket label “misogynist.”

Fixation on gender politics, though, has obscured from view that injustice has been legislated into the law and fortified by decades of accustomed application (albeit that politics is the reason why). Today women—straight, gay, or otherwise—enjoy no greater safety from accusation and arbitrary violations of their civil rights than men do (in drive-thru procedures promoted as “female-empowering”), and women too may be accused by women (including their own mothers, sisters, daughters, and neighbors—which is a predictable consequence when accusation is tolerated as a recreational sport). Law that mocks due process and facilitates and rewards its own abuse is iniquitous, period. What this post reveals, importantly and inescapably, is that how many people choose to understand accusation, court process, and their repercussions is deplorably simplistic. Among these many are most politicians, academics, journalists, and social justice activists.

Eugene Volokh, First Amendment, freedom of speech, The Volokh ConspiracyThe Tucson man in the title of the post is also its author, and there was a time, within his memory, when to allege sexual impropriety without urgent grounds would have stirred outrage, because such an accusation is always damaging. In the climate that has prevailed since the advent of the Violence Against Women Act, however, the female plaintiff who doesn’t allege sexual violation, or at least trespass, squanders invaluable leverage. To a potently shrill sector of the community, this represents social progress. It has made pollution de rigueur.

Inaugurating the task of restoring a site inspired by the tenacity of false accusations like those exposed below, this post breaks a year-and-a-half-long silence coerced from the site’s owner by a series of lawsuits, which included two that demanded that he be jailed for exercising his First Amendment rights. The principal complainant, Tiffany Bredfeldt, an official at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), has repeatedly alleged to the Arizona Superior Court that the writer’s criticisms of her honesty, ethics, and character are untrue. Bredfeldt told the court in 2016 that the “ongoing fear, stress, and associated physical impacts” the writer’s criticisms had caused her “have been a decision factor as to whether or not [she has] children.” She also reported she has “talked to more people at police departments, sheriffs’ departments, and federal and state agencies than [she] can count,” and urged the court to impose “significant consequences” to bring her relief from a “continual rollercoaster of fear.”

Judge Richard Gordon, Pima County Superior Court

I am not going to hold him in contempt for talking about his case,” Pima County Superior Court Judge Richard Gordon pronounced in response to a 2016 complaint that demanded the writer be jailed for doing exactly that. Also commendably, the judge granted the writer a court-appointed attorney without reservation. Disagreeing, however, that the law authorized him to revise or dissolve an illegal prior restraint entered against the writer in 2013, the judge instead delimited its vague and overbroad proscriptions. The writer continued to be (1) forbidden from publishing images of the plaintiffs on this site; (2) forbidden from using “[meta] tags” with their names to label images or contents of posts, supposedly elevating them in Google’s returns for certain search terms thereby; (3) forbidden from “repeating” three “specific statements” that, absent a jury opinion, the 2013 court deemed “defamatory”—only two of which the writer may have made, both concerning honesty; and (4) forbidden from contacting the plaintiffs, Tiffany and Phil Bredfeldt, the former’s employers at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or “their friends, their acquaintances, or their family.” The writer’s own friends and family are among Tiffany Bredfeldt’s acquaintances, and who else may be is impossible for the writer to know, which underscores the recklessness of the 2013 order Judge Gordon construed rather than vacated. That order’s prohibitions, which were substantially narrowed in July of this year, could have been interpreted very differently by another judge at any time for the rest of the writer’s life.

Bredfeldt sued the writer in 2013, neither for the first time nor the last. Michael Honeycutt, to whom the writer had communicated his criticisms of Bredfeldt’s conduct by letter two years before, served her as a witness—telephonically, from the comfort of his desk chair in Texas. Honeycutt is Bredfeldt’s boss at the TCEQ and an old hand at testifying; his bio [deleted from the Internet since this publication] boasts that he has testified before Congress. His role in accusing the writer, who in 2013 had already grappled with crippling allegations for seven years, was to ensure that he would live with them indefinitely—and it’s unlikely that Honeycutt acted without the full approval and support of the TCEQ’s administration.

The upshot of the 2013 prosecution, in which the writer represented himself, was that Bredfeldt was granted an unconstitutional restraining order that prohibited the writer from publishing anything about her “to anybody, in any way, oral, written or web-based” by the judge whose words appear a few times in the transcript excerpts that follow. That Pima County Superior Court judge, Carmine Cornelio, is a judge no longer. In June of 2016, 84% of an Arizona Commission on Judicial Performance Review panel concluded he did not meet standards. The judge declined to face voters that fall, and his tenure on the bench terminated two months later.

(The no-confidence rating returned against Judge Cornelio in 2016 followed reprimands by the Arizona Supreme Court in 2010 and 2013 for the judge’s saying “fuck you” to an attorney during a settlement conference, causing a 19-year-old girl to cry during a different one, and gesturing accusatorily at a female court employee in public, among other alleged acts of “abusive conduct.” In a guest column in the Arizona Daily Star, Judge Cornelio wrote, “I leave with head held high….” He told the same paper in an interview that he “intends to go into private practice in alternative dispute resolution.” Judges of the Arizona Superior Court are paid $145,000 a year, and a proposal has been tabled to raise their salaries to $160,000.)

The speech injunction Judge Cornelio imposed on this writer in 2013, which the judge made permanent without bothering with a trial, was affirmed in 2016 by a second Pima County Superior Court judge, Richard Gordon, despite Judge Gordon’s having acknowledged in open court that the conduct of the 2013 proceedings was “not legal” and that the prior restraint that issued from them offended the Constitution. “There are obviously some parts that are just too broad and then don’t make a whole lot of sense,” Judge Gordon conceded in court in July. In his subsequent Sept. 2016 ruling, little trace of this acknowledgment survives. The writer’s father died a month after the ruling was returned. More than a year has transpired since (and, as the U.S. Supreme Court has held, “[t]he loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury”).

An appeal of the 2016 ruling to the Arizona Court of Appeals’ Second Division was denied in December (five months after it was filed). The court—consisting of Judge Philip Espinosa, Judge Christopher Staring, and Judge Sean Brearcliffedeclined to address the prior restraint’s unconstitutionality and sidestepped use of the phrase prior restraint entirely:

[T]he issue before us is not whether the injunction is constitutionally permissible, but whether the [2016] trial court properly refused to modify or dissolve it.

