Why Judicial Process Is Corrupt: The “Customer” Is Always Right

September 2, 2016June 23, 2023Moderator Leave a comment

Everyone angered by procedural abuse has a different grievance: false allegations of domestic violence, civil rights violations, wrongful claims of child abuse, exploitation of process to silence critics, and even lying about rape, to name a few. Typically, it’s what sort of procedural abuse a person has experienced—or someone close to that person has experienced—that determines the particular subject of his or her outrage. (Restraining order abuse—the abuse of court injunctions—is associated with all of them, and is often discounted as merely incidental to a “bigger problem.”)

There are some broader categories of offense, for example, hyped claims of abuse by women (of whatever nature). Prominent female advocates against procedural abuse, like Wendy McElroy, Christina Hoff Sommers, and Cathy Young, often take aim at social science that’s negatively skewed against men and blame prevailing prejudices promulgated and reinforced by what’s loosely called “mainstream feminism.” These prejudices have conditioned how accusations of abuse are treated by employers, university administrators, the police, and judges—and how they’re reflexively perceived by the public at large. Then there are First Amendment advocates who catalog and decry a plethora of misapplications of law to speech, which may be silenced by wrongful accusations of “abuse” (including violence), “harassment,” “(cyber)stalking,” “defamation,” “copyright infringement,” “trademark infringement,” etc. There’s a dominant tendency among trial court judges to pay heed to anyone who alleges something “unwanted” has been said about him or her or his or her business, especially on the Internet, which to many judges is still a suspect medium.

The success of procedural abuse boils down to a basic corruption of ethics and perception: The customer (the complainant) is always right; s/he is a “victim,” not an “accuser” or even just a “plaintiff”: a “victim.”

This characterization is inscribed in state statutes and, as a matter of form, used by prosecutors and judges in court. Even the “free press” may use it instead of “alleged victim,” and that says everything. It means there are no objective influential voices. Both judges’ and journalists’ determinations conform to a script.

People who falsely accuse seldom or never risk punishment; accountability is almost nil. The only party in jeopardy is the accused. For that reason alone, skepticism by arbiters of fact is mandated by morality.

A judge once told this writer that he considered his court the “last bastion of civilization.” Consider the implications if that supposed bulwark against societal anomie is just a puppet stage where players are issued halos and black waxed mustaches depending on which of them was first up the courthouse steps.

More on False Accusation Culture: A Memoir That Exemplifies how False Accusations Are Motivated by “Mass Panic”

March 8, 2015July 1, 2023Moderator 1 Comment

Meredith Maran, in writing about falsely accusing her father of molesting her, has been lauded for her bravery, compassion, and honesty by no lesser literary lights than Anne Lamott, Elizabeth Loftus, and Michael Chabon. One must wonder, however, whether a memoir by her father about the torment of being falsely accused and alienated from his grandchildren, particularly if Ms. Maran had maintained her story of abuse, would have received the same sympathetic interest, never mind the same critical acclaim.

Thanks to how Google News is prioritizing its returns for the search term “false accusations,” I came across a Salon.com interview the other day (published in 2010) that speaks significantly to how false claims of abuse, even “false memories” of abuse, can be socially coerced. What it relates exemplifies why how we talk about violence is a very big deal.

More than 20 years ago, Meredith Maran falsely accused her father of molestation. That she came to believe such a thing was possible reveals what can happen when personal turmoil meets a powerful social movement. In her book My Lie: A True Story of False Memory (the introduction of which is excerpted on Salon), Maran recounts the 1980s feminist-inspired campaign to expose molestation, which hit feverish levels in 1988 with the book The Courage to Heal. As an early reporter on the story, Maran observed family therapy sessions, interviewed molesters, and steeped herself in cases where abuse clearly took place. Meanwhile, she divorced her husband and fell in love with a woman who was also an incest survivor. Maran began having nightmares about her own molestation and soon what had been a contentious relationship with her father turned into accusations of unspeakable crimes. Eventually, she came to realize the truth. She was the person who had done wrong.

Toward the end of her memoir, her father asks her, “What I really want to know is how the hell you could have thought that of me.”

Ms. Maran tells Salon reporter Michael Humphrey that she was a thrall of “mass hysteria” (of “mind control” or “brainwashing”).

I was working as a feminist journalist, writing exposés of child sexual abuse, trying to convince the world that incest was more than a one-in-a-million occurrence. In the process, I convinced myself that my father had molested me. After five years of incest nightmares and incest workshops and incest therapy, I accused my father, estranging myself and my sons from him for the next eight years.

In the early 1990s the culture flipped, and so did I. Across the country, falsely accused fathers were suing their daughters’ incest therapists. Falsely accused molesters were being freed from jail—and I realized that my accusation was false. I was one of the lucky ones. My father was still alive, and he forgave me.

