How an Innocent Woman May Be Accused of Molestation, Rape, or Murder and Have to Live with It

January 24, 2022July 28, 2023Moderator Leave a comment

Consider the following allegations:

“She has repeatedly exposed herself to me.”

“She told me on multiple occasions that if I wouldn’t have sex with her again she would tell the police I raped her.”

“She has stalked me since I met her. I’ve kept a dated log of all of the instances when she appeared someplace where I was. I’ve told her to leave me alone but she won’t. She says I’m her ‘destiny.’”

“She grabbed my crotch. When I pushed her hand away and ran, she laughed and called me a ‘pussy.’”

“I loaned her money. She told me if I asked for it back one more time, she and a friend of hers would hurt me. She bragged that they had killed someone before.”

“She has sent me panties covered with blood, urine, and feces. I threw them away because they were disgusting.”

“She showed me a knife and said that if I didn’t leave my girlfriend she would ‘cut her good.’”

“She said she wanted to drink my blood.”

An affidavit on a protective order application could include any or all of these statements and any number of others, including, say, alleged confessions of any act conceivable by the imagination of the accuser.

An affidavit, that is, a statement of facts alleged and sworn to be true, can usually be of any length and could include detailed descriptions of the accused’s anatomy, commentaries on his or her hygiene, and judgments of any variety, besides including an account of “what happened.”

There are no rules, and the court cannot retroactively censor what is effectively a complainant’s testimony.

Note that none of the accusations listed above could ever be ascertained as true or false, and a judge, accordingly, has no particular investment in “the truth.” His or her job, as prescribed by the law, is to decide whether the accuser is convincing.

An even cruder fact is that a judge may never read a complainant’s affidavit at all but simply ask for a verbal accounting, that’s if s/he does anything more than make sure the paperwork is filled out correctly. Once validated by a judge’s signature, unless contested and successfully quashed during a hearing that may be afforded 30 minutes on a judge’s docket, the order is a binding instrument of law and an indefinitely preserved public document that can be quoted or published.

Restraining orders are typically issued ex parte. That means based on the accuser’s say-so only. The accused may know nothing about it until a law enforcement officer or agent of the court appears at his or her door, possibly in the presence of friends, family, and/or neighbors.

The whole application and approval process may take from a few minutes to a few hours.

The latitude granted to judges in this arena of law is virtually boundless, as the politicking behind so-called “women’s law” intended it to be. A single statement from the list that heads this post, delivered persuasively enough, could suffice to make any number of allegations “stick” (whether relevant or not). Or repeated emphatic claims of terror and violation could. Or the testimony of a crony witness. Or a real or faked series of text messages or emails. Or a real or spoofed series of calls on a phone (which, if real, could have been about anything).

As Ralph Nader said, “Power has to be insecure to be responsive.” To judges, this business is just quotidian paper-shuffling, and they have no liability for their rulings, which are issued without oversight (including by judges who aren’t even judges but merely seasonal temps). Grounds for appeal, furthermore, are almost none (and “lying” is not among the few).

A reasonable person would conclude that anyone who supported laws that would allow a woman to be falsely accused of molestation, rape, or murder would have to be a monster.

The left-leaning feminist humanists and self-styled social justice advocates who do militantly support these laws emphasize their virtue: bringing relief to women in abusive relationships. This is somewhat like explaining communism’s goal is the protection of the working class citizen—while ignoring that tens of millions of working class citizens have been killed in the name of an idealistic social experiment.

Perhaps social justice crusaders who promote “women’s law” would say they’ve only ever meant for it to treat men monstrously.

*In civil lawsuits that aren’t filed for free, as restraining order applications usually are, a defendant could move the court to strike inflammatory statements that weren’t relevant and that could only serve to damage (his or) her reputation and, for example, professional standing (and health, security, interpersonal relationships, etc.). Whether this would fare any chance of success in drive-thru procedures conceived to permanently document misdeeds is less than iffy. (It would require redacting, or “blacking out,” parts of the original order, which is contrary to its purpose.)

About Liberalism and Its Deterioration of Civil Rights…and Its Own Credibility

May 21, 2018July 28, 2023Moderator 1 Comment

Liberals are curiously less than rapturous about a political victory only they could have accomplished: the election of Donald Trump, a living caricature straight from the pages of a satirical novel, to the country’s highest office. Liberals do count as a victory, and have for a long time, laws that authorize the wholesale removal of citizens from their homes by armed agents of the state based on what may amount to nothing more substantive than finger-pointing.

In this writer’s opinion, they’re the same victory.

Since the advent of the restraining order in the 1970s, and particularly since the enactment of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994—under the auspices of which billions of federal tax dollars have been poured into state courts and police precincts to condition how judges and law enforcement officials respond to complaints of abuse—the priority in the U.S. has been to curtail evidentiary requirements and due process rights to expediently meet political expectations, expectations inspired by liberal feminist politicking.

With typical dramatic irony, liberals today vehemently denounce immigration policies that divide family members who have entered the country illegally, that is, in plain violation of the law. Meanwhile the separation of accused citizens from their families, citizens who have not, in a majority of cases, been proven to have violated any laws, continues to quietly transpire, as it has for decades. Attorney Liz Mandarano posits that “[t]here are between 2 and 3 million temporary restraining orders issued in the United States annually,” and attorney Gregory Hession, a vocal critic of protective order laws, observes that “500,000 children are right now in the custody of the state” (“an astounding number”).

Liberals consider conservatives “dumb” yet fail to perceive that alienation of such a broad swathe of the populace could inspire contempt for their values if not a raw animal loathing for everything they represent. Liberals adduce (and Twitter-reinforce) preposterous and hackneyed theories to explain disenchantment with their positions like resistance to progress and a longing to return to the days of “patriarchy.”

The author of this post has recently examined criticisms by NYU Journalism Prof. Katie Roiphe of #MeToo feminists’ disregard for due process (for which she has been excoriated almost everywhere but in the National Review, which called her criticisms courageously commonsensical). Prof. Roiphe has similarly qualmed about the extrajudicial “rape trials” of male college students. Even she, however, seems to assume that if the merits of “abuse” complaints are decided in a courtroom, then defendants have been afforded due process of law.

The assumption is understandable but ignorant of the legal standards and the practical ones that have come to inform how civil claims of abuse are adjudicated, claims that affect the lives of millions of American citizens every year.

It’s a truism of language that the meanings of words follow usage. Applied poorly, language degrades. Rights are no different, which is something our “educated” class should already know.

On a scale our government disdains to even calculate, citizens are denied both rights and dignity, besides in many cases family, property, and liberty, in the absence of determinate evidence, which is not, in any case, heard by a jury. Liberals, who often “identify” as humanist, say they simply deplore insensitivity.

The only thing more hateful to voters than a hypocrite is a party of hypocrites who support arbitrary attacks on citizens in their own homes.

Tell Us a Story: Using Pennsylvania’s Laws to Expose Restraining Order Lawlessness

May 7, 2018July 28, 2023Moderator Leave a comment

“The court determines a witness’s credibility and may infer fear based on the witness’s testimony describing the defendant’s actions.”

—Karch v. Karch, 885 A.2d 535 (Pa. Super. 2005)

Complainants of false allegations and judicial bias in restraining order prosecutions express disbelief that lying in court or forming rulings based on lies can be legal. Some exclaim that their judges “didn’t know the law.”

There are a lot of things judges don’t know, but the law isn’t one of them. Restraining orders are a lawless arena, anyway, so there’s not much to know.

The quotation at the top of this post is law, and what it says is there is no law. It says the court can make up whatever it wants. That’s not a cynical interpretation; it’s a literal one.

The quotation is lifted from case law in Pennsylvania, birthplace of the Constitution, and it informs how judges rule on restraining orders in that state (called PFAs).

It says the court may choose whether an accuser is honest, and that it may “infer” from this choice that the accuser’s fear is real and valid. Some citizen tells a story “describing [another citizen’s alleged] actions,” and that’s the only basis the court requires to deny that other citizen basic civil liberties.

The court must be provided with a narrative to act upon, which the storyteller may make up. Everything else the court is authorized to make up itself.

Play Misty for Me: Feminine Psychodrama and Restraining Orders

May 4, 2018July 28, 2023Moderator Leave a comment

“The first time ‘Misty’ broke into the backyard to pound and scream at the bedroom window, the police handcuffed her and said—her face pressed to the hood of the idling black-and-white—that she was not to return. I figured we would never see her again after that early morning in 2012. But the next night, around 1 a.m., I was in bed with my new boyfriend, ‘Scott,’ and we heard the bedroom door slowly crack open. Scott jumped up. ‘No! You can’t be here!’ he shouted, all high-pitched.”

—“This Restraining Order Expires on Tuesday”

Here’s a fascinating look at the female drama behind restraining orders. Its author is a gifted writer, and it’s an engaging read.

The subject of the piece, who’s called “Misty,” actually responds to it in the comments section—repeatedly—and calls some of its details into question, including ones that suggest speculation by the author (which, while imaginative, is nevertheless scrupulous and plausible). The writer, Natasha, was Misty’s rival in a love triangle. She apparently replaced Misty before Misty was prepared to relinquish her man.

That first night, [Scott and I] stayed at my house, and after having an intimate conversation in bed, we noticed his phone had 41 missed calls from Misty.

Then came the texts. She was at his house.

12:03 AM: Where are you? I’m staying here

12:05 AM: Please come back. I’m not going to lose you. I’m not going to give up. Please come back I want to see you. I love you

12:06 AM: I’m too drunk to drive home, can I please stay?

12:10 AM: Ok I’m staying.

Scott turned off the phone. The next morning when we checked again there were 16 more:

6:41 AM: By the way the pup tore the shit out of the house, but don’t worry I cleaned it up. If you can’t take care of him then you need to put him up for adoption.

To judge from Misty’s not contradicting the meat of the story (see the comments that follow it), its more titillating details are substantially accurate—and include serial calls and text messages to a nonresponsive ex, camping out in his yard, and even entering his house uninvited.

Hollywood representations like this one are seldom mirrored in real life. True “fatal attractions” are rare. High-conflict people, though, aren’t as rare as most imagine, which would be better known were their spiteful urges literally murderous (or even significantly violent). Attacks are typically insidious in their effects rather than bloody.

I tried to relax in Scott’s bed and just as I did, Misty appeared in the doorway.

“No! You can’t be here!” Scott cried, as he scrambled out of the sheets.

“I just came to see about the dog!” Misty shouted, rushing towards Scott.

Scott managed to wrangle Misty backwards away from the bed but she broke through and, before I could get fully to my feet, her arm swung back and I felt a fleshy thud against the side of my head.

She looked me in the eye, her nose ring glinting in the lamplight. “That’s what you get, you fat c[—],” she said.

She swooshed around, threw open the door (she had broken in through the window), and ran away into the night.

There was another series of confrontations with Misty but most of them took place in a courtroom, or through the unregulated space of fake Facebook profiles and anonymous emails. In the days after our first six-month order expired in 2013, Scott’s phone buzzed at 1 a.m.

It was a text message from Misty that just read: “Hi.”

Misty’s claim that her rival engaged in some passive-aggressive payback after a restraining order was procured also sounds credible:

Did you tell the people reading this article that you sent me a blank text from your boyfriend’s new phone during the restraining order period? I responded asking “who is this?” Natasha then proceeded to call the cops and told them I had violated the order. The judge laughed at it.

I’m no more a psychologist than Natasha, who chronicles the escapade, and I don’t know that her diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD) would be confirmed by a clinician, but I think there’s more than a hint of personality-disordered aggression in Misty’s conduct (that reported and that on display in the comments section beneath the story). Of the various personality disorders that typify high-conflict people, what’s more, BPD seems the best fit.

The individual with BPD demonstrates a wide range of impulsive behaviors, particularly those that are self destructive. BPD is characterized by wide mood swings, intense anger even at benign events, and idealization followed by devaluation. The BPD individual’s emotional life is a rollercoaster and his/her interpersonal relationships are particularly unstable. Typically, the individual with BPD has serious problems with boundaries. They become quickly involved in relationships with people, and then quickly become disappointed with them. They make great demands on other people, and easily become frightened of being abandoned by them.

Most suggestive of a disordered personality is the lack of shame or remorse in Misty’s responses. Her impulse is to blame, derogate, and punish:

One day I will laugh at her and said moron’s obese, ugly children and thank the lord they are not mine. I will defend myself to the end! A gigantic f[—] you to all is well deserved. I really can’t help the fact that she’s ugly. Jealousy is a horribly disease. I can’t really think of any other reason why she’d carry this drama on so long, they clearly talk about me. I’m flattered.

A high-conflict person may act impulsively—i.e., in hot blood—but having a personality disorder doesn’t mean someone is insane or psychotic. After an outburst of pique, rage may cool to mute hostility—which may nevertheless endure and continue to flare for years. (It’s perhaps telling, though, that wrathful women are often portrayed brandishing knives. It’s our go-to image for invoking vengeful malice.)

There’s a temptation to wonder whether all of this couldn’t have been resolved by talking things through. The reactions of the couple, like the behavior of Misty’s that motivated it, might be considered hysterical. On the other hand, had the man in the middle shown empathy and tried to assuage Misty’s feelings, he might have been the one who ended up on the receiving end of a restraining order.

This happens.

People like Misty are on both sides of restraining order and related prosecutions. Dare to imagine what Misty would be like as an accuser—the absence of conscience and the vengeful vehemence—and you’ll have an idea of what those who are falsely fingered as abusers are subject to. They’re menaced not by repeated home intrusions but by repeated abuses of process (false allegations to the police and court), which are at least as invasive and far more lasting and pernicious in their effects and consequences.

Something the story significantly highlights is feminine volatility. Feminism (itself often markedly hostile) would have us believe women are categorically passive, nurturing, and vulnerable. It’s men who are possessive, domineering, and dangerous.

The active agents in this story are the women; the guy (the “bone of contention”) is strictly peripheral.

*The author of RestrainingOrderBlog.com (now apparently defunct) alleged his accuser was a borderline personality.

There Are No “Sides” to a Story That’s BS: How Restraining Order Policy Turns Lies into Realities

April 13, 2018July 28, 2023Moderator 1 Comment

A mathematician would dismissively tell you that you can’t describe one-half of zero. The project is absurd.

Yet civil courts, as a matter of policy, demand that defendants perform this nonsensical exercise every day.

This advice about telling “your side of the story about what happened” is offered by the California Court System, and it presumes that something must have happened to inspire some accuser to petition a restraining order. No tips are included about what to do if “what happened” was that this accuser had a malicious impulse to lie or is crazy.

I’m not a mathematician; I was trained as a critic. While a mathematician would almost certainly pronounce that trying to articulate one-half of nothing is meaningless and a waste of time (and then wave you away), a critic, arching an eyebrow, would tell you that the act of trying to articulate one-half of nothing raises the expectation that nothing is something after all. The act of explaining, in other words, creates meaning; it exerts an influence. It says there is “a story.”

To describe “your side” of nothing gives substance and dimensions to zero; it turns zero (a lie or lies) into something real—and this is what the civil court forces defendants to do…then it faults them for the stories it makes them tell about what was BS to begin with.

This sorcery goes on routinely and n-n-n-duh-mbly. The presumption of civil courts that accusations are “facts” that have “sides” is a grave blindness. This prejudice can, and it regularly does, turn nothing into “something.”

A defendant could answer honestly: “Your Honor, it’s bullshit, wholly bullshit, and nothing but bullshit.” But the judge would reject that answer out of hand and would, besides, threaten the speaker with penalties for insulting the court’s “dignity.” The judge could even rule that a defendant is “guilty” of allegations that are bullshit to punish him or her for saying the allegations are bullshit.

Fun, huh? Lives are intruded upon by judges (who are paid lavishly to warm chair seats), and then these judges produce reams of records to make people blameworthy for nothing they’ve actually done.

The mindset of judges is that there must be something, which means they find something where there was nothing. They “find” something even if they have to make it up.

This is all (yet another) explanation of how civil process is (1) stupid, (2) corrupt, (3) stupid, (4) noxious, (106) absurd, and (5) reprehensible.

*People are daily deprived of their liberties, livelihoods, and even their reasons for living based on equations like this one: 0 = 22.

“What Would Mrs. Grundy Say?” Has Nothing to Do with the Law: Scrutiny of the Restraining Order Case against Blogger and Political Activist Derek Logue as Reported by Writer Peter Schorsch

March 31, 2018July 28, 2023Moderator 3 Comments

The law is a two-way street. Those who violate it are answerable to it. So, too, though, are those who exploit it. It’s canonical that administrators of law not play favorites. The defendant in the case this post scrutinizes was convicted of a sex offense against a preteen girl in 2001, and the author of this post, a would-have-been children’s writer, is ambivalent about the defendant’s cause, which is articulated here (and is not without valid and urgent points). The plaintiff in the case, however, is not a child. She’s an adult representative of the people whose job is to negotiate issues of concern to society, no matter how thorny or repugnant. And it’s this writer’s opinion that she has abdicated that responsibility and abused the law. Also criticized in this post is a self-styled reporter whose job is to relate facts without bias. It’s this writer’s opinion that he, too, has failed to meet his ethical duties.

No allegation is more prejudicial today than “abuse.” Forty years of slipshod and slapdash legislation, and the pumping of billions of federal tax dollars into police precincts and the court system are among the reasons. Priorities have been bought. And the propaganda that has motivated this investment has been no less effective at influencing the public.

“Abuse” isn’t an allegation these days; it’s Revelation—and skepticism is tantamount to heresy. The torch-bearing mob doesn’t answer to the system. It owns it.

Accordingly, attorneys for plaintiffs alleging abuse are free to exercise dramatic license, and both judges and cops know what’s expected of them and strive to please.

Journalists who report and comment on investigative and court findings in “abuse” prosecutions typically know the least about the law but may be the most arrogant in their judgments.

Enter Peter Schorsch, who introduced me to the restraining order case of Florida Sen. Lauren Book v. Derek Logue in a jaundiced account on the website Florida Politics, which bills itself as a “statewide, new media platform covering campaigns, elections, government, policy, and lobbying in Florida.” Mr. Schorsch is its publisher.

Mr. Logue, the defendant in the case, was issued a permanent restraining order this month, based, apparently, on political speech, which is protected in our country above all other kinds. It seems his entitlements under the First Amendment were deemed negligible, however, because he committed the cardinal sin of profaning a woman—and because he’s a registered sex offender. Mr. Logue pleaded guilty to first degree sexual abuse of an 11-year-old girl 17 years ago. This is his account from his blog, Once Fallen:

I kissed an underage girl. She was somebody I knew, and I knew better. I am what you call a “situational offender.” I was arrested in 2000 and convicted in 2001 (I sat in jail a full year before my conviction). I served 37 months of a six-year sentence in an Alabama State Prison, and was released in April 2003. I never chose to become an activist, but after I spent years in vain [lying] low, working and paying bills, and bothering no one, I was targeted by local politicians determined to use registrants like me to further their careers. I was forced out of one residence formerly pre-approved by the authorities, and had to fight to keep my second residence. My activism was inspired by my struggle to survive.

That activism, Mr. Schorsch reports, has included R-rated criticisms of Sen. Book since 2009 on a variety of Internet media, as well as in-person protests of her positions at public events where Sen. Book was present. Mr. Logue is said to have “heckle[d]” her at one last year.

Although there’s no mention in Mr. Schorsch’s story of Mr. Logue’s having issued threats, brandished a weapon, or cast literal brickbats, Mr. Schorsch quotes Sen. Book’s restraining order petition as stating: “[B]ecause of the anger and hostility targeted at Ms. Book during the session by Mr. Logue, she had to be quickly escorted off stage by security for her safety.”

The logical non sequitur is obvious, but legal interpretation has been conditioned in “abuse” cases to treat alleged emotional impressions as incontrovertible facts. Why words from a distance required that Sen. Book be rushed off of a stage is a taboo question.

Plainly Mr. Logue has been implicated by implication—and not even his own implication.

Mr. Schorsch reports “he posted a video on Twitter entitled ‘You are a C**t’ that included lyrics saying he would ‘f**k up [Book’s] face.’” If Mr. Logue said he would “f**k up” Ms. Book’s face, then why does “Book’s” appear in brackets in Mr. Schorsch’s story? The referenced video is by Australian singer-songwriter Kat McSnatch (note the stage name).

The video has nothing to do with Sen. Book, nor is Mr. Logue its author. The allegation is that the hyperlink republication of the video by Mr. Logue on Twitter implied violent intent and ignores context. Unreported by Mr. Schorsch, what Mr. Logue tweeted was this: “I think I found the official…Lauren Book theme song.” The meaning of the statement is unambiguous.

Even if it weren’t, though, implication is not a true threat, which must “communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals” (Virginia v. Black). Nevertheless, Mr. Schorsch reports that a hyperlink to a cartoon was “deemed a credible threat to Book’s safety by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.”

Here’s Mr. Schorsch:

Logue claims his lyrics, his website and in-person protests are within his First Amendment rights, though Book’s attorneys vehemently disagree.

Were the lyrics his? Are Sen. Book’s attorneys correct in their interpretation of First Amendment protections? These are questions to which a journalist might have pursued answers, particularly one who has fallen under criminal suspicion himself, as Mr. Schorsch reportedly has.

Instead Mr. Schorsch contents himself with quoting Sen. Book’s attorneys:

“To even flirt with the notion that Mr. Logue’s words directed at Lauren Book are anything less than profane insults or ‘fighting words’ would be nonsensical,” the argument reads. “Mr. Logue’s mission, which he continuously reemphasizes over several social media platforms…has been to target Senator Book because of her political views and her attempt to pass more legislature relating to violent sexual offenders, such as Mr. Logue.”

Without exception, “profane insults” are fully protected by the First Amendment, and the dated phrase “fighting words” (1942) hardly applies. Fighting words are those “which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace” (Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire). In the age of HBO, there is no conceivable sequence of words Mr. Logue could have strung together from a distance of yards, possibly many yards, that could have inspired a brawl, and tweets to the world at large, for example, can never be qualified as “fighting words” (or “stalking,” a characterization Mr. Schorsch uses in his article’s headline). If Mr. Logue’s “mission” had been to criticize President Trump’s policies “over several social media platforms,” there would be no story. The allegations only survived scrutiny because Mr. Logue committed a sex offense in the distant past, which is “continuously reemphasize[d]” because it’s highly prejudicial. (The website Florida Bulldog reports that Sen. Book’s initial request for a temporary restraining order was rejected for “insufficient evidence showing she was in immediate danger.”)

Finally, Mr. Schorsch reports:

The court approved the restraining order, which requires Logue to stay at least 500 feet away from Book’s house and car, 1,000 feet from her person, and prohibits him from contacting her directly or indirectly in any way.

Finally, I have to wonder, has Mr. Logue ever been anywhere near Sen. Book’s “house and car”? From the reported facts, it seems improbable. So Mr. Logue has been indefinitely prohibited from attending public events to engage in constitutionally protected political protest, and he has effectively if not explicitly been prohibited from criticizing a politician by the court’s misinterpretation of harassment laws, which cannot be applied to one-to-many speech…even if it uses “bad words.”

*On his blog, Mr. Logue writes that in “2007, [he] received a partial pardon from the state of Alabama in recognition of [his] rehabilitation” and has “been ‘free’ for over 14 years without a single accusation or suspicion of re-offense.” He expresses the belief that the pardon signified “hope for redemption, even for those with the label ‘sex offender.’” It granted Mr. Logue the restoration of his “civil and political rights”—as long, apparently, as he declined to actually exercise them.

What Massachusetts Law Firm Dane Shulman Associates Says about Restraining Order Abuse and Divorce

March 31, 2018March 31, 2018Moderator Leave a comment

Below is Massachusetts law firm Dane Shulman Associates writing about the game of false accusation. Lawyers know this happens. They know it very well.

Various feminist advocates doggedly assert that restraining order abuse, particularly to gain leverage in family court, is insignificant—or worse, that claims of it are merely men’s rights propaganda—and such assertions are made even by professors of law. Practitioners of law (the lawyers in the trenches, not the ivory tower) report otherwise.

“Restraining Order Abuse in Divorce Cases” (emphases added):

Unfortunately, some people are abusing Massachusetts’ restraining order laws and using them as a divorce tactic. An individual involved in divorce proceedings may file a temporary restraining order against [his or her] spouse, alleging abuse of him or [her] or of the couple’s children. This would prevent the alleged abuser from having contact with his or her children during the 10-day temporary order, and if the allegations stick, the restraining order would last up to a year after the accusations were made. Often, such allegations are false, and only a way to put a wrench in the divorce proceedings and for the accusing spouse to gain custody of the children involved.

To prevent the restraining order from being extended, it is imperative that the alleged abuser present evidence [in] the second hearing that the allegations made against him or her are false. This is the first and only time an alleged abuser can present his or her case. If he or she fails to appear, chances are that the restraining order will be extended, and the accusing spouse will gain custody of the children.

A restraining order can have disastrous effects on the alleged abuser. The order is put on his or her criminal record, and any violation of the order results in criminal charges. The alleged abuser is also listed in the statewide Domestic Violence Registry, a record that never goes away. All of these actions greatly impact an alleged abuser’s ability to secure new employment, especially jobs for the government or jobs that involve working with children.

Massachusetts’ courts issue restraining orders to protect victims, not so the orders can be used as frivolous tactics to gain the upper hand in a divorce or a child custody matter. Restraining orders have serious consequences for the alleged abuser, and also for the relationship between the alleged abuser and his or her children, since the order could put strain on the parent-child relationship. A restraining order is something no one should consider obtaining without a serious, truthful cause.

*One of the most outspoken critics of restraining orders, attorney Gregory Hession, also practices in Massachusetts.

Most False Restraining Orders against Feminists Who Abuse Children Work

March 23, 2018March 23, 2018Moderator Leave a comment

If you’re not sure what the title means, that’s the point.

It’s satirical and intended to emphasize that if you falsely accuse someone of abusing a child and the accusation sticks, there’s about a 100% probability that the restraining order will work to deter future abuse of that child by the falsely accused person who never abused the child in the first place.

As a feminist might reason, however, zero probability of abuse is good, and that zero probability recommends that all feminists be restrained by order of the court from abusing children…because how could that be a bad thing?

It’s certainly likely that there are feminist child abusers. If all feminists were put on notice, then, malefactors among them would be discouraged from committing further abuses.

Okay, sure, non-child-abusing feminists might resent the implication of a court order that prohibited them from abusing children. But so what? As a feminist might observe, the net effect of forbidding all feminists from abusing children would be enhanced protection of children. Unquestionably this would be worth some ruffled fur.

Now, do I mean the above as lampoon, or am I being serious? When it comes to the subject of restraining orders, both amount to the same thing.

These remarks and my choice of words in this post’s title were inspired by a 15-year-old “family violence special report” headlined, “Most restraining orders work.” It was written by Kristen Go for The Denver Post and published Sept. 12, 1999.

The headline’s assertion is the kind that makes people who’ve been falsely accused grate their teeth.

Imagine, just for argument’s sake, that most restraining order accusations are hyped or false. If that were the case, then naturally most restraining orders would “work” (to curb behavior that the accused never exhibited in the first place).

What Ms. Go’s report saliently relates is that three Colorado women who obtained restraining orders against “abusive husbands” were subsequently shot to death by those husbands.

While these recent high-profile cases in Grand Junction, Fort Collins and Colorado Springs make it appear that restraining orders don’t work, experts say that’s not the case. Enforcing a restraining order can be difficult but not impossible. And obtaining a restraining order is just one step toward leaving an abusive relationship and staying safe, experts say.

“The reality is that a restraining order is a piece of paper,” said John Poley, an assistant city attorney in Denver’s Domestic Violence Unit. “It’s not going to stop bullets. If you get a restraining order without a safety plan in a domestic situation, I think that’s almost asking for trouble.”

Translation: Restraining orders against violent people may not actually do a damn thing but make those violent people murderously angry, and those much-promoted pieces of paper may inspire a false sense of security in their applicants that gets them killed.

No one…keeps track of how many domestic-abuse homicide victims had restraining orders against their killers.

Translation: No one really cares what the consequences are so long as perception is predominantly positive.

Recent studies—which include data collected in Denver—are inconsistent about how often orders are violated. A 1994 study by the National Center for State Courts found that two-thirds of restraining orders are never violated. Yet a 1993 study by the Urban Institute reported that 60 percent of women said their abuser violated the order.

Translation: What the courts report contradicts what women report, and what women report contradicts what Ms. Go does (“Most restraining orders work”).

What the studies do agree on, however, is that about 70 percent of people who obtain restraining orders report feeling safer.

Translation: A majority of people who obtain restraining orders report “feeling” safer, and this means most restraining orders “work.”

The foregoing may be summarized thus: (1) Restraining orders against violent people may get their applicants killed; (2) no one takes a particular interest in how often this occurs; (3) most restraining orders “work”; (4) if most restraining orders are based on BS, it only stands to reason that they should; and (5) we know that three restraining orders obtained in Colorado in the late 90s were presumably legit…and ascertainably worthless.

*Ms. Go’s report also relates the following data: “In fiscal 1998, about 18,000 temporary and 3,300 permanent domestic-violence-related restraining orders were issued in Colorado counties.” If Ms. Go is correct, there’s no evidence in her reportage that she understands this means over 80% of domestic-violence-related restraining orders issued in Colorado counties in 1998 were dismissed. Of the approximately 18,000 petitions preliminarily approved by the court, that is, less than 20% (3,300) were affirmed (made “permanent”). Over 14,500 cases, then, may have been (tacitly) deemed frivolous, flimsy, or false by Colorado courts. Appreciate, besides, that a significant proportion of the 3,300 orders that were upheld may have had false grounds. Almost 20 more years of this charade have gone by since.

Can Anyone Publish and Criticize a Judicial Ruling (Including a Restraining Order)?

December 29, 2017July 11, 2023Moderator 8 Comments

A judicial ruling, like a law, is among what the U.S. Copyright Office terms edicts of government, and edicts of government cannot be hushed. “If either statutes or decisions could be made private property, it would be in the power of an individual to shut out the light by which we guide our actions.” Wheaton v. Peters, 33 US (8 Pet) 591, 668 (1834). Public access to judicial documents is a common law right.

Why is this worthy of mention?

Below is an excerpt from testimony given during an aborted trial proceeding that sought to have this writer jailed in 2016 for contempt of a judicial injunction. The speaker is Phil Bredfeldt, husband of Tiffany Bredfeldt, a woman the writer knew for three months in 2005 and hasn’t had any contact with since 2006, who admitted during the same prosecution that she had accused the writer “to the Court multiple times [and] to multiple police departments, detectives, federal agencies, and other officials in several states [over what has become an 11-year period].” She was eager to impress this upon a judge but less keen for the whole world to know about it. The Bredfeldts petitioned an injunction against the writer in 2013 that unconstitutionally prohibited him from talking about his own case.

One of the many heinous consequences of a restraining order process run amok is the erroneous faith, held by both trial court judges and complainants eager to conceal mischief, that judicial rulings may be suppressed. They may not be. Similarly, defendants may not be prohibited from talking about their experiences in the judicial meat mill. It’s unconstitutional.

American plaintiffs want to exploit court process yet remain anonymous; American attorneys want to bend or break the rules without having reminders of infractions they’ve been caught at available for public consumption; and American trial judges want the freedom to enter sketchy rulings and the security of knowing that those sketchy rulings will never be scrutinized.

They’re in the wrong country.

“I Reckon”: The Standard of Proof Applied by Judges to Restraining Order Cases

September 30, 2016June 22, 2023Moderator 2 Comments

As the story goes, civil restraining orders are awarded to plaintiffs who demonstrate by a “preponderance of the evidence” that they need one. According to this story, a judge determines by actuarial science that there’s a 51% or greater probability that the petitioner’s need is valid, that is, that s/he’s representing some facts and his or her feelings about them more sincerely than not and that those facts and feelings fall into some legal definition of trespass (that’s typically as voluminous as interstellar space).

So concludes Harvard Law Prof. Louis Kaplow (who actually does the math).

The important thing is that the process sounds just.

Restraining order judges rule with mallets—and no subtler instruments. While they may be formulaic, their opinions (and they’re not called “opinions” for nothing) aren’t arrived at by the application of algebra. The phrase preponderance of the evidence is a rhetorical affectation used to lend those opinions an air of gravitas…because “I reckon” sounds a little squishy.

The suggestion that they’re the products of painstaking moral computation is supposed to make rulings sound dignified and conclusive. It’s not important that the defendants in what may be 10-minute “hearings” aren’t fooled.

It’s only important that everybody else is.

*The reader who retorts that judges rule with their minds—and their minds are subtler instruments than mallets—has never actually been before one in a restraining order “trial.”

If Restraining Order Cases Are Only about Narrative, How Do You Beat a Liar in Court?

September 16, 2016June 24, 2023Moderator 4 Comments

The next to last post stressed the importance of narrative in restraining order cases.

Stories complainants tell pursuant to obtaining a restraining order don’t particularly matter. “I’m afraid” may suffice.

In contrast, defendants’ narratives are critical.

Strategic defense is not about “telling the truth.” It’s about telling the better story. Competing narratives are universally regarded as “he-said/she-said” (so to speak: Restraining orders are not strictly procured by women against men). The only thing that counts is whose story a judge favors when the end-of-the-round bell dings. (Significantly, there’s only one round, and it’s often only a few minutes long.)

Fraudulent claims in restraining order affidavits are commonplace—and what restraining orders do, especially ones whose grounds include false allegations, is inspire those who’ve been accused to register betrayal, indignation, and outrage. Since opportunities to defend may come and go in a few days’ time, those emotions aren’t likely to settle (and may be compounded by many others: fear, bewilderment, uncertainty, vulnerability, etc.).

The urge of defendants will be to stress in court how they’ve been wronged: “It’s really [him or her] who’s the bad guy, Judge.” This urge must be resisted.

The judge couldn’t care any less if s/he were paid to—and s/he is paid to.

Defendants need to defuse whatever has been alleged against them. Merely relating a meandering history (or “history”) of mistreatment can work great for plaintiffs; it does nothing for defendants.

This may seem unfair. It is, and that doesn’t matter—and that’s what a defendant must focus on: what matters.

Sometimes what matters is the law. For example, many recent posts here concern allegations that writing about someone online is “harassment” or “stalking.” One-to-many speech (online or otherwise) is neither, and it’s protected by the First Amendment. To qualify as “harassment” or “stalking,” someone has to contact someone else, repeatedly, after being told not to. Contact must be one-to-one or through a middleman. No confrontation, emails, texts, phone calls, letters, or relayed messages means no contact, and that means no grounds for court interference. Cases in which a constitutional defense is strictly applicable, however, are rare.

(The author of this post is in such a case right now with a woman who he has been told has been diagnosed with a mental illness. The law is clear: The woman has admitted I’ve had no contact with her in years; therefore there were no grounds to authorize an injunction. Making the law clear to a municipal trial judge is a different story. Do I start by playing a voicemailU that this woman, who claims I’ve stalked her since I met her in 2005, left me in 2012, in which she urges me to call her? Maybe. That kind of evidence makes a good first impression. It says—without saying it—that she’s lying. It upsets her narrative. Do I start by saying, “She’s crazy”? No. That’s aggressive and makes a poor impression. It would only get the judge’s hackles up.)

What makes a good narrative? First, follow the creative writer’s maxim: Show, don’t tell. Sometimes defendants have contradictory evidence to present; sometimes there is none. If there is evidence, it must be framed with care (and defendants are recommended to read it aloud in court and not to depend upon a judge to “get it.”) Legal method proceeds from evidence to conclusion. Defendants shouldn’t start with the conclusion, for example, “He’s lying.” They should present a story that gives a convincing impression. Then they can say, “He’s lying.” Attorney Gregory Hession, a specialist in restraining order defense, would call this highlighting plaintiffs’ “ulterior motives” (their real reasons) for petitioning a restraining order. These may include malice, for example, or cover-up.

Defendants shouldn’t rile the judge. What riles a judge is defending by accusing the other guy. Defendants’ narratives should do that. Judges actually think it’s incomprehensible that defendants should be irate, even defendants who’ve been lied about. Expressions of anger by defendants inspire theirs. Misrepresented defendants must seem misrepresented. (No normal human reactions should be expected from judges, furthermore, and normal human reactions from judges should not be relied upon. Judges will often be very civil even as they insert the knife. Defendants should never be lulled into thinking judges are on their side until after the gavel falls in their favor.)

Narratives must be organized, coherent, and taut: no jangly pockets to upset the seams.

Obviously, they should be rehearsed.

Narratives, too, shouldn’t be one-sided. Defendants should cross-examine (ask questions of) their accusers with the aim of tripping them up, and they should anticipate accusers’ answers. If an accuser has made contradictory claims to the police, for example, a way to obviate an outright denial is to phrase a question like this: “Would it surprise you to know that Officer [A] recorded that you said [X] on [date], and Officer [B] recorded that you said [Y] on [later/earlier date]?” (Any defendant who has been accused to the police should obtain the complete file and scour it. It’s there for the asking.) The objective is not to show that plaintiffs are capable of lying but that they have lied about something material (that is, about something that would tend to influence the judge’s understanding and verdict). Exposed details or contradictions should be relevant and significant details or contradictions.

Defendants with documents that corroborate their narratives and contradict their accusers’ should bring them to court in triplicate. Trial judges are seldom sage; they’re just people doing a job. Anything that appears to be “evidence” should be exploited.

Restraining order trials are storytelling competitions. Whether or how defendants embellish the facts is a question for their consciences. In a criminal trial, a defense attorney will flatly deny anything that can’t be proved by the plaintiff, even if the attorney knows the denial isn’t “the truth.” The attorney’s job is to exculpate his or her client: “Can you prove my client even knows you?”

Being storytelling competitions, restraining order trials are not won by telling “truer” stories. They’re won by telling stories that are more appealing to the listener.

Restraining Order Cases Are about One Thing: NARRATIVE

September 15, 2016June 23, 2023Moderator 4 Comments

The universal conviction is that the court involves itself in a citizen’s life because the citizen did something wrong. Even judges are inclined to believe this.

It’s wrong, and they’re wrong—and it’s very wrong of them to be wrong about something so important.

The court involves itself in a citizen’s life because someone (automatically designated a “victim”) told it a narrative, one that characterized the citizen as a miscreant. Someone told it a story.

That’s it. It would accordingly be swell if administrators, legislators, the judiciary, the general public, and the press recognized this.

If a story the court is told is true, there are consequences. If a story the court is told is untrue, there are consequences. The consequences, however, are always borne by the accused, that is, the person the story is about, irrespective of whether the story is true.

The accuser may be rewarded, or s/he may not be rewarded: “No harm, no foul.”

This goes a long way toward explaining why the universal conviction is that the court involves itself in a citizen’s life because the citizen did something wrong: S/he’s the only one who’s ever implicated in wrongdoing (and, whatever the circumstances, s/he is never called a “victim”).

The inequity is obvious. This inequity is magnified in restraining order cases, because stories are subject to minimal or no scrutiny in procedures that may be mere minutes long.

The “standard of proof” is how trial judges feel, and that may actually be reflected in states’ statutes, which in cases explicitly authorize judges to do as they “deem appropriate.” (Who determines whether they actually do what they think is right? They do.)

This is why it’s impossible to answer questions like this: “Can someone get a restraining order on you for calling her a bitch?” The law says one thing (no); a judge may feel otherwise.

“Justice” in this arena is freewheeling, as First Amendment authority Aaron Caplan has remarked.

In other sorts of cases, defendants may appeal a judge’s decision. Not only are few able or inclined to do so in restraining order cases (which can cost a defendant $5,000 based on a three-minute fish tale that’s swallowed hook, line, and sinker—or force him or her to cross the country to answer charges in a 10-minute hearing); there may be no point. The standard applied by appellate judges, barring arguments like violation of civil rights, is “clear abuse of discretion.” Since trial judges’ discretion is without limit, satisfying the “clear abuse of discretion” standard isn’t strictly possible. Post-trial defense is almost always an exercise in futility.

A narrative that works…works. It doesn’t matter if it was false. That had to have been proved at trial, and it had to have made an impression on the judge, who isn’t obligated to dismiss a complaint that’s fraudulent. S/he doesn’t have to justify his or her decision. It’s indisputable.

A narrative that works…works.

*The process is derisible for many more reasons than this. Significant to take from this post is that restraining order cases are storytelling competitions. There is no justice or accountability. All a defendant can do is endeavor to tell the better story. To be continued….

What Does It Mean When a Defendant Is Enjoined by the Court from Making “Indirect Contact” with the Plaintiff?

September 2, 2016June 24, 2023Moderator Leave a comment

“If the writing does not request or direct a third party to contact you vicariously, and or request a third party to forward any communication to you, there is no indirect contact. Essentially, the restrained party is not prevented from communicating about you, but rather communicating with you… [emphases added].”

—California attorney Timothy Miranda

Mr. Miranda, who identifies himself as a domestic violence lawyer, puts it succinctly and correctly.

“Indirect contact” is often prohibited on civil injunctions, and this prohibition is typically expressed this way: “no third-party contact.” This doesn’t mean the “restrained party” on a restraining order is prohibited from talking about the plaintiff with anyone (or the world at large); it means she can’t communicate with the plaintiff, either directly (e.g., by phone, email, text, or in person) or through another.

An example of violating a “no third-party contact” prohibition would be asking a mutual friend to convey a message from you to the “protected party” or so-called “victim.” (Worth parenthetical mention is that some courts may interpret attorney-mediated contact to be a violation, so grave care should be exercised even in that instance. A respondent to this blog reported he was jailed for merely asking his attorney to communicate a message. The attorney didn’t fulfill the request. The man was incarcerated, anyway, for his intent to indirectly contact the plaintiff, his ex-wife.)

Washington attorney Derek Michael Smith elucidates the distinction between lawful speech to a third party and unlawful “indirect contact” with a plaintiff on a restraining order.

That’s the clean-and-tidy stuff. Motives for restraining orders are often other than they appear, however. Often, preventing a defendant from talking about him or her is a plaintiff’s (ulterior) motive for petitioning a restraining order from the court, and it’s all too easy for a plaintiff to persuade a trial judge that speech about him or her to others is “harassment.”

Moreover, it’s not uncommon for plaintiffs to want a defendant jailed on any pretext. Spite and malice are not atypically (among) the reasons plaintiffs seek court injunctions in the first place.

Speech about someone that isn’t false or threatening is protected by the First Amendment, even if that person has a restraining order against you. S/he may object to that speech, but if it isn’t directed to him or her, no legal grounds exist for calling it harassment. Coercive, objectionable, and even emotionally upsetting speech about someone is protected. Opinions about and truthful criticism of others that don’t threaten and aren’t directed to them is not “harassment.” Such criticism may defame—saying someone “stinks” is hardly likely to burnish his or her reputation much—but legal liability for defamation requires that a statement be untrue, not merely unwanted, unpleasant, or unseemly.

That said, I’ve been prosecuted three times this year based exclusively on my writing about the plaintiffs (and all three actions were coordinated by the same people). Two of the procedures exposed me to immediate jail time (16 months total), and none of them was summarily dismissed for lacking meritorious grounds.

Writing about someone is easily represented today as “cyberstalking,” “harassment,” “threat,” etc. These words are nebulously defined and provoke knee-jerk reactions from prosecutors and trial judges. All a plaintiff need do is claim speech is “frightening” or “invasive.” No judge is likely to read and assess the speech, and police and judicial bias in favor of complainants who allege “fear” has been conditioned by billions of dollars over the past 20 years under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Responses by agents of the justice system are all but automatic.

Too, it’s well-established that the law is two decades out of step with the times. To trial judges, the Internet is still newfangled and suspect.

As Judge Roger Titus clarified in U.S. v. Cassidy, the Internet is just an electronic “bulletin board” that someone may elect to look at or not. Publications on a blog, for instance, do not “contact” people, even if they’re indexed by Google. If someone you talk about on Facebook or Twitter chooses to read what you’ve said, that’s a decision s/he is responsible for not you. (An exception is “tagging” a comment in Facebook, which does cause the comment to appear in the tagged person’s Timeline. There’s a case of a New York woman’s being held in contempt of court for tagging her ex-boyfriend, who had a restraining order against her. She called him “sad” and “stupid,” so the guy tearfully ran to the courthouse and cried foul. Even such a case as this has been excepted. See, for example, David v. Textor, in which the Florida District Court of Appeals ruled that “where comments are made on an electronic medium to be read by others, they cannot be said to be directed to a particular person.” )

It’s the rare state trial judge who’s as enlightened as Judge Titus, though, and who knows to consider one-to-many speech on a website differently from one-to-one, interpersonal “contact.”

In my most recent superior court trial, for instance, it was alleged that I had “indirectly contacted” the plaintiffs by Google Alerts and by my use of keyword meta tags on this site. One of the plaintiffs requested that Google inform him of my posts. Google’s emails to him were represented as “contacts” from me. The claim is absurd, but there you go. Similarly, the keywords beneath posts here that catalog their topics were said to “contact” anyone whose name appeared among them. I wish I could say such arguments are met with derisive scoffs, but the judge in the case took notes. “Meta tags” were new to him—and sounded sinister enough.

This nonsense works. (A police detective told me in January that he believed I had “caused a contact” with one of the plaintiffs merely by using her name online or inspiring someone else to comment on her conduct.)

Probably a judge would not consider writing someone’s name on a bathroom stall a “contact,” but because the Internet is a public medium that anyone can access with a computer and a few key strokes, the distinction between speech and contact becomes muddled.

It’s further obscured by snivels and protestations of grievous violation by vindictive and attention-seeking plaintiffs, which trigger preconditioned judicial impulses.

Unless a defendant “gets in touch” with the plaintiff, it is NOT “contact.”

*See also the dictionary.

Restraining Orders as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs)

May 4, 2016June 24, 2023Moderator 3 Comments

Not a day goes by when a search engine query doesn’t lead someone to this blog because s/he wants to know whether speech on Facebook can be prohibited by the court.

Lawfully…maybe. If someone sends communications TO someone else after the someone else has repeatedly requested that s/he be left alone, this can be labeled “harassment,” and a judge can “properly” issue an injunction forbidding further contact.

If, however, a person merely makes remarks ABOUT another person (even a so-called “private figure”) or otherwise expresses his or her view on something, that’s his or her constitutional right (see the First Amendment). Americans are guaranteed the freedom to criticize one another, as well as their government, and judges have no business poking their noses in…which doesn’t mean they won’t if invited. A person merely making remarks ABOUT someone can still be sued. Anyone can be, whether on meritorious grounds or frivolous or vexatious ones.

Enter the “SLAPP,” or, Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.

Lawsuits whose motive is to silence critical speech by intimidation are SLAPPs. They typically allege that an opinion is “defamatory.” There can be no defamation in opinion, but that doesn’t matter.

SLAPPs work because being sued is stressful and expensive. Only about half of states have anti-SLAPP laws on their books and their content varies significantly, as well as do targets’ means to hire attorneys and prosecute a defense. (For just this reason, a federal “Speak Free Act” has been proposed.)

Making matters worse, how SLAPPs are used, particularly when they take the form of restraining order petitions, is by alleging a constellation of offenses that may be utterly false but can nevertheless be very persuasive.

The writer of this post is the defendant in three such litigations right now. The complainants don’t like what I’ve reported or opined about them. They haven’t, though, alleged that I’ve been unkind in my characterizations; they’ve claimed they’re afraid for their lives, that they’ve been harassed, that they’ve been defamed, that they’ve been stalked, that they’ve been sexually aggressed against…that kind of thing. The more frenzied of the two women who are prosecuting me—a woman who emailed me four years ago calling herself an “avid reader” of the blog and calling the other woman who’s prosecuting me a “sociopath”—today says she’s packing a gun. (I’ve seen this person once in 10 years: I consented to join her for coffee, and afterwards she hugged me.)

You see how it works: You make your allegations lurid to distract from your real motive, which is to shut somebody up who’s making you look bad (because you are bad).

Commenters on this blog have reported having restraining orders petitioned against them because the plaintiff owed them money or because they had knowledge of the plaintiff’s commission of a criminal act, like drug abuse, tax evasion, or violence, including rape.

In instances like this, restraining orders are SLAPPs. They’re meant to make sure the defendant is gagged and subdued.

As SLAPPs is just another way restraining orders are abused.

Midlife Madness and Restraining Order Abuse

April 26, 2016June 24, 2023Moderator 2 Comments

“Of the 760 women approached [of menopausal age], 539 (71 %) returned completed questionnaires. A total of 155 women (29%) had a score of 12 or more on the general health questionnaire and were identified as probable psychiatric cases.”

—C. Barbara Ballinger, British Medical Journal (1975)

Translation: About every fourth woman you meet “of a certain age” is at least a little off.

Men in this age group, besides—perceiving their virility to be on the wane—are commonly said to experience “midlife crises.”

In investigating and writing about abuses of restraining orders for five years, I’ve heard from plenty of teenaged and young adult victims (who are not uncommonly represented by their very distressed moms or dads).

The really hairy stories, though, come from people in midlife. I’m in midlife, and I’m fending off allegations from women who have begun (or are fast approaching) “the change.” Here are some statements one of them made to a police detective in January:

Jennifer said Todd wrote in his blog on 10-31-15 “Your lives have an expiration date and so do you.”
Jennifer said Todd also wrote, “You don’t want people like me thinking about people like you, think about that.”
Jennifer said Todd’s dog died in August 2015 and that he had said that once he didn’t have dependents he would go crazy and seek justice.
Jennifer said she believed Todd posted several blogs in which she believed he was a danger to others which included seeking retribution and “going biblical” and “seeking his own justice.”
Jennifer said she now carries a handgun due to her concern that Todd is a threat to her safety.

Note especially the last statement. This woman, who has monitored me for 10 years (and will have read this post before you), has also referred to my mother in her incoherent remarks to the police.

She works as a research specialist in the University of Arizona Department of Psychiatry.

My accuser, who is (peri)menopausal and whom I’ve met once in 10 years, was evicted from her home last summer after she accused her husband of something in 2014, which inspired him to lose his cool and flourish what police called a “killing knife” in an intoxicated rage. He was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. A former bartender, he’d previously been convicted for cocaine possession. My accuser was cited for impaired driving in 2011, though she wasn’t convicted. Her brother has been charged with DUI and imprisoned for violent crimes. The head of the University of Arizona Pharmacy College, where my accuser works or has worked, was indicted in November on three counts of sexual assault allegedly involving the use of “date rape drugs.”

The accusations against me began right at the same time. As I tried to urgently impress upon a Tucson judge this week, that’s probably more than coincidental. As I also tried to urgently impress upon him, I’m not the one whose mental state should be under suspicion.

People in midlife can be powder kegs with short fuses, and it’s hardly rare for their orientation to life to be more backwards-directed than toward the future.

Midlifers can devote an exorbitant amount of time to worrying the question, “Where did it all go wrong?” Those with accountability issues also wonder who’s to blame, and the answer they arrive at is never “me.”

A woman I’m in contact with, Betty Krachey, was threatened with eviction from her home not that long ago, because her long-term boyfriend (of decades) had designs on it and maybe nursed plans to trade Betty in for a newer model. She was issued a restraining order, which blessedly she managed to extricate herself from with the help of a lawyer (something those in her situation often don’t know is an option even if it’s an option they could afford).

Many or most respondents to this blog who report deep-seeded conflict are in their 40s or 50s. They’re served with restraining orders whose hyped or false grounds are motivated by resentments that have simmered for years or decades. Midlife is when they reach a boiling point.

It’s also a time when people’s familial infrastructures crumble. They lose friends, siblings, and parents. Safety nets tatter or disappear.

They are, accordingly, less accountable to others for their choices. They’re more socially isolated, and therefore less socially inhibited. They have fewer people to answer to for what they do, and they don’t have the fear of rejection that they might have had when they were younger. They tend to be more callused, disillusioned, and jaded or cynical (or crazier). This can mean they’re less scrupulous, too.

Appreciate that accusation is the perfect way to:

“get even” for past slights and indignities (real or imagined) and/or
“ditch” a spouse or boy- or girlfriend and keep shared possessions (including the home) and
“reset” the clock.

A quickie process that lets a person swan into a courthouse, breezily recite some accusations, and skip back out in under an hour with a renewed lease on life is therefore bound to hold some attractions for the embittered midlifer.

That’s besides anyone of any age with moral deficits and a pen.

*Update (2018): Legal actions brought pursuant to the allegations against me referenced in this post were in each instance dismissed (two to 20 months later). The matter, which goes back 12 years, is detailed here.

“Contact”: A Lesson in Semantics for Officers of the Law and Court

April 17, 2016July 4, 2023Moderator 16 Comments

I was an English major. In the mid- to late ’90s, I taught literature as a doctoral student—everything from Homer to Robert Louis Stevenson to Virginia Woolf.

I taught privately, too. Each week, I would tutor the grandson of a retired Pima County Superior Court judge, sometimes crossing town to do it. For years.

I got $15 (eventually $20) per visit. It wasn’t about the money.

I liked words, and I liked sensitizing others to them. I used to carry words around in my pockets, and I meant to write for my living.

If the Tucson Police Department and the Tucson City Prosecutor’s Office are correct that writing ABOUT someone is “contact,” then the Weekly World News is distinguished for contacting Bigfoot; Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, AND their shaved ape baby; aliens; a redneck vampire; and both Satan and Jesus.

As a teacher and student of words, then, it’s not without irony that today I face nearly a year and a half in jail because of them. Ostensibly I stand exposed to this punishment because of words I’ve written here. Really it’s because a single word, whose meaning everybody knows, has taken on such a pyrotechnic glare that custodians of the law have become blind to its significance.

That word is contact, which decades of scare propaganda have turned into a loaded weapon. People are criminalized today for purportedly making “unwanted contact” or “unsolicited contact.”

I was arrested in January by a Tucson detective I’ll call Rottweiler (which is a word the detective used to clarify how his name is spelled and pronounced, and isn’t used by me to insult him: Rottweilers are dogs dear to my heart). Det. Rottweiler told me that he believed I had “caused a contact” with some women who’ve stalked me for a decade and falsely accused me of stalking them to reverse roles. They’ve accused me of sexually harassing and posing a violent “danger” to them, too. (One of them, whom I’ve met exactly three times in my life, reported to Det. Rottweiler in January that she now carries a gun to protect herself from me—and she probably does; she takes her method acting seriously. When you’ve deceived as many people as these women have, including police officers and judges, you have to up your game to save face.) The detective said I had “contacted” the women by using their names as I’ve just used “his” in this paragraph. By this reasoning, I have just contacted him.

Have I, though? No, plainly not. When the detective called me in January, we were “in contact.” When I later called him to appoint a time to meet for an interview, that, too, was a “contact.”

The distinction is stark. Contact is one-to-one. I contact someone by calling him, meeting him, emailing, texting, etc.

In its ruling in favor of entrepreneur Matthew Chan last spring, who was accused of “stalking” on the same basis I’m being prosecuted for criminal “harassment,” the Georgia Supreme Court put it like this:

“To ‘contact’ is readily understood by people of ordinary intelligence as meaning ‘to get in touch with; communicate with.’” […] Although one may “contact” another…by communicating with the other person through any medium, it nevertheless is essential that the communication be directed specifically to that other person, as opposed to a communication that is only directed generally to the public.

To put it another way, these do not represent contact: carving a person’s name in a tree trunk in the park, skywriting it, or having it tattooed on your biceps. Like using a person’s name in a one-to-many “blog” (which does not communicate anything to any particular person), all of these acts are publications of a person’s name; none is contact.

If an anchor on CNN or Fox News or NPR or the BBC today reports something that the president of Egypt said or did yesterday, that does not mean the news presenter will necessarily have “contacted” the president of Egypt.

(While this should be obvious to anyone, I’ve been writing motions to the court for the past two months, and salient in the documents are boldfaced prepositions like ABOUT, as opposed to TO or WITH. You wouldn’t think communicating the distinction to learned adults would require such antics, but it does.)

It’s a telling reflection on the priorities of stewards of the law today that citizens face imprisonment because of a misattribution of meaning to a word we all learned as little kids.

*It will presage real progress toward reform when we as a people start to re-familiarize ourselves with the meanings of these words: decency, fairness, equality, and justice.

Love Actually…Is Why Feminists Relate Best to Cats (Indoor Ones): On Perspectives That Account for “Stalking” Hysteria

March 24, 2016July 4, 2023Moderator 11 Comments

“One card says: ‘To me, you are perfect.’ Another says: ‘My wasted heart will love you ‘til you look like this [insert image of a time-ravaged skeleton].’ Juliet laughs. My reaction would be to slam the door and get a restraining order. What is Mark implying here?”

—Maitri Mehta, Bustle.com

Answer: What Mark is “implying” (with gentle, anguished humor) is that he will love Juliet “till the end of time” (“till the wells run dry, and every mountain disappears”) despite knowing his love can’t be requited. Mark silently confesses his feelings, to ease Juliet’s mind as much as his own, and then he walks away with no expectations at all. His is an act of apology and “closure” that could only be read as a tender gesture by people possessed of a soul.

(Ms. Mehta, exhibiting the undisciplined critical faculty characteristic of feminists and other judges, feels a picture of a skeleton authorizes her to infer that Mark intends to turn Juliet into one. Context is invisible to those who only see in monochrome.)

According to the Ms. Mehtas of the world, one of the great romantic figures of literature, Cyrano de Bergerac, would be a “stalker,” because he“serially” wooed his lady love beneath her balcony while masquerading as someone else.

(“And that nose and rapier! What was Cyrano implying there?”)

It doesn’t matter that neither Roxane nor Juliet was afraid. What matters is that they Damn Well Should Have Been.

By feminists’ lights, I’m a stalker, too, and I can’t imagine any romantic who wouldn’t be. I wrote love notes to a classmate in first grade even after she told me not to. With crayon hearts on them. I suppose the feminist interpretation of what my purple construction paper cards “implied” would be that I wanted to eat the girl’s organs.

They’re to be pitied, I guess, these women who never obsessively wrote a boy’s name in their notebooks as a girl or tittered with their friends about a schoolmate while spying on him (again) from behind a bank of lockers—and I would pity instead of scorn them if I didn’t know firsthand how perniciously influential their twisted perspectives are.

I was invited to visit some older friends on Christmas to watch Love Actually with them. That’s the movie the quotation above refers to. They’re in their 70s, and this is a holiday ritual of theirs.

The Mark-and-Juliet scene is a poignant one, and only an emotionally disturbed mind could construe it otherwise.

Ms. Mehta says this scene represents for her “a level of creepy that shakes me to my core, and every time she runs after him and kisses him in the street, I cringe.” (The phrase “every time” betrays Ms. Mehta has nevertheless watched the movie over and over.)

Sentiments like hers are what make me cringe. (Ms. Mehta’s name says her family is from India, where people still squat in the dirt because indoor plumbing isn’t universal. People starve there, too.)

I introduce Ms. Mehta’s remarks in this context (a blog about restraining orders), because they’re not exclusive to her. They echo social science produced by a post-doc fellow at Michigan U, Julia Lippman, who performed a study that concludes romantic comedies “mak[e] stalking behaviors seem like a normal part of romance.” It’s titled, “The Effects of Media Portrayals of Persistent Pursuit on Beliefs about Stalking.”

This “work” isn’t discounted, either. Google it. Dr. Lippman has her own website.

In a write-up about the study in The Atlantic, Julie Beck quotes the National Institute of Justice’s definition of stalking as “a course of conduct directed at a specific person that involves repeated (two or more occasions) visual or physical proximity, nonconsensual communication, or verbal, written, or implied threats, or a combination thereof, that would cause a reasonable person fear.”

You’ll find this definition inscribed in many states’ criminal statutes.

Observe that the language is so tortured with qualifying phrases beginning with “or” that the “fear” component seems optional—and feminists more than suggest it is.

To judge from Ms. Mehta’s response to a scene in a romantic comedy, the “reasonable person” restriction in the definition of “stalking”…is entirely superfluous.

*A comment from a female respondent submitted three days ago: “I too am a victim, then became a whistle blower/informant exposing my perps, then victimized again with six false stalking petitions…. Three were granted and all were dismissed, including one where we made case law!” The respondent calls herself “Warrior Lady in Florida.” When I was a kid, that’s what feminists were: warrior ladies. Today, they’re distinguished for cringing.

No One Is a VICTIM Just because S/he Says S/he Is: A Reminder for Reporters…and Other People Who Shouldn’t Need Reminding

March 12, 2016March 2, 2018Moderator 1 Comment

I looked at a form I was handed a couple of weeks ago at a criminal arraignment I was ordered to attend. The form gives the impression I was supposed to sign it, which no one asked me to do. This would be disturbing if I were still capable of registering disturbance. I noticed with dim approval, though, that it said this:

alleged_victim

When accusations are made on “protective orders” or are of the type “protective orders” typically purport to concern (e.g., harassment, stalking, or domestic violence), journalists routinely call accusers “victims” automatically. They reason, apparently, that a person can’t be awarded a restraining order unless s/he has demonstrably been victimized. (More accurately, “reporters” don’t scruple overmuch about the facts or how the process works, because they know where their loyalties are supposed to lie.) Probably a majority of injunctions are awarded based on their petitioners’ say-so alone. To understand what that means, a “reporter” would have to investigate (instead of, say, quoting a pamphlet authored by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence).

Prosecutors? They seem to call all accusers “victims” on reflex. Their job, after all, is to “prevail” in court. If they think they can win, they try to; it’s not about justice. That’s rosy rhetoric for the rubes…like journalists.

Whether intentionally or not, both journalists and prosecutors get it wrong. Legislators do, too. The statutes they enact may explicitly call accusers “victims” (due process be damned).

The (criminal) court at least got this much right: Allegations aren’t facts, and until some semblance of due process has been staged, an accuser is an “alleged victim,” not a “victim.”

Judges don’t always get this right, either, however.

I couldn’t say with complete assurance whether lapses in objectivity, ethics, and procedural propriety like this have always existed or whether they’re testaments to systemic bigotry conditioned since the mid-’90s by the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)—whose megabuck grant contracts stipulate that alleged victims should be treated as victims in every instance.

I feel pretty confident, though, in my suspicions of corruption.

The lines can’t help but have become blurry since the advent of the restraining order, which authorizes the court to draw conclusions prior to a trial, based on a few minutes of testimony and what may be no ascertainable facts at all.

If “verdicts” can be formed without proof and possibly without any adversarial contest in which controverting evidence could be adduced, that would seem to make the distinction between “victim” and “alleged victim” merely academic.

Restraining order judgments aren’t uncommonly “default” judgments, because defendants either don’t show up in court or can’t. An “emergency” injunction can require a defendant to appear in court mere days after service, possibly after having been booted to the curb (and left without resource or a vehicle), and even a non-emergency injunction may require a defendant to appear in court within a week. There’s no time to secure legal representation, even if the means are available and even if the respondent appreciates the significance of the paperwork that’s been thrust in his or her hand, and injunctions can be issued against defendants in other counties or states. (Some defendants, moreover, may not be first-timers, and they may simply conclude: “F— it. What’s the point?”)

(What defendants are told: “Here’s your restraining order. Don’t violate it, or we’ll arrest you.” What they’re not told: “You have six days to learn enough law to extricate yourself from allegations of which you’ve already been found guilty.” At the time they’re told anything, chances are they won’t know what the word defendant means.)

When procedure is engineered to find anyone who has alleged victimhood to be a “victim,” maybe calling every accuser a victim to begin with is just economical. Maybe it’s also the closest thing to honest a person can expect from a manifestly crooked business.

*And make no mistake: It is a business.

How Restraining Order Fraud is Motivated and Concealed by VAWA and Its Advocates

December 28, 2015July 9, 2023Moderator 9 Comments

The previous post, which highlights how fraudulent abuse of process is promoted and disguised, contains a link to a PDF prepared by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) called “Comparison of VAWA 1994, VAWA 2000 and VAWA 2005 Reauthorization Bill.”

The acronym VAWA stands for the federal Violence Against Women Act, which was ratified over 20 years ago (and has been repeatedly renewed). State police and judicial bias toward allegations of abuse has accordingly been conditioned with billions of dollars over decades and is today well-cemented.

Even a non-cynical critic would call the “justice system” owned.

Parsing the entirety of the NCADV’s PDF would be overkill. This post will examine a few quotations that illustrate how police, judicial, and prosecutorial conduct have been bought with inducements that are called “grants.”

Grants from the Office on Violence Against Women for “Court Training and Improvements” (i.e., “training” or “educating” judges and court staff) have been discontinued under current legislation, possibly because it occurred to someone that “instructing” the court how it should rule sounds very like coercing verdicts. Procedural bias, however, has already been firmly rooted, and money to influence court process has merely been relabeled Grants to Support Families in the Justice System.

High school civics teachers tell us our government was set up so that its administrative, legislative, and judicial branches act independently to ensure that “checks and balances” prevent any one branch from acting tyrannically, and that state governments enjoy autonomy from the central government. What the quotations below show is how checks and balances can be worked around with cash.

(VAWA 2000): “Amends Pro-arrest grants to expressly include enforcement of protection orders, and is designed to help state and tribal courts improve interstate enforcement of protection orders.”

This quotation means that money from the federal government is issued to state police departments to urge them to arrest people, including anyone who has purportedly violated a restraining order. If the petitioner of a restraining order reports a violation (real or not)—including a violation s/he has “arranged” (“Susie, I’ve reconsidered. Please come over so we can talk about this!”)—officers have been “incentivized” to haul the defendant in (according to their “judgment,” which has been influenced and can hardly be called fair and objective).

(VAWA 2000): “Clarifies that as a condition of funding, recipients of STOP and Pro-Arrest grants must ensure filing and service of protection orders at no extra cost to the victim.”

This quotation “clarifies” that unless states allow restraining order petitioners to accuse people for free, they won’t get any money.

(VAWA 2005): “Requires law enforcement agencies and courts to enforce these orders.”

(VAWA 2005): “Prevents courts from publishing survivor information on the internet.”

These quotations explicitly say that state police and court policy has been dictated (i.e., cops and courts have been told how they’re “required” to act). Either they comply, or the money tap gets shut off. This may reasonably be called extortion or coercion.

(VAWA 2005): “Encourages protocols and training to avoid dual arrest.”

This quotation means if there are two complainants in a domestic spat, for example, only one should be arrested (and since this stipulation is eagerly reported by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, guess which member of a hetero couple the police are supposed to arrest).

(VAWA 2005): “Criminalizes stalking by surveillance.”

(VAWA 2005): “Expands the accountable harm to include substantial emotional harm to the victim.”

(VAWA 2005): “Expands minimum penalties of stalking if it occurs in violation of a protection order.”

These quotations mean that pretty much any alleged misconduct is punishable and dictates how it should be punished (at a minimum) if it reportedly occurs while a restraining order is in effect.

(VAWA 2005): “Permits LAV-funded attorneys to support victims’ dealings with the criminal justice system; but, does not permit funding to pay for prosecutorial or defense functions.”

This quotation says accusers (“victims”) may be provided with free legal services but that the accused must not be.

The themes in these few quotations indicate the pattern of the web:

Punishable conduct has been broadened to include almost anything that can be described as offensive by a plaintiff and/or a judge. In practice, this means any alleged conduct that allegedly causes a complainant to feel afraid.
Police and judges have been urged to act and to act without deliberation and bigotedly.
Accusers’ accountability has been minimized (and accusers are nominated “victims” or even “survivors” on no more ascertainable grounds than that they accused someone of violating them), while the accused’s accountability has been maximized to include permanent registration in public/police databases, ones that may specifically label them “stalkers” or “violent abusers.”
Free attorney services are granted to accusers but must be denied to the accused.

This web has been constructed methodically with billions of taxpayer dollars, and this money has gone not only to the police and the courts but to law schools and nonprofits (like the NCADV), and the latter may reciprocate by producing research papers; websites; and pamphlets, brochures, and posters that further bias the system as well as the public and their representatives, for example, journalists. (Grants from the National Institute of Justice may also be awarded to generate feminist “social science” that’s used to “train” judges.) The federal government’s investment in favored nonprofits furthermore legitimates and empowers those nonprofits and thereby increases the donations they receive from the public. The Kayden Jayce Foundation (KJF), a nonprofit that acknowledged false accusation and focused on providing legal aid to low-income (non-white) families, applied for grant monies, was denied, and has since had to shutter its windows. So, too, have nonprofits that defend men’s rights—i.e., equal rights—been spurned. They’re on their own. Consequently, they can’t pay for teams of professional writers and web designers, etc., and receive little or no public assistance. They don’t have the cachet that only money can buy.

If all of this weren’t enough, rulings that nominate people “stalkers,” “batterers,” “child abusers,” or even “rapists” can legally be formed in 10 minutes or even by “default” (i.e., without ever having heard from a defendant at all). In some states (Arizona and Indiana are examples), three-minute ex parte rulings are final unless defendants apply to the court for the opportunity to be heard. Men and women may be accused from another state and never afforded a practicable chance to defend themselves against allegations that may be arrant lies and exercise dire effects on their lives (including loss of employment).

When complainants of procedural abuses speak of “conspiracy,” this is what they’re talking about…and they’re not wrong.

*For further insight, see “‘You have bullsh*t; we have research’: The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence v. Daddy Justice (Or, Why False Allegations Are a Serious Problem).”

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.

“There’s No Justice System; There’s Just a System”: A California Paralegal’s Advice on Defending Yourself against a Restraining Order Based on Fraud

September 29, 2015January 10, 2018Moderator 19 Comments

The commentary and advice that follow are from a “paralegal at a top-tier criminal defense firm in Southern California.”

I will go on record saying we have some clients that were slapped with permanent restraining orders and some were also on probation for prior convictions while the restraining order injunction was issued. A number of our clients were arrested and put in jail multiple times by vindictive exes who used the RO in an abusive manner such as asking the restrained person to come over so they could reconcile and then calling the police as soon as the restrained person arrived. Another “protected person” in particular called the restrained person and claimed she was going to commit suicide. When the restrained person (our client) came over, she immediately called the cops, and he got hauled off to jail. We have another client who got locked up for responding to his ex via text message! Those are classic examples of “RO set-ups,” and it happens too often. Evil!

This topic hits close to home, because I too was the victim of a false/frivolous DV restraining order (or at least a failed attempt to get one placed on me) not too long ago. My ex-fiancée used a few e-mails I had written, admittedly in poor taste, of course, as evidence against me. The e-mails, though rather offensive, did not have any indications or inclinations of imminent danger towards my ex. No threats of physical harm towards my ex or her family at all. She even amended the protective order a couple of days after she originally filed it to include her brother, her mother, and the family dog!

I was shocked a temporary restraining order (TRO) was granted but later came to realize the courts tend to grant TROs quite easily with minimal evidence as a “safe measure” in case the petitioner is truly in immediate danger. Fortunately for me, my ex and her bro lacked basic legal knowledge and were not well-prepared for the hearing when the day came. I hired an attorney who specialized in domestic violence/criminal defense, and she was able to discredit/impeach my ex’s bro’s testimony and pretty much shoot down much of what my ex had to say with regard to my being a threat to her and her family. My ex did tell the judge she was fearful of me, and the judge did sympathize with her in that area. Long story short, the petition for a permanent restraining order was denied, and I hope I never see my ex or any members of her family ever again.

I’m sure this site has this info already, but I’d like to reiterate:

When you get served with a temporary restraining order, regardless of how frivolous, OBEY THE TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER. Make no effort in any way, shape, or form to communicate with the petitioner/protected person(s).
If you have firearms, turn them in to a local firearms dealer for storage.
Get an attorney who is reputable and skilled in domestic violence as well as criminal defense.
If the hearing date is less than a week away, have your attorney request a continuance so you can better prepare for the hearing.
Have your attorney file a formal response to the petition before the actual hearing, and make sure it gets served to the court and the petitioner.
You and your attorney must go over your strategy in defending against the petitioner prior to the hearing.

I never lived with my ex nor did I have any history of domestic violence, but I still had to deal with the bullshit that came with a TRO. Even so, I stood my ground and fought the bogus petition.

Innocent people fight when they are wrongly accused rather than submit. Those who blatantly lie and lack reasonable evidence to support the lies will get shot down by competent defense counsel (as well as a confident and competent respondent/defendant).

Maintain your composure at all times, especially during the hearing—dress nice, speak well, and discredit your accuser(s) in a cordial and professional manner, and you will prevail.
If the judge feels the petition for the restraining order was completely unmerited, you can request that the judge order the petitioner to pay your attorney’s fees as well as any other expenses such as reimbursement for firearm storage fees.

The sad thing, though, is nine out of 10 times if the petitioner simply says s/he was truly in fear, the judge will say the TRO did have “some” merit.

Anyhow, my heart truly goes out to those of you falsely restrained and subjected to all the headaches that come along with it. Sometimes the system does truly suck.

Law Professor Brooke Coleman Explains Why the Civil Defendant Is Denied Legal Counsel, and Why This Is Unjust

September 27, 2015June 30, 2023Moderator 6 Comments

From “Prison Is Prison” by Seattle Law School Prof. Brooke Coleman (Notre Dame Law Review, 2013):

Two indigent men stand before two separate judges. Both will be sent to prison if they lose their cases. One receives appointed counsel, but the other does not. This discrepancy seems terribly unjust, yet the Supreme Court has no problem with it. It recently affirmed in Turner v. Rogers that where an indigent individual is subject to criminal charges that can result in incarceration, he has a right to appointed counsel, but where an indigent individual is subject to civil proceedings where incarceration is a consequence, he does not. In other words, criminal and civil proceedings have different rules, and the right to appointed counsel is no exception. This Article argues that because the consequence of these proceedings is exactly the same, the right to appointed counsel should be the same. Prison is prison. This consequence, and not just doctrinal distinctions, should guide the Court’s analysis in deciding whether an indigent individual receives appointed counsel. By systematically examining the Court’s narratives in both criminal and civil right-to-counsel cases, this Article seeks to determine why the Court continues to treat the same situation so differently. The Court states that it is driven solely by doctrine, but it uses radically different language to discuss the individuals, attorneys, and nature of the proceedings in the criminal versus civil setting. This Article argues that the Court’s different goals in the criminal and civil context better explain the Court’s approach than doctrinal distinctions alone. With criminal cases, its goal is legitimacy, while with civil cases, its primary goal is efficiency.

*Restraining order prosecutions are civil procedures. Arguable synonyms for efficiency are short shrift and railroading (also travesty).

“Defend Our Constitutional Rights”: Anne’s Proposal to Redress Restraining Order Injustice

August 27, 2015February 14, 2018Moderator 6 Comments

Below is a proposition by a 74-year-old California woman, Anne Copeland, who’s earning a degree in criminal justice administration. Anne alleges that accusations against her made in a restraining order petition were trumped up, and has reported being taunted and terrorized by her accusers, who were her neighbors. She also reports she’s been prohibited from performing volunteer work as a consequence of the court’s order and that it has necessitated that she pack up and move away from her accusers to gain relief from their abuse, which the order against her in essence authorized.

She urges a course of remedial action.

Some prefatory remarks from the blog’s author: Restraining orders were enacted into law pre-Internet. No one considered in the ’80s that they could be abused. No one considered that “obscure court records” would soon be talked about from one end of the planet to the other; that they could be “scanned,” “uploaded,” and conveniently distributed by “email”; or that they would be accessed by employers. No one considered that there would be “public registries” (in cases that anyone with an “Internet connection” could consult). No one imagined that the very phrase restraining order would come to be associated with the savage imagery that “the Internet” is awash with. “Restraining orders” were supposed to stop wife-batterers. Today, they may be approved to quiet any complaint, however actually innocuous the alleged behavior is. Though reported figures are few, all indications are that the vast majority of restraining order petitions are rejected right off the bat. That means even the courts regard most complaints to be stinky. So if “plenty of cases ARE actually justified,” as Anne allows below, it’s only plenty of a small fraction of those the court doesn’t already summarily toss out. Since respondents to this site like Anne are typically people who’ve had orders sworn against them that were grounded on hyped or false accusations but even so passed muster with a judge or two, the process is pretty much just stinky.

Hi, my name is Anne Copeland, and I have written before about the abuse of restraining orders, which I too have experienced. I am a 74-year-old senior studying criminal justice at a university online, and will receive my degree this coming year and go on to get my master’s so that I can work with juvenile delinquents.

Concerns about the decay in our government are not without foundation. I just read a wonderful article written by the Honorable Judge Harvie Wilkinson III, who serves as a judge for the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals: “In Defense of American Criminal Justice.” It was an eye-opener for me, as I too have come to believe that our justice system is going to hell in a hay basket. I would say that it is very worthwhile reading; it was definitely pivotal in changing my thinking on the subject.

There is a particular case of a man named Clarence Earl Gideon of Bay Harbor, Florida, who in 1964 changed the acknowledgment of our rights under the Constitution. Previously, only cases that were pretty major in nature would enable a person to have a defense attorney provided by a particular state. In this case, the man was indigent, and his alleged “crimes” were mostly minor in nature. But he insisted on his right to have an attorney, and it was a turning point for indigent people facing criminal charges. There is a lot more that is well-discussed in the essay. I think every person who is interested in where our government is going needs to read this.

After reading this article, my next step in thinking was, “Why doesn’t someone who is facing a restraining order, which does have disastrous effects on human lives, request to have an attorney represent him or her and let it be known that his or her constitutional rights are being denied?” I am thinking of doing something along these lines in trying to appeal my case. The “witness” in the case was definitely not credible, nor were the charges that were brought against me. And the judge did not allow me to really defend myself at all but actually charged me, showing me that he considered me guilty before even hearing the case.

I have thought out all the issues, and I feel that each person who can do it needs to appeal the case against him or her on the grounds that his or her constitutional rights have been denied. If enough of us do this, one will get heard finally, and we can put a stop to this devastating and unlawful practice. Just because someone says it is the law doesn’t make it so. We do have the right to challenge the law as it exists now, just as women did to get it changed in their favor in the first place.

I am not saying there is no place for justified restraining orders. In today’s confused and conflicted world, I am quite sure there are plenty of actual cases that are justified, but we need to have the process reexamined and re-aligned with the principle of civil rights for all citizens, not just for those who file falsified restraining orders. The process has to allow the determination that there has been a true injustice done to a person, and then perhaps there needs to be a period of counseling on both sides, as well as a look at the behavioral histories of both sides. I honestly don’t know what, in the long run, would truly be the best procedure to work to the benefit of both parties fairly and for the courts as well, but this issue needs to be addressed so that there is something to recommend.

Remember that as citizens of the United States, we still do have rights guaranteed us by the Constitution, and while they might be tiresome to fight for and very unrewarding in the short distance, we need to exercise our rights the best we can. If we don’t do this, we have nothing to blame but our apathy and feelings of victimhood. Sometimes we need to get therapy to help us overcome the PTSD and stress, etc. from the events that were forced upon us, but then as soon as we can, we need to pull ourselves back up and instead of trying to fight the person or persons who are petitioning the falsified restraining orders (which is always going to be a losing battle), we need to stop thinking about them and not give them power by doing that. Instead we need to deal with the government itself, making our voices heard where we can potentially make an actual difference. Yes, just one person might not be able to do it, but if enough of us petition the government in the higher courts using constitutional grounds, I believe we can get things done. Clarence Earl Gideon was a common street person, not highly educated, and definitely not with any funds to help him. But he believed his rights were being denied, and he took it to the courts and would not give up. And Gideon forever changed the rights of indigent people to have equal representation in court.

I believe most visitors to this site have been injured emotionally, spiritually, and otherwise by falsified cases. So it is time for us to gather together as a body of people and stop wasting our time trying to get justice against those who act against us. Rather, let’s think of a way to get our voices heard in the higher courts to defend our constitutional rights. It is true that our justice system is very unjust at times, but if we do nothing about it, we have nothing to speak for us.

Just because these are civil cases doesn’t mean that we have no rights anymore. The fact is that they can be turned into criminal cases, and frequently are. So our rights are being abused, and we need to come together and form a strong voice to go to the higher courts to defend our constitutional rights.

Thank you most kindly.

No Paper Trail: How Restraining Order Injustice Has Stayed under the Radar

August 24, 2015July 25, 2023Moderator 2 Comments

Whether according with careless procedural design or cunning, the details of restraining order decisions aren’t recorded anywhere. What go into the case file at the courthouse are some accusations and a petition with a judge’s signature on it. The rulings accompanying it may simply be “approved” or “denied” and then “affirmed” or “dismissed.”

Rulings in other court matters are articulated. They recapitulate what litigants have claimed and explain how the judge formed his or her ruling. They have, like, paragraphs and stuff. Restraining order trials and rulings may be preserved on audio, but published materials reveal nothing except what was claimed by the plaintiff. (In other words, even the record of a dismissed order is pretty much damning because there’s no worded rejection of individual accusations.)

Not publishing the verdicts of lower court judges, who may never have graduated from college, is savvy. It limits the court’s accountability for those rulings (because they can’t be scrutinized), and it precludes their being mined for quotations that other litigants could cite in court. Judgments are basically yea or nay.

Since relatively few restraining order verdicts are appealed to the higher courts, very little is published about the conduct of restraining order trials at all, a fact Prof. Aaron Caplan, former staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), has noted in his law journal monograph, “Free Speech and Civil Harassment Orders.”

The parties are rarely represented by counsel, and ex parte orders are encouraged, which means courts may not hear the necessary facts and legal arguments. Very few civil harassment cases lead to appeals, let alone appeals with published opinions. As a result, civil harassment law tends to operate with a shortage of two things we ordinarily rely upon to ensure accurate decision-making by trial courts: the adversary system and appellate review.

Restraining order law operates with immunity from exterior (e.g., journalistic) scrutiny, as well: Nobody don’t know nothin’.

So-called “creditworthy” commentary on the process largely conforms with feminist positions. Reports of abuse, discrimination, and injustice in general emerge almost exclusively in marginalized media like blogs and forum threads, so those reports are handily discounted.

It isn’t just that the free flow of information is staunched; no formal remarks are committed to paper for scrutiny in the first place.

Nobody don’t know nothin’…and that’s the way (uh-huh, uh-huh) we like it.

*The absence of judicial commentary licenses proponents of the restraining order process (e.g., feminists) to say of it whatever they prefer. There’s nothing in the record to contradict free interpretation, which may be represented as “fact” or even “science.”

A Consideration of Attorney Gregory Hession’s “How to Fight a False Allegation Restraining Order”

August 15, 2015February 11, 2018Moderator 9 Comments

“In thousands of 10-minute hearings held all over the Commonwealth, judges are now able to do what the Marxists have only dreamed of doing before now, and could never hope to do before they were able to use the pretext of ‘domestic violence.’ However, the real violence is almost always to the rights of the defendant, and to the Constitution itself….”

—Attorney Gregory Hession

As a follow-up to the previous post, “Pointers for Contesting a Restraining Order,” this post analyzes (and recommends) attorney Gregory Hession’s tutorial “How to Fight a False Allegation Restraining Order.”

The title’s a little weird. An earlier version of the explication used the phrase “false restraining order.” Evidently Mr. Hession wanted to clarify that he means a restraining order that’s very real but based on an allegation that’s false—hence the phrase “false allegation restraining order.”

Massachusetts attorney Gregory Hession, who urges the wrongly implicated to expose their accusers’ false motives, identifies the above as “ulterior” reasons for the procurement of a restraining order.

The quotation of Mr. Hession’s that was lifted for the epigraph above highlights that violence is the pretext used to justify procedures that are constitutionally unconscionable. Often no violence is alleged. The word, however, emphatically appears everywhere in state statutes as a smokescreen. It makes any violation or abuse of the accused “okay.” The courts aren’t messing around with people’s lives for kicks; they’re protecting the vulnerable from “violence.”

Here, therefore, is what you, as the “defendant” or “respondent” (the accused), are up against:

In restraining order hearings, judges may ignore ALL traditional due process protections such as jury trials, the rules of evidence, the right to innocent until proven guilty, etc. They may also usurp several other dearly held rights, such as the right to be with one’s children, to occupy one’s own home and property, or travel where one pleases. No one has yet come up with so demonic a perversion of our legal system to match the breathtaking scope of the unconstitutional deprivations of this law.

What is the actual legal basis for getting an abuse restraining order? Many courts issue restraining orders without following the requirements of the law (which are already so flimsy as to be a mockery). If a person comes into court (called the “complainant” or “plaintiff”) and whines about feeling “fear,” a court will often issue an order, even though many times it is improper and illegal to do it.

Restraining orders—not just in Mr. Hession’s state of Massachusetts but in most if not all states—require that some intimation of “imminent physical harm” be suggested by the alleged conduct of the accused. Mr. Hession urges that this qualification be picked apart.

First the harm has to be “imminent,” [that is], immediate, right there, right now. Not a vague threat to do something someday. Not a phone call from a far location. Next, it has to be “serious.” The [Massachusetts] attorney general, on a ballot referendum to overturn some recent changes to the domestic violence laws, defined “serious bodily injury” as follows:

“Injury that results in a permanent disfigurement; long-term loss or impairment of a bodily function, arm, leg, or organ; or substantial risk of death.” [If you’re appealing an order in another state, you may investigate how your state defines “serious bodily injury.”]

Lastly, the fear has to be of “physical” harm, not emotional harm, psychic harm, hurt feelings, or any number of other non-physical issues that people commonly get orders for.

If courts went by this definition strictly, fewer frivolous orders would be issued. However, as you likely know, judges often issue an order if they feel it should be issued, regardless of the law’s requirements.

(Statutes are often mishmashes. Ridiculously, an injunction against harassment in the author’s state of Arizona reads, “The Court finds reasonable evidence of harassment of the Plaintiff by the Defendant or that great or irreparable harm would result….” There’s plainly a huge gulf between annoyance and “irreparable harm.” That’s how these statutes are designed: to apply to virtually any alleged conduct, however harmless, but to make it seem as though plaintiffs are being protected from violent assault…or murder. That’s how the laws are justified. The person who sends some angry text messages is equated with tomorrow’s serial killer.)

If you hope to appeal a restraining order, Mr. Hession stresses, you must appeal the initial order (which may issue from any of a number of courts). It is possible to contest an order through higher tiers of the court system if the first judge finds against you, but if you blow off your initial court appearance, “fuhgetaboutit.”

First, Mr. Hession says, get your “docket number” (your case number), go to the courthouse, and demand to see all of the allegations against you. (Sometimes the plaintiff’s affidavit, his or her sworn narrative statement, isn’t provided to the defendant when the order is served and must be requested.)

Second, he offers a number of strategies to attack the allegations against you, mainly by exposing falsehoods. For these, go to the source: “How to Fight a False Allegation Restraining Order.”

If you have no experience of court procedure, Mr. Hession’s tutorial is a challenging read. It’s also long, which can be off-putting. It is, however, definitely worthwhile, whatever state you may be in.

The point of this heads-up is to ensure that the substance of Mr. Hession’s advice isn’t discounted by the bewildered defendant who may think it only applies to the wrongfully accused in Massachusetts. Absorb the gist of the material, and it’s likely you’ll fare far better in an appeal than you would have otherwise.

TALKING BACK to restraining orders

THEY’RE NOT JUST ABUSED BUT ABUSIVE

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