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.:

Weston Solutions Dirt Engineer Phil Bredfeldt Complains to the Court That He’s Been Stalked

UPDATE: Allegations by psychiatric patient Tiffany Bredfeldt, wife of Phil Bredfeldt, the subject of this post, were invalidated in July of 2018, and Phil’s wife is expressly prohibited by order of the court from making false or frivolous accusations to law enforcement officials in the future. Phil Bredfeldt’s own claims to the court were dismissed entirely.


Philip (“Phil”) Bredfeldt is a geoscientist employed by Weston Solutions in Austin, Texas. The writer babysat Mr. Bredfeldt’s wife for three months in 2005 (September through early December). During the 2016 court procedure this post describes, the latest of many initiated or inspired by this couple over a 10-year period, Mr. Bredfeldt testified he “never met” the writer, which is true. No one the writer knows ever so much as glimpsed or heard a word about a “Phil” when his wife was a regular presence on the property where the writer lives, and Mrs. Bredfeldt took care never to use her last name at all.

In 2012, one of Phil Bredfeldt and his wife’s witnesses (in both 2013 and this year) told the writer that Mr. Bredfeldt had been known as “the phantom husband” in 2005, because none of his wife’s pals had ever seen him either, and his wife “never talked about Phil at all” (but did complain of marital dissatisfaction and did talk about the writer to “EVERYONE…at the time”). The same witness (their witness) said Phil Bredfeldt’s wife, Tiffany, had been “considering an affair” with the writer and that she had known Tiffany Bredfeldt for “years maybe?” before learning the woman was married herself.

Ray Bredfeldt MD, Raymond Bredfeldt MD, Dr Ray Bredfeldt, Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, ABCBS, Ruth Bredfeldt

Among Phil Bredfeldt’s slated witnesses in 2016 was his daddy, who was also Phil’s best man in 2001. Over the years the writer’s family has been sickened by Tiffany and Phil Bredfeldt’s effluvia, Dr. Ray Bredfeldt, an M.D.—but no less a political creature for that—rented his credentials to Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield. The starting salary for a regional medical director approaches $200,000, and Dr. Bredfeldt held the position for some dozen years. Above is his mugshot from Blue and You, the corporation’s quarterly magazine. It conveys the correct impression of caring and trustworthy professionalism. When Dr. Bredfeldt’s family’s invasive violations began in 2006, the writer’s mother was in chemotherapy for breast cancer, and his father was hospitalized and died, skeletal and too weak to move, while the Bredfeldts’ latest attack was in full swing. Dr. Bredfeldt, who has been a deacon of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and lauded “Arkansas Family Doctor of the Year,” has shown nothing but indifference. To avoid paying any damages caused by his family’s conduct, he has temporized for over 10 years and was last summer prepared to testify in court to have the writer incarcerated to conceal what this preface bares.

These facts are undisputed: Phil Bredfeldt’s wife was frequently outside of the writer’s residence at night (alone) in 2005, never wore a wedding ring, and never identified herself as married or made any reference to a spouse. She gave in evidence to the court months later (March 2006) the statement that the writer had been “nice” to her and that she had “never felt the need to explain” to him that she was married. Then Mrs. Bredfeldt testified to multiple judges (including in her husband’s presence) that the writer had serially sexually harassed her. Fully seven years later, in 2013, the court was told the writer had “propositioned” Mrs. Bredfeldt and “ask[ed] for” or “offered her sex.” During the same procedure—a two-hour hearing with a six-month coda that violated both the state and federal constitutions—the court was informed Mrs. Bredfeldt “would not wear a wedding ring” while she was outside of the writer’s residence at night.

A normal mind might wonder why a woman’s husband wouldn’t have intervened if she said she was being sexually harassed. Most (non-phantom) husbands would.

Mr. Bredfeldt testified to the court in the procedure this post introduces that he only heard the writer’s name for the first time months after the alleged sexual harassment…right about the time the writer demanded (in three emails sent over a weekend) that Mrs. Bredfeldt explain her behaviors at his home—which behaviors shouldn’t be difficult for the reader to imagine (“Where I come from, it’s considered rude not to at least invite a person onto your porch”/“Breasts aren’t shaped that way”/“Are you cold?”).

Mr. Bredfeldt compensated for his absenteeism in 2005 by emailing the writer and calling him a “SICK FUCK.” The Bredfeldts sent the email and cc’ed it to the University of Arizona Police Department the same day they got a restraining order, which prohibited the writer from responding. The officer the email was cc’ed to, who said the couple had been on the phone with her when the email was sent, told the writer she believed Mrs. Bredfeldt “wore the pants.” The court injunction Mrs. Bredfeldt secured emphatically forbade the writer from speaking to her husband, a total stranger whose name twice appears on the form—including in a section demarcated for little kids at risk.

No allegations of sexual harassment were ever made to the police, whom Mr. Bredfeldt’s wife provided with a completely different narrative from the one she would present to the court two days later (and then three weeks after that, three months after that, and seven years after that). Mrs. Bredfeldt told the police that she had admitted to the writer she was married and that he’d subsequently left her alone…but did seize her phone, copy her number from its back against her wishes, and “[proceed] to contact her.” The writer never spoke to Mrs. Bredfeldt on the phone. There was no need: He could find her outside of his house most nights.

Phil Bredfeldt identifies himself as a victim and recently testified to the court that he’s “frighten[ed].” The relief from “fear” the Bredfeldts have sought is punishment of the writer for reporting what he has in this preface. That’s supposed to make them feel “safer.” During his testimony, Mr. Bredfeldt avoided meeting the writer’s gaze. The Bredfeldts’ game has gone on for over a decade…and it has eroded lives.


It’s a novel argument—and impressive as much for its preposterousness as for its ability to influence a judge.

In the latest of a series of abusive prosecutions initiated or inspired by Tiffany and Phil Bredfeldt against the author of this site, it was alleged on July 15, 2016, by the couple’s attorney, Christopher Scileppi, that I had “contacted” the Bredfeldts by repeatedly setting off Google alerts that one of them had followed the above steps to activate.

Any time a specific word or phrase Phil Bredfeldt had asked Google to be alerted about appeared in anything I published online (like “red herring,” say), an email was automatically generated by Google and transmitted to Mr. Bredfeldt.