The early ’90s, coincidentally, was when restraining orders entered full swing, and the Violence Against Women Act emerged—and allegations of “epidemic violence,” largely from feminist quarters, have never broken stride since.

Ms. Maran’s memoir presents a case study in the coercive effects of rhetoric, especially when it’s backed by widely embraced “social science.”

In 2007, I was out for a walk with someone I wasn’t even that close to. She asked me if I’d ever done anything I was ashamed of and had never forgiven myself for. And without hesitation I said, yeah, when I was in my 30s I accused my father of molesting me, and then I realized it wasn’t true. She stopped walking and stood still, just staring at me and she said, “The same exact thing happened to me.” When I came home from that hike I started calling people I had known back then and speaking to some of the therapists I had seen during that period. With the exception of my ex-lover, every other person I talked to who had accused her father in the ’80s and early ’90s now believed she had been wrong.

[…]

It really shocked me, I must say, to see how much influence the external had on the internal. That the most intimate emotions and relationships can be so affected by the dominant paradigm.

Today’s “dominant paradigm” (a.k.a. dogma) is that accusers who allege abuse are telling it straight, especially if the accusers are female and they’re alleging violence. Conscientious voices continue to meet with vehement hostility, even for making the mild (and very reasonable) suggestion that allegations shouldn’t be treated as facts.

[T]he statement of accusation is all it takes to put the wheels in motion. Either legally or in your family. One thing I’ve learned is the relevance of the phrase “the perfect storm.” Not only for me, but for a lot of women I know who made these false accusations, it was very much a social phenomenon. Metaphorically, everything we were saying was true. But there was a confusion between a metaphor and a fact. And it was a highly relevant difference.

Put plainly, the difference Ms. Maran remarks is between real and fictional—a “highly relevant difference” indeed. So much of the rhetoric that continues to exert a governing influence on social perspectives mirrors what we “want to think” or what we’ve been motivated or conditioned to think (what it’s “right” or politically correct to think). There’s a broad and vocal contingent of “true believers” who are deeply invested in the notion that “violence is epidemic” and that “victim’s” needs should preempt all other concerns, including justice and the false implication of the innocent.

Mr. Humphrey’s interview with Ms. Maran ends on a chilling statement that’s worthy of reflection, coming as it does from a woman who’s written a book acknowledging that people may be led to falsely accuse and that she herself was “brainwashed” into doing so.

In the middle of the book, while you are still deeply in the mind-set of being molested, there’s a notion you agree with that if one innocent man goes to prison, but it stops a hundred molesters, it’s worth it. Do you still agree with that notion?

I’m fairly close to a man still in prison, and really believe he is innocent. I know how he’s suffered. I know he’s 80 years old and in ill health. He’s spent 20 years in prison, for no reason. If every elementary school child is now taught how to protect themselves from sexual abuse—and even more to the point, some father or preschool teacher who feels the urge to molest a child will be inhibited from doing so because they think there are guys still in jail for doing that—but innocent people are in prison, do I have to make that choice? It is a Sophie’s choice kind of thing. Would I allow an innocent man to sit in prison if it meant keeping children safe?

So would you make that choice?

I think so.

In closing, appreciate these facts: (1) A false accuser isn’t pilloried but praised for “bravely” admitting the truth years later, years during which someone else—may we also say “bravely”?—lived with the isolating stigma of her accusations; and (2) the same false accuser who “saw the light” nevertheless opines that other people’s lives are arbitrarily expendable for a virtuous cause.

If these compound horrors weren’t bad enough, the view the memoirist expresses is generally shared and, for all intents and purposes, held by our own “justice system” (consequently).

The question the interviewer poses isn’t a “Sophie’s choice.” The character in William Styron’s novel is forced by a Nazi soldier to choose which of her children should be allowed to live. The choice wasn’t a moral one. Opting to punish people for crimes they haven’t committed to make “object lessons” of them against their will decidedly is.

Whether it’s “worth it” to expediently destroy some other person’s life for the betterment of society isn’t a decision anyone gets to make but the owner of that life—and how dare anyone presume otherwise.

*The definition of expedient in my dictionary (World Book) includes this model sentence: “No honest judge would make a decision that was expedient rather than fair and just.”

The Politics of Feminism and Women’s Law: A Response to Zerlina Maxwell’s Editorial “No Matter What Jackie Said, We Should Generally Believe Rape Claims”

December 9, 2014February 12, 2018Moderator Leave a comment

Implicit in the headline of this op-ed is that even “wrongly accused” men are “perps.”

The only complimentary thing this writer can find to say about attorney Zerlina Maxwell’s December 6 column in The Washington Post is—yeah, scratch that; it has no redeeming qualities.

The editorial is not only intellectually callow but morally vacuous. Even its research and computations are careless.