The appeals court, whose decision may have been influenced by a case narrative that this post will show is false, did acknowledge that “[a]t least one provision of the [2013] injunction would appear clearly unconstitutional, ordering that ‘[t]he defendant…immediately cease and desist all future publications on his website or otherwise.’” The word publication means any act of public speech. This provision, which was dissolved in July of this year, accordingly prohibited the writer from, for example, finishing a Ph.D., addressing the city council, marketing a book, or defending himself in a courtroom, all of which require publication. Also accordingly, courts have consistently found prior restraints facially invalid, even ones far less vague and overbroad than the one issued against the writer, and such orders have been vacated as much as 30 years later, which the writer’s attorney informed the appellate judges by brief and in oral argument. This was unremarked in their Dec. 18, 2017 ruling.

Eugene Volokh, free speech, First Amendment

UCLA Law Prof. Eugene Volokh, addressing the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on June 20

Unlike in 2013 (and previously), the writer wasn’t alone in court in 2016 or 2017. His defense was aided by two gifted lawyers representing the Pima County Legal Defender: Kristine Alger, who drafted and orally augmented a faultless appeal, and Kent F. Davis, whose zealous advocacy made an appeal possible in the first place. Their arguments were what’s more reinforced by no lesser light than Eugene Volokh, who’s distinguished as one of the country’s foremost authorities on First Amendment law and who, in conjunction with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Phoenix attorney Eric M. Fraser, graciously submitted an amicus brief to the court on the writer’s behalf. Alison Boaz of the UCLA School of Law, who assisted Prof. Volokh, is also due credit. A win in the appellate court would have been much more theirs than this writer’s, and they have the writer’s thanks for their Herculean exertions.

(It’s conceivable that a legal critique of the matter may one day appear on The Volokh Conspiracy, which is listed by the ABA Journal in its “Blawg 100 Hall of Fame.”)

Exemplifying the importance of the First Amendment, this post will illuminate how trial courts are manipulated into forming bad conclusions by lowering its beam into the crevices to rest on those who do the manipulating.

A byproduct of the writer’s representation in 2016 and 2017 was access to courtroom transcripts, so the post won’t offer much in the way of opinion. Commentary can be denied. Testimony given under oath…cannot be.


Dr. Tiffany Bredfeldt, on cross-examination by the writer in 2013

Dr. Michael Honeycutt, on cross-examination by the writer in 2013

Based on nothing more than the two statements quoted above, a precocious child would wrinkle her nose. Yet such obvious contradictions have inspired no judge to arch an eyebrow nor any Ph.D. to scruple. In over 11 years.

Calling someone a liar risks being sued, and trial judges interpret whatever they want however they want. They’re acutely aware, moreover, of which direction their criteria are supposed to skew when abuse is alleged. This remark cannot be called defamatory: Although this post isn’t about air or water pollution, as would befit one that quotes environmental scientists, it does concern filth.

Cheryl Lyn Walker PhD, Cheryl Walker PhD, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Texas A&M University Health Science Center, TAMHSC, Institute of Biosciences and Technology

Director of the Texas A&M Health Science Center Institute of Biosciences and Technology Cheryl Lyn Walker, remarks by whom were used in evidence against the writer in 2013 and 2016

It relates sworn testimony to the Arizona Superior Court by two representatives of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), reportedly the second largest agency of its kind after the EPA. Those public sector scientists are Michael Honeycutt, Ph.D., the TCEQ’s toxicology director and an adjunct professor at Texas A&M University, who was recently entrusted with a role in forming national health policy, and one of Honeycutt’s protégés, senior toxicologist Tiffany Bredfeldt, who’s also a Ph.D. and who had already been entrusted with a role in forming national health policy. On April 4, 2017, the TCEQ tweeted its congratulations to Bredfeldt for her being selected to serve on the Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board, which her boss now chairs. The bio of Bredfeldt’s associated with her appointment highlights her experience as an “expert witness.” This merits note, as does Honeycutt’s superior claim to the same distinction.

A second Texas A&M professor, Dr. Cheryl Lyn Walker, Ph.D., who was Bredfeldt’s postdoc adviser at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, has been aware of the conduct of Bredfeldt’s detailed in this post for a decade. Appeals by this writer to Walker’s conscience and integrity only inspired her to tell Bredfeldt in a 2008 email: “I am very concerned about your safety.” Bredfeldt entered Walker’s email in evidence against the writer in 2013 and also quoted it to the court in 2016.

Authorial intrusions in the survey of statements to follow will be terse. Bredfeldt and her witnesses will do the preponderant storytelling.

Tiffany Bredfeldt, romancing the camera in 2005

Some orienting details are required. The writer encountered Bredfeldt, then a doctoral student in the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy, at his home in late summer 2005 and met with her there routinely over the ensuing months, mostly after dark. Bredfeldt, otherwise a stranger, declined to mention to the writer that she was married while, for example, taunting him for not inviting her in at midnight: “Where I come from, it’s considered rude not to at least invite a person onto your porch.” Then she disappeared, providing no explanation. A few months after that, when the writer sought one, Bredfeldt variously reported to the police and numerous courts—in statements that remain public in perpetuity and that are not deemed defamatory—that the writer had made unwelcome sexual advances toward her, despite being repeatedly “rebuff[ed]” and “rebuked”; that he posed a violent danger to her and to assorted others she was concerned the writer would talk to about her conduct at his home (among them her mother, who lived 1,200 miles away); that he should be prohibited from possessing firearms; and that he had stalked her, a woman the writer had only ever met hanging around his yard like a stray cat.

Here’s Bredfeldt’s account in her own words to Judge Jack Peyton on April 10, 2006:

Okay, I’ll begin by defining my relationship, um, with Mr. Greene. I met Mr. Greene in about September or October of 2005 when I was boarding a horse that I own at a boarding facility owned by his family. At that time, uh, we were acquaintances, and we spent time talking and — at his family barn. And that’s about the nature of our — our interaction. During that time, I think, um, he developed maybe romantic feelings for me that — that made me uncomfortable, and I generally would rebuff his advances, asking him to stop.