This, attorney Christopher Scileppi told Pima County Superior Court Judge Richard Gordon, represented a communication FROM me TO Mr. Bredfeldt.

Why the ridiculous stretch? I’ve had no contact whatever with Tiffany Bredfeldt, a woman who was routinely to be found outside of my residence at night in 2005, since her accusations against me began in the spring of 2006, and I’ve never met the husband Mrs. Bredfeldt denied having. Tiffany—and I only knew her as “Tiffany”; she was careful to hide her last name—presented a cover story to the police and courts in 2006 that she has repeatedly sued me to maintain for over 10 years. She says I stalked and sexually harassed her. Never mind that I have never been to her house (at midnight or any other hour)…or eagerly told her about my body or my underwear.

Role reversal by false complainants is standard operating procedure.

Because no-contact-in-over-10-years more than lames the allegation that I have “stalked” and “harassed” the couple, they had to get creative. Satisfaction of stalking and harassment statutes requires that some conduct be directed AT the so-called victim (e.g., phone calls TO him or her, or emails or texts sent TO him or her). In the past decade, I’ve only ever written ABOUT the couple, who live in a different state, and speech ABOUT people is protected by the First Amendment. So the Bredfeldts concocted a workaround: They set up an automated service to contact them and then alleged that contact from Google equated to contact from me.


Phil Bredfeldt, Philip Bredfeldt

In testimony to the court, Phil Bredfeldt explains how he “set up” the Google Alert he claimed represented “contact” by the author of this blog.


What should have elicited a derisive scoff from the judge instead inspired his rapt attention.

Judge Gordon made no effort to conceal he knew little about computers or the Internet, and Mr. Scileppi, the plaintiffs’ attorney (a criminal attorney), produced an expert witness on computers and “cybercrimes” to testify (also a criminal attorney). The expert, Brian Chase, a scrupulous man, did not propose to the court that a Google alert represented a communication from me to the plaintiffs. But the effectiveness of nonsense arguments isn’t determined by their legitimacy; it’s determined by the air of legitimacy that the right theatrical elements confer.

What distracts, works.

Here’s an analogous argument: I ask someone to monitor my neighbor and tell me every time she says good morning; she says good morning every day; thus I’m harassed every day. My spy’s bulletins to me about my neighbor’s activities are “the same” as if my neighbor contacted me.

Why absurd arguments work like magic spells in cases like this is that what should be obvious becomes muddied by prejudicial associations: “court order,” “Internet,” “cyberstalking,” etc. Such arguments also exploit judicial credulity. They’re conceived to manipulate the court.

Mr. Scileppi concluded his remarks during the hearing by asserting I was manipulating the court.

Get it?

Copyright © 2016 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*I was represented by a talented lawyer, Kent F. Davis, whose appointment was only permitted because the plaintiffs insisted that I be jailed. Mr. Davis objected to the “entire line of questioning” during the July 15 hearing, because it was irrelevant. A good half of the day was consumed by testimony about “tags,” the keywords at the bottoms of posts that catalog their topics (and that haven’t been used by any major search engine in forever). There are very few conceivable ways that tags could be used that wouldn’t be constitutionally protected. Mr. Davis’s objection was offhandedly overruled. Had he not been there to demand a stay of the proceedings, what do you suppose the outcome would have been? And had he not been there, who in the system do you suppose would have cared?

Courtroom Fraud and Smear Campaigns: The Full Machiavelli

Cheryl Lyn Walker PhD, Dr. Cheryl Lyn Walker, Dr. Cheryl L. Walker PhD, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Michael Honeycutt PhD, Michael Honeycutt TCEQ

“False Accusations, Distortion Campaigns, and Smear Campaigns can all be used with or without a grain of truth, and have the potential to cause enormous emotional hurt to the victim or even impact [his or her] professional or personal reputation and character.”

—“False Accusations and Distortion Campaigns

There are several fine explications on the Internet about the smear campaigns of false accusers. Some sketch method and motive generally; some catalog specific damages that ensue when lies are fed to the police and courts.

This survey of “adverse impacts” is credited to lies told by people with borderline personality disorder. Conducting “distortion campaigns” isn’t exclusive to BPDs, however, and the “adverse impacts” are the same, irrespective of campaigners’ particular cognitive kinks.

The valuable role of the police and courts in the prosecution of campaigns to slander, libel, and otherwise bully and defame can’t be overstated. They’re instrumental to a well-orchestrated character assassination.

Lies can be told to anyone, of course, and lies told to anyone can have toxic effects. The right lie told in a workplace, for example, can cost someone a job and impair or imperil a career.

Lies told to police and judges—especially judges—they’re the real wrecking balls, though. False allegations of threat or abuse are handily put over in restraining order or domestic violence procedures, and they endure indefinitely (and embolden accusers to tell further lies, which are that much more persuasive).

Among the motives of false accusation are blame-shifting (cover-up), attention, profit, and revenge (all corroborated by the FBI). Lying, however, may become its own motive, particularly when the target of lies resists. The appetite for malice, once rewarded, may persist long after an initial (possibly impulsive) goal is realized. Smear campaigns that employ legal abuse may go on for years, or indefinitely (usually depending on the stamina of the falsely accused to fight back).

Legitimation of lies by the court both encourages lying and reinforces lies told to others. Consider the implications of this pronouncement: “I had to take out a restraining order on her.” Who’s going to question whether the grounds were real or the testimony was true? Moreover, who’s going to question anything said about the accused once that claim has been made? It’s open season.

In the accuser’s circle, at least—which may be broad and influential—no one may even entertain a doubt, and the falsely accused can’t know who’s been told what and often can’t safely inquire.

Judgments enable smear and distortion campaigners to slander, libel, and otherwise bully with impunity, because their targets have been discredited and left defenseless (judges may even punish them for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights and effectively gag them). The courts, besides, may rule that specific lies are “true,” target_of_blamethereby making the slanders and libels impervious to legal relief. Statements that are “true” aren’t defamatory. The man or woman, for instance, who’s wrongly found guilty of domestic violence (and entered into a police database) may be called a domestic abuser completely on the up and up (to friends, family, or neighbors, for example, or to staff at a child’s school).