Ms. Maxwell’s piece concerns a story published last month in Rolling Stone Magazine about a purported gang rape at the University of Virginia. The story was swiftly lofted upon a current of hot air then failed to maintain elevation because of a number of holes.

By Ms. Maxwell’s pained logic, the story’s having nosedived is all the more reason why allegations of rape should be accepted wholesale.

Many people (not least U-Va. administrators) will be tempted to see this as a reminder that officials, reporters and the general public should hear both sides of the story and collect all the evidence before coming to a conclusion in rape cases. This is what we mean in America when we say someone is “innocent until proven guilty.” After all, look what happened to the Duke lacrosse players.

In important ways, this is wrong. We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says.

Default means negligence, which Ms. Maxwell equates with propriety. According to feminist algebra, negligence = propriety is a balanced equation.

Note that Ms. Maxwell isn’t actually making an argument for policy reform. We already do, by default, believe what an accuser says, hence outraged and anguished accounts like the ones you’ll find here: “Stop False Allegations of Domestic Violence.”

Ms. Maxwell fails to appreciate that our crediting what a rape accuser says “as a matter of default” means the slope is greased all the way to the bottom. Accepting allegations of rape on faith means accepting on faith all allegations that relate to or imply violence.

And the grease flows sideways, also, not just top-down.

According to the same policy, women too, are victimized by false allegations, false allegations made in criminal, civil, and family court (as well as to government agencies like Child Protective Services)—and the standard applied in non-criminal procedures is already much reduced from “innocent until proven guilty.” Women unjustly lose their good names, their livelihoods, their children, and their homes (and that’s just the abbreviated list). These are among the consequences of equating allegations with facts “as a matter of default.”

Ms. Maxwell concludes: “Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist.”

She asserts that rape leaves a “lasting psychological wound” but that the fallout from being falsely accused of rape is minor and ephemeral. “The accused would have a rough period,” she allows. “He might be suspended from his job; friends might defriend him on Facebook.”

Haunting is not only that people like Ms. Maxwell can appeal to pathos to make their case or that they can make such an appeal despite demonstrating no faculty for empathy; haunting is that their appeals nevertheless succeed.

Ms. Maxwell says the “cost of disbelieving women…signals that women don’t matter and that they are disposable.” No, it signals that no one is any more disposable than anyone else.

Why It’s Valuable to Report Your Story of Restraining Order Abuse or Other Procedural Abuse on an E-Petition or Similar Medium

December 7, 2014August 25, 2023Moderator Leave a comment

Government statistics used to train police officers and judges are derived significantly from surveys, as discussed in the previous post.

These surveys are represented as “science” but are in fact simply acts of collecting responses, responses that may be completely anecdotal (that is, unverified and most likely unverifiable). Interviewers ask questions, and volunteers answer. Some studies according to which policy is determined (for example, on college campuses) may not even be conducted person-to-person; they may be electronic.

Policy that indelibly impacts lives on a grand scale may be based, yes, on glorified questionnaires.

“Science” that influences research trends and legislation, and that consequently conditions police and judicial impulses, is derived by “randomly” eliciting responses from a sample population—and not a particularly large one at that.

When you hear a controversial statistic, the kind that appears in international headlines and in feminist blogs from one end of the Internet to the other, like one in five college women has been a victim of sexual assault (a statistic drawn from a Web survey administered at two American universities), that figure was based on survey data.

What is a petition?

It’s a survey (of personal experience and public sentiment).

Blinded by Science: Examining the Australian Government’s Sexual Assault Statistics to Expose How Such Science Is Derived, How It’s Applied, and Why It’s Not Really as Scientific as It’s Represented to Be

December 6, 2014April 7, 2018Moderator Leave a comment

Here is the Australian government’s Institute of Family Studies’ sexual assault “Facts & Figures” page.

And here is the first thing it says: “Statistics carry significant power and persuasion.”

That’s putting it mildly. That power and that persuasion influence lives on a magnitude that no numbers could quantify. Appreciate that figures concerning sexual assault and how these figures are popularly exploited influence court rulings in all cases that touch on violence or the purported fear of it, including in civil and family court, cases based on allegations of harassment, stalking, child abuse, and/or domestic violence, among others.

You’ll encounter these statistics bruited ubiquitously on the Internet.

“Sexual assault statistics are based on two main types of data,” according to the Australian government website:

victimisation survey data—data collated from surveys conducted with individuals, asking them about their experiences of sexual assault victimisation, regardless of whether they have reported to police; and
administrative data—data extracted through the various systems that respond to sexual assault (e.g., police, courts, corrections or support services).

Important to note at the outset of this discussion is that statistics often quoted by advocates and commentators of one stripe or another (including journalists) may originate from survey responses, that is, from “intelligence” that may be unqualified by any corroborating investigation. Though this post looks at Australian statistics, figures cited as originating from the United States, for example, are derived the same way. When a statistic is phrased “[x number] of [men or women] report being the victim of [x],” that figure was derived from survey responses.