Mrs. Bredfeldt, whom the writer knew for three months and with whom he has had no contact since March 2006, has along with one of two or three girlfriends of hers who were also routinely around the writer’s residence in 2005 sued the writer some six times. Four legal actions were brought against the writer in 2016 alone, two of which sought his incarceration and all of which endeavored to suppress what this post relates. In a “Victim’s Impact Statement” Bredfeldt submitted to the court in 2016, she owned that she had accused the writer “to the Court multiple times [and] to multiple police departments, detectives, federal agencies, and other officials in several states”—including the Arizona Dept. of Public Safety and the FBI—and it’s this writer’s belief that only with the blind support of loyalists like Mike Honeycutt would Bredfeldt have been so emboldened.

attorney Beth E. Maultsby, attorney Kathryn Flowers Samler, high-conflict litigants, high-conflict people, high-conflict litigation, false testimony, lying in courtThe legal onslaught has spanned (and consumed) almost 12 years, despite the writer’s appealing to dozens of people to look between the lines, including Honeycutt, who’s notably a husband with two college-aged sons. Honeycutt is besides a distinguished scientist, cited for his rigorous investigative standards, whose testimony quoted immediately below includes the statements, “I didn’t ask for details” and “I didn’t clarify that.” As a departmental director of the TCEQ, Honeycutt is paid $137,000 per. The writer, in contrast, has for the past decade earned a subsistence wage doing manual jobs that allow him to keep an insomniac’s hours and be left alone—formerly in the company of his dog, his dearest friend, who died suddenly in 2015 while the writer was still daily distracted with trying to clear his name and recover time and opportunities that had been stolen from them. (Here is a letter the writer hired an attorney to prepare in 2009. Bredfeldt represented it to the court in 2013 as evidence of harassment, and testified she believed her “psychiatric prognosis” would improve if such speech were restrained. “One of the most difficult parts of dealing with something, since this is profoundly stressful,” she told the court, “is that the stress doesn’t go away.”) The writer had aspired to be a commercial author of humor for kids, as Bredfeldt knew, and had labored toward realizing his ambition for many years before encountering her and her cronies on his doorstep. His manuscripts have since only gathered dust.

(A further counterpoint: The first public official the writer notified of Bredfeldt’s conduct, who also took no heed, was University of Arizona Dean of Pharmacy J. Lyle Bootman, Ph.D. A decade later, Bootman was charged with raping and beating an unconscious woman in his home. For almost two years following his indictment in 2015, while free on his own recognizance, Bootman faced trial—a fundamental due process right this writer was denied in 2013. Despite having been placed on administrative leave, Bootman continued to draw a faculty salary of over $250,000 from the U of A, the writer’s alma mater and former place of employ. As a graduate teaching assistant in the English Dept. in the late ’90s, the writer cleared about $200 a week. While he awaited a ruling in Greene v. Bredfeldt, the appeal of the last of the lawsuits brought against him during the same period of time by Bredfeldt and a cohort of hers, the five felony charges against Bootman were dropped. A tort case based on the same facts continues. Bootman’s attorneys filed for a protective order in December to bar public access to records.)

In an interview that aired in 2017, Tiffany Bredfeldt, the writer’s accuser, reassured the audience of ABC News that it could place its trust in the TCEQ. Bredfeldt made a similar pitch before the National Research Council of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2013. Bredfeldt, who the court was told in 2013 and 2016 is not a public official, has repeatedly appeared as the face of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Her attorneys have argued that since she isn’t a public official, she isn’t obligated by law to prove her allegation that objectionable statements by this writer are false and therefore unprotected speech. Her boss, Michael Honeycutt, told the court in 2013: “Tiffany is just like the other 14 employees that I have.” If no other assertions by the TCEQ cause Texans concern, that one should.

This post’s presentation is simple: It juxtaposes contradictory statements that span seven years (2006–2013), most of them made under oath and all of them made by state scientists. (Those in small print may be enlarged in a new tab by clicking on them, or magnification of the entire post may be increased by pressing [CTRL] or [COMMAND, the cloverleaf-shaped key on Macs] + [+]. Zoom may be reversed similarly: [CTRL] or [COMMAND] + [-].) Scrutiny of the quotations below may lead the reader to conclude they’re evidence of false reporting, perjury, subornation of perjury, stalking, harassment, mobbing (including attorney-complicit abuse of process and civil conspiracy), defamation, bureaucratic negligence, professional incompetence, mental derangement, and/or general depravity.

The writer will let the facts speak for themselves.

MICHAEL HONEYCUTT, on cross-examination by the writer on May 20, 2013:

Honeycutt testifies in 2013 that Bredfeldt told him the writer “propositioned” her in 2005, which to him, he says, “would mean ask[ed] for sex.”

Bredfeldt’s attorney, Jeffrey Marks, would follow up on Honeycutt’s testimony by beginning his cross-examination of the writer with a jab instead of a question: “She says you propositioned her.” The writer replied, “What does that mean?” Marks chirped, “That you offered her sex.” Bredfeldt, while gazing around the room at her audience, nodded solemnly.

TIFFANY BREDFELDT, in an email to the writer sent Friday, March 17, 2006, that she entered into evidence three days later (Monday, March 20, 2006) along with her petition for restraining order number one:

Bredfeldt states in this self-contradictory email, which she would submit days later in evidence to the court in the 2006 procedure that began the controversy, that the writer had been “nice” to her and that she had never felt the need” to “explain” to him she was married, because her husband had come to the writer’s place of residence “a number of times,” and she thought the writer already knew and besidesviewed [her] strictly as a social friend.” Contrast Honeycutt’s 2013 testimony: “[S]he said that he propositioned her.

On April 10, 2006, not a month after Bredfeldt sent this email, she would testify before a judge (in her husband’s presence) that she had had to repeatedly “rebuff…advances” by the writer in 2005. The writer was identified to the court not as a considerate “friend” but as an “acquaintance” with whom Bredfeldt had “interact[ed].” Ten years later, the husband the writer was supposed to have known about, a geoscientist today employed by Weston Solutions as a project manager, would be asked in court on direct examination by his lawyer, “Do you know the defendant, Todd Greene?” Philip Bredfeldt’s answer: “I never met him….” Then Mr. Bredfeldt would clarify to the 2016 court that he “first came to know about the [writer] in early 2006,” that is, the same week his wife sent this email, during which the writer was alleged to have sent her a “series of disturbing emails” and “packages,” a fiction that by itself would take another entire post to unweave. Significantly, Phil Bredfeldt had no idea the writer existed until 2006 and, according to his 2016 testimony, was not informed by his wife of any sexual aggression toward her in 2005—nor was anybody else, for example, the writer’s mother, who was daily at the property where the writer lives from morning till dusk, and whom Bredfeldt knew and spoke with routinely. (The writer’s mother was then in treatment for cancer, a fact Bredfeldt exploited to flaunt her knowledge of the disease, which was a subject of her dissertation research.) Where Phil Bredfeldt was while his wife was outside of the writer’s residence at 1 a.m.—and with whom—has never been clarified.