Lies become facts that may be shared with anybody and publicly (court rulings are public records). Smear campaigners don’t limit themselves to court-validated lies, either, but it seldom comes back to bite them once a solid foundation has been laid.

Some so-called high-conflict people, the sorts described in the epigraph, conduct their smear or distortion campaigns brazenly and confrontationally. Some poison insidiously, spreading rumors behind closed doors, in conversation and private correspondence. As Dr. Tara Palmatier has remarked, social media also present them with attractive and potent platforms (and many respondents to this blog report being tarred on Facebook or even mobbed, i.e., bullied by multiple parties, including strangers).

Even when false accusers’ claims are outlandish and over the top, like these posted on Facebook by North Carolinian Marty Tackitt-Grist, they’re rarely viewed with suspicion—and almost never if a court ruling (or rulings) in the accusers’ favor can be asserted. The man accused in this comment to ABC’s 20/20 is a retiree with three toy poodles and a passion for aviation who couldn’t “hack” firewood without pain, because his spine is deformed. He is a retired lawyer, but he wasn’t “disbarred” and hasn’t “embezzled” (or, for that matter, “mooned” anyone). He has, however, been jailed consequent to insistent and serial falsehoods from his patently disturbed neighbor…who’s a schoolteacher.

For Crazy, social media websites are an endless source of attention, self-promotion, self-aggrandizement, and a sophisticated weapon. Many narcissists, histrionics, borderlines, and other self-obsessed, abusive personality types use Facebook, Twitter, and the like to run smear campaigns, to make false allegations, to perpetrate parental alienation, and to stalk and harass their targets while simultaneously portraying themselves as the much maligned victim, superwoman, and/or mother of the year.

(A respondent to this blog who’s been relentlessly harried by lies for two years, who’s consequently homeless and penniless, and who’s taken flight to another state, recently reported that a woman who’d offered her aid suddenly and inexplicably defriended her on Facebook and shut her out without a word. Her “friend” had evidently been gotten to.)

(An advocate for legal reform who was falsely accused in court last year by her husband and succeeded in having the allegations against her dismissed reports that he afterwards circulated it around town that she tried to kill him.)

I was falsely accused in 2006 by a woman who had nightly hung around outside of my house for a season. She was married and concealed the fact. Then she lied to conceal the concealment and the behavior that motivated the concealment. She has sustained her fictions (and honed them) for nearly 10 years. People like this build tissues of lies, aptly and commonly called webs.

Their infrastructures are visible, but many strands may not be…and the spinners never stop spinning.

The personality types associated with chronic lying are often represented as serpentine, arachnoid, or vampiric. This ironically feeds into some false accusers’ delusions of potency. Instead of shaming them, it turns them on.

I know from corresponding with many others who’ve endured the same traumas I have that they’ve been induced to do the same thing I did: write to others to defend the truth and hope to gain an advocate to help them unsnarl a skein of falsehoods that propelled them face-first into a slough of despond. (Why people write, if clarification is needed, is because there is no other way to articulate what are often layered and “bizarre” frauds.)

I know with heart-wrenching certainty, also, that these others’ honest and plaintive missives have probably been received with exactly the same suspicion, contempt, and apprehension that mine were. It’s a hideous irony that attempts to dispel false accusations are typically perceived as confirmations of them, including by the court. To complain of being called a stalker, for example, is interpreted as an act of stalking. There’s a kind of awful beauty to the synergy of procedural abuse and lies. (Judges pat bullies on the head and send them home with smiles on their faces.)

Smear campaigns wrap up false accusations authorized by the court with a ribbon and a bow.

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*The name Machiavelli, referenced in the title of this post, is associated with the use of any means necessary to obtain political dominion (i.e., power and control). Psychologists have adapted the name to characterize one aspect of a syzygy of virulent character traits called “The Dark Triad.”

Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here: The Hell of Legal Abuse Syndrome

This is the third sequential post on this blog about Legal Abuse Syndrome (LAS), a condition proposed by marriage and family therapist Karin P. Huffer “that develops in individuals assaulted by ethical violations, legal abuses, betrayals, and fraud” and that’s exacerbated by “abuse of power and authority and a profound lack of accountability in our courts.” This post surveys accounts of affliction (and its sources) drawn from various websites.

abandon all hope
Editorial intrusions and commentary in this post have been kept to a minimum, but some grammatical polishing is acknowledged.

You May Be Suffering from Legal Abuse Syndrome if You Have Been a Victim of DCF”:

I have been doing some reading on LAS (Legal Abuse Syndrome) and PTSD since I have begun to fear my own shadow. I hate the doorbell to ring. I run to the window to try to see who it might be, and rarely answer. If someone knocks on the door with any force, I am paralyzed. I do not like to answer the phone and thank God for caller ID. When I go out of the house, heaven help me if I see a child who reminds me of what we have lost. I cannot tell you the number of times I have vomited in public toilets. A police car in the rearview mirror leads to deep breathing and panic attacks. The thought of walking into a courtroom is enough to reduce me to a shaking mess. Certain names…can cause me to feel a sense of violation like no other. Sleep rarely happens and is often interrupted by nightmares, or even worse, waking and screaming for my child. No one cares; all of those I thought would protect us have not only failed us but willingly allowed misconduct and lies. Those I held in high regard due to their positions of trust and power I have found to have let their power corrupt their values and morals. Do I think I am ill? Yes, I know I am. I have a good doctor who is trying to help, a church to support me, and my husband and children who have stood by me, but I also know I will never be the same person I was. I will never trust in the “system” and have been totally disillusioned by what I always thought were my constitutional rights as an American citizen not only being disregarded but willfully being trampled on by those sworn to protect them.

