restraining orders against women | TALKING BACK to restraining orders

Traffic was directed to this site Friday from another one intriguingly called ScamBoard.com. I followed the link. It led me to a 2016 complaint posted by Arizonan James Cukr, who says a woman has been making “false and untrue” statements about him “on every social media outlet available to her,” and that he’s sworn out a restraining order against her, which he includes in his complaint.

I had intended to leave reportage of my own case topmost while I rebuilt this blog. I’m led to comment on the Scam Board post, though, because it relates.

To see how, first consider Mr. Cukr’s “restraining order,” which is a public document:

Look at the case number: DV20160965. The prefix “DV” stands for “domestic violence.” In other words, in an affidavit given under penalty of perjury to the Superior Court of Arizona, Mr. Cukr alleged domestic violence against a woman who criticized him on the Internet. The closest thing to substantiation of his domestic violence claim that he offers on Scam Board is that she had a “temper.” The “OP” that you see in the lower right corner stands for “order of protection.”

Apparent is that Mr. Cukr was upset and wanted to intimidate his accuser into silence for remarks like this one posted on CheaterLand.com: “James Cukr trolls dating sites like POF, Match, and OKCUPID lying to U of A students and desperate older women to get sex…but he is married with a wife and child in France he is lying to.”

The protective order is almost entirely blank, and there is no indication that it was ever served (which does not necessarily mean the record was discarded).

In other posts on Cheater Land and elsewhere—presuming they’re all by the same person—Mr. Cukr’s accuser, who is anonymous, does make statements that might be qualified as defamatory (pursuant to a civil lawsuit that would demand a filing fee and a lot more effort than filling out a form). Since those comments were directed to the world at large, however, and not to Mr. Cukr himself, they cannot properly be characterized as harassing, never mind “violent,” and are not grounds for a protective order.

A reasoning person might deduce that effectively accusing someone of domestic violence is easily accomplished, irrespective of the facts or the law. Mr. Cukr might just as handily have alleged “stalking”—and maybe he did.

Here are two other cases chronicled on this site that reflect the same gender dynamic, similar facts, and an identical misapplication of the law/abuse of process:

The court wrongly arrogates to itself the power to censor speech to the world at large because it is alleged to be harassing to some party it criticizes.

To quote eminent constitutional scholar Aaron Caplan, a law professor at Loyola:

American law deliberately makes defamation difficult to prove…. By contrast, civil harassment is designed to be easy to prove…. A petitioner should not be able to evade the limits on defamation law (many of them constitutionally mandated) by redesignating the claim as civil harassment.

The highlighted cases exemplify how restraining orders are exploited as cheap workarounds, possibly to conceal any nature of objectionable conduct by plaintiffs, from deceitful to criminal.

To quash embarrassing criticism, you allege you’re in danger.

*See The Volokh Conspiracy for related stories and commentaries.

Contents of this post were independently investigated by the writer. He alone is responsible for the post’s authorship.

Tennessee ball player Jacob Benjamin Fabry petitioned an “order of protection” against a Colorado woman 20 years his senior in September. He told the court he feared “harm” from the woman, Sheila Powers, who is 65 lbs. lighter than he is, stands 7″ shorter, and has never been within the borders of the state in which Fabry lives.

Here is a chart prepared by the “state administrative offices of the courts” in 2010 that puts the number of “general” and “limited” jurisdiction state courts in our country at about 30,000.

Here is a single judge’s docket for this week. It has about 30 cases on it, eight of which (about a fourth) are protection order cases.

That’s one judge, one week, eight restraining order cases. While it’s unlikely this means there are 240,000 restraining orders issued each week in the United States, it does suggest that there are a whole lot. (A cost estimate by DailyFinance.com, also from 2010, projects the national expenditure to be at least $4,000,000,000 per annum.)

The particular judge whose docket is cited is L. Marie Williams, who issued a restraining order in Tennessee last year petitioned by Jacob Fabry against Coloradan Sheila Powers. The judge’s order requires that Ms. Powers, who lives three states distant from Mr. Fabry, “stay away” from him and his children, and it mandated that she turn over any firearms in her possession within 48 hours.

Mr. Fabry’s affidavit to the court claims “threats of harm,” besides “harassment and stalking,” as the motives for his application for an injunction. Ms. Powers says she has never been to Tennessee, including to contest Mr. Fabry’s “order of protection.” The order was finalized by default: “The Tennessee judge…refused to let me appear by phone and then threw my notarized affidavit out, [rejecting] it as hearsay.”

Mr. Fabry, the plaintiff, is a competitive baseball player who stands 6′ 1″ and weighs 195 lbs.; Ms. Powers is 5′ 6″, weighs 130, and lives in a different time zone. She’s also 20 years older than Mr. Fabry.

Judge Williams ruled:

Respondent shall refrain from contacting Petitioner, his family, his girlfriend or his employer, directly or indirectly, from stalking, harassing, threatening, texting, emailing, posting on the Internet or any social media platform anything about, referring to in any way referencing the Petitioner, his family, his girlfriend or his employer.

The judge’s ruling exemplifies how an already extravagantly expensive, easily exploited, and dubiously necessary process opens the door to gross violations of citizens’ civil rights. In wanton excess of her jurisdiction, the judge prohibited Ms. Powers from exercising her right to freedom of speech.

This order, besides highlighting palpable absurdities endemic to the restraining order process, is transparently unlawful (i.e., unconstitutional) and therefore void (which does not mean it can be safely disobeyed).

*The order concludes: “Neither you nor the Petitioner can agree to change this Order. Even if the Petitioner attempts to contact you or agrees to have contact with you, you must obey this Order. If you do not, you can be jailed for up to 11 months and 29 days and fined up to $2,500.” (Emphases added.)

TALKING BACK to restraining orders

THEY’RE NOT JUST ABUSED BUT ABUSIVE

Tag restraining orders against women

Another Instance of a Restraining Order against a Woman Petitioned by a Man She Allegedly Talked ABOUT

FABRY v. POWERS: An Injunction against a Woman That Underscores the Wastefulness and Absurdity of the Restraining Order Process, and Its Licensing of Civil Rights Violations by the Courts