Honeycutt, in a 2013 quotation below, will testify in further contrast to Bredfeldt’s statements in this email that he was told the writer’s behavior in 2005 was “erratic and bizarre” and that he “wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

TIFFANY BREDFELDT, in a statement to the University of Arizona Police Dept. given on March 18, 2006 (the next day):

Bredfeldt, in contrast to her emailed statements to the writer 24 hours prior (and in contrast to her subsequent testimony to the court in 2006 and both hers and Honeycutt’s in 2013), reports to the police that the writer had made “a romantic advance” toward her in 2005, inspiring her to admit to him she was married, after which he desisted. Bredfeldt then says the writer seized her cell phone, copied down her number, and contacted her. Bredfeldt’s work and home addresses and telephone numbers were publicly listed, and the writer never spoke with Bredfeldt on the phone. There was no need; she could be found outside of his residence most nights, as often as not in a red tank top.

On the single occasion the writer had handled Bredfeldt’s cell phone, borrowing it because his phone had been destroyed by a power surge, Bredfeldt had insisted on typing the numbers for him before sliding the phone into his palm and caressing his fingers (repeatedly). That was in late Nov. 2005 after she and a friend of hers had invited themselves into the writer’s house. Bredfeldt’s “chaperone,” a stranger then calling herself Jenn Oas, began conversation by telling the writer she had just returned from India where she “mostly” hadn’t worn a bra. Bredfeldt chimed in with a quip about “granny panties” (after having excused herself and returned wearing freshly applied eye makeup, complaining that she had “misplaced” her glasses). A couple of weeks later, Bredfeldt would vanish.

(Flash-forward: The policewoman who instructed Bredfeldt how to obtain a court-ordered injunction, Bethany Wilson, is today a librarian in charge of kid lit—what the writer had aspired in 2006 to make his profession.)

TIFFANY (AND PHIL) BREDFELDT, in a sworn affidavit to Judge Roger Duncan (then a pro tem) filed on March 20, 2006 (two days later):

Bredfeldt urgently petitions a protective order tailored to prohibit the writer (three days earlier called a “friend” who had been “nice” to her) from having any contact with her husband, Phil, a stranger, who is alleged to be in violent “danger.”

Later the same day, the writer would be sent an email, ostensibly by Phil Bredfeldt, that begins, “STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM MY WIFE, YOU SICK FUCK,” and ends, “THIS IS THE LAST TIME YOU WILL BE TOLD.

(The Bredfeldts simultaneously sent the email to UAPD Officer Bethany Wilson, with whom she later told the writer they had been on the phone at the time. Officer Wilson, who had met both of them, opined during a 2006 interview with the writer that Mrs. Bredfeldt “wore the pants.”)

Judge Jack Peyton, JP, Justice of the Peace, Pima County Justice Court

Judge Jack Peyton

The evidence of harassment Tiffany Bredfeldt presented to the court was five emails she and the writer had exchanged over a weekend (March 16–20): two from her, three from him in reply. The March 17 email of hers shown above was shuffled to the back of the sheaf, out of chronological order, causing the judge who presided over the writer’s April 10, 2006 hearing, Pima County Justice of the Peace Jack Peyton, to remark, “I don’t think I have a copy,” and then to ask, “Am I missing one [of the emails]?” Bredfeldt had to include the contradictory email among her evidence, which was never anyhow scrutinized, because it contained one of the only two requests she had ever made to the writer not to contact her: “I hope that you will respect my request for no further communication.” The other request was in an email she had sent him 20 hours earlier, in which Bredfeldt had represented the writer to himself as a stalker after he had gently tried to learn the motives for her behaviors at his home and her concealment from him that she was married. Judge Peyton confirmed with Bredfeldt that the minimum qualification demanded by the law, namely, two requests for no contact, had been met. The writer need not have been present.

Alleged on March 20 to be in danger of violent assault, Phil Bredfeldt had to be repeatedly reprimanded for displays of temper in open court three weeks later. Judge Peyton finally told him, after ordering his name stricken from his wife’s protective order:

I won’t think twice about asking you to leave the courtroom, because you’re not a party. You are welcome to be here. This is a public forum. But I won’t have you interrupting, and I will not have you making me uncomfortable about what your next action might be.

The judge, reputed to be the go-to JP for women alleging abuse by men, nevertheless cemented the protective order against the writer, explaining: “I do not get the impression that [Mr. Bredfeldt] was placed on that order by design.

(The following year, Judge Peyton was appointed to head a county domestic violence specialty court, which was financed by a $350,000 gubernatorial grant that included no budgetary allowance for defense attorneys. The judge, a onetime Maryland labor lawyer d/b/a J. Craig Peyton, underwent a “five-day domestic violence training session” in preparation. Reportedly operating only two days a week, his court has since processed well upwards of 25,000 cases.)

TIFFANY BREDFELDT, on cross-examination by the writer on May 20, 2013 (seven years later):

In contrast to her statements to the police in 2006, Bredfeldt testifies in 2013 that she never told the writer she was married. What Bredfeldt told the writer in 2005 was that she lived with a dog. The writer asked if it was alone at night while she was with him. Bredfeldt answered, “Yes.” The writer urged her to bring the dog with her so it wasn’t by itself and gave her a toy to take home.

TIFFANY BREDFELDT, on cross-examination by the writer on May 20, 2013 (the same afternoon):

Also contradicting her statements to the police in 2006 (besides controverting what her first witness, Honeycutt, told the court in 2013 that she had told him), Bredfeldt testifies (in the presence of her husband) that the writer made “three attempts to kiss [her]” in 2005—which made her “uncomfortable” but not so uncomfortable as to prompt her to tell the writer she was married (or to tell her husband that another man had repeatedly tried to kiss her). Then Bredfeldt denies she has “ever” accused the writer of sexual harassment.

TIFFANY BREDFELDT, in a memorandum to Superior Court Judge Charles Harrington filed July 30, 2006:

In a “Statement of Factsto the court, contradicting her statements to the police (besides to the writer himself, which emailed statements she submitted to the court in 2006, 2013, and 2016), Bredfeldt alleges the writer made “several physical, romantic advances toward [her],” despite being “rebuked,” and that she was forced to flee[w]hen such advances continued.”

There were no physical advances. Bredfeldt was invited to have Thanksgiving dinner with the writer’s family in 2005. Instead of telling the writer she had a husband to get home to, she said she was suffering from a migraine. The writer put his hand on her shoulder and said he hoped she felt better. All other physical contacts between Bredfeldt and the writer, clasps and caresses, were initiated by her, typically during conversations in which she pointedly referred to breasts, bras, or panties, her naked body, striptease, or the like. At the conclusion of an earlier meeting in November, Bredfeldt had thrust her face in the writer’s and wagged it back and forth as if to tease a kiss. The writer didn’t respond, because there was nothing romantic about it. That was on the night Bredfeldt returned after attending an out-of-state wedding—her sister-in-law’s (Sara Bredfeldt’s), a detail she omitted mentioning.