Sufferer Legal Abuse Syndrome” (MyPTSD.com):

I was just diagnosed with PTSD from a prolonged and nasty legal battle (10 years). It was my understanding that PTSD was only for vets coming back from war. I guess there are other ways to fight wars. Mine was in the courtroom trying to fight off the onslaught of unethical attorneys and judges. I believe I fought for a good cause, but it has taken its toll on me. My nerves are shot; I have anxiety from the minute I wake up until I go to bed. Thoughts of what they did and the power they had over me and my children are with me always. I want to have a life, but I still deal with the consequences every day. I feel guilty for feeling this way as there are so many other people who have been through much worse. I think the feeling of being powerless and abused by a system I had faith in has shaken my foundation. My feelings about people and the world have changed forever, and my trust level is very low. A psychologist involved in the battle betrayed me and my family with lies, along with two other professionals in this field, all my attorneys, and the judges. You might discount my viewpoint as overboard. It took a long time to see it myself, but my investigations proved correct.

Legal Abuse Syndrome” (Caught.net):

I became depressed, physically ill, and seriously suicidal after experiencing the insanity of litigation. I lost my home and was sent to the street with nothing but the clothes on my back. Literally everything I owned was gone for several years. I fought my fight to points of exhaustion where all I could do was stare into space. Friends had left; I was emotionally isolated, and normal living activities were no longer normal. Rage doesn’t come close to describing the feelings I lived with for years. Even this is not the full story of how bad it got.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Legal Abuse Syndrome”:

I was diagnosed about two years ago with LAS [Legal Abuse Syndrome]. Protracted litigation and corrupt court decisions not only exacerbated my fibromyalgia but caused me to begin a whole new set of debilitating symptoms which have rendered me unable to sleep properly, hold a job, succeed in relationships, enjoy life, maintain goals, dreams, and hope. I suffer from what I call “spinal cord attacks,” which feel like rushes of adrenaline or cortisol permeating my spine, making me feel paralyzed, causing severe pain, lasting for 30 seconds to two minutes, and resulting in complete exhaustion and distress.

My once beautiful life as a drama and music teacher, writer and producer of children’s musicals, and fledgling writer has all but vanished. I am so debilitated from extensive legal research, useless and destructive attorneys and judges, horrendous living conditions imposed upon me by corrupt judges who denied me due process, the loss of my beautiful family home to my ex (which I had been paying for but couldn’t qualify for), the purging of all my earthly belongings, a now transient lifestyle, and increasing medical problems like high blood pressure, anxiety attacks, and hopelessness.

Massachusetts Mother Calling for Family Court Justice in Domestic Abuse Cases”:

I have missed all of my three daughters’ birthdays, first days of school, first dances, holidays, vacations, and school volunteering since 2007. My youngest daughter, Kelly, is nine. That means I have already missed out on half her life. I am not a drug addict. I am not an alcoholic.  I was and still am an upstanding citizen in the community despite Attorney Arabasz and his clients’ attempts to cause deliberate and malicious harm to me. I do my best to volunteer in the community, including hospice and domestic abuse, and have won numerous awards for my volunteerism over the years, which tends to bring me a renewed sense of healing from my own traumas. My children and I cannot get back those formative years we have missed. They are gone forever, never to return.  I am speechless in my ability to describe the pain and anguish I feel over this injustice alone.

Over that time, as documented through the courts, I have endured numerous, repeated, serious abuses that I have come to the court pleading for help with to no avail.  I am a human being who can take being abused only for so long.  I have suffered serious, repeated, unrelenting, undue stresses, many of which are criminal in nature, that have caused health issues. When the trial arrived, I prayed and hoped for justice to finally prevail for the sake of my children.

I have been severed from my children’s lives with little to no contact since August 3, 2011, and even longer since September 2007. The verdict of August 2012 from the trial was devastating to me and I worried about the long-term negative impact it would have on my children….

As a result, I am currently being treated for ADHD, Legal Abuse Syndrome, and trauma-related stress, and my treatment since trial has increased. Symptoms of trauma-related stress include gastrointestinal issues; anxiety and fear, especially when exposed to situations reminding me of the many repeated traumatic events; trouble sleeping; trouble eating; low energy; memory problems, including difficulty remembering aspects of the trauma; a “scattered” feeling and inability to focus on work or daily activities;  emotional “numbness,” which causes me to feel withdrawn, disconnected, or different from others; and protectiveness of loved ones or fear for their safety.

I did not suffer any of these symptoms until after I married an abusive partner and endured years of abuse. I was a victim that the system failed to protect, and now I suffer greatly. I was a fantastic mother, and even the father never questioned my ability to care for or mother these children until he got what he wanted and stole financially through the divorce.  However, the system has stripped away all my ability to love, nurture, and parent my three daughters who need me greatly.

The foregoing first-person accounts are hardly comprehensive; they were culled because they’re evocative. Notably, they echo numerous comments submitted by visitors to this blog, who have reported everything from homelessness and hopelessness to living “like a hamster” to contemplating suicide. Many respondents to the e-petition “Stop False Allegations of Domestic Violence” have reported the same.

The third-person account below, though it leaves the victim’s torment to the reader’s imagination, is certainly no less sympathetic than those above. It speaks, particularly, to how blind or indifferent others may be to the effects of legal abuse.

How academia betrayed and continues to betray Aaron Swartz”:

As news spread last week that digital rights activist Aaron Swartz had killed himself ahead of a federal trial on charges that he illegally downloaded a large database of scholarly articles with the intent to freely disseminate its contents, thousands of academics began posting free copies of their work online, coalescing around the Twitter hashtag #pdftribute.

This was a touching tribute: a collective effort to complete the task Swartz had tried—and many people felt died trying—to accomplish himself. But it is a tragic irony that the only reason Swartz had to break the law to fulfill his quest to liberate human knowledge was that the same academic community that rose up to support his cause after he died had routinely betrayed it while he was alive.

This survey concludes with an impersonal commentary from a woman who’s still embroiled in legal strife and fears the consequences of speaking about it too candidly in a public medium. She has removed herself to another state to escape a malicious accuser’s clutches but remains in the crosshairs, despite having been deprived of everything she once took for granted—including her sense of self.

‘White Collar’ Domestic Violence Sanctioned by the State”:

The fraudulently obtained protective order is the new tool of abuse for abusers to obtain total power and control over their victims. The protective order is obtained using false allegations of domestic violence and abuse against the victim in an open court of law without due process or an evidentiary hearing. The protective order is then used as a state-sanctioned license to stalk, harass, intimidate, and continue to abuse the victim. The victim lives in constant fear that s/he will be arrested and incarcerated any time the abuser chooses to place him or her in jail. The accuser plays the victim of his or her own crime [cf. Dr. Tara Palmatier’s “Presto, Change-o, DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender”].

