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Restraining Orders Are Not Solutions People Should Be Told They Can Stake Their Lives On

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A couple of weeks ago, a correspondent of mine, whose brother is in the service, brought my attention to a National Review story that underlines the sort of political contradictions that are bound to drive any thinking person up the wall.

It’s about a 39-year-old hairdresser, Carol Browne, who “had become increasingly nervous about her ex-boyfriend. Convinced that he intended to do her physical harm, she took out a restraining order, had security cameras installed at her home, and purchased an alarm system.”

She also applied for a permit to buy a gun, which she should have received (or at least had some word about) within a month. About six weeks after her application, she was stabbed to death in her driveway.

Defending his tardiness, the local police chief explained that the application process usually takes more than two months, and that when Bowne died, his team was still waiting for her fingerprints to be processed. Perhaps so. But this should serve as no acceptable excuse. By state law, New Jersey is required to get back to permit petitioners within 30 days. It didn’t.

It almost never does. Instead, would-be gun owners report waiting for three, four, six, and even nine months for permission to exercise what the Second Amendment makes clear is an unalienable individual right. The rules do not apply to the government.

Sure, the story makes a good case for easing restrictive firearm policies (or at least making them no more restrictive than the law prescribes), but what it saliently stresses is that liberal/feminist perspectives and the public safety policies they coerce are incoherent. Easy access to restraining orders is fiercely defended, and domestic and sexual violence are promoted as “epidemic.” Complainants of “whatever” are emboldened to represent their situations as dire and seek state protections. It’s estimated that millions of these orders are dispensed every year, and violence is the justification—and violence is always implicit in judicial rulings in this arena of law.

At the same time, the most obvious deterrents to violence, guns, are denounced—also in accordance with party positions. Okay, but which is it? Are multitudes of people in immediate danger…or aren’t they? Are their needs desperately important…or aren’t they?

(What wonder if police officers exhibit a degree of cynicism?)

Corollary to millions of restraining orders’ being granted to people is that millions of restraining orders are issued to people, and those people are publicly represented as threats. If they’re not really regarded as threats, then this is wrong. If they are regarded as threats, then there are a lot of people at risk, and denying them the means to defend themselves is wrong.

What the story in this post emphasizes above all is that restraining orders aren’t armor; they can’t live up to their promises and may enrage violent aggressors to extremity.

The perspectives outlined above persist in spite of obvious and outrageous contradictions because the leftist ideologues who hold them don’t get falsely accused…or stabbed to death in their driveways on their way to restock their larders with croissants and cat litter.

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

False Accusations and Murder: More Headlines about the Effects of Finger-Pointing and Legal Abuse

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“[W]hy would someone lie about being sexually assaulted? What could be gained from that? Nothing, really.”

—Tracie Egan Morrissey, Jezebel (Feb. 28, 2014)

The quotation above derives from a piece titled, “Rape, Lies and the Internet: The Story of Conor Oberst and His Accuser.” It’s spotlighted because it echoes the sentiment expressed by the writer of the prior post’s epigraph, who’s also a feminist and who betrays the same blindness.

What’s disturbing to the author of the blog you’re reading is that feminists who ask questions like Ms. Morrissey’s make a strong case for rape denial, because it might just as unreasonably be asked, “Why would someone sexually assault anyone? What could be gained from that?”

What could be “gained” from raping someone is the same thing that could be “gained” from lying about being raped—or lying about any number of other offenses: the exultation of control (i.e., power, dominance).

Other reasons for lying suggested by Ms. Morrisey’s own reportage are attention-seeking, self-aggrandizement, and mythomania. There have also been a number of publicized cases about false rape accusations’ being used for concealment of sexual infidelity. Two hyperlinks in this post lead to stories exemplifying this motive. Of course (and significantly), none of these motives applies exclusively to false rape claims. Besides avarice and malice, they’re common motives among false accusers (of all types). People hurt people…to hurt people. Appetites, least of all vicious ones, don’t answer to sense.

The previous post emphasized the emotional trauma of accusation, particularly false accusation, by highlighting a number of suicides reported in the news.

Suicide is a recognized consequence of bullying; name-calling and public humiliation are recognized as among the forms that bullying takes; and falsely branding someone a stalker, rapist, child abuser, or killer, for example, certainly qualifies as publicly humiliating name-calling.

Whether someone is disparaged on the playground, on Facebook, in a courtroom, or in the headlines makes absolutely no difference; the effect is the same, and it may be unbearable.

This stuff shouldn’t need to be pointed out to grown-ups. But since the fatal consequences of false accusation don’t support any dominant political agendas—and may undermine them—they’re ignored. That people are harried and hectored by lies, sometimes to death, is an inconvenient truth.

At least it is here. Many of the news clippings featured in the last post notably originate from the U.K., as do two of the clippings below. Journalism is far more balanced there, and it’s less taboo to call a jade a jade. A Jezebel reporter might denounce this as “misogynistic,”  but truth isn’t misogynistic; it’s just the truth, and it doesn’t play favorites (nor should its purveyors).

This post looks at the other lethal upshot of false accusation: murder. The stories that follow are about people who existed and now do not.

The point of introducing these stories isn’t to assert incidents like these are common; the point is to reveal the emotions that are inspired by false accusations, whether by women, by men, or by mobs. It’s also to reveal their consequences…writ large and lurid. These same emotions are aroused in cops and judges no less than they are in anyone else. False accusers know what reactions they can expect, and they know how to manipulate their audience—and bending others to do their will is thrilling.

Nothing makes the emotions provoked by accusation more manifest than when accusation inspires others to beat someone to death—or set him ablaze.

This is nevertheless typically lost on reporters and their viewers and readers. The details that are stressed and eagerly sought are who got it, and how. Why, which is always the more speculative aspect, is in its broader implications the most important one, however.

Gore is sexy. It’s what gets airplay and column space. It’s an attention-grabber and a ratings booster. Nothing draws the eye like the color red.

What sensation eclipses, though, is that for every false accusation that ends in red, thousands or hundreds of thousands end in gray, an interminable state of disquiet, disease, and dolor.

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*Jezebel, if I’m remembering my Bible stories right, was a mass murderer who was condemned for promoting a false dogma. (Among her victims was a man she had judicially executed.)

STINKIER: Not Only Do the Courts Toss Most Restraining Order Petitions, a Lot of the Ones That Are Finalized Are Later Withdrawn by Their Petitioners

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stinkier
A couple available rejection rates for restraining order petitions filed with the courts were scrutinized in the last post. Those rates, based on news reports out of Colorado (1998) and Connecticut (2014) were high: roughly 82% (lowball calculation) and 72%, respectively. That’s how many restraining order petitions may be denied or dismissed by our courts. They’re either rejected at first glance, or they’re preliminarily approved and then vacated on review.

They’re judged to be stinky.

Yesterday, I came across this: “Many abuse victims request protection orders then have them dismissed” (March 26, 2015). How many? Almost half (in the cited county, anyhow).

The headline and slant of the story pain me, and I’m compelled to comment on them before broaching the meat of the article.

Note that the typical journalistic bias is in evidence: accusers are termed “abuse victims.” This bias accounts significantly for why the bad odor of the restraining order process is obscured. It stinks, too—of Glade aerosol.

My criticism may seem cold—many accusers assuredly are abuse victims—but a journalist’s brief is to report what he’s investigated, and it’s a safe bet that the “many abuse victims” referenced in the headline aren’t people whose cases the writer looked into. At all. He assumes they’re “abuse victims,” apparently because why else would they have claimed to be?

This is smelly news reporting, and Journalism 101 urges a revision: “Many who are granted protection orders then have them dismissed.” There’s a difference, and the journalist who doesn’t discern that difference is in the wrong line of work.

The writer also begins his story with an account of a woman who’d obtained a protection order against her husband only to be subsequently shot to death by that husband. Then the reader is informed:

Though [the homicide victim] had not asked for her protection order to be dismissed, many other victims do and some of them end up coming back and asking for additional protection orders.

In other words, the reported tragedy has absolutely nothing to do with people who “request protection orders then have them dismissed.” I studied journalism in high school under the tutelage of a man who was the real deal, so lurid and careless journalism offends me.

What do we know from what’s related by Matt Elofson, the crime and courts reporter for Alabama’s Dothan Eagle? We know people apply for restraining orders, get them, and then reconsider (and sometimes re-reconsider). And we know that one person, who never reconsidered the restraining order she was granted, was fatally shot (possibly as a consequence of seeking the state’s protection). These are facts; the rest is rhetoric and specious connections, which are journalistic no-nos.

The reportage of Mr. Elofson’s that isn’t corrupt, however, is telling.

Roughly 40 percent of the petitions for protection from abuse filed in Houston County over the past year were dismissed upon request of the victim.

Houston County Circuit Clerk Carla Woodall said 223 petitions for protection from abuse were filed in Houston County from March 2014 to March of this year. She said 90 of the 223 petitions were later dismissed upon request by the victim.

For “victim,” substitute “petitioner” (pretend, in other words, that it’s a news story that’s been quoted) and then note that it says nearly half of orders that are approved and finalized are afterwards withdrawn by their petitioners.

Nearly half.

Here’s what a journalist (somewhere, someday) should observe: Most restraining orders are denied or dismissed by our courts, and an arresting proportion of those that aren’t denied or dismissed are withdrawn. That’s a whole lot of “sound and fury signifying nothing” except a whole lot of misery for a whole lot of accused people.

This, furthermore, ignores that a majority of orders that are approved and not withdrawn may be false.

We’re not allowed to call the restraining order process a farce, because—as Mr. Elofson reminds us—sometimes people who procure restraining orders are legitimately at risk.

How, though, does Mr. Elofson remind us that restraining orders are necessary and vital to the protection of women? He reminds us by citing an instance in which a restraining order may have gotten its petitioner killed.

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Inciting Violence: If Lawmakers Require a Compelling Motive for Restraining Order Reform, How about This One?

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I examined a case, recently, of a man’s committing murder hours after being accused to the police. My familiarity with the case was, admittedly, shallow; I only had what was reported to go on (and that from a single, “raw” source). I have, however, heard from scores of people who’ve been accused—or scorned for telling the truth—in drive-thru restraining order proceedings, and expressions of fury have been more than a few.

This week, I shared an email by a highly educated, professional woman and mother of three young children that expresses an “almost homicidal enmity” catalyzed by procedural abuses. Note the elevated diction she uses to describe an impulse to bash, throttle, and gouge. Does her vaulted language indicate she “doesn’t really mean it”? No, it indicates how alien rage is to her character. It indicates she’s someone who shouldn’t have cause to feel this way.

Consider: How is it the police and the courts recognize the propensity for violence that interpersonal conflicts mediated by the “justice system” may arouse, but lawmakers don’t? Are they that “in the dark”?

Yeah, pretty much.

If you get into a spat with your neighbor, and the police intervene, parties are separated into corners. In court, complainants even merely of “fear” may be shielded by law officers in anticipation of a judicial ruling. It’s understood that emotions run hot in this theater.

Why, then, is it not appreciated that when the basis for rulings is false, the risk of violence is not only higher but infinite?

We like our games, and we like our fictions about how people should be and should feel and should react even if you trash their lives maliciously. Hey, we’re disposed to remind, it’s the law.

All well and good until somebody gets an ax in the ear—an edgy remark, maybe; honesty often strikes us that way (i.e., like an ax in the ear).

The wonder is that more people who lie to the courts don’t meet premature ends—or at least sustain some anatomical remodeling. False accusations, which have inspired a great deal of sententious deliberation in recent months, don’t just “discomfort” people or make them “justifiably [and transiently] angry.” At the risk of being edgy again: People who haven’t been falsely accused in a legal procedure don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. I was collegiately trained as a literary analyst—I’ve studied and taught Victorian literature—and I’m normally more disciplined in my remarks, but this subject rebukes gentility.

Liars maim. That they do it with words in no way mitigates the brutality of the act or its consequences.

One would think that as people mature and progress through life, that they would stop behaviors of their youth. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Sadly, adults can be bullies, just as children and teenagers can be bullies. While adults are more likely to use verbal bullying as opposed to physical bullying, the fact of the matter is that adult bullying exists. The goal of an adult bully is to gain power over another person, and make himself or herself the dominant adult. They try to humiliate victims, and “show them who is boss” (BullyingStatistics.org, “Adult Bullying”).

StopBullying.gov defines bullying as including name-calling, taunting, threatening, spreading rumors about someone, and embarrassing someone in public. Falsely labeling someone a stalker, child abuser, violent danger, or sexual deviant in one or more public trials whose findings are impressed on the target’s permanent record and are accompanied by menacing threats (if not immediate punishment) plainly qualifies. Among identified effects of bullying are suicide (“bullycide”) and violence, including murder. “Extreme emotional disturbance” is a defense for murder in some states (a finding that doesn’t excuse the act but does lighten the sentence), and a related murder defense is “provocation.”

Sure, character assassination is bloodless. What of it? If I circulate lies about someone and s/he snaps, I’m a bully, and I had it coming. Few people would say otherwise.

Ah, but if I lie and use the law as my medium to insult, demean, badger, intimidate, or otherwise persecute—hey, that’s different. I’m the “good guy.”

So suck it. And keep on sucking it, because the public record says my lies are the truth. Neener-neener.

A system that represents its purpose to be the curtailment of violence shouldn’t be promoting it by pandering to bullies, even “unofficially,” and its officers shouldn’t be serving as those bullies’ lieutenants and enforcers. If the system makes it easy to lie about and humiliate people, doesn’t hold liars accountable, and furthermore punishes the falsely accused based on lies, then it’s promoting violence.

This shouldn’t require social science research to corroborate. It shouldn’t even require this analyst’s observation.

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Games That Kill: Sex, the “Justice System,” Accusal, Restraining Orders, and “the News”

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“‘She likes playing the little mind games too,’ he remarked. ‘She’s not quite as innocent as she makes it out to be.’”

—A Texas man to the police, 16 hours before he killed his girlfriend and himself

The headline reads, “Texas man threatens girlfriend 7 times in a month, then kills her hours after she begs police for help.” The story, however, isn’t so cut-and-dried.

According to Raw Story reporter David Edwards,

33-year-old Heather Coglaiti went to the Corpus Christi Police Department (CCPD) to report that her on-again-off-again boyfriend, José Calderon, had threatened to hurt her, and had slashed her car tires.

While Coglaiti was speaking with officers, Calderon called her cellphone, and he agreed to come in to the station to give his side of the story.

That was February 2, 2015. Coglaiti and Calderon were dead less than a day later. Evidence confirms Calderon shot her, then himself.

“CCPD records showed incidents between the couple going back to January of 2014—including seven death threats and other incidents last month,” Raw Story reports.

It also reports these statements made by Mr. Calderon to the police on the 2nd:

“We’ve done this a lot through the whole two years. We go back and forth, we’ll fight like this and she knows I won’t punch her but she punches the hell out of me in the face and she’ll bite, do whatever,” he said.

“She said, ‘I’m so scared you’re gonna kill me,’” Calderon admitted during the interview. “I’ve never said that out of my mouth.”

“Never do I ever threaten this lady. Never,” he insisted. “I don’t know why she says this and that.”

Raw Story relates the facts, and it relates them almost as a news source should: objectively. Mr. Edwards, the reporter, might properly have said, however, of the “seven death threats and other incidents” (and earlier “incidents”) that they were “alleged” or “reported.” Plainly from Mr. Calderon’s statements to the police, he didn’t put any death threats on paper and sign them; he says he never made any at all. So “alleged death threats and other incidents” is what the journalist should have written (even at the risk of the story’s sounding less “raw”). The headline reports a “Texas man threatens girlfriend 7 times in a month, then kills her.” That the Texas man’s girlfriend is dead by his hand is forensically ascertainable, more or less; that the Texas man threatened his girlfriend seven times in a month is not.

This isn’t pettifoggery. Distinctions like this aren’t minor, and they betray how we interpret allegations: We believe they must be true. Objectivity, if not skepticism, though, is the journalist’s brief, not credulity.

Credulity is especially prone to kick in if it seems warranted by later circumstances, for example, a homicide. Nevertheless, there’s no tweezing out whether Ms. Coglaiti’s reports to the police were accurate, and there’s no knowing what influence they may have had on Mr. Calderon’s actions.

A murderer isn’t given the benefit of the doubt. Significantly, however, neither is anyone else. Accusations are taken at face value (particularly accusations of threats or violence made by women against men).

We discount the effect that allegation and scrutiny have on the mind, and discounting that effect may have cost a woman her life. Not only must it be acknowledged that “the system” failed to protect a complainant of fear; it must be owned that use and abuse of “the system” affects the mental state of the accused, as it may well have in this case.

It may be harsh to ask why a woman who had alleged she’d been threatened with death seven times in a month and who had reported other incidents to the police over the course of a year hadn’t relocated and changed her phone number. But the scrupulous thinker must wonder.

Dogma has it that it’s wrong to second-guess “the victim.” Who was or wasn’t a victim of what in this case, however, is probably something no one will ever conclusively know.

The scrupulous thinker must ask himself why a man who intended to commit murder would voluntarily submit to police questioning, and what might it suggest that he committed murder less than a day later?

Did he avert suspicion just long enough to carry out his fell plot, or was he pushed further than he could tolerate? One interpretation certainly jibes better with PC dogma. Is the former, though, really likelier than the latter?

Raw Story’s reportage ends:

At a press conference on Tuesday, CCPD officials said that they did all that they could do to protect Coglaiti under state and federal laws.

CCPD Criminal Investigative Division Captain Hollis Bowers explained that victims were often frustrated by the legal system.

“The law not only gives us authority, but it restricts our authority so the system works in a very methodical way,” Bowers said. “Victims need to understand that when [we] start to suggest that you leave your home or your job, it’s for immediate safety, not because the legal system needs that.”

He pointed out that an emergency protective order requires “a certain level of violence.”

“So a protective order can’t be—criminal mischief, for instance, will not reach a level where somebody can get a protective order,” Bowers noted. “It requires violence at a certain level. It is issued by a judge.”

Two things, finally, are worthy of remark. First, those who induce people to trust that “the system” may be relied upon to protect them from threat mislead them and may be to blame for harm they subsequently, if not consequently, come to. Second, if Mr. Calderon’s intentions were what they’ve been represented to be, the issuance of a “protective order” against him would probably have led to the same tragic end.

“The system” fails not because it isn’t stringent enough; it fails because the premises for its reasoning are bad.

Casualties like Ms. Coglaiti are eagerly offered up by advocates as corroborations that stiffer laws are required. The facts of her death and the value of her life are conveniently exploited, even as they’re conveniently forgotten.

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com