A month later, on the evening before Bredfeldt “left the horse boarding facility” (in 2005 not 2006), the writer encountered her loitering in the dark outside of his house—alone. Bredfeldt returned a coffeemaker she had borrowed from him to prepare poultices for her horse’s abscessed leg. During the transfer, Bredfeldt tried to brush the writer’s hands with hers. Bredfeldt and the writer spoke as usual—he remembers talking to her about shooting stars—and the writer’s mother briefly joined them and invited Bredfeldt to a Christmas party. Bredfeldt removed her horse the next day while the writer was at work.

TIFFANY BREDFELDT, during cross-examination by the writer on May 20, 2013:

Bredfeldt testifies on examination by the judge that she has only ever told police officers and judges that the writer “act[ed] in a way that was sexual toward [her].” She “communicated with him that that was not what [she] wanted in the most respectful way that [she] could,” she says, which did not include either informing the writer she was married or wearing her wedding ring.

JENNIFER (OAS-)TERPSTRA, Bredfeldt’s other witness in 2013, a former colleague of hers from her University of Arizona days who went by Jenn Oas when the writer was introduced to her in 2005, in an email to the writer sent April 2, 2012 (a year earlier):

Jennifer Terpstra, Jen J. Terpstra, Terpstra JJ, Jennifer Oas-Terpstra, Jenn Oas, South Texas College, STC

This and the rest of Terpstra’s some two dozen emails to the writer in 2012 have been submitted to the court in multiple cases and are public documents accessible to anyone. Whether the emails have ever been scrutinized by a judge is uncertain. No trial has been conducted since the writer was granted a 20-minute audience before a judge in 2006. The 2013 proceeding from which the focal testimony in this post is drawn was a two-hour “preliminary” hearing. Judge Carmine Cornelio, though he drew the case out for half a year and returned several scalding rulings, found a two-hour hearing to be a sufficient basis for indefinitely depriving the writer of his First Amendment privileges. (When the writer had begun to object in open court to an order that was flagrantly unlawful, the judge threatened to summon security. Among the Arizona Court of Appeals’ stated reasons for denying the writer’s 2017 appeal of the order was that the writer had not “challenged” the judge’s ruling at the time.)

In this email, Terpstra tells the writer she was “stalked [f]or over 8 years [f]rom state to state.” Both Bredfeldt and Terpstra have claimed to be victims of multiple stalkers—including this writer. Bredfeldt, who the writer would be informed four years later has held a black belt in tae kwon do since her teens, came to the writer’s door in 2005 seeking his protection from some “men in a van” who she said had been “stalking” her while she was alone in the dark outside of his residence. Narratives of the “event,” which was unwitnessed and may have had no basis in reality, were circulated by Bredfeldt among other horse boarders on the property where the writer lives. The writer bought a wireless doorbell and installed it by the gate to his yard so that Bredfeldt could summon him quickly in case of a “recurrence.” When he showed it to her, she smiled.

A few months subsequent, when Bredfeldt’s accusations against the writer began, she was reported to have told colleagues that she thought she had seen him around her residence—and at workday’s end would ask to be escorted to her car. In testimony to the court quoted in a postscript to this exposé, Honeycutt, Bredfeldt’s first witness in 2013, says the TCEQ rewarded similar expressions of fear from her by providing her with a private office (“with hard walls and with a door that has a lock on it” in Texas).

JENNIFER TERPSTRA, in an email to the writer sent April 2, 2012:

Jennifer Terpstra, Jen J. Terpstra, Terpstra JJ, Jennifer Oas-Terpstra, Jenn Oas, South Texas College, STC, Carlotta Groves PhD, Carlotta Groves DVM

In this email, sent a year before Terpstra would join Bredfeldt in testifying against the writer, Terpstra says that she “never thought [Bredfeldt] would lie so seriously to everyone” and that she knew Bredfeldt and the writer had been “close,” which remark alone contradicts everything Bredfeldt has told the court in the past decade. Terpstra also says she feels professionally “vulnerable” confiding in the writer but that he “deserve[s] to know the truth.” She suggests the writer “bring a pen and a notebook” to a meeting she proposed so that he doesn’t forget anything.

JENNIFER TERPSTRA, in an email to the writer sent June 3, 2012 (a month and a half after the two met for coffee):

Jennifer Terpstra, Jen J. Terpstra, Terpstra JJ, Jennifer Oas-Terpstra, Jenn Oas, South Texas College, STC

Terpstra told the writer over coffee in mid-April 2012 (when his father and his best friend were still alive, and a settlement could have reversed their decline) that Bredfeldt’s spouse, Phil, was known in their circle as “the phantom husband” and that Bredfeldt had urged her friends to go to the writer’s home to “check [him] out”—besides routinely talked about the writer to an audience of “25 or 30 people” at the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy.

Terpstra says in this email that Bredfeldt never talked about her husband and that she (Terpstra) wasn’t sure she had ever seen the man in person or only seen what she had described to the writer over coffee as a laminated newspaper clipping with a picture of him that was tacked to Bredfeldt’s refrigerator. Terpstra says that based on Bredfeldt’s behaviors in 2005, she judged she had been “considering an affair” with the writer, which wildly contradicts any account Bredfeldt has ever related to anybody.

In the first of the emails Terpstra sent him in 2012, she explained her six-year delay in confiding this to the writer by saying, “I don’t lie or bend the truth [but] I do avoid conflict.”

JENNIFER TERPSTRA, on direct examination by Bredfeldt’s attorney, Jeffrey Marks, on May 20, 2013 (less than a year later):

JENNIFER TERPSTRA, in an email to the writer sent April 1, 2012:

Jennifer Terpstra, Jen J. Terpstra, Terpstra JJ, Jennifer Oas-Terpstra, Jenn Oas, South Texas College, STC

In this email, Terpstra tells the writer she had asked Bredfeldt “to just have the restraining order removed” in 2006. (Terpstra would tell the writer the same thing over coffee a couple of weeks later, saying Bredfeldt had answered, “‘No.’ Just…‘no.’”) In contrast to Terpstra’s statements in this email and the others she sent him in 2012, besides in contrast to an email she sent him in 2007, Terpstra would report to Officer Nicole Britt of the Tucson Police Dept. in 2015 that “in 2005 she and her friend [Tiffany Bredfeldt] met [Todd Greene]. He then became fixated on the two of them and began stalking them.” (According to the same interview notes, Terpstra said this blog was “set up in honor” of her and “dedicated” to her.) A couple of months later (early 2016), Terpstra would report to TPD Det. Todd Schladweiler, who is assigned to the Tucson Police Mental Health Support Team, that she “now carries a handgun due to her concern that [Greene] is a threat to her safety.” Det. Schladweiler also recorded that Terpstra “said she communicated with [Greene] a few times [in 2012] and then he became very sexual in nature” and that Terpstra denied contacting the writer after they met for coffee in mid-April 2012, following which meeting she had insisted the writer give her a hug and then emailed and phoned him for a quarter of a year.