This is the new “white collar” form of domestic violence and abuse. It is a tactic used by both men and women to gain the upper hand in a divorce or custody battle, or to have a domestic partner simply removed from a lease and ejected from his or her own home. In the case of a victim’s terrible misfortune of coupling with a psychopath or sociopath suffering from a narcissistic or borderline personality disorder, the protective order is fraudulently obtained by means of false accusations of domestic abuse simply to gain total power and control over him or her while simultaneously inflicting emotional distress to hurt and humiliate him or her and publicly harm his or her reputation. This in and of itself allows the abuser to compromise the integrity of his or her victim with a permanent public record, thereby impugning the victim’s character. This not only serves to satisfy the malicious intent of the abuser; it also renders the victim helpless in any and all attempts to plead innocence and defend him- or herself to law enforcement and the courts.

Acts of malicious intent by way of falsifying police reports, manufacturing evidence, and committing perjury in a court of law—all crimes at a felony offense level—go criminally unprosecuted because restraining order courts are of a civil nature, held by low level officials with no due process. Any attempts by the victim to file complaints or police reports of his or her own are useless and futile attempts at self-protection, because probable cause cannot be proven; a victim simply cannot prove with tangible evidence the intent or motive of the abuser. All attempts by the victim to file complaints or police reports to protect him- or herself do is embolden and provoke the abuser to escalate the abusive behavior toward the victim to the point that the victim cannot attend school, go to work, or even leave his or her own home out of living in a constant state of fear that the abuser will have him or her arrested on a whim.

Without due process and without protection, the victim is ultimately under the total power and control of the abuser. Law enforcement and the legal system (the courts, the judges, the attorneys) are all simply pawns in the sociopath’s sick game of abuse of process. A carefully constructed web of lies is in itself so complex that the victim is powerless to prove s/he is the victim of abuse, not its perpetrator. Over time, after the victim is professionally and academically destroyed, publicly humiliated, and ultimately alienated and completely isolated from his or her community, from friends, and even from family, s/he begins to doubt him- or herself and eventually loses all sense of human identity. Many victims commit suicide as a result of the abuse.

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*See also this post about the death of Christopher Mackney, which contains links to his suicide note: “First Amendment Rights from Beyond the Grave: Defense of a Suicide’s Publication of His Final Words by the Randazza Legal Group.” The circumstances that conduced to Mr. Mackney’s taking his life are chronicled in a forthcoming book by investigative journalist Michael Volpe, which is titled, Bullied to Death: The Chris Mackney Story.

Even when They’re Right, They’re Wrong: A Female Author Agrees Domestic Violence Laws Are Exploited to “Set Up” Partners but Puts the Blame Squarely on Men

Since the publication of this post, the website it quotes has been deleted.


“Victims of these increasingly common set-ups face criminal charges alongside their emotionally depleting divorce and custody cases, which are, of course, by now stacked against them.”

—Former crime reporter Janie McQueen

The quotation above comes from the author of the book, Hanging on by My Fingernails: Surviving the New Divorce Gamesmanship, and How a Scratch Can Land You in Jail.

Perhaps you’re thinking: I can so identify with that—and perhaps you can identify with it. If you’re not a woman, though, you’re not supposed to. So stop it.

Yep, a female author (and journalist) acknowledges that lying to the court to gain the upper hand in divorce and custody cases occurs. In fact, she says it’s “increasingly common.” According to her, though, the culprits are violent men.

Ms. McQueen apparently aspires to upset the dogma while still keeping the faith: The system is abused, she emphasizes, but women are the victims, and men are the victimizers.

Evident without benefit of having read her book is that because Ms. McQueen alleges she was framed (and probably quotes other women who allege they were framed), “set-ups” of this sort are asserted to be “increasingly common.” They probably are—they’re reported here routinely—but never mind, apparently, that Ms. McQueen’s contention is exactly what men have been saying for, um, decades. Whether frame-ups are “increasingly” common or not, they are common, and they have been for a long time (and thanks to rhetoric that insists women are incapable of lying maliciously, the likelihood of their becoming increasingly “increasingly common” is strong).

Since I haven’t read Ms. McQueen’s book, fairness requires that I acknowledge her position may not be as chauvinistic as it sounds. Also, the book has apparently been in print for three years, and I just heard about it Monday, so I’d venture to guess that it hasn’t exerted a great deal of populist influence. For an audience sympathetic to feminism to concede that false allegations from men are rampant would be to invite speculation on how rampant false allegations from women are.

That, as they say, ain’t gonna happen.

I learned of Ms. McQueen’s book in an online column in Forbes by Jeff Landers, a “certified divorce financial analyst” and the founder of Bedrock Divorce Advisors, LLC, a “divorce financial advisory firm that works exclusively with women.” Mr. Landers is also the author of multiple books directed to a strictly female audience.

His representation of Ms. McQueen’s book, then, may be skewed to his marketing demographic. I can’t say. This, however, is a passage from Ms. McQueen’s book quoted in Mr. Landers’s column “How Some Men Are Upending Domestic Violence Laws to Scam an Advantage in Divorce” (the passage is from the book’s forward, which is penned by Chicago criminal defense attorney Tamara N. Holder):

Unfortunately, many abusive men have learned to reshape domestic violence laws into another weapon of abuse. They are turning police and court protections upside down: The abusers themselves call 9-1-1; they have the women arrested for domestic violence; and then they do everything they can to try to have the women prosecuted and sentenced. In this way, the true victim is painted as the abuser.

There is a deeper motivation in using this ploy; to show a pattern of “violent conduct” on the woman’s part so that the abuser can use it as evidence against her in a divorce or child custody battle. And this form of abuse is permanent. A bruise heals after a few days, but a conviction for a violent crime mars her record forever.

