“N.J. Judges Told to Ignore Rights in Abuse TROs”: A Retrospective Look at Vicious Restraining Order Policies 20 Years Later

June 13, 2014June 19, 2023Moderator 1 Comment

Among the challenges of exposing crookedness in the adjudication of restraining orders is credibility. Power rules, and the people who’ve been abused typically have none. Their plaints are discounted or dismissed.

Influential and creditworthy commentators have denounced restraining order injustice, including systemic judicial misconduct, and they’ve in fact done it for decades. But they aren’t saying what the politically entitled want to hear, so the odd peep and quibble are easily drowned in the maelstrom.

Below is a exquisite journalistic exposé that I can’t simply provide a link to because the nearly 20-year-old reportage is only preserved on the Internet by proxy hosts (for example, here).

The article, “N.J. Judges Told to Ignore Rights in Abuse TROs,” is by Russ Bleemer and was published in the April 24, 1995 edition of the New Jersey Law Journal.

New Jersey attorneys corroborate that the rigid policy it scrutinizes still obtains today. What’s more, the general prescriptions of the New Jersey training judge on whom the articles focuses arguably inform restraining order policy nationwide. The only things dated about the article are (1) judges’ being “trained on the issue of domestic violence” is no longer “unique” to New Jersey but is contractually mandated everywhere in return for courts’ receiving hefty federal grants under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which grants average out at over $500,000 per; and (2) the resultant policy now injures not only men who are fingered as abusers in five-minute procedures that are often merely perfunctory.

According to the same complacently biased “standards,” it also trashes the lives of accused women, who are not infrequently prosecuted by other women (including their mothers, daughters, and sisters).

______________

On Friday, at a training session at the Hughes Justice Complex in Trenton, novitiate municipal judged were given the “scared straight” version of dealing with requests for temporary restraining orders in domestic violence cases.

The recommendation: Issue the order, or else.

Failing to issue temporary restraining orders in domestic violence cases, the judges are told, will turn them into fodder for headlines.

They’re also instructed not to worry about the constitution.

The state law carries a strong presumption in favor of granting emergency TROs for alleged domestic violence victims, the new judges were told at the seminar run by the Administrative Office of the Courts. Public sentiment, mostly due to the O.J. Simpson case, runs even stronger.

The judges’ training is rife with hyperbole apparently designed to shock the newcomers. It sets down a rigid procedure, one that the trainers say is the judges’ only choice under a tough 1991 domestic violence law and its decade-old predecessor.

Since the Legislature has made domestic violence a top priority, municipal court judges are instructed that they can do their part by issuing temporary restraining orders pronto.

“Throw him out on the street,” said trainer and municipal court judge Richard Russell at a similar seminar a year ago, “give him the clothes on his back, and tell him, ‘See ya around.’”

This napalm approach to implementing the domestic violence statute has some state judges talking. No one disputes the presumption in the law of granting a TRO, and there have been no serious court challenges to the statute’s ex parte provisions.

The strident teaching, however, doesn’t always sit well with some judges, even those who characterize the instruction as deliberate verbal flares directed at a worthy goal.

“[It’s] one of the most inflammatory things I have ever heard,” says one municipal court judge, who asked not to be identified, about a presentation held last year. “We’re supposed to have the courage to make the right decisions, not do what is ‘safe.’”

At the same time, even former and current municipal and Superior Court judges who are critical of the seminar have words of admiration for the candor of trainers Russell, Somerset County Superior Court Judge Graham Ross and Nancy Kessler, chief of juvenile and family services for the AOC. One municipal court judge says that while the statements reflect an incorrect approach, “I wouldn’t be real keen to inhibit the trainers at these sessions from exhibiting their honest opinions.”

For their part, Russell and Kessler say they are doing what the law says they should do—protecting victims, which in turn can save lives. Ross didn’t return telephone calls about the training. He, Russell and Kessler were scheduled to conduct Friday’s program for new judges, a program Kessler says the trio has conducted for judges at least five times since the law was passed.

The law, N.J.S.A. 2C:25-17 et seq., requires judges to be trained on the issue of domestic violence, a requirement that women’s rights advocates say is unique. The TRO provisions also were reemphasized three years ago, encouraging the use of such orders after a municipal court judge hears from one complainant.

Under N.J.S.A. 2C:25-28, municipal court judges assigned to cover for their Superior Court counterparts at nights and on weekends and holidays can issue an ex parte TRO, which is subject to a hearing within 10 days in the Superior Court’s family part “when necessary to protect the life, health or well-being of a victim on whose behalf the relief is sought.”

The TRO may prohibit the defendant from returning to the scene of the alleged act, strip the defendant of firearms or weapons, and provide “any other appropriate relief.” The law also says that the emergency relief “shall be granted for good cause shown.”

Dating Relationships Included

The training, however, stresses the Legislature’s urgency in passing the law, which last year was amended again to extend possible domestic violence situations to dating relationships. The trainers encourage the judges to focus on the legislative findings, which, in emphasizing rapid law enforcement response, state “that there are thousands of persons in this State who are regularly beaten, tortured and in some cases even killed by their spouses or cohabitants.”

This, said Kessler at a training session last year, is justification for an approach advocated by Russell: Talk to the complainant, talk to the reporting officer, issue the TRO, and let the family court sort it out later.

On a tape of the April 1994 session obtained by the Law Journal, Kessler told the judges that “in that legislative findings section, people are told to interpret this law broadly in order to maximize protection for the victim. So if anybody ever came back at you and said, ‘Gee, that’s a real reach in terms of probable cause,’ you have a legislatively mandated response which is, ‘I erred on the side of caution for the victim.’”

Kessler was reacting to a question that arose during Russell’s presentation. “The statute says we should apply just cause in issuing the order,” an unidentified, new municipal judge said, adding, “You seem to be saying to grant every order.”

Russell quickly replied, “Yeah, that’s what I seem to be saying.”

Russell, a municipal court judge in Ocean City and Woodbine, as well as a partner in Ocean City’s Loveland, Garrett, Russell & Young, answered the question at last year’s seminar after he had spoken for some time on the middle-of-the-night procedures the new judges would have to follow.

At the outset, Russell said that he was on the bench when the original domestic violence act was enacted in 1982 “and that just blew up all of my learning, all my understanding, all my concept of constitutional protections and I had to acclimate myself to a whole new ball game.

“If I had one message to give you today, it is that your job is not to weigh the parties’ rights as you might be inclined to do as having been private practitioners,” Russell told the judges. “Your job is not to become concerned about all the constitutional rights of the man that you’re violating as you grant a restraining order. Throw him out on the street, give him the clothes on his back and tell him, ‘See ya around.’ Your job is to be a wall that is thrown between the two people that are fighting each other and that’s how you can rationalize it. Because that’s what the statute says. The statute says that there is something called domestic violence and it says that it is an evil in our society.”

Not all judges agree with Russell’s approach. Philip Gruccio, a former trial and Appellate Division judge, says that even orders based on ex parte requests require hearings, to a certain extent. “It involves a certain amount of judicial discretion,” he says.

Robert Penza, who retired last year after serving as a family court judge in Morris County for two years, agrees. “I could just never rubber stamp a complaint,” says Penza. “A judge has got to judge.”

Gruccio, who says he is familiar with the work of Russell and Ross on the bench and that both are top notch judges, strongly disagrees with the approach. “My view is that you just can’t say, ‘Forget about the defendant’s rights.’ You can’t say that. It is wrong to say that. It is wrong to train people that constitutional rights aren’t important.”

Gruccio, a professor at Widener University Law School in Wilmington, Del., and director of its judicial administration program, concludes, “I think what has happened is, for emphasis purposes, somebody has lost their way.”

Catering to Popular Objectives

Sitting judges interviewed for this article readily agree with Gruccio. Says one: “The constitution is being ignored in order to satisfy a particular legislative objective. And if the judiciary should feel that it is obliged to close its eyes to constitutional considerations in order to assist the Legislature in attaining a currently popular objective, it will have prostituted itself and abrogated its responsibility to maintain its independence and its primary responsibility of upholding the constitution.”

One municipal court judge who has heard the AOC lecture says, “This is throwing people out of their homes in the middle of the night,” adding, “We have an obligation under our oath of office to be fair, not to be safe.”

A problem that arises by such wholesale approvals of TROs, judges say, is that word spreads, and litigants can try to use them as a club. Kessler couldn’t provide statistics on the number of TROs that are later dismissed by the family court, but she says that the number is “significant.” She adds that more than 58,000 TROs and amended TROs were issued by New Jersey courts last year, with about 60 percent of the complaints originating in municipal courts.

While some municipal court judges acknowledge that the domestic violence law can create injustices—one calls it “probably the most abused piece of legislation that comes to my mind”—there are counterpoints. Melanie Griffin, executive director of the Commission to Study Sex Discrimination in the Statutes, a legislative commission that drafted much of the 1991 law, says that for every individual who files a false report, “there are 100 women who don’t come in at all and stay there and get beaten.”

Judges who have seen the training presentation say that if anyone objects, they keep it to themselves. Russell says that sometimes “those with no background express disbelief, until we explain the intent of the legislation.”

Moreover, Russell says there is nothing wrong with the teaching approach. Abuse victims, he says, may apply and relinquish TROs repeatedly before they finally do something about breaking away. Once they do so, he says, the Legislature’s prevention goal has been met.

Russell continues: “So when you say to me, am I doing something wrong telling these judges they have to ignore the constitutional protections most people have, I don’t think so. The Legislature described the problem and how to address it, [and] I am doing my job properly by teaching other judges to follow the legislative mandate.”

Russell disputes that the TRO training removes judicial discretion where it is needed. On the tape, Russell and Kessler emphasize that first, the judge must decide whether the domestic violence