Then students in the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy, Terpstra and Bredfeldt told the writer in 2005, after inviting themselves into his house, that they took “benzos” to relieve stress. The writer asked where they got the drugs. Terpstra (who would marry a former bartender with a cocaine conviction not long afterwards and be charged with DUI in 2011) answered, “From work.” Bredfeldt echoed, “From work.”

Terpstra, who is reportedly diagnosed with bipolar disorder, told Det. Schladweiler she believed the writer was mentally ill. Although Det. Schladweiler was provided with Terpstra’s emails when he arrested the writer on Jan. 5, 2016, the subsequent synopsis of their interview gives no indication the detective spared the emails a glance.

Less than four months after her second police report, in which Terpstra alleged she feared for her safety and was carrying a gun, she would have her home address forwarded to the writer by email in the first of a spate of “copyright infringement” claims that represented her third legal action against him in 2016 and that succeeded in having this blog temporarily suspended by its host. The writer contested the claims, alleging perjury and fraud, and Terpstra declined to litigate them in court.

Terpstra, who has coauthored with Dr. Michael J. Frank, Ph.D., professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown University, is the daughter of feminist painter Joan Bemel Iron Moccasin (Oas) and was employed as a research specialist in the University of Arizona College of Medicine under psychiatrist Francisco Moreno until 2016, when, after making her sundry false allegations, she left the jurisdiction.

JENNIFER TERPSTRA, on cross-examination by the writer on May 20, 2013:

Jennifer Terpstra, Jen J. Terpstra, Terpstra JJ, Jennifer Oas-Terpstra, Jenn Oas, South Texas College, STC

Over coffee with the writer in 2012, Terpstra complained of financial problems. She also remarked, “Tiffany’s dad has a lot of money.” Tiffany and Phil Bredfeldt’s was a mutually prosperous union of two wealthy, fundamentalist Christian families. Phil Bredfeldt’s father was his best man in 2001; his sister Sara was a bridesmaid; and Tiffany Bredfeldt’s brother, Jon Hargis, was a groomsman. Four years later, Sara Bredfeldt was married to a medical student, Roberto “Bobby” Rojas, who is today an M.D. (Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee).

Ray Bredfeldt MD, Raymond Bredfeldt MD, Dr. Ray Bredfeldt, Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, ABCBSTiffany Bredfeldt’s father, Timothy “Tim” Hargis, is or was a bank vice president (First Security of Arkansas), as was his father before him. Phil Bredfeldt’s father, Raymond “Ray” Bredfeldt, is a family physician who practiced privately and besides rented his credentials to Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield for some dozen years. The starting salary for an ABCBS regional medical director is today around $180,000. Dr. Ray Bredfeldt, M.D., had volunteered to join Terpstra in giving witness testimony in 2016 that was meant to induce the court to jail the writer while the writer’s own father, who didn’t graduate from high school, lay dying—in a home in foreclosure. Ray and Ruth Bredfeldt and Tim and GaLyn Hargis have known of what this post details from the start and have temporized for over a decade rather than acknowledge any liability for their families’ ways. “It’s what people like that do,” Terpstra commented to the writer in 2012. (Testifying in 2016, while his father was nearby, Phil Bredfeldt acknowledged on the stand that he was very aware of Terpstra’s 2012 emails. He quoted a post about them. Construing his statements to the court, the only thing that disturbed him about the emails was their contents’ being public.)

The court was told on Dec. 21, 2016, that Terpstra, who was sued to have her evicted from her house the year before, had moved from Arizona to Texas, where Tiffany and Phil Bredfeldt have resided since 2006 (in a house Terpstra told the writer that Tiffany Bredfeldt’s father had bought for them)—and the writer would be surprised if Terpstra’s legal representation in 2016 and 2017 cost her a penny.

JENNIFER TERPSTRA, on cross-examination by the writer on May 20, 2013:

JENNIFER TERPSTRA, in an email to the writer sent June 7, 2012:

Jennifer Terpstra, Jen J. Terpstra, Terpstra JJ, Jennifer Oas-Terpstra, Jenn Oas, South Texas College, STC

JENNIFER TERPSTRA, on cross-examination by the writer on May 20, 2013:

Jennifer Terpstra, Jen J. Terpstra, Terpstra JJ, Jennifer Oas-Terpstra, Jenn Oas, South Texas College, STC

JENNIFER TERPSTRA, in an email to the writer sent June 3, 2012:

Jennifer Terpstra, Jen J. Terpstra, Terpstra JJ, Jennifer Oas-Terpstra, Jenn Oas, South Texas College, STC

Jennifer Oas-Terpstra, whom the writer has met three times in his life and only once in the past decade (and with whom he has had no contact since 2012), brought three legal actions against him in 2016 that each sought to suppress the emails quoted above—emails that today implicate both Bredfeldt and her (and criminal statutes of limitation, like those for false reporting and forswearing, stop running when perpetrators are outside of the state’s boundaries). Terpstra’s actions included a criminal prosecution, dismissed seven months later, in which Bredfeldt was also named a plaintiff, and a restraining order identical to the one Bredfeldt petitioned in 2006, which had inspired this blog and inspired Terpstra to tell the writer in 2012: “I can’t even begin to imagine what the past years have been like for you.” Terpstra’s restraining order was dismissed 20 months later.

Here are the allegations Terpstra made in her affidavit. These ex parte allegations remain a public record indefinitely. Here, in contrast, is how “vindication” from them appears. The writer was told that this handwritten dismissal, which required eight months of appeals to obtain, exists as a piece of paper only and won’t be reflected in the digitized record. Judge Antonio Riojas, who granted the Aug. 25, 2017 dismissal, accordingly recommended that the writer “carry [it] with [him].” His clerk provided the writer with the yellow copy of the triplicate form, the one meant for the plaintiff, who never appeared in court and will never be criminally accountable for her false allegations to the police in 2015 and 2016.