The set-up: A couple has a fight. Either the wife calls 9-1-1 in a desperate plea for police intervention, or the husband makes the call first in a preemptive attack. When the police arrive, the woman is visibly upset. The man, on the other hand, is extremely calm as he switches off his anger. The husband tells the police that his wife is delusional, crazy, and violent. Depending on how convincing the man’s story is to the police officer, and the state’s law on domestic violence, either both people are arrested or the woman is arrested.

In the case of a dual arrest, which some states discourage, the woman often tells prosecutors she doesn’t want to testify against her husband, so the case is dismissed. Meanwhile, the husband is determined that she be prosecuted. Instead of the prosecutors looking into the history of the relationship before proceeding with the criminal case, they move full speed ahead. The wife is usually cut off from her husband’s financial support so she cannot pay for defense against him. As a result, she is forced to take a plea to the charges because she cannot afford to defend herself. She fears taking the case to trial, losing, and going to jail.

Conclusory remarks will be brief. First, bravo to Ms. Holder (and Ms. McQueen) for a detailed articulation of a serious problem, one that founders lives. What’s described above certainly happens; don’t doubt it for a moment. Second, though, what impassioned subdual of the imagination is required for an intelligent person to believe this only happens to women? C’mon. (Not only does the same thing happen to men, but the presence of children in the relationship isn’t a necessary motivation.) Finally, mark this statement well: “And this form of abuse is permanent. A bruise heals after a few days, but a conviction for a violent crime mars [a] record forever.”

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

“On the Receiving End of a Sociopath’s Lies”: A Professional Mom’s Story of Restraining Order Abuse

The following account is reproduced almost verbatim from an email of recent vintage. Its writer is a professional woman and single mother of three with whom I corresponded last year while she was embroiled in strife—legal, medical, and emotional (a synergy of torments that’s been reported here before). The capsule version of her story is that she was in an abusive relationship (including violently abusive), sought a restraining order, which was dismissed on appeal, and then was issued an order petitioned by her abuser, which she reports was based on fraud, and which was nevertheless upheld despite her appealing it. She brought criminal charges, also. Her abuser smoothly extricated himself from those, too. The victim of assault is the one with the “restraining order” on her permanent record. She asked that I not use her name because she’s “terrified of  the possibility of repercussions.”

In her own words, which more poignantly express the psychic trauma of procedural abuses than any I’ve ever read:

My active involvement with my sociopath has, mercifully, ended.

[H]e refused to accept a plea deal, he took his assault case to a jury trial, and he was found not guilty by a jury of his peers. His lies were, apparently, more believable than my truth, or, best case, the jurors didn’t really believe him but couldn’t find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I’ve seen enough of the court system to learn that the truth is completely immaterial, and that the officers of the court will consistently choose the “easy” ruling over the one that is true. If the matter before them requires some thought, some extrapolation, some reading between the lines, and/or some backbone, forget it. The truth will be jettisoned faster than a grenade with its pin pulled.

I don’t really know how to describe how profoundly my brushes with domestic abuse/restraining order abuse/generalized legal abuse have affected me. In a few short months, a year will have passed since the criminal trial against my abuser took place. Four years will have passed since the whole odyssey began on Easter of 2011, when I walked into the police station and reported my abuser’s attack after agonizing overnight about whether or not I should do so. Imagine that—agonizing overnight about whether or not to report a crime! On some level, I must have known even then how very awry it all could go.

Let me just attempt to put this into perspective: I have lived through my parents’ divorce. I have boarded an Amtrak train headed for New Orleans at 16 years old in an effort to escape a miserable childhood. I have been scarred by the shame of being a high school dropout and then gone on to receive a college education. I have experimented with more drugs than I can count on two hands. I have traveled all over Europe with little more than a backpack and a few pfennigs. I have been robbed at gunpoint while working third shift in a Shell-Mart in Anniston, Alabama. I have scuba-dived off the coast of Honduras. I have watched my stepmother fight to regain pulmonary function after she was stabbed by a purse-snatching punk in the alley behind her home in Washington, D.C., only to watch her die an agonizing death from lung cancer fifteen years later. I have held a lion cub in my arms. I have lain helplessly in a hospital bed as not one, not two, but three premature babies were whisked from my body and transferred straight into the NICU. I have survived breast cancer, and then my mother’s untimely death from a hospital-acquired infection four months after my diagnosis. I have been sliced and diced and blasted by radiation. I have been exposed to, and treated for, tuberculosis. I have lived through bacterial meningitis and undergone a blood patch procedure after a botched spinal tap. I have been resuscitated with Narcan after being given too much IV narcotic during an acute episode of kidney stones. I have skydived over the Newport, Rhode Island coastline. I have loved multiple dogs and cats and then held them in my arms when it was their time to leave this earth. I have fought for my children and for myself against a relentlessly bitter spouse during a contentious, protracted divorce.

Not one of those things has affected me as deeply as being on the receiving end of a sociopath’s lies, and the legal system’s subsequent validation of those lies. There is no “coming out the other side” of a public, on-the-legal-record character assassination. It gnaws at me on a near-daily basis like one of those worms that lives inside those Mexican jumping beans for sale to tourists on the counters of countless cheesy gift shops in Tijuana.

I have sort of moved on; I mean, what else can one do, particularly when one has young children? But the horror, outrage, shame, and, yes, fury engendered by being wrongly accused by a perpetrator, and then having that perpetrator be believed, chafes at me constantly. Some things born of irritation and pressure are ones of beauty, like a pearl, or a diamond, but not this. This is a stoma on one’s soul—it never heals, it’s always chapped and raw, and if you’re not careful, it can leak and soil everything around it.

These days, when sleep escapes me, which seems to be fairly frequently, I often relive the various court hearings associated with this shit show. One is the court hearing for the restraining order that my abuser sought against me (and which was granted) based on his completely vague, bullshit story that he felt “afraid” of me—this from the beast that had assaulted me on numerous occasions, slashed my tires, and had a documented history of abusing previous girlfriends. Another is his trial for assault and battery, during which I was forced to undergo a hostile, nasty, and innuendo-laced cross-examination by his scumbag defense attorney in front of a courtroom full of strangers. But the hearing that really gnaws at me and fills me with an almost homicidal enmity for the judge overseeing it is the one where I was requesting a restraining order against my abuser, this after a particularly heinous assault in the days following my cancer diagnosis and my partial mastectomy.

That judge apparently believed my abuser’s bald-faced, self-serving, and absurdly improbable lies over my detailed, accurate, and horrific account of his behavior immediately following my surgery. That judge believed that a well-dressed, employed, and reasonably intelligent woman would drag her ass to court a week after a life-threatening diagnosis and major surgery just to harass her blameless ex. My memory of the surreal, humiliating, and completely unexpected ruling that day, made even more galling by the judge’s proclamation that he found the defendant to be “more credible” than me, is as grievously harrowing today as it was then.

To say that I feel indignant about it would be an understatement. Take indignation, add a dollop of pain, some hefty pinches of fear, embarrassment, and hopelessness, and a heaping dose of fury, and you’ve got a toxic mix of emotions that, if I don’t actively squelch them whenever they surface, could blow the top of my skull clean off. No amount of therapy can mitigate this particular affront; I’ve learned that the best I can hope for is some measure of containment. Kind of like radioactive waste.

foreverI will have that prick’s bogus restraining order on my record today, tomorrow, next week, and on and on into perpetuity. I am a licensed professional whose employers require a full background check prior to being hired. I honestly don’t know how that restraining order was missed by the company that my most recent employer contracted to perform my pre-employment vetting. I live with the ever-present dread that someday, someone will unearth the perverse landmine that my abusive ex planted in my legal record, and that dread hasn’t lessened one whit since the day the restraining order was granted.

I understand that the existence of a past restraining order can be a valuable red flag for the police when dealing with domestic abusers and stalkers. Most domestic abusers are repeat offenders, so prior bad acts can help to establish a pattern that law enforcement should be aware of (though, confoundingly, these same bad acts are not admissible during any trial). Even though I’m not necessarily comfortable with the existence of a permanent registry of all restraining orders—both those that are sought and those that are actually granted (which, as you know, is what currently exists)—what I’m not comfortable with is that this information is available not just to the police, not just to other governmental agencies, but to the public at large! My height and weight taken while at the doctor’s office are protected by law. A hospital cannot disclose if I was treated there for a sore throat. But an inflammatory, defamatory, embarrassing, unsubstantiated, and oftentimes false restraining order affidavit can be obtained by whoever strolls into a courthouse and requests a copy from the clerk.

I don’t believe this registry will ever be abolished, because restraining order abuse isn’t “sexy” and no one thinks it could ever happen to her, but can we at least limit who can access this information and the circumstances under which they can access it? It’s mind-boggling to me. It’s just so goddamn devastating to the people who are unfairly stigmatized, and, call me pessimistic, but I don’t think these casualties will ever have a voice.

[Today] I’m working full-time at a job that I basically enjoy, and my three children are flourishing. I no longer feel that I am defined by my intensely negative experiences with my abuser and with the legal system, or that my life is being hijacked on a daily basis. I go days at a time without any of this crossing my mind. To say that I have “gotten over it,” though, would be a lie. A piece of me was lost because of this, and an emotional fissure was left behind, that, from what I can tell, simply cannot be fixed or ignored. My only succor is my halfhearted hope that karma is, indeed, a bitch.

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Dust It Off: This Isn’t 1979, and It’s Time Restraining Order Laws Were Reconsidered

I remarked to a commenter the other day that when I became a vegetarian in the ’80s, I was still a kid, and my family took it as an affront, which was a common reaction then. Today, everyone’s a vegetarian or “tried vegetarianism” or has “thought about becoming a vegetarian.” Other subjects that were outré or taboo in my childhood like atheism, cross-dressing, and depression—they’re no longer stigmatized, either (in the main). Gay people, who were only whispered about then, can marry in a majority of states. When I was a kid, it was shaming for bra straps or underpants bands to be visible. Today they’re exposed on purpose.

It’s a brave new world.

While domestic violence is no more comfortable a topic of conversation now than it was then, it’s also hardly hush-hush. When restraining orders were conceived, it was unmentionable, and that was the problem. It was impossible for battered women to reliably get help. They faced alienation from their families and even ridicule from the police if they summoned the courage to ask for it. They were trapped.

Restraining orders cut through all of the red tape and made it possible for battered women to go straight to the courthouse to talk one-on-one with a judge and get immediate relief. The intention, at least, was good.

It’s probable, too, that when restraining orders were enacted way back when, their exploitation was minimal. It wouldn’t have occurred to many people to abuse them, just as it wouldn’t have occurred to lawmakers that anyone would take advantage.

This isn’t 1979. Times have changed and with them social perceptions and ethics. Reporting domestic violence isn’t an act of moral apostasy. It’s widely encouraged.

No one has gone back, however, and reconsidered the justice of a procedure of law that omits all safeguards against misuse. Restraining orders circumvent investigation by police and the vetting of accusations by district attorneys. They allow individuals to prosecute allegations all on their own, trusting that those individuals won’t lie about fear or abuse, despite the fact that there are any number of compelling motives to do so, including greed/profit, spite, victim-playing, revenge, mental illness, personality disorder, bullying, blame-shifting, cover-up, infidelity/adultery, blackmail, coercion, citizenship, stalking, and the mere desire for attention.

Restraining orders laws have steadily accreted even as the original (problematic) blueprint has remained unchanged. Claims no longer need to be of domestic violence (though its legal definition has grown so broad as to be virtually all-inclusive, anyway). They can be of harassment, “stalking,” threat, or just inspiring vague unease.

These aren’t claims that are hard to manufacture, and they don’t have to be proved (and there’s no ascertaining the truth of alleged “feelings” or “beliefs,” anyway, just as there’s no defense against them). Due to decades of feminist lobbying, moreover, judges are predisposed to issue restraining orders on little or no more basis than a petitioner’s saying s/he needs one.

What once upon a time made this a worthy compromise of defendants’ constitutionally guaranteed expectation of due process and equitable treatment under the law no longer does. The anticipation of rejection or ridicule that women who reported domestic violence in the ’70s and ’80s faced from police, and which recommended a workaround like the restraining order, is now anachronistic.

Prevailing reflex from authorities has swiveled 180 degrees. If anything, the conditioned reaction to claims of abuse is their eager investigation; it’s compulsory policy.

Laws that authorize restraining order judges, based exclusively on their discretion, to impose sanctions on defendants like registry in public databases that can permanently foul employment prospects, removal from their homes, and denial of access to their kids and property are out of date. Their license has expired.

Besides material privations, defendants against allegations made in brief trips to the courthouse are subjected to humiliation and abuse that’s lastingly traumatic. Making false claims is a simple matter, and offering damning misrepresentations that don’t even depend on lies is simpler yet.

What shouldn’t be possible happens. A lot. Almost as bad is that we make believe it doesn’t.

Just as it was wrong to avert our eyes from domestic violence 30 years ago, it’s wrong to pretend that attempts to curb it since haven’t fostered new forms of taunting, terrorism, and torment that use the state as their agent.

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

BLACKMAIL: Using Restraining Orders to Extort and Punish

“A blackmailer could attempt to blackmail someone with a threat to accuse him falsely, but we should expect such cases to be rare because the victim has a good remedy: sue the blackmailer for defamation. Good but not perfect, because the blackmailer may not have the resources to pay a legal judgment. Criminalizing this form of blackmail can thus be viewed as backing up the law against defamation.”

—Judge Richard A. Posner, “Blackmail, Privacy, and Freedom of Contract

In theory, the judge is right that victims of false allegations have a “good remedy”; in practice, however, he’s mistaken.

That’s not because the judge doesn’t comprehend his subject (to the contrary, his explication is very adept); it’s because the judge only considers the “attempt to blackmail someone with a threat to accuse him falsely” as a tool to extort money.

Among human economic transactions, money isn’t the only sought-after commodity.

A perusal of the e-petition “Stop False Allegations of Domestic Violence” will garner the social scientist any number of anecdotal accounts of blackmailers’ threatening to make false allegations in order to bend people to their will. Here’s a recent example:

My husband filed false child abuse charges against me to obtain full custody of our children. I cannot count the number of times that he threatened to keep the children away from me. He said he would tell people I abused them. I am a victim of domestic violence, and this allegation has just allowed him to continue the abuse.

In this instance, a husband used threats of filing false allegations of child abuse to blackmail his wife to stay with him and keep quiet about his abuse of her (cf. Dr. Tara Palmatier’s “Presto, Change-o, DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender”). The brief account doesn’t explain why the husband made good on the threats. Maybe his wife wasn’t as compliant as he wanted—or maybe he met someone to replace her with, and she was just an albatross around his neck.

Women, of course, do the same to men, particularly to men who’ve indicated they want to break up (sometimes kids are used as leverage, sometimes not).

Here’s a recent comment on the blog from the mother of a blackmail victim of this type:

My son’s girlfriend…filed a domestic abuse CPO [civil protection order] against my son, again telling him that he shouldn’t have left her. He hasn’t been served yet—they keep missing him. She calls my son constantly, stringing him along with the idea that she “might” let it go. He’s taking her out to eat, giving her money, staying the night with her. Hoping that she’ll let it go. All that and yet two hearing dates for him have come and gone with her showing up at both his hearings asking for a continuance because he hasn’t been served.

For the uninitiated, appreciate that restraining orders alleging abuse are obtained at no cost—and in a few hours if not minutes. Getting one is cake. It costs an accuser absolutely nothing to file serial petitions, and there are no statutory limits on the number of times s/he can file (some people do this over and over for years). The commenter has herself also been repeatedly accused by the woman in her story (her son’s “former” girlfriend) of stalking the woman and causing her to fear “for her life.”

When the court date comes up, she doesn’t show, and the case is dismissed. She then goes and files a new CPO to keep the cycle going. I tried to get a CPO protection order against her, but the magistrate denied it.

This is a reality that the court is either blind to or finds it impolitic to acknowledge—and no wonder: millions of restraining orders are issued per annum, and owning that restraining orders are abused to blackmail and terrorize defendants would implicate the court as an accessory to extortion, defamation, harassment, fraud, etc.

The “remedy” proposed by the judge quoted in the epigraph, i.e., suing for defamation, is for the same reason a nonstarter. If the court entertained defamation suits brought by the victims of false restraining orders, it would have to acknowledge its own culpability. It would have to own, that is, that restraining orders are urgent and conveniently available tools of blackmail, harassment, and terrorism. It would also have to own that it’s easily duped. The court doesn’t like to admit that it makes mistakes, let alone that it’s gullible.

This writer has filed a defamation suit and has corresponded with others who’ve done the same. The court refuses to accept the claim that “testimony” can be “defamatory.” Litigants are batted away with invocations of “res judicata” (they’re told the false allegations are already “decided things” and can’t be revisited). Never mind that consequences of false testimony include defendants’ being entered into domestic violence registries and state and federal police databases, as well as being denied employment (and, for example, the right to attend their children’s school activities, coach or teach kids, etc.).

False restraining orders, in other words, not only defame but defame with the authority of the court behind them. The reputations of those accused aren’t merely “sullied”; defamatory allegations are credited as incontrovertible truths established in a court of law.

When the motive of blackmailers is to extort money, following through with the threat by exposing the person threatened means blackmailers don’t get what they want. When, however, the motive is to dominate another person, and false allegations of abuse are the threat, following through with the threat does enable blackmailers to get what they want: control.

That includes control of the truth. Some cases of blackmail this author has been informed of were instances of the parties accused knowing something about their accusers that their accusers didn’t want to get around (usually criminal activity). When the guilty parties no longer trusted that coercion would ensure that those who had the goods on them would keep quiet, they filed restraining orders against them alleging abuse, which instantly discredited anything the people they accused might disclose about their activities.

Some such activities reported to this writer have been domestic violence, immigration fraud (selling green cards), drug use, and tax evasion. All someone who’s obtained a restraining order has to say to authorities if their actions are reported is that the allegations were brought by a crank they “had to get a restraining order against.” Case closed.

Restraining orders are perfect tools of cover-up.

Contrary, then, to what the judge quoted in the epigraph concludes, people who blackmail others with threats of filing false allegations can not only make good on their threats with the expectation of impunity; they can conceal other crimes behind the shield of the court.

For blackmailers, it’s a win-win proposition.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com