The Australian Institute of Family Studies draws its statistics from six national surveys. This number suggests scrupulous science, but no ascertainable accuracy can be ascribed to the raw data, which is anecdotal.

The 2012-13 Crime Victimisation Survey (CVS), for example, which is one of the six surveys from which the Australian government draws its statistics, is based on interview responses from one member (“selected at random”) of 30,749 “fully responding households,” that is, on the personal interpretations and alleged experiences of fewer than 31,000 people, a study sample that represents about a tenth of 1% of the Australian population. What percentage of this sample is male and what percentage female isn’t reported on the CVS webpage (though other surveys, like the Personal Safety Survey, do report gender-specific conclusions).

Survey-based statistics are among the sorts you’ll encounter broadly promulgated in feminist “fact sheets” and brochures—and consequently everywhere else.

Important to consider, furthermore, is that “administrative data” (police and court statistics), the second data set from which government figures are derived, may itself be influenced by the former sort of data. Survey responses, much touted, may exert either a direct influence on how officers of the law and courts are trained to respond to or interpret allegations, or they may exert a proximal influence by having inspired the direction of social science research that’s used for training. The former data, survey responses, may in other words determine the conclusions and actions of agents of the justice system to some degree, and possibly to a very considerable one.

“Statistics carry significant power and persuasion,” and neither police officers nor judges are any less susceptible to that power and persuasion than anyone else. In fact, they more than almost anyone else are required to absorb these statistics.

Granted, survey statistics are probably as comprehensive as it’s practical for them to be, and contrary statistics that these figures are rejoined with by advocates for disenfranchised groups like battered men may themselves be based on surveys of even smaller groups of people. All such studies are subject to sampling error, because there’s no practicable means to interview an entire population, and sampling error is hardly the only error inherent to such studies, which are based on reported facts that may be impossible to substantiate.

What must be appreciated in all of this is that what’s called “science” is far from certain and is no more verifiable or creditworthy than are responses to online petitions like this one: “Stop False Allegations of Domestic Violence.” Both types of data, that is, are anecdotal.

The significant difference is that respondents to petitions aren’t “randomly selected” or interviewed by trained questioners. There are no “controls.”

So-called controls, however, may themselves influence findings.

Government surveys are inherently biased insofar as their aim is to collect information according to specific questions. The questions determine the nature and bounds of the responses to them and are determined by designated topics of interest.

Petitions in contrast place no constraints on respondents’ comments—and indirectly garner uninhibited answers to questions like, “Have you or someone you know been the victim of fraudulent abuse of court or state process?”

They garner answers to questions, that is, that the government doesn’t care to ask.

A Source of False Reporting and Procedural Abuse Even Feminists Can’t Get Behind: Women Lying about Women

November 28, 2014January 23, 2018Moderator 6 Comments

The Orlando Sentinel reported this month that a former Seminole County deputy sheriff faces criminal charges for falsely accusing her boyfriend’s ex-wife of being a child molester.

The backstory runs something like this:

Boy and girl deputy sheriffs, despite being married to other people, begin sleeping with each other in the early weeks of 2014, including while on duty.
An internal affairs investigation concludes they abandoned their posts at least three times to have sex.
The girl deputy consequently resigns; the boy deputy is fired soon after.
A month later, on May 15, an anonymous call is placed to the Florida Abuse Hotline reporting the boy deputy’s (now ex-)wife abused a six-year-old girl (who is unidentified in the Sentinel article).
Authorities trace the anonymous call to the girl deputy’s phone and arrest her.

A recent post on this blog commented on the award of $500,000 from the federal government to a female law professor who proposes to disprove the claim that women make false allegations in family court to alienate fathers from their children.

Stories like the one highlighted in this post, to the contrary, suggest that love (scorned love, failed love, feared failed love, etc.) motivates some women to lie indiscriminately and heinously.

Procedural biases that broadly obtain today exist because, we’re told, men are motivated by their sexual urges to do horrible things (cf. “rape culture”). How ironic would it be if those procedural biases were being exploited by women motivated by their sexual urges to do horrible things?

That would discredit the whole shebang.

Beating up Disabled Girls: False Allegations and Judicial Dishonor

October 20, 2014June 30, 2023Moderator 1 Comment

“There is no normal. The rational has been torn away from your ability to grasp it.”

—Cartoonist Scott Stantis (on growing up in an abusive household)

This is the sentiment shared by everyone who’s been wrongly blamed—and abused and condemned for it.

Consider that current restraining order and domestic violence legislation and policy are defended as protecting battered women and children. Consider further that honor is not only represented as the guiding principle of judicial conduct but that it’s the title that judges are expected to ceremoniously be addressed by.