I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” Judge Riojas told the writer, “and I’ve never known a police [officer] or a prosecutor to charge someone for…false reports, no matter how blatant….” He added: “I wish they would, because I think people come in, and they say things that are just blatantly false—and lying.” A false or vexatious complainant “can keep filing as much as [s/he] wants,” Judge Riojas said (costing an attorney-represented defendant thousands of dollars a pop and his or her accuser nothing; application is free to all comers). “There is no mechanism to stop someone from filing these orders.” What may be worse, even a dismissed order, the judge explained, “can’t be expunged” (and anything may be alleged on a fill-in-the-blank civil injunction form, for example, rape, conspiracy to commit murder, or cross-dressing; whether heinous or merely humiliating, allegations that may be irrelevant to the approval of a keep-away order and/or that may never be litigated in court, let alone substantiated, will still be preserved indefinitely in the public record above a judge’s signature). Significantly, Judge Riojas, who is the presiding magistrate of the Tucson municipal court (and a member of the Arizona Judicial Council and the Task Force on Fair Justice for All), agreed that restraining orders were “abused”. Of that, he said, “[t]here’s no doubt.”

(In a given year, there are reportedly 5,000 active restraining orders in Tucson City Court, which recently added an annex dedicated to their administration exclusively—and the municipal court is just one of three courts in Tucson that issue such orders.)

Judge Wendy Million, Tucson City Court

Judge Wendy Million

The reason Judge Riojas had to dismiss the order against the writer, nine months after he requested his day in court, was that the writer had been denied his statutory right to a hearing by Judge Wendy Million, necessitating a lengthy appeal and her admonishment by Superior Court Judge Catherine Woods for abuse of discretion. (Among approximately 15 judges to have been exposed to some aspect of this matter, Judge Woods was the first to return a ruling clearly untainted by political motives, for which she has this defendant’s highest respect.) Judge Million, who twice continued the writer’s hearing until the injunction expired and then nominated the case a “dead file,” notably coordinates Tucson’s domestic violence court and is acknowledged as an editor of Arizona’s Domestic Violence and Protective Order Bench Book. Dismissal of the case was further delayed by Judge Cynthia Kuhn, who was first assigned to the writer’s superior court appeal. Judge Kuhn sua sponte (that is, without being asked) granted Terpstra’s attorney additional time to respond to the writer’s appellate memorandum—and then abruptly recused herself, citing an unspecified “conflict of interest” as the reason.

Terpstra, in the first of the 22 emails she sent him in 2012, had told the writer: “I have this deeply engrained distrust of the law and the courts and avoid them at all cost.” Besides witnessing against him in May 2013, accusing him to the police in Nov. 2015, petitioning a civil injunction and instigating a criminal prosecution a month after that, filing a second police report in Jan. 2016, and threatening to sue him in federal court for copyright infringement 14 weeks later, Terpstra was poised to witness against the writer all over again that summer in the lawsuit brought by Bredfeldt and her husband that demanded the writer be jailed for contempt of the 2013 prior restraint. In between, in 2014, Terpstra prosecuted her husband, alleging domestic violence. A relative of his, who afterwards wept, told the writer in 2016 that she believed the man was relentlessly provoked, which the writer finds more than credible. In a voicemail Terpstra left him in 2012 (in which she tacitly identifies Bredfeldt as a “crazy person” from the writer’s “life book”), Terpstra told the writer someone had “threatened to call the police on [her].” Later, by phone, she clarified that this was another man she had been corresponding with that year—who blamed her for a woman’s suicide.

Tucson attorney Chris Scileppi, attorney Christopher Scileppi

Attorney Christopher Scileppi

Bredfeldt and Terpstra, (carrion) birds of a feather, were represented by the same (criminal) attorney in 2016 and 2017, Christopher “Chris” Scileppi, whose plumage is no different from theirs. Scileppi attained minor notoriety in 2008 for having been given a hug by his “very close friend” the mayor in front of jurors at a rape trial in which Scileppi represented one of the alleged rapists of a 15-year-old girl. Scileppi remarked to the outraged judge: “Courtrooms are open to the public, and I don’t think it is inappropriate when high-profile people come in and show support for somebody who is on trial.” Scileppi’s client was cut free, but the mayor later did a stint in prison for public corruption despite Scileppi’s representation.

Showing the same unscrupulousness during hearings in the 2016 civil case, Bredfeldt v. Greene, Scileppi threatened in open court to prosecute the writer for purported felony crimes (“extortion” and “aggravated harassment,” specifically) to intimidate him into capitulating to Bredfeldt’s censorship demands, then offered to drop the lawsuit if the writer agreed to leave this site invisible to the public and accessible by request only (apparently because his clients’ fear would be eased if they didn’t know what was on the writer’s mind), and finally, as a Parthian shot, directed the judge to jail the writer for the nonpayment of a $350 sanction from 2013 (explained below): “Put him in contempt,” Scileppi said, “and somebody can post a bond and pay that and then he will be released as soon as that bond is posted….

Tucson attorney Chris Scileppi, attorney Christopher ScileppiScileppi, who was suspended for 60 days and placed on six months’ probation in 2014 for violating various ethical rules (ERs), endeavored to convince the 2016 court that the writer had “terrorize[d], demonize[d], harass[ed], and defame[d]” the Bredfeldts, in particular through the use of “[meta] tags” on this blog, that is, keywords that describe its contents. These terms, which haven’t been used by any major search engine in eight years, were alleged to have hijacked the Bredfeldts’ public images on Google and to have “contact[ed]” anyone whose name appeared among them. Because a Google Alert Phil Bredfeldt had “set up” had allegedly been triggered by tags on the blog (in publications to the world at large), that was said to represent illicit “communication [and] contactby the writer with Mr. Bredfeldt and his wife. Scileppi enlisted an information technology expert, “part-time professor” and (criminal) attorney Brian Chase, to loosely substantiate this theory on the stand. Lamely objecting to an eminent constitutional scholar’s weighing in as an amicus curiae (Latin for “friend of the court”), Scileppi also defended the 2013 prior restraint last year before the Arizona Court of Appeals. He told the court that the writer was the liar.

Jeffrey “25% OFF ALL MONTH LONG” Marks, the low-rent opportunist who represented Tiffany Bredfeldt in 2010 and 2013, and is quoted below, represented her in 2016, also, but was hastily replaced after the writer was granted a court-appointed lawyer of his own. Marks, like his replacement, Scileppi, attempted to induce the court to stifle even third-party criticism of Bredfeldt, for example, that of Georgia entrepreneur Matthew Chan, who (aided by Prof. Eugene Volokh) successfully appealed a prior restraint in 2015 in his state’s supreme court and who introduced the writer to the finer points of First Amendment law.

To explain away Terpstra’s emails to the writer in 2012 and the contradictory testimony she gave a year later, Scileppi told Judge Catherine Woods in 2017 that “[i]n the midst of Greene’s harassment of Dr. Bredfeldt, [Terpstra] reached out to Greene and met with him. Through meeting with Greene, Terpstra became privy to his harassment of Dr. Bredfeldt.” In contrast to Scileppi’s claims, which Judge Woods shrewdly disregarded, Terpstra had offered to help the writer settle the conflict with Bredfeldt in 2012 (three months after Terpstra “reached out to [the writer] and met with him”). In an email Terpstra sent the writer on July 18 of that year (the first of four she sent that day), she wrote: “Maybe I can be a go between if the pastor [Jeremy Cheezum, a brother-in-law of Phil Bredfeldt’s] will not. I told Tiffany we met for coffee.” The email ended, “Hoping for the best.” That was the last day the writer heard from Terpstra, who is notably the mother of two college-aged daughters. Desperate to raise money to secure a surgery for his dog to enable her to run and jump again—something else Terpstra had said she was eager to help him accomplish—the writer scarcely gave Terpstra another thought until she appeared as a surprise witness 10 months later and deceived the court for Bredfeldt.

The other friend of Bredfeldt’s the writer met at his home in 2005, Dr. Carlotta Groves, a reported recipient of $740,000 in scientific research grants who uses the alias “Jahchannah” and identifies herself as a “Black Hebrew Israelite” and “servant of Yah,” lives in Arizona but apparently couldn’t be persuaded to give witness testimony for Bredfeldt in either 2013 or 2016. Like Terpstra did in the first of her emails to the writer in 2012, Groves told him in a blog comment around the same time that her own brother had been falsely accused. Terpstra said her brother had been falsely accused of rape and that it had “truly ruined his life.” For 12 years, Groves has done what Terpstra did for six: spectate. Groves, a DVM and a Ph.D. (who “love[s] to read and support aspiring authors!”), works at a low-cost veterinary clinic in Tucson.


Tiffany Bredfeldt TCEQ, Tiffany Bredfeldt PhD, Tiffany Bredfeldt EPA, TCEQ, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee


TIFFANY BREDFELDT, on cross-examination by the writer on May 20, 2013:

TIFFANY BREDFELDT, on cross-examination by the writer on May 20, 2013:

JEFFREY MARKS, Bredfeldt’s attorney, speaking for her in a memorandum to the court filed July 10, 2013:

The difference between Bredfeldt’s attorney’s offhand estimation, “2005 or 2006,” was a year of this writer’s life (and his friends’ and his family’s). The year after the “genesis of this case” was one the writer spent every waking moment conscious he could be arrested without a warrant based on a further contrived allegation by Bredfeldt (in which case the writer’s dog, who was part Rottweiler and vigorously barked at any approaching stranger, could easily have been shot and killed).

Contrary to Marks’s claim, Bredfeldt employed others to tend to her horse’s daily hygiene in 2005. Within six or seven weeks of her installing her horse 30′ from the writer’s residence, it became lame and could not even be ridden, after which Bredfeldt increased the frequency of her nighttime visits.

Karin Huffer PhD, Legal Abuse Syndrome, legal abuse, LASMarks, who boasts of having served as a superior court judge himself, also tells the court in this memorandum, which was captioned, “Plaintiffs’ Response to Defendant’s ‘Chronology of Tiffany Bredfeldt’s 2006 Frauds,’” that “[e]ven assuming arguendo that Plaintiff Tiffany Bredfeldt is a chronic liar, her veracity is totally irrelevant to the necessity to restrain Defendant’s [speech] conduct.” Marks moved the 2013 court to strike the writer’s “scandalous” chronology from the record so that it couldn’t be accessed by the public. The judge, Carmine Cornelio, complied, rebuked the writer, and sanctioned him $350 for filing the brief, despite having invited him to: “Mr. Greene,” the judge had said in open court, “you can file anything you want.” Then the judge permanently prohibited the writer from telling anyone else what that chronology related—including by word of mouth. Bredfeldt’s handmaidens, Honeycutt and Terpstra, said exactly what they knew they should to inspire the illegal injunction. The judge permanently prohibited the writer from talking about them, also, including by reporting the testimony they gave in a public proceeding in the United States of America.

(Last year, two days before the writer’s attorney would file an appeal reminding an American court that citizens of this country enjoy freedom of speech, The New York Times published an editorial on censorship in China adapted from an essay by iconic artist and agitator Ai Weiwei. In it, Ai argues that censorship, an essential tool of oppression, does the opposite of pacify: It stimulates “behavior [that] can become wild, abnormal and violent.” Having to live with lies, as Ai told NPR in an interview in 2013, “is suffocating. It’s like bad air all the time.”)

MICHAEL HONEYCUTT, on cross-examination by the writer on May 20, 2013:

MICHAEL HONEYCUTT, on direct examination by Bredfeldt’s attorney, Jeffrey Marks, on May 20, 2013:

The testimony of “Where’s my mike?” Honeycutt exemplifies how the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality responds to “pretty significant allegations” of ethical misconduct by its scientists: It ignores the allegations…and abets the misconduct.

Under Arizona law, a “false sworn statement in regard to a material issue” is perjury, a felony crime. Honeycutt influentially testified in 2013 that the writer had called Bredfeldt a “fraudulent scientist.” Here, in contrast, is what the writer told Honeycutt in 2011, in a letter that is today a public document.

L'Oreal Stepney, TCEQ, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, censorshipIn the Texas Observer the summer before last, Naveena Sadasivam reported that “Honeycutt sent at least 100 emails to state air pollution regulators, university professors and industry representatives and lawyers asking them to send the EPA a letter supporting his nomination to the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee….” Probably none of them sought to have him silenced on pain of imprisonment for requesting support. In a further instance of incandescent hypocrisy, Honeycutt is quoted in the story as pronouncing: “Ideology is different from science and data.” The reader is invited to consider which master Honeycutt was serving when he testified against this writer four and a half years ago.

After a hearing held on July 15, 2016, during which her husband had testified he was “frighten[ed],” Tiffany Bredfeldt swore in court, “God damn it,” because instead of ordering that the writer be jailed, the judge had stayed the proceedings pending further briefings from the attorneys on the First Amendment. Then, less than a year after the writer had buried his best friend and a few months before the writer’s father would succumb to cancer by starving to death, Bredfeldt laughed. She said Honeycutt had joked that her prosecution of the writer was “good experience” for when she gave expert witness testimony. “That’s something we have to do,” Bredfeldt explained to her entourage.

Copyright © 2018 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

DR. MICHAEL HONEYCUTT, PH.D.:

DR. TIFFANY BREDFELDT, PH.D.: