What False Accusation and Rape Have in Common

December 13, 2015March 11, 2018Moderator 2 Comments

Rape is a crime that has become a totem for many. Its invocation impoverishes all other violations of significance and accordingly authorizes violations that would not otherwise be tolerated, like lying about abuse to authorities and the courts. That rape occurs and that it’s an ineffably vicious act aren’t questions but facts. They are urgent facts, but their denial of other urgent facts is wrong. Those who zealously defend the criminal primacy of violence against women, to the exclusion of all other considerations, eagerly discover callousness in any who question the consequences of unchecked violence rhetoric, and the selfsame “advocates of sensitivity” dictate how victims of false accusation are “allowed” to feel.

These fish, caught in nets intended to trap shrimp, are called “bycatch.” For every shrimp that’s caught, there are as many as 20 casualties. The unintended victims are not released; they’re left to suffocate and rot (in the interest of economy).

There’s a reflex that’s triggered in a lot of people’s minds when you juxtapose the word rape with the phrase false accusation. The reason is basic.

Violence rhetoric has spawned laws that are like fishing nets: They snare anything that blunders into them, whether it’s what they were meant to catch or not. The intended and unintended targets of those laws are clubbed and gutted with the same zealous vigor and dispassion, and this conditions people who are railroaded through the system and stripped of everything on false, skewed, or exaggerated grounds to hate.

These people are predominately men, and they know they have decades of rampant violence rhetoric to thank for their loss of home, family, livelihood, and dignity. What’s more, civil complaints of legal abuses garner no attention except ridicule—and that, typically, from feminist quarters, which are also the source of the violence rhetoric that has engendered restraining order, domestic violence, family court, and child protection laws and policies that are billowy, careless, hyper-reactive, and easily exploited by the unscrupulous (and to dire effect).

This spurs aggressive counter-rhetoric, which is conveniently labeled “misogyny” and “rape denial,” particularly by the liberally biased, who accordingly react hysterically if rape and false accusation are compared. If you’re among those who decry “misogyny” and “rape denial,” look up the word etiology.

I’m not a misogynist, a rape-denier, or a liberal; I’m an analyst with no doctrinal loyalties. Rape and false accusation are not dissimilar, and I’ll tell you why.

Most victims of false accusation, like most rape victims, are known to their attackers, often intimately; so the act of false accusation, like the act of rape, is a particularly treacherous and personal assault.
Victims of false accusation, like victims of rape, are objectified; they’re denied their personhood and typecast according to a set of representations.
The false accuser, like the rapist, is guided by the will to dominate and subjugate; his or her motive is control (as is the court’s).
The falsely accused, like the rape victim, is denied his or her personal agency: S/he’s held down and forced to tolerate what’s inflicted upon him or her under threat of receiving worse.
The falsely accused, like the rape victim, consequently suffers distrust, insecurity, and the mental trauma (PTSD) that comes of having it confirmed that s/he has no control over his or her circumstances.
Like rapists, false accusers violate people because they can.
Finally, like rape victims, the falsely accused enjoy no expectation of justice.

How false accusation and rape differ is that the false accuser uses a proxy terrorist (the awesome power of the state), his or her crime is public (with all the humiliation that implies), its toll may be extravagant (the victim may be left with nothing), and besides enjoying no expectation of justice, the falsely accused enjoys no expectation of recognition or sympathy, either (and may be harried relentlessly and then expunged).

*Yes, false accusation is bloodless (discounting suicides and the rare murder), but so, too, can what we call “rape” be bloodless. If the significant distinction between rape and false accusation is that victims of the former are predominately female and victims of the latter predominately male, then we’re overdue for a reevaluation of what we call “equality” and “equity,” both of which are feminist watchwords.

Legal Abuse and “Learned Helplessness” (Including Commentary on the Mythical Value of “Taking the High Road”)

November 28, 2015June 24, 2023Moderator 4 Comments

“Learned helplessness is behavior typical of an organism (human or animal) that has endured repeated painful or otherwise aversive stimuli which it was unable to escape or avoid. After such experience, the organism often fails to learn escape or avoidance in new situations where such behavior would be effective. In other words, the organism seems to have learned that it is helpless in aversive situations, that it has lost control, and so it gives up trying. Such an organism is said to have acquired learned helplessness. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses may result from such real or perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation.”

—Wikipedia

I introduced this psychological theory to a judge in 2010 when I filed a lawsuit against a woman who falsely accused me to the police and multiple courts in 2006. The accusations began in March, and before the close of July, she had defrauded at least four judges.

To be falsely accused is bewildering; it savages the mind. To then learn that efforts to expose the truth are met by judges not with keen interest and probing questions but variably with mute indifference, scornful derision, and offhand dismissal—that’s to have it firmly impressed upon you that resistance is futile. Worse, it’s to learn that resistance compounds the frustration and pain.

The system isn’t on your side, and bucking it for many is just an invitation to be scourged afresh.

After attempting some direct appeals to people who, I reasoned, might care more about the truth than the court did (2007), then writing about the business online (2008), then employing an attorney to mediate a resolution (2009), all of which efforts were met with stony silence, I filed a lawsuit (on my own).

That was in 2010. By then, unknown to me, the statutes of limitation on the civil torts I alleged—fraud, false light, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress—had flown. My accuser’s attorney, with mock ingenuousness, wondered to the court why I hadn’t filed my suit in 2006, right after having had the court twice swat down my appeals.

I offered the explanation to the judge that people who go through this become conditioned to helplessness (or hopelessness), because process militates against the proposition that a claimant of abuse has engaged in deception. The righteous indignation and outrage of the wronged defendant gradually succumb to the inevitable conclusion that facts, truth, and reason are impotent against fraud and judicial bias. (The defendant lives besides under the constant menace of unwarranted arrest.)

I didn’t know I could prosecute a lawsuit on my own until a legal assistant told me so in 2009, which I also told the judge. I might have been motivated to find out sooner if I’d had the least faith that a judge would heed my testimony.

My accuser’s attorney disdained the explanation for my tardy filing as “self-diagnosis,” and the judge eagerly echoed his assessment and dismissed the case (the court’s interest is in economy, not truth or justice). What was another six months of my life? (Letters from a physician and a therapist, along with witness affidavits, including one from a former cop, made no difference.)

I wasn’t wrong, though. People who defy a rigged system—whether restraining order defendants, domestic violence defendants, or family court defendants—can be conditioned to helplessness, and many accordingly report experiencing posttraumatic stress (which fortifies their distrust and their aversion to further rude scrutiny and contemptuous treatment from the court).

A lesson to take from this is that the “high road” (i.e., trusting in facts, truth, and reason) is a detour to hell. If I had known in 2006 what I know today, I could have extricated myself from my accuser’s false accusations in five minutes by playing the game according to her rules, which were “whatever works.”

The studies from which the term “learned helplessness” emerged were studies of drowned rats and tortured dogs. Playing fair (or aspiring to saintliness by never uttering an ill word against your accuser) is noble, but nobly drowned is still drowned. If an accuser lies about you, denounce him or her as a liar. Similarly, if a process of law is bullshit, call it what it is.

Some respondents to this blog, even after they’ve been through the courthouse ringer, retain a beleaguered faith in ethics. They believe that if injustice is laid bare to a discerning audience by rhetorical appeals to reason and decency, this will spur change. “Our objective is to fix the problem, not the blame” was quoted in a recent comment.

The abstract and impersonal may be informative, but they don’t arouse curiosity, because they don’t inflame the passions; controversy does. Advocates of the “high road” eschew naming names, for example, because it’s aggressive. Avoidance of confrontation, however, accomplishes little and exemplifies “learned helplessness.” The “high road” is safe and tame, and it leads to a dead-end.

The reason restraining order abuse endures is that the abused are paralyzed by indecisiveness. They won’t knuckle down and demand that a flawed process be repealed.

Among people who’ve been damaged by fraudulent abuse of restraining orders and related civil court procedures that are supposed to protect the defenseless, you’ve got, for instance, your liberals who’ll defend the process on principle, because they insist it must be preserved to protect the vulnerable, and they’ll fence-sit just to spite conservatives who flatly denounce the process as a governmental intrusion that undermines family.

Liberals and women who identify with legitimately victimized women feel obligated to “negotiate the gray space” and acknowledge the pros and cons of “women’s law.”

Then you have people (of whatever political allegiance or none) who believe that if you eliminated procedural inequities and ensured that defendants’ due process rights were observed, the system would work fine.

Maybe they believe a process that allows a person in Nevada to mosey into a courthouse, fill out some forms, and accuse a person in Wyoming of “stalking” or “domestic violence,” necessitating that the person in Wyoming hustle him- or herself to Nevada to present a defense within the week, can be made fair, and maybe they don’t know that the same Nevadan can prosecute the same claim over and over against the same Wyomingite (three times, six times, a dozen times, or more).

Maybe they believe that appeals to public conscience will urge the passage of laws that require free legal counsel be provided to defendants.

This would mean that if, say, a million restraining orders are petitioned a year, and legal representation for each defendant in each case could be capped at $2,000 (which might translate to a feeble defense, anyway), state governments would be required to shell out $2,000,000,000 to make everything “fair and square.” But that’s not all. If government gave free representation to “abusers,” advocates for “victims” would demand the same for them. So your $2,000,000,000 would become $4,000,000,000.

That’s per annum. (Also, the hypothetical Wyomingite would still need to travel to Nevada, and who’s paying for that?)

Others believe that if lying (perjury) were prosecuted, that would straighten things out. The costs to prosecute what may be hundreds of thousands of liars a year might be less than $4,000,000,000…or it might not be. Too, how do you prove someone is lying about an emotional state, like “fear”? How do you prove an alleged event didn’t happen?

You can’t, not conclusively, which is what a criminal prosecution requires.

More say appeal to your senator, to the president, to the press…nicely and cogently. They follow a utopian faith that basic decency will prevail if “the problem” is exposed.

As a rhetorical stance, the position has its merits. It suggests calmness and rationality, and calmness and rationality should recommend attention from others. “We’re calm and rational,” proponents of the position imply, “so when we say there’s a problem in need of fixing, it’s calmness and rationality speaking, not anger.”

The limitation is that no one who needs to be convinced has a motive to listen. No one can be made to care about abstractions like equity and due process when in the other ear they’re being cited statistics about epidemic violence.

Everything to do with the law is adversarial. If you seek to revise it without being personal or confrontational, the soonest you can expect a just reward is in the afterlife.

Protesters march on a SlutWalk in Newcastle

*Splendid writers, particularly Cathy Young, have responsibly and lucidly exposed “the problem” for 20 years in major news outlets. The system has responded with statutes that are broader, laxer, and more punishing.

Understanding the Significance of False Accusations in Restraining Order and Related “Trials”

September 23, 2015March 18, 2018Moderator 4 Comments

Misperception of the significance of false accusations is a topic that’s been considered in past posts on this blog, particularly false accusations of sexual assault, which are the only false accusations anyone seems to believe are deserving of mention.

It’s wrong to say that the nature of false accusations doesn’t matter. But more relevant to observing corruption than a consideration of what is alleged is a consideration of how it’s alleged and decided.

Imagine if special courts were convened to judge accused people of a certain type, and imagine if the normal standards of evidence applied to allegations that may impute criminal wrongdoing to them were suspended. Imagine if instead of having to prove they had done what they were accused of, it were enough for a single judge (absent a jury) to “determine” upon a few minutes’ deliberation that the allegations were probably true and sufficiently urgent to merit the court’s intrusion.

These are among recent search terms that brought readers to this site.

If the accused people of a certain type were Jews or African-Americans, for instance, we would denounce these special courts to be an abomination. This kind of discrimination would raise our hackles.

Yet such special courts exist. Restraining order allegations are decided exactly this way, as may be allegations of domestic violence or rape, allegations that can also be made on restraining order petitions. There is nothing that can’t be alleged on a restraining order petition. Yet nothing alleged must be verified.

Now the critic of complaints about the harm of false allegations will chime in at this point and say, yeah, but it’s not like the victim of false accusations decided in a kangaroo court will be served a felony conviction.

Yes…and no. The critic should ask him- or herself what kind of person would maliciously or self-servingly lie about stalking, sexual violation, or violence and then ask him- or herself whether it’s reasonable not to expect more and worse from such a person.

Subsequent false allegations can give people criminal records (possibly, again, without a jury’s ever having vetted the evidence). They can give people criminal records because of the prior lie. A person can find him- or herself deprived of everything, including liberty, based on a tissue of frauds.

My ex-husband used to batter me and then go crawling on his hands and knees through the neighborhood until he reached the hospital or police station, and he would claim I had attacked him. I’d be hysterical, and police would arrest me. This happened repeatedly. […] I was made homeless on multiple occasions. He would involve my family, his family, all of our friends, employers, and university professors, and I was always the bad guy and still am. […] They filed restraining orders against me and claimed I was a danger to everyone; kidnapped my son, my dogs; stole my car at one point; drained bank accounts, PayPal accounts; and sawed locks of my storage unit and took off with everything…and EVERY F[—]ING TIME, police just validated the abuse and continued to terrorize me.

To complicate matters, a ruling on a false accusation can criminalize lawful behavior. So a subsequent allegation against someone can be true, but the alleged behavior that lands him or her in jail might only have been unlawful because of the original false accusation.

She filed a PFA [protection from abuse order] against me in April of 2014. Several months later, I was charged [by the district attorney on two counts of] violating the PFA. (1) My wife read my private password-protected Facebook emails. I asked a friend to contact her ex-husband #2 and tell him what was going on between her and me (he lives in Mexico and was listed on the PFA as one of the people I could not contact). The friend I emailed didn’t contact her ex-husband. In fact, nobody contacted her ex-husband. (2) I drafted a letter to my wife and gave it to my lawyer. My lawyer in turn forwarded it to her lawyer. They claimed this was also a PFA violation. We went to court, and the judge agreed on both counts and sent me to jail for 30 days. [This commenter’s wife was a Mexican national whom he met in March 2013 (Match.com) and married a month later. The PFA was filed after he “got her and her children their immigration papers” and later told her he wanted to divorce her because the marriage was unsatisfactory.]

Appreciate that one false record can be invoked until the end of time. The superficial critic thinks that once a trial is concluded and the framed victim survives his or her licks, the matter is concluded.

Not so. Ignoring the psychological residue for the moment, if the victim of a false accusation is falsely accused a second time, it can now be alleged that s/he has a “history” or “pattern” of abusive behavior, which may influence a divorce or child custody proceeding, a lawsuit, or even a criminal prosecution.

Respondent [—] and Father have a history of domestic violence that includes, but may not be limited to, the issuance of temporary restraining orders in cases […] and the issuance of a permanent restraining order in case […] which was entered by default on January 16, 2015, placing the welfare of the Child at risk. [The “Father” in this case was married to his wife for a brief period before she left and then filed a number of allegations of violence, both with the police and the court, over the ensuing six months. She then committed suicide after being institutionalized. She gave birth to a daughter a couple of months prior whom she had told the father she had miscarried. The father was never heard by a court in his defense but has nevertheless been represented as a serial abuser by the district prosecutor, who has sought to deny him any role in his child’s life.]

Lies that stick…cling, and they can be recycled. Public records don’t expire, and court rulings that impute grave misdeeds, even if those rulings were formed in mere minutes, aren’t questioned. They’re as valid as any other ruling.

Lies that stick, moreover, are entered into public (police) databases, registries that throw up red flags…indefinitely. The person falsely accused of domestic violence, for instance, may be permanently barred from certain types of employment and even, say, from attending his or her daughter’s dance recitals at school.

Defendant was refused jobs, [is] not allowed to attend [or] volunteer [at] her daughter’s school events, [and has had] numerous other rights taken away due to Plaintiff’s Abuse of Process and Fraudulent Allegations and written Affidavit to the Court. This continues today. [This is an excerpt from the draft of a commenter’s “Motion to Expunge,” which she was preparing herself with no legal know-how.]

Again, privations endure permanently, for always, ad infinitum.

The liberal critic who declaims s/he’s for immigrant rights and for restraining orders should be aware that a non-citizen who’s falsely accused in a restraining order proceeding and then accused of violating an order obtained by fraud can be summarily booted from the country: Adios, muchachito (we don’t like your kind here).

Based on lies, people are deprived of their good names, their dignity, their children, their homes, their property, their livelihoods, and their security.

Finally, being lied about and then scorned by cops and lambasted by judges—these traumas last, and they last no less indefinitely than false records do. So on top of everything else, people may be driven out of their minds.

*Public records, besides being permanent, are also public records, and a lie that a judge legitimates is a lie that everyone else will regard as true (e.g., a neighbor, a boy- or girlfriend, a student, a patient, a client, an employer, a loan officer, a landlord….).

The Harmlessness of False Accusations

September 20, 2015July 30, 2023Moderator 7 Comments

What Do People Accused in Civil Court Have to Complain About?: Civil Prosecutions and PTSD

July 27, 2015June 24, 2023Moderator 2 Comments

“Contemplating, undergoing, or having undergone a lawsuit is disruptive. The experience saps energy and distracts the litigant from the normal daily preoccupations that we call ‘life.’ Litigants, who commonly feel alone, isolated, and helpless, are challenged to confront and manage the emotional burden of the legal process. The distress of litigation can be expressed in multiple symptoms: sleeplessness, anger, frustration, humiliation, headaches, difficulty concentrating, loss of self-confidence, indecision, anxiety, despondency: the picture has much in common with the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”

—Dr. Larry H. Strasburger (1999)

Prior posts on this blog have considered Legal Abuse Syndrome (LAS), a concept proposed by marriage and family therapist Karin Huffer that has been discounted by the courts as a “novel theory.” This post spotlights a journal monograph published almost 20 years ago by psychiatrist Larry H. Strasburger that unequivocally states Dr. Huffer isn’t wrong and the courts are.

Dr. Strasburger’s comments in “The Litigant-Patient: Mental Health Consequences of Civil Litigation” are based on his having treated the legally abused (who may include anyone who’s been exposed to litigation).

The therapist of a litigant will encounter not only the trauma that produced the lawsuit, but the distress and disruption of litigation as well, including the delays, rehashing and reliving the original trauma, and challenges to honesty and integrity. The patient may come after years of feeling frustrated and thwarted by a system that moves at a snail’s pace, preventing the litigant from putting the issue of the litigation behind him [or her] and “moving on” with life. Gutheil et al. have recently coined the term “critogenic harm” to describe these emotional harms resulting from the legal process itself.

The term “critogenic harm,” by its etymology, refers to the psychic damages that arise from judgment, i.e., the pain and humiliation of being verbally attacked and publicly disparaged.

This, the reader will note, is a blaring clinical denunciation of those self-appointed, armchair authorities who would deny the damages of false prosecution. Nearly two decades after the publication of the journal article this post examines, such deniers are everywhere, including in the mainstream press.

The deniers, according to the experts, are talking out of their blowholes. Mere accusation, ignoring the effects of protracted legal battles, drives some to suicide and multitudes more into agoraphobic withdrawal.

The adversarial system is also a threat to the maintenance of personal boundaries. Formal complaints, interrogatories, depositions, public testimony, and cross-examination are intrusive procedures that aggravate feelings previously caused by trauma. Such procedures amplify feelings that the world is an unsafe place, redoubling the litigant’s need to regain a sense of control—often in any way he or she can, including exhibiting characteristic symptoms or defenses. It is not unusual to find entries such as the following in the medical records of litigants: “Janet is hearing voices to cut herself again after talking to her lawyer today.” Similarly, a male plaintiff in a sexual harassment suit threatened violence when he was informed that he was to be deposed, and he required hospitalization.

Exposure to civil process can very literally drive people nuts, and inspire in them urges to commit violence, whether to themselves or others.

Consider Dr. Strasburger’s remarks in the context of restraining order abuse and appreciate that the strains they describe can be compounded by loss of residence (some defendants are left homeless), loss of family, loss of income, loss of employment/career, loss of property, etc. Those so deprived may accordingly become estranged from friends and relations, if not socially ostracized. (They must also live with the consciousness that they’re vulnerable to warrantless arrest at any time.)

Litigants are often further distressed as various members of their support systems “burn out.” Their need for human connection and their need to talk about their experience often exceed the tolerance of family members and friends. Embarrassment and humiliation shrink their social world.

That’s besides the discord and isolation caused by a damning accusation, which may be accepted as fact even by kith and kin. Loyalties may become divided, and the accused may be spurned based on allegations that aren’t true. The sources of outrage to the mind and emotions multiply like cancer cells.

It should come as no surprise then that many who complain of procedural abuse report they’re in therapy. If the costs weren’t prohibitive to most, they might all be. Desolating, as Dr. Strasburger points out, is that even if this were the case, the promise of “healing” isn’t necessarily good. The therapist’s role may be little more than cheerleader.

Psychotherapy for a patient involved in ongoing litigation can take on the aspects of managing a continuing crisis. The therapist, facing this need for crisis management, may be providing support more than insight.

Litigation (or its aftermath) may become consuming; normal, healthy activities are suspended. (One woman this author has corresponded with laments she hasn’t known intimate contact in years; a recent female commenter, alienated from her child, refers to herself as a living homicide.) People may become stuck in a tape loop perpetuated by interminable indeterminacy, insurmountable loss, and a galling sense of injustice.

The legal battle enables people to put their lives on “hold,” thereby avoiding other aspects of their lives (e.g., “How can I be intimate with you when I’m involved in this lawsuit?”). The patient may be so attuned to psycholegal issues and hypotheses that she focuses thereupon in resistance to dealing with significant personal conflict. As a result, she is continually “pleading her case” in the therapy hour.

This cognitive rut exemplifies Legal Abuse Syndrome, and the state may be unending.

*The journal article cited in this post may be introduced to the court by litigants in need of an authoritative voice to validate complaints of pain and suffering induced by fraudulent or vexatious prosecution.

“When You Can’t Dream Well, What Does Life Mean?”: Revisiting Legal Abuse Syndrome

May 26, 2015August 4, 2023Moderator 1 Comment

A past series of posts on this blog introduced Legal Abuse Syndrome (LAS). Two of the posts detailed its effects: “Courthouse Violations and PTSD: What Is ‘Legal Abuse Syndrome’?” and “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here: The Hell of Legal Abuse Syndrome.”

This panel of a mural I encountered recently while walking aimlessly with my dog, who has grown aged since our lives were derailed by legal frauds beginning nine years ago, sums up those effects succinctly.

You Don’t Want to “Be a Part of It”: Commentary on New York’s Protection Order Biz

May 21, 2015January 20, 2018Moderator Leave a comment

I corresponded with a man last year, a man in a homosexual relationship, who was assaulted by his partner severely enough to require the ministrations of a surgeon. His boyfriend was issued a restraining order coincident to his being charged with assault. That’s how it typically works in New York: A protection order is issued following a criminal complaint.

The man who wrote reported that he contacted the violent partner while the order was in effect to impress upon him how badly he had been hurt. The boyfriend used the contact to have the assault charge reduced and to obtain a protection order of his own, which he then abused serially to drive the man he had assaulted from his job and eventually from the state. This only required that he repeatedly claim he felt threatened, which is what he did. (According to the man, “The DA did not even try to substantiate my ex’s allegations and pursued the case to the utmost of his ability.”) The law licenses “mandatory arrest” under such circumstances. Arresting officers told the man all they needed was his accuser’s statement. (It didn’t matter who the actual victim was.)

The man was badly traumatized, at least as much by the lies and legal abuse as by the violence. Though he can’t look in the mirror without being reminded of it—one of its mementos is a scar under his eye—the effects of the violence subsided; the lies and legal abuse eventuated in his public disgrace, alienation from his friends, his being arrested at his place of work, and his being asked to leave by his employer after his business dried up and he had accrued massive debts, including from legal fees and medical treatment for PTSD and depression. He says he developed “terrible agoraphobia” (“afraid I would inadvertently run into my ex and have him accuse me of anything just to have me arrested yet again”) and continues to suffer nightmares (“that cause great daily despair”) even now—in another state where he fled to the safety of his family and where he gets by on disability insurance while he plots a reemergence secure from the risk of further legal assaults.

His story, which has here been stripped of detail to preserve his confidentiality, should serve to inject some color into the black-and-white tutorial on New York protection orders that’s examined below.

I digested a page on protection orders recently that was prepped for the New York Court System by the very earnest Judge Penelope D. Clute. It obliquely highlights absurdities in the system that merit some remark.

According to the judge, there are two types of protection orders: “stay away” orders and “refrain from” orders.

The former are pretty straightforward in their prohibitions:

No physical contact of any kind.
Stay away from the home, school, business or place of employment of the person named in the Order.
No phone calls.
No letters, emails, or faxes.
No messages through other people.
No presents.
No contacting the person in any way at all, even if you are invited to talk or meet by that person.

Note the last line—and note that it is the last line.

It acknowledges that people who are nominated “victims” on protection orders may entice their “abusers” to contact them. The quotation marks around the words victims and abusers in the previous sentence are there to stress that the language used by the courts and inscribed in the law is suspect. The court itself recognizes that there are cases when “victims” invite “abusers” to chat or hang out (or move in). As the story that introduces this post shows, besides, there are instances when actual victims seek the understanding of abusers, and this may come with its own host of complications and horrors.

Attorneys like these know very well that allegations of abuse may be hyped or fraudulent.

Unstated in Judge Clute’s bullet list is that the burden of blame falls on the accused even if s/he’s invited to violate the court’s order. Unstated but implicit is that “victims” may not be victims, and “abusers” may not be abusers. Entirely unconscious is that telling people whom they are or are not “permitted” to send a message or gift to contravenes the basic principles of liberty we define ourselves by and pride ourselves on. Restraining orders obviate the chance of reconciliation between parties in conflict by criminalizing contact and making what may be strained relations wholly and possibly virulently antagonistic.

(But, I hear you counter, you sacrifice your freedom when you violate the law. The issuance of a restraining order may be in conjunction with a criminal case, as it commonly is in New York, or it may not be; doesn’t necessarily require proof conclusive of anything; isn’t itself a criminal judgment but an admonitory one; and may be grounded on cranky interpretations of perfectly lawful acts, on lies constituting fraud, or on mere finger-pointing and a few moments of the court’s attention only. The issuance of a restraining order is, however, regarded as a criminal judgment, even in the absence of a criminal charge, and a finding that the order was violated is a criminal judgment. Appreciate that a violation could be the “abuser’s” calling the “victim” and reporting, “Your dad phoned and says your mom’s been in an accident.” A restraining order makes that act criminal, and the court’s prohibitions aren’t negotiable. Restraining orders make perfectly lawful acts, even morally imperative acts, criminal ones, ones you may be arrested for, denied jobs and housing for, and/or deported for.)

These contradictions will likely be familiar to the repeat reader.

Fascinating to learn of was New York’s “refrain from” order. Its contradictions are less likely to be familiar. According to Judge Clute, if you’re issued a “refrain from” order, “you can live together and have contact, but you’re prohibited from harassing, intimidating, threatening, or otherwise interfering with the person protected by the Order.”

This means, evidently and bizarrely, that there are people dwelling under the same roof as their accusers who may be cited for criminal contempt if an accuser calls and reports them for “harassment” that occurred, for example, in the hallway or the kitchen. The implications, which are fairly stunning, bring to mind the phrase “sleeping with the enemy.” The law invests its complete faith in the virtuousness of accusers’ motives. What will be plain to anyone who’s been falsely accused is that an accuser who’s been granted a “refrain from” order and resides with his or her “abuser” holds the life of the accused in the palm of his or her hand.

A writer for the feminist house organ Jezebel might ask, “Why would anyone make a false accusation of harassment, intimidation, or threat? What could be gained by that?”

Since feminists aren’t actually obtuse, the question doesn’t require an answer. Pretending, though, that they are obtuse, here is one: A residence could be gained by making a false accusation. Property could be. Children could be. Revenge could be (see the introduction above). Attention could be. The list goes on.

Judge Clute wraps up her tutorial on protection orders with this advice on “How Defendants Can Avoid Problems,” which reinforces the earlier observations that “victims” may call their “abusers” or otherwise attempt to reconcile, and which notes, besides, how a court order may stir conflict and confrontation with “family or friends.”

Do not go to places where you know the other person goes.
Leave a building, restaurant, store, or other place if you realize that the other person is there.
Hang up the phone immediately if the person calls you. Record the call on your answering machine, if possible. Tell your lawyer about the call.
Do not send letters, emails, or faxes to the other person and do not respond if that person sends one to you. Give your lawyer any message you receive from the other person.
Do not get into arguments or confrontations with the person’s family or friends. Walk away. Try to avoid them completely.
Do not get together with the other person, even to apologize or to try to work things out unless the Judge has dropped the Order of Protection.

Everything that makes these bureaucratic intrusions and impositions ridiculous is right there on the page.

Remember: If you spot your accuser, run away and hide! If s/he calls, hang up immediately (and call your lawyer posthaste)! Also…no sending presents!

Should such a debasing and debased statutory process really be one embraced by an enlightened citizenry?

*The author of this post has listened to National Public Radio for about 20 years (and done The New York Times crossword for at least as long). If a cosmopolitan New York doyen(ne) of the art world, someone with the right background and the right associations, were saddled with a protection order based on false accusations (which are easily staged or concocted and may be heinous or a foot in the door for the commission of years of legal abuse), it might be treated on an NPR program (or in The Times) like a rare and inexplicable bird sighting, and the torments, indignities, and privations of the sensitive, cultivated victim of this “anomalous” miscarriage of justice likened to those suffered by a detainee in a Siberian gulag. It’s estimated that millions of restraining orders are issued in this country each year, and it’s posited that a majority are based on hyped or false claims. It’s further speculated by this author that only a tiny minority of the country’s privileged class are victims of such frauds.

If You Doubt the Grief Caused by False Accusation, Consider the Whimpers of False Accusers When THEY’RE Exposed

May 12, 2015August 4, 2023Moderator 10 Comments

Forthcoming posts on this blog will consider character assassination, and they will critique one of the many execrable ironies of the civil restraining order process. It is possible to falsely accuse a person of anything—literally anything (mooning the neighbors, groping children, chewing the ears off of puppies, rape, you name it)—and the act of false accusation, which is universally deemed a statutory crime (perjury), is not sanctioned by the court. The falsely accused, what’s more, cannot litigate the crime of perjury him- or herself nor apply to the court for relief from the falsehoods or an award for the damages they do, which may include PTSD, loss of home, and financial ruin. But…but if the falsely accused exercises his or her constitutionally protected right to free speech and exposes his or her false accuser, which is his or her only lawful defense (and a feeble one at that), this act may paradoxically be construed as “character assassination” by state prosecutors and judges. This post will ease into the topic of character assassination gently.

An alternative way of understanding the pains inflicted by false accusation, if you’re among the compassionately challenged, is to consider the complaints of those accused of falsely accusing.

They don’t like it much when the table is turned.

A woman I’m in correspondence with and have written about was accused of abuse on a petition for a protection order last year by a scheming long-term domestic partner, a man who’d seemingly been thrilled by the prospect of publicly ruining her and having her tossed to the curb with nothing but the clothes on her back. He probably woke up each morning to find his pillow saturated with drool.

The woman he accused, meanwhile, probably didn’t sleep at all during the weeks of purgatory between the accusation and her hearing. For a while, she had to worry about where she’d be able to sleep.

She successfully had the protection order dismissed and has since publicly exposed her false accuser. She’s also filed a lawsuit and endeavors to have the laws in her state amended so people like her ex face consequences for defrauding the court (which at present they never do…anywhere). After her exoneration in court, she says her ex starting circulating it around town that she tried to kill him.

Now her former boyfriend complains that the stir she’s caused by expressing her outrage in public media is affecting his business, and he reportedly wants to obtain a restraining order to shut her up…for exposing his last attempt to get a restraining order…which was based on fraud.

He feels defamed, you see.

Public exposure is not the same thing as being put on the legal rack, but, oh, how those outed for lying will snivel and pule. They expected their testimony would be neatly kept under wraps, and it’s just…not…fair!

Anyone who doubts or misconceives the torments of legal abuse need only look to the whiners who object to being revealed as its perpetrators to be disabused of illusion.

*First Amendment advocate Matthew Chan, who recently prevailed in a protection order appeal before the Georgia Supreme Court, keeps a constant vigil over what’s said about him by his own accuser, who reportedly began a social media campaign to reboot the conflict after the court ruled against her. Larry Smith, who authors BuncyBlawg.com, was ordered to show cause in 2014 why he shouldn’t be censured for writing about his false accuser, a disturbed woman who complained of grave emotional distress. A sometime commenter here, Sean Heeger, has had a restraining order against him extended, has been jailed, and has had his character and sanity impugned for talking publicly about legal abuse. Neil Shelton, who was jailed for a year, alleges his (now ex-)wife’s divorce attorney, a state congresswoman, conspired to frame him as a terrorist to shut him up after he ridiculed her on Facebook for her efforts to frame him for various violations of a restraining order obtained on false grounds (Neil represented himself in six hearings and each time won). Though Neil’s case is extreme, cases like these are exceptional only insofar as the victims of legal abuse have elected to speak out.

If It’s Okay to Tell the Falsely Accused How They Should Feel, Then It’s Cool to Tell Victims of Rape How They Should Feel, Right?

April 22, 2015August 24, 2023Moderator 6 Comments

That’s a rhetorical question.

Plainly it’s not cool to tell victims of rape how they should feel, particularly if you’re not one yourself. I don’t say that because it’s un-PC to criticize rape victims; I say that because it’s wrong.

Yet goddamn if there’s no shortage of people who have no context to relate either to rape victims or victims of false accusations who presume to defend the former’s right to be basket cases and deny the latter any right to complain.

The previous post examined the vehement rhetoric of one of these self-appointed arbiters of anguish (whose argument seems to run: “I’ll tell you how you’re entitled to feel”).

Pause here for a point of clarification: False accusations can be of a great many acts besides sexual assault, and the phrase false accusation in this post refers to any false accusation.

There’s nothing, of course, to reproach about someone’s sympathizing with victims of sexual assault, as the writer scrutinized in the last post does; it’s compassionate. Presuming to “relate” to the pain of women who’ve been raped, however, is presuming a lot.

Presuming to deny others’ pain, furthermore, because you believe you can quantify it or “imagine” what it “should” be like—that’s stepping way over the line.

Look at enough feminist rhetoric, though, and something becomes starkly clear: The basic contention is that “our” pain is worse than yours. (One gets the distinct impression that all feminist writers consider themselves rape victims by association or genital identification.)

I don’t discount rape victims’ torment, but I do believe this pain “rating scale” is due to be dispassionately tested.

The approach of those who presume to criticize complainants of false accusation is to reduce their trials to something like this: generally speaking, (1) you’re accused, and (2) maybe you lose some friends and your job. Also, (3) if you’re exonerated, you don’t have anything to bitch about, so shut up and go away.

Now here’s what you get when you apply to rape victims the same obscenely reductive analysis: generally speaking, (1) your body is penetrated without your consent or against your express objection, and (2) you’re possibly, if not probably, left with some tissue damage.

Both of these sketchy assessments are about equivalent in their insensitivity (and according to them, the privations of the falsely accused may well be more enduring than the injuries of the victim of rape).

So why is the former assessment popularly conceived to be “fair” while the latter would be denounced as “cruel”?

Is it because false accusation inflicts a psychic trauma and that rape has a physical component? I’ve been run down in the road by a 4 x 4 while on foot. Bones were splintered and crushed. I spent five days in an intensive care ward, and my skeleton and joints will never be the same. I almost lost an eye, and the hemorrhaging came with its own host of consequences. Entire swaths of my body were without sensation. Some months later, I had a cerebral episode and was aphasic for a day (I couldn’t remember, for example, the word October or repeat “no ifs, ands, or buts”). I’d wager the physical trauma I sustained exceeds that of an overwhelming majority of rape victims. Does that make me “more worthy” of sympathy?

Apples and oranges, right? Why? Because the affront to my body was impersonal.

It makes a difference, then, when our dignity and humanity are violated, and we’re treated with intimate disregard.

I don’t know what it is to be raped. I do know, though, what complainants of rape report, and reported sources of pain are shame, outrage, fear, betrayal, a lingering and possibly insurmountable distrust, and ambivalence about reporting the violation based on the expectation of suspicion and reproach from authorities (as well as others) and having to relive the horror, possibly without hope of realizing any form of justice.

gavels-gavels I do know what it is to be falsely accused, and the sources of pain are the same, only the suspicion and reproach aren’t an “expectation.” When you’re the target of damning fingers, suspicion and reproach inevitably ensue; they’re a given.

There’s a misconception about accusation that isn’t really a misconception at all; it’s an empathic dereliction. Facile commentators say people are “accused” as if that’s all there is to it. (I’ve been falsely accused by the same person in multiple court procedures spanning seven years, and I’ve lived with the accusations daily for nine. A man I know has been summoned to court dozens of times; a woman I recently heard from, over 100 times—in both cases, by a single vexatious litigant.)

To be accused is to have the state knocking on your door. It’s to be sent menacing notices in the mail or to have them tacked to your residence (endure this long enough, and you stop looking in the mailbox or even answering the phone). It’s to be hauled into a police precinct—if not arrested and jailed—and to be subjected to invasive questioning, if not physically invasive, involuntary examinations. It’s to be treated with hostility and contempt, like a thing of disgust. It’s to become the fodder of gossip and the target of threats. Judgment is a palpable thing, and it’s far worse than a body blow (or even being steamrolled by an onrushing vehicle).

The outrage, moreover, of being blamed falsely isn’t something that can be “intuited.” Here’s how one woman I’ve corresponded with puts it, a woman who was accused by a man who had abused her both physically and otherwise (yes, sometimes the accuser simply reverses roles with his or her victim—and, yes, if you missed it in the parenthetical remark above, sometimes the falsely accused isn’t a man):

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.

Would a feminist sympathize with this person? Probably…grudgingly and without making a to-do about it.

Why? If the answer is because she’s a woman, then we’re getting somewhere. The blindness to the damages of legal abuse has a great deal to do with sex. Most of the vehement objectors to legal violations are men—they being the majority of the victims—and they’ve been demonized…because they’re men. This has led to the dim formulation that “falsely accused” equals “male” equals f* ’em.

Absurd, besides, is that arguments like those scrutinized in the last post on the one hand posit that men shouldn’t feel their own pain but on the other hand should show sympathy to women’s. Men are oxymoronically supposed to be stoic and insensitive, er, “empaths.”

Yeah, but not really. Really the conclusion is their pain doesn’t matter. It’s “insignificant” because (tum-tum-tum-TUMMM)…

To whom? Society? It certainly isn’t a bigger problem to its falsely accused constituents. This is a democracy, not an ant colony, and pain isn’t a competition or a zero-sum game. No one’s pain is more “valid” or “virtuous” than the next’s. What the sentiment in headlines like this really means is that the lives of the falsely accused are (politically) insignificant—and the sentiment is a sick one.

Abuse of people is abuse of people, and life-wrecking torment is life-wrecking torment.

*Though its psychic fallout may be indelible, rape ends. False accusation and legal abuse may be continually renewed. People report being in legal contests for years, even many, many years. They report running through tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. They report being left penniless and in cases homeless. They report living “like a hamster.” They report being in therapy, on meds, and sometimes being unable to work even if their careers haven’t been ruined, and often they have been. They report losing their children, and they report losing the right to work with or be around children. Accusation isn’t an “inconvenience.”

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

April 10, 2015February 27, 2018Moderator 18 Comments

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.

*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.

Courthouse Violations and PTSD: What Is “Legal Abuse Syndrome”?

April 6, 2015June 21, 2023Moderator 26 Comments

This is the first post on this blog to introduce Legal Abuse Syndrome (LAS), a condition proposed by marriage and family therapist Karin P. Huffer, whose books on the subject of posttraumatic stress stemming from court-mediated violations are Overcoming the Devastation of Legal Abuse Syndrome (1995) and Legal Abuse Syndrome: 8 Steps for Avoiding the Traumatic Stress Caused by the Justice System (2013), and Legal Abuse Syndrome: A Preventable Public Health Problem (2018).

“Anyone who has ever worked in a legal aid office or law library has met people whose lives have come unhinged after a bad contact with the legal system. The details vary—they may have lost a business or inheritance or the custody of a child—but the common theme of feeling violated by the legal system does not. Even 20 years after losing a lawsuit, some people who suffer from Legal Abuse Syndrome still carry a suitcase of old legal papers around, desperately hoping someone will help them find justice.”

—Ralph Warner, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle (1997)

I’ve encountered the ghostly men and women described by Mr. Warner in the epigraph. They haunt law libraries the way some exiles haunt coffeehouses or used to haunt bookstores. They carry sheaves of papers, foxed file folders, and weathered satchels, just as Mr. Warner describes. They’re known to one another and exchange muted greetings and tinny words of encouragement.

They desultorily pore over computerized case law and weighty reference tomes—whether pursuing a lead or just out of habit, it’s impossible to tell—and they propound among themselves novel approaches to revisiting one or another of the dusty judgments that have plainly come to consume their lives.

The eager young law students who mill and toil never cast a glance in the direction of these damned souls, who palpably emanate doom.

Maybe I’m a fatalist, or maybe I was smart enough to recognize a fix when I saw one. A few self-navigated trips through the legal ringer were enough to cement in me a sense of futility. Otherwise, I suppose I might have found myself among this skeleton crew.

After my most recent pelting in that burlesque show advertised as process of law (2013), I resolved to stick with what I know: writing. I have no illusions that this makes me any more a master of my fate than if I clung to a corner and allayed my outrage by rocking back and forth and muttering imprecations, but the activity provides a sense of purpose, however lackluster, and bestows a semblance of order to my inner world (my outer world is a hopeless shambles from which the writing blessedly distracts).

I surface now and again to discover people I knew have aged, have entered puberty or college, have married or divorced, or have died.

Elucidating the trauma that forces a person to exchange living for some deranged form of solace like prating in a blog in defiance of a juggernaut is all this initial post on Legal Abuse Syndrome aspires to. For this, I defer to Dr. Huffer (though anyone who has tracked posts and comments here will find significant correspondences between their positions and hers):

LEGAL ABUSE SYNDROME (LAS) is a form of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is a psychic injury, not a mental illness. It is a personal injury that develops in individuals assaulted by ethical violations, legal abuses, betrayals, and fraud. Abuse of power and authority and a profound lack of accountability in our courts have become rampant, compounding an already stressful experience.

This stress can and does lead to physical illness. AMA statistics show that around 85% of all physical illness is directly attributable to stress. Legal Abuse Syndrome is a public health menace in this country. It leads to massive medical intervention costs, burdens insurance companies, and adds to Medicare and Social Security costs. Most painfully, it crushes the brilliance and creativity of its sufferers. Legal Abuse Syndrome is detrimental to all of society, and nobody is immune.

Whatever the court setting, whether it is regarding divorce, child custody, parental support, probate matters, personal injury, property disputes, legal or medical malpractice, criminal charges, or other deeply personal issues, the frauds put forth in our courts add greatly to the trauma. When litigants are unable to get fair resolution to their issues, when the court dysfunction further adds to the litigant’s burden, when no amount of actual case law compels an equitable outcome, litigants suffer often disabling levels of stress. When further attempts to achieve redress fail, litigants display the hallmark signs of Legal Abuse Syndrome (LAS).

I’ll conclude with a refrain that has become trite with repetition: The thesis Dr. Huffer’s statements delineate was put forward decades ago, like so many arguments from journalists, jurists, and other social critics against a heedless and unyielding status quo that has prevailed for far too long.

*The concept of Legal Abuse Syndrome was brought to the attention of this writer by investigative journalist Michael Volpe, coauthor of Bullied to Death: The Chris Mackney Story.

“Shame and Stigma” and the “Mean-Spirited Cultural Response” That Efforts to Cast Them Off Provoke: Procedural Abuse and Parental Alienation

April 1, 2015March 1, 2018Moderator 4 Comments

“Parental alienation is the ‘programming’ of a child by one parent to denigrate the other (targeted) parent, in an effort to undermine and interfere with the child’s relationship with that parent, and most often occurs within the context of a child custody conflict. This includes the ‘legal abuse’ of parents who have been disenfranchised from their children’s lives subsequent to sole custody and primary residence judgments. Within an adversarial legal process, non-custodial parents are often subjected to shame and stigma, lack of access to their children, and devaluation of their role as parents. And those who speak about the pain and woundedness in their lives are subjected to a mean-spirited cultural response, where their talk of woundedness is mocked.”

—Edward Kruk, Ph.D.

Here’s child and family social worker Edward Kruk corroborating that parents may be the targets of “legal abuse”; that they’re subjected to shame and stigma, and to alienation from their children; and that they’re ridiculed and regarded with contempt for complaining about it: “The Impact of Parental Alienation on Parents: Post-traumatic Stress in the Rupture of Parent-Child Relationships” (2013). There are mothers who endure this, make no mistake, but as Dr. Kruk observes, “Most alienated parents are non-custodial fathers.”

Members of both genders (parents and non-parents alike) have reported on this blog that they’ve experienced (or are in the throes of) PTSD consequent to abusive legal contests, and it’s not the intent of this post to discount the plaints of mothers who face this torment. It must be emphasized, however, that the “mean-spirited cultural response” Dr. Kruk notes is predominately, if not exclusively, directed at men, and it’s because fathers’/men’s plaints are so roundly and effectively denounced and dismissed that mothers’/women’s plaints also lack a sympathetic audience.

(Feminists would prefer that female victims of legal abuse quietly recede into obscurity and accept the role of martyr for “the cause.”)

The “mean-spirited cultural response” is broad but includes highly influential voices, including law professors and esteemed advocacy groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has equated men’s and fathers’ rights representatives with hate groups, asserting that they’re on a par with the Ku Klux Klan.

No kidding.

To vehemently complain about being treated prejudicially by the courts and alienated from your kids is to be caricatured as a racist wearing a bedsheet and brandishing a torch. (Few in the mainstream press, moreover, scoff at this rhetoric.) For moms (and women in general) who’ve been victimized by legal abuse to be heeded, the demonization of men’s and fathers’ advocates as mere “misogynists” must first be controverted.

Last year, a post on this blog reported the award of a $500,000 grant to a female law professor to “debunk” the claim that court procedures are abused to alienate parents from their children, and it’s this sort of (government-funded) social science research that marginalizes voices like Dr. Kruk’s.

It provides fodder to bloggers and other commentators, and it’s used to “train” judges how to rule.

The selective orientation of feminist social science ignores competing (and compelling) findings like these Dr. Kruk cites:

Suicide rates are reported to be of epidemic proportions among parents, fathers in particular, who are struggling to maintain a parenting relationship with their children (Kposowa, 2000; Kposowa, 2003); and legal abuse has been noted as a key factor in these cases.

A recent post on this blog referenced the suicide of a father who’d undergone years of legal hell and couldn’t face any more. He bled out—emotionally, morally, and financially. Feminist advocates stress the consequences and “rampancy” of domestic violence—focusing narrowly on female victims—while denying that the effects of legal abuses are grave. They trivialize those effects and often deny legal abuses occur to any extent worthy of attention or redress.

The devaluation of family and the curtailment of lives aren’t trivial.

First Amendment Rights from Beyond the Grave: Defense of a Suicide’s Publication of His Final Words by the Randazza Legal Group

March 20, 2015August 25, 2023Moderator 33 Comments

“I couldn’t flee and I could not fight. I was never going to be allowed to heal or recover. I wish I were better at articulating the psychological and emotional trauma I experienced. I could fill a book with all the lies and mysterious rulings of the Court. Never have I experienced this kind of pain. I asked for help, but good men did nothing and evil prevailed.”

—Chris Mackney (1968–2013)

An emailed riposte from Las Vegas attorney Marc Randazza was introduced to my attention this week. It was an answer to a move by the “estranged wife” of a man who committed suicide in 2013 to have the man’s suicide note removed from the blog A Voice for Men.

The genesis of this dispute appears to be that Mr. Christopher Hines Machnij a/k/a Christopher Hines Mackney and his estranged wife were in an acrimonious relationship. Due to the strains of that relationship, Mr. Mackney started a blog in order to express his thoughts about his treatment in the family law system. This culminated in a suicide note, which he published to his blog from Washington, D.C., on December 29, 2013, and then he committed suicide on December 29, 2013. His writing and his suicide note were admittedly unflattering to your client. Your client then petitioned a Virginia state court to grant her some ambiguous (and questionable) intellectual property rights to the blog’s contents, which she is using to attempt to purge Mr. Mackney’s expression from every corner possible. One of those corners is my client’s blog.

[…]

It is our position that A Voice for Men’s republication of the suicide note is not copyright infringement, pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 107. Accordingly, even if Mr. Mackney were to rise from the dead and insist upon the depublication of the suicide note, it is my client’s position that it has a right to continue publication of the letter.

Perusal of Mr. Randazza’s email, which is masterfully composed, is recommended to anyone invested in the right to redress perceived injustices by the public exercise of his or her voice.

Christopher Mackney

I’ve read Mr. Mackney’s “suicide note,” which is neither a manifesto of hate nor a farewell-cruel-world. It’s a supremely calm and sincere apology that’s all the more haunting for its quiet lucidity and resignation.

What Mr. Mackney describes in his final statement (dated four days after Christmas) will be familiar to anyone who’s endured something similar: the isolation, alienation, and paralysis; the mute indifference from anyone who could have intervened; the loss of identity, emotional decay, and financial ruin; and the hopelessness that comes from repeated confirmations that resistance is futile.

The consequences of the court’s intrusion into family and interpersonal matters—and the imposition of its judgment—are seldom viewed with the gravity they deserve.

Much of the debate of issues orbital to the events that prompted Mr. Mackney’s suicide occurs in the abstract. Commentators’ opinions (and they are legion) can rarely be seen to acknowledge the real-life strains and torments that real, live accused people suffer.

What is animating fodder for conversation to some, however, leads others to kill themselves.

*Among Mr. Mackney’s final words are an adjuration to stand up and speak out in defense of the abused (his blog resided at GoodMenDidNothing.com).

TALKING BACK to restraining orders

THEY’RE NOT JUST ABUSED BUT ABUSIVE

Tag PTSD