restraining order injustice | TALKING BACK to restraining orders

A rhetorical catfight has been waged for years on the Internet between injured men and injured women or people who advocate on behalf of injured women. It’s a logical mare’s nest. Untold men (and women) have been wronged by casually abused and abusive procedures of law whose genesis owes to rabid feminist politicking at the end of the last century. These men (and women) have, again in untold because incalculable numbers, been unjustly deprived of children, home, property, livelihood, security, dignity, and/or liberty, and that fact has largely gone disregarded. A perusal of the quotations in the margin of this blog will satisfy any conscientious reader that this is a fact and not merely an allegation. The laws themselves are bent. Injured men (their predominant victims) have, sensibly or not, accordingly sought to draw attention to lying by women by emphasizing that women will lie even about rape (the specter in the room, incidentally, during any legal proceeding based on an allegation of abuse). There have, of course, been many documented cases of false rape allegations’ being made by women. Feminist advocates deny false accusation of rape “occurs” to any significant degree, ignoring the underlying male plaint, namely, that women lie in heinously vengeful, passive-aggressive, attention-seeking, destructive ways—and contrary to what some apologists for feminine lying would have the public believe, unscrupulous women (and men) don’t lie because they’re crazy, per se. They lie because it’s effective, just as diverting the “conversation” away from lying to lying about rape is effective at denying either one merits consideration.

These are not people.

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.”

—Marie Shear

Far from suggesting that women are Barbie dolls or marble angels, a proposition that may even have offended its speaker, this quotation, oft brandished by feminists today, promotes the idea that women are people. And people, unlike Barbie dolls or marble angels, lie. They lie about anything it serves them to lie about.

So much then for the myth of the faultless woman—which is one you’re unlikely to find debunked on Jezebel.com.

The question this post considers is that if women are willing to lie to cops and judges (and they are, as are men), why pussyfoot and not just accuse any target of malice of sexual violation? It’s a potent allegation.

Well, it comes with a host of complications is why. In civil court, a false (or possibly real but baseless) claim of fear is all it takes to procure a protective order and turn a person’s life on its head. It can win a perfect stranger the exclusive entitlement to a person’s home and property while possibly landing him or her in jail. Unless a lying plaintiff aims to drive her victim to suicide, falsely alleging rape is overkill and pointlessly invites exposure.

A criminal claim of rape, on the other hand, both figuratively and literally invites strangers’ noses into uncomfortable places. Government wants specifics and evidence. Girlfriends and family members may gently inquire about details.

This is the kind of claim, if false, that requires a great deal of determination to pull off and carries a heavy risk of tattering under scrutiny.

Let’s not deceive ourselves that unscrupulous women are too virtuous to lie about rape. Rather let’s be honest: Lying about rape is demanding and dicey.

That said, it’s really not that tough in civil court, which doesn’t require “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” In civil court, it’s just he-said-she-said. A defendant doesn’t even have to be heard in court for a “default” judgment to be entered against him. And even if he does appear, there’s no guarantee the plaintiff will be required to or that the accused will have the opportunity to cross-examine her, making a mockery of the adversarial process. A judgment in civil court doesn’t represent a finding that a rape was committed, necessarily, but it’s not a denial that a rape was committed, either, and the accusation is what’s preserved.

The injustice is glaring but note that it’s legally no worse than that any other allegation that works can be made and can accomplish the same damaging consequences.

People have to live with this shit. Their families have to live with this shit. Their children have to live with this shit.

This is what men’s rights advocates would be saying if there were anyone who would listen or have the least capacity to comprehend the breadth and depth of injuries that instead tend to be casually batted aside (while accounts of groping or sexual harassment are gravely highlighted on NPR).

Most of these men have not been accused of rape, which doesn’t mean they couldn’t also have been accused of rape had their accusers been gutsy enough or that it wasn’t implied (point 1). And it doesn’t mean they have nothing to complain about (point 2).

Injustice is always something to complain about (point 3).

*I think I even read that on a liberal yard sign.

I’ve had occasion in the last few months to scrutinize my own state’s (Arizona’s) restraining order statutes, which are a study in prejudice, civil rights compromises, and politically coerced naïvety. Their outdated perspective fails even to acknowledge the possibility of misuse let alone recognize the need for remedial actions to undo it.

Restraining orders are issued upon presumptive conclusions (conclusions made without judges ever even knowing who recipients are—to the judges, recipients are just names inked on boilerplate forms), and the laws that authorize these presumptive conclusions likewise presume that restraining order applicants’ motives and allegations are legitimate, that is, that they’re not lying or otherwise acting with malicious intent.

That, you might note, is a lot of presuming.

In criminal law, the state must presume that defendants are innocent; in civil law (restraining orders are civil instruments), defendants may be presumed guilty. What’s outrageous about this with respect to restraining orders is that public allegations made on them may be criminal or criminal in nature, and violations of restraining orders—real or falsely alleged—have criminal consequences. Due process and the presumption of innocence are circumvented entirely; and with these safeguards out of the way, a defendant may be jailed on no valid evidence or for doing something that’s only illegal because a judge issued a restraining order on false grounds that made it so. (A parent who’s under a court-ordered injunction may be jailed, for example, for sending his child a birthday present.)

One of my motives for consulting my state’s restraining order statutes is having absorbed a broad array of stories of restraining order abuse over the past two years. Common themes among these stories are judicial bias; lying and fraud by plaintiffs (applicants); restraining order plaintiffs’ calling, emailing, or texting the people they’ve petitioned restraining orders against (or showing up at their homes or places of work—or following them); and restraining orders’ being serially applied for by plaintiffs whose past orders have been repeatedly dismissed (that is, restraining orders’ being used to harass and torment with impunity).

Those who’ve shared their stories want to know how these abuses are possible and what, if anything, they can do to gain relief from them. The answer to the question of how lies within the laws themselves, which are flawed; the answer to the question of what to do about it may well lie outside of legal bounds entirely, which fact loudly declaims just how terribly flawed those laws are.

Arizona restraining orders are of two sorts, called respectively “injunctions against harassment” and “orders of protection.” They’re defined differently, but the same allegations may be used to obtain either. Most of the excerpted clauses below are drawn directly from Arizona’s protection order statute. Overlap with its sister statute is significant, however, and which order is entered simply depends on whether the plaintiff and defendant are relatives or cohabitants or not.

“[If a court issues an order of protection, the court may do any of the following:] Grant one party the use and exclusive possession of the parties’ residence on a showing that there is reasonable cause to believe that physical harm may otherwise result.”

This means that if your wife/husband or girlfriend/boyfriend alleges you’re dangerous, you may be forcibly evicted from your home (even if you’re the owner of that home). The latitude for satisfying the “reasonable cause” provision is broad and purely discretionary. “Reasonable cause” may be found on nothing more real than the plaintiff’s being persuasive (or having filled out the application right).

“If the other party is accompanied by a law enforcement officer, the other party may return to the residence on one occasion to retrieve belongings.”

This means you can slink back to your house once, with a police officer hovering over your shoulder, to collect a change of socks. Even this opportunity to recover some basic essentials may be denied defendants in other jurisdictions.

“[If a court issues an order of protection, the court may do any of the following:] Restrain the defendant from contacting the plaintiff or other specifically designated persons and from coming near the residence, place of employment or school of the plaintiff or other specifically designated locations or persons on a showing that there is reasonable cause to believe that physical harm may otherwise result.”

This means defendants can be denied access to their children (so-called “specifically designated persons”) based on allegations of danger that may be false.

“[If a court issues an order of protection, the court may do any of the following:] Grant the petitioner the exclusive care, custody or control of any animal that is owned, possessed, leased, kept or held by the petitioner, the respondent or a minor child residing in the residence or household of the petitioner or the respondent, and order the respondent to stay away from the animal and forbid the respondent from taking, transferring, encumbering, concealing, committing an act of cruelty or neglect in violation of section 13-2910 or otherwise disposing of the animal.”

This means defendants can be denied access to the family pet(s), besides.

Note that the linguistic presumption in all of these clauses is that recipients of restraining orders are wife-batterers, child-beaters, and torturers of puppies, and recall that restraining orders are issued without judges’ even knowing what defendants look like. This is because restraining orders were originally conceived as a deterrent to domestic violence (which, relative to the vast numbers of restraining orders issued each year, is only rarely alleged on them today at all). It’s no wonder then that judicial presumption of defendants’ guilt may be correspondently harsh. Nor is it any wonder that in any number of jurisdictions, an order of protection can be had by a plaintiff’s alleging nothing more substantive than “I’m afraid” (on which basis a judge is authorized to conclude that a defendant is a “credible threat”).

“A peace officer, with or without a warrant, may arrest a person if the peace officer has probable cause to believe that the person has violated section 13-2810 by disobeying or resisting an order that is issued in any jurisdiction in this state pursuant to this section, whether or not such violation occurred in the presence of the officer.”

This means you can be arrested and jailed based on nothing more certain than the plaintiff’s word that a violation of a court order was committed. More than one respondent to this blog has reported being arrested and jailed for a lengthy period on fraudulent allegations. Some, unsurprisingly, have lost their jobs as a consequence (on top of being denied home, money, and property).

“There is no statutory limit on the number of petitions for protective orders that a plaintiff may file.”

This observation, drawn from Arizona’s Domestic Violence Civil Benchbook, means there’s no restriction on the number of restraining orders a single plaintiff may petition, which means a single plaintiff may continuously reapply for restraining orders even upon previous applications’ having been denied.

Renewing already granted orders (which may have been false to begin with) requires no new evidence at all. Reapplying after prior applications have been denied just requires that the grounds for the latest application be different, which is of course no impediment if those grounds are made up. As search terms like this one reveal, the same sort of harassment can be accomplished by false allegations to the police: “boyfriends ex keeps calling police with false allegations.” Unscrupulous plaintiffs can perpetually harass targets of their wrath this way—and do.

No restrictions whatever are placed upon plaintiffs’ actions, which means that they’re free to bait, taunt, entrap, or stalk defendants on restraining orders they’ve successfully petitioned with impunity. And neither false allegations to the police nor false allegations to the courts (felony perjury) are ever prosecuted.

“A fee shall not be charged for filing a petition under this section or for service of process.”

This means the process is entirely free of charge.

TALKING BACK to restraining orders

THEY’RE NOT JUST ABUSED BUT ABUSIVE

Tag restraining order injustice

Presumed Guilty: On How Restraining Order Laws Enable and Promote Abuse