Now consider this appeal posted three weeks ago (September 30, 2014) to the e-petition “Stop False Allegations of Domestic Violence” by Phoenicia W. of Springfield, Missouri:

Hi im disabled 28 year old women. And just. Because. I was sick of being. Beat by my exboyfrend I kicked him out and he put fales charges on my cost me 10.000 dollars and I lost. Alot. How can his lies be taken. Off my record. Please. IV never. Even. Could. Hurt a fly please. I cry every. Nite. Help me.im incident I swere.

I’ve edited copy since I was teenager. Here’s what Phoenicia means:

Hi, I’m a disabled 28-year-old woman, and just because I was sick of being beaten by my ex-boyfriend [and] kicked him out…he put false charges on me that cost me $10,000—and I lost. A lot. How can his lies be taken off my record? Please. I’ve never even (and couldn’t) hurt a fly. Please. I cry every night. Help me. I’m innocent, I swear.

The gist of Mr. Stantis’s cartoon essay is that when you’re punished for something you didn’t do, and there’s no way to make sense of your situation or escape it, it “mangles the soul.”

My tidied version makes Phoenicia sound very able and together. Look again at the unedited script, though, which is a poem of pain.

Does it look and sound like it was authored by someone who could capably represent herself in court? For that matter, does it look and sound like it was authored by someone dangerous? Finally, how honorable is beating up (or beating down, if you prefer) a disabled girl and leaving her crying herself to sleep each night—a disabled girl, what’s more, who says she was beaten by the man who accused her of violence?

Feminists are urged to ask themselves which they think will have a more lasting consequence on this woman’s psyche: having been hit by an ex-boyfriend or living day and night with the court’s judgment? Which obviously haunts her? Which has healed, and which can’t heal? (When the court acts on lies by abusers, it compounds the abuse many times and makes it gnawing and constant: “There is no normal.” Ever. Again.)

You can’t relate pain like Phoenicia’s with a lurid picture of a black eye. Her pain and its source are invisible—and count on it that all traces of either have been carefully concealed beneath layers of judicial impression management.

If you’re not familiar with the phrase impression management, here’s an example: “She’ll be okay. She just ran into a door.”

BLACKMAIL: Using Restraining Orders to Extort and Punish

October 14, 2014January 22, 2018Moderator 4 Comments

“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.

Class Action Lawsuits: Suing Uncle Sam for Rights Violations Arising from Restraining Order and Domestic Violence Prosecutions

October 11, 2014August 10, 2023Moderator 9 Comments

“I think action would be better than just mere words. How do you think same-sex marriages were passed? We all need to come together and file a class action lawsuit. These laws plainly violate our constitutional rights as U.S. citizens. There is no due process of law for these allegations, and the cause-and-effect deprives an individual of life, liberty, and property.”

—Michael K. from Alamogordo, New Mexico

The man makes a good point.

Cursory reading on class actions suggests, too, that a lawsuit like the one he proposes is feasible. According to Wikipedia, “Nationwide plaintiff classes are possible [if] such suits…have a commonality of issues across state lines.”

Controlling statutes and procedures concerning domestic violence and restraining order prosecutions, as well as “child welfare” interventions, vary state to state, but a “commonality of issues” vis-à-vis civil rights violations and unjust privations definitely does exist—and certainly class actions within states’ lines are at least as worthy of consideration.

Wikipedia again: “The procedure for filing a class action is to file suit with one or several named plaintiffs on behalf of a proposed class. The proposed class must consist of a group of individuals [who] have suffered a common injury or injuries.”

The most sympathetic candidates for a class action are probably those who’ve unjustly been deprived of property, employment, and/or access to children.

A recent NPR story reports that dozens of students who’ve been accused of rape are suing their universities. They allege they were denied due process and fair treatment by college investigative committees, that is, that they were “railroaded” (and publicly humiliated and reviled). The basis for a suit alleging civil rights violations, then, might also exist (that is, independent of claims of material privation). Certainly most or all restraining order defendants and many domestic violence defendants are “railroaded” and subjected to public shaming and social rejection unjustly.

“How to Start a Class Action Lawsuit,” a primer authored by Linda Jo Martin, creator of FightCPS.com, explains the basics of the procedure. (Ms. Martin advocates for the filing of class actions against Child Protective Services in all 50 states.)

Getting a class action going of the sort this post concerns requires self-starters with good networking skills and a great deal of perseverance, because inducing people who’ve been abused by state process to come forward with complaints is tough. They’re scathed, distrustful, and afraid.

Names of willing participants have to be gathered and a law firm enlisted. Attorney fees aren’t a hindrance, because they’re collected from the reward. But a law firm would have to be confident of a win.

A firm that represent class actions is Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann, and Bernstein. Its website offer further information about class actions. Alternatively or additionally, see Stanford Law Professor Janet Cooper Alexander’s “An Introduction to Class Action Procedure in the United States.”

Undertaking a venture like coordinating a class action is beyond the resources of this writer, but anyone with the gumption to try and transform words into action is welcome to post a notice here.

Placing a notice on an e-petition like “Stop False Allegations of Domestic Violence” would be of limited value, because it would recede into the archives in a couple of days. Mining the petition for names, however, could be rewarding, because some respondents include their telephone numbers and email addresses along with their stories. Using Facebook and Twitter would be the most potentially profitable tacks.

The intrepid social activist would besides do well to contact the likes of A Voice for Men, and put out the word. Any group or hub that represents the interests of people with similar complaints should be notified.

Professors who’ve written about the particular rights abuses a class action would seek to redress, particularly law professors, might also be recruited to provide amicus briefs to the court (authoritative opinions that lend support).

Abuses of the sorts this blog and related sites concern have persisted without check for decades. Even prompts for others to take action are still just words.

Someone has to step forward and attempt to translate thought into action. Is that person you?

Feminist Response Invited: Mom Gives up after Spending $25,000 to Fight a False Restraining Order and Regain Custody of Her Son Only to Have Her Ex-Husband Start the Whole Thing over Again

October 4, 2014January 29, 2018Moderator 4 Comments

Feminists who identify with the “battered women’s movement” (the domestic violence lobby) insist fathers’ claims that women lie about abuse are false or overblown. This writer wonders whether they feel the same about mothers’ claims that men lie about abuse.

Here’s one mom’s account (submitted yesterday):

My ex-husband’s family just filed their second bogus restraining order against me to overturn custody of our 13-year-old. The first one, three years ago, I spent three months and $25,000 to fight, and got my son back. This one? I promised myself not to fight if they tried again, and I didn’t and lost today in court. They upheld the emergency order of protection and extended a restraining order against me for no contact with my own son for nothing I did at all—for two years. My son wants to be with them, so I’m not fighting. I just don’t want him to grow up thinking I did anything wrong and that’s why they took him from me. I don’t need to lose any more money and get fired from any more jobs trying to fight…. I’m done.

Restraining orders suck when used for ulterior motives. Unfortunately, they’re used to legally kidnap children, and I wish anyone who’s going through what I’m going through strength and health.

For those who don’t know how an “emergency order of protection” works, it’s this simple: the petitioner goes to court and files some allegations (“under oath”) that the defendant has to respond to a few days later. Typically the window to respond is far too narrow to make it possible for a defendant to retain legal counsel even if she weren’t resigned to defeat, as the mom whose story appears above was (after running up $25,000 in costs fighting a previous prosecution, losing jobs, and possibly being emotionally harried to the brink of insanity).

Feminists are encouraged to respond to this mom’s story, whether with sympathy or criticism. The court process she’s a victim of isn’t one this writer condones. Let’s hear from some people who do condone it.

This writer is tired and has no words of solace. The mother whose story this post concerns is prohibited contact with her son for two years, which may mean she’ll never have a normal, healthy relationship with him again.

Feminists out there—and I know you’re out there—are invited to remind her why this is as it should be.

Perhaps you could tell her how the courts never swallow lies, so she must be lying. Perhaps you could tell her how a process comprising two hearings mere days apart, a process that’s initiated and concluded in minutes, is fair and just. Perhaps you could reassure her that her sacrifice is ensuring the protection of abused women she’ll never meet. Don’t, however, let me put words in your mouths.

Ladies?

A Circle of Moms Reports on False Allegations to CPS (and Says the Same Things That Father’s Groups Say about the Abuse of Restraining Orders and Domestic Violence Laws)

September 16, 2014March 22, 2018Moderator 7 Comments

Here’s a group of women on a forum for mothers with school-aged kids responding to a conversational prompt that deserves the attention of those who believe false allegations made out of spite are rare and that the report of such allegations is overblown and only originates from father’s rights groups (or what one notable polemicist calls “FRGs”).

“Has someone ever called CPS on you out of spite? Have you called on someone? Why?”

Not surprising to this writer, a number of respondents commented in the affirmative. Also worthy of note in this context is that the site FightCPS.com is authored by a woman.

Here are a few of the topmost comments on the Circle of Moms thread:

Yes, twice I’ve had CPS called on me out of spite. Both times a social worker came to my house. I had nothing to hide, so I let them in and they both said, “I can’t tell you who called us, but I can tell you this is absolutely ludicrous for us to even come to your house, because we can’t find a single thing wrong. Sounds like a false allegation to me.” I was like, “I know, right. Thank you.” They couldn’t tell me who called, but I already knew who was behind it. The person who did it was just mad because I wouldn’t pay them money I didn’t even owe! This person was my babysitter, who is the most manipulative, money hungry witch. I just didn’t know it until now.

[M]y mom and sister have been calling and making false accusations about me ever since I told them they’re not my children’s mom—I am. They thought they were just going to tell me how to [rear my] kids, and I told them both, sorry about your luck, I’m their mom, and that’s final. I’ve never gotten a break from CPS since. Especially because my mom didn’t raise us—we did ourselves. And then she thought she was going to take mine and my husband’s first daughter and raise her as her [own] to try to fix mistakes that couldn’t be fixed. UH-UH, she wasn’t getting my daughter. Not till she called my sick, demented sister in to plot against me for 16 years and stole my life, my soul, my heart, my babies. Don’t trust no one.

The person [who] called them on me and my two children knew my mom was very sick and did not have much time to live. My mom died four days ago. Six days before she died, CPS came out. The person who called them on me wanted to add even more pain to my life—and fear. I went and picked up the report. It said [no] on every one of the allegations. I think CPS should let you know who called so you can file a lawsuit. I mean, if they do not do anything, then we should have a choice. We should have the right to know so we can stay away from those who called on us. It should be up to us to tell CPS to press charges or let us do it ourselves, and if we do not know who did call, then we have not got the right kind of privacy or peace throughout our lives.

According to a brochure published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Children’s Bureau:

Approximately 29 States carry penalties in their civil child protection laws for any person who willfully or intentionally makes a report of child abuse or neglect that the reporter knows to be false. In New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the Virgin Islands, making false reports of child maltreatment is made illegal in criminal sections of State code.

Nineteen states and the Virgin Islands classify false reporting as a misdemeanor or similar charge. In Florida, Illinois, Tennessee, and Texas, false reporting is a felony, while in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Virginia, second or subsequent offenses are upgraded to felonies.

In Michigan, false reporting can be either a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the seriousness of the alleged abuse in the report. No criminal penalties are imposed in California, Maine, Montana, Minnesota, and Nebraska; however, immunity from civil or criminal action that is provided to reporters of abuse or neglect is not extended to those who make a false report.

Eleven States and the Virgin Islands specify the penalties for making a false report. Upon conviction, the reporter can face jail terms ranging from 90 days to 5 years or fines ranging from $500 to $5,000. Florida imposes the most severe penalties: In addition to a court sentence of 5 years and $5,000, the Department of Children and Family Services may fine the reporter up to $10,000. In six States, the reporter may be civilly liable for any damages caused by the report.

Based on the anecdotal reports in the referenced Circle of Moms thread, consider how likely it is any of the reported mischief was ever prosecuted. This kind of sniping, which is impossible to fend off, exactly corresponds to that perpetrated by abusers of the restraining order process, which is also exempted from the exacting standards of police and judicial scrutiny that are supposed to be applied when allegations have criminal overtones or can lead to serious privations or criminal consequences.

The women responding in this forum aren’t “anti-feminists,” and they’re certainly not motivated to report malicious exploitation of state process because they’re “for” child abuse: They’re moms.

Yet despite that under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), billions of dollars have been invested over the past 20 years toward conditioning authorities and the courts to take allegations of violence and abuse on faith, when fathers allege identical exploitation of restraining orders and domestic violence laws according to the spiteful motives alleged by the mothers cited in this post, they’re dismissed as cranks by feminists and their partisans.

Disinterested parties and feminist sympathizers are urged to recognize that if mothers and fathers are saying the same things, then the claim that allegations of procedural abuses are nothing more than the baseless rants of angry men is flatly wrong.

Restraining Orders Based on Fraud Falsely Imprison Defendants Whether They’re Incarcerated or Not

June 25, 2014February 15, 2018Moderator Leave a comment

“Forensic psychiatrists and other mental health professionals must remember that although allegations are often genuine, there is an almost equal number of cases…in which they are not. Complete and objective assessment is always required, and especially so when accusations emerge in contexts such as the following:

Certain kinds of mental illness and character traits (particularly in allegations against clinicians). One should note poor doctor-patient relationships, whether real or perceived, patients with psychotic or delusional symptoms, certain hysterical and factitious disorders, some fragmenting or dissociative disorders, and those with substantial borderline, inadequate, and/or passive personality traits
Divorce proceedings
Child custody proceedings
Situations with the potential for substantial financial reward
Situations in which the accuser has an emotional or characterological reason to avoid discovery, prosecution, or confrontation with legal (or parental) authority (e.g., those with antisocial personality traits, some substance abusers)
A history of repeated past allegations, particularly if they have not been fully investigated
Unusual timing of the accusation or alleged event (e.g., alleged ‘date rape’ within an otherwise close and stable relationship, or accusations made only when some sort of secondary purpose or reward is evident).”

—“False Allegations: The Role of the Forensic Psychiatrist”

The previous post called attention to an excerpt from a story featured in The Times of Malta this month that concluded that incidences of false allegations weren’t “one-offs,” meaning they’re not singular occurrences but more common than the public imagines.

The lawyers quoted by reporter, what’s more, refer to criminal cases in which sexual abuse is alleged and, consequently, in which the accused are afforded attorney representation.

By contrast, civil restraining order hearings are mere minutes long, defendants aren’t afforded counsel, and fraud is typically ignored by the court even if it’s perceived. There is, therefore, no accurately determining the pervasiveness or degree of lying in such adjudications.

Many authoritative sources conclude it’s rampant, and anecdotal reports concur.

The application process for restraining orders is typically free, it’s concluded in an afternoon if not within minutes, and there are no consequences for lying. Why, then, shouldn’t the process be broadly and routinely abused?

To believe that such a process wouldn’t be abused would depend on an unshakably naïve conviction in the inherent goodness of people, and such a belief would determine the process unnecessary. Anyone who believes people are capable of beastly behavior and that restraining orders are necessary—take, for example, feminists—must believe people are capable of lying hurtfully to get them.

Exposing the flaws in the belief that anyone who points a finger must necessarily be telling the truth doesn’t take a professor of philosophy.

Consider, then, that allegations made in civil court may be identical to those introduced against defendants in criminal court—and can include rape, child molestation, or even murder. The only difference between civil and criminal rulings is legal consequence.

This is the source of the cognitive disconnect exemplified by judges and, largely, everyone else. Because civil restraining orders only threaten incarceration rather than mandate it, they’re considered “no biggie.”

The conceit is that though falsely accused restraining order defendants may be denied access to their homes, money, property, and children—besides facing other privations—they aren’t denied their freedom; it’s only curtailed somewhat (“Here are your shoes—you’re free to leave”).

Faith in the conceit that restraining orders are minor impingements on defendants’ lives depends on accepting that being falsely, publically, and permanently labeled a stalker or batterer, for example, shouldn’t interfere with a person’s comfort, equanimity, or ability to realize his or her dreams. Such faith is founded, in other words, on the fantastical belief that wrongful vilification won’t exercise a detrimental influence on a person’s mental state, won’t affect his or her familial and social relationships, won’t negatively impact his or her employment and employability, etc.

Clearly such faith is beyond unreasonable; it’s inane. Being forced to live with false allegations can be crippling—for painfully obvious reasons. Whether a person is forced to agonize in a cell or is permitted to agonize in his or her place of choice is of scant significance to the psycho-emotional well-being of the sufferer. Prison isn’t just an environment, and arresting someone doesn’t require handcuffs.

Eight Years of Hell: On the Toll of False Allegations of Abuse

June 22, 2014August 8, 2023Moderator Leave a comment

“Bitter separation battles and unrequited love are among the reasons why people falsely accuse others of sexual abuse, according to legal professionals.

“Lawyers contacted by The Sunday Times of Malta came across several examples of cases when people, often women, made false claims that they or their children had been abused.

“Lawyer Roberto Montalto gave the example of one situation where a woman claimed her children were abused by her husband’s colleague.

“The case dragged on for eight years and the man was acquitted after the court found that the woman lied….”

—“False Abuse Accusations Not One-Offs, Say Lawyers”

To read the rest of this story, published just a couple of weeks ago, you have to subscribe to The Times of Malta. I can guess the remainder’s content, as I know many men and women who’ve visited this site can.

This excerpt is highlighted, because even today most people are under the impression that instances of false allegations’ being made repeatedly in protracted legal assaults are rare and isolated occurrences.

As attorneys and others attest, they’re not. Only hearing about them is.

Among the reasons why restraining orders are criticized on this site and elsewhere is that they’re superlative and intoxicating gateway fixes for spiteful accusers bent on gratifying malicious impulses. They can be obtained in a few hours—even a few minutes—based on allegations that require no substantiation and that are subjected to a minimum of scrutiny, if any at all.

They’re easily exploited to establish claims that can then be parlayed into interminable attacks.

False criminal allegations suggestive of sexual or violent deviancy—e.g., stalking, sexual harassment or molestation, and domestic abuse—can be just as effective and for the same reasons. The hysteria promoted by the abuse industry and the political influence it has bent to its “cause” have conditioned police, municipal prosecutors, and judges to credit allegations of abuse automatically (especially ones from women).

Eight years—that’s the term in hell the man in the epigraph had to endure before it was apparently demonstrated that the whole ordeal was based on lies: eight years lost for nothing. Nothing. More horrible yet is that the only thing that makes this story exceptional is that the fraudulent accuser was eventually exposed and acknowledged as such.

Eight years is a Ph.D. Eight years is a career. Eight years is a son or daughter’s childhood.

TALKING BACK to restraining orders

THEY’RE NOT JUST ABUSED BUT ABUSIVE

Tag false allegations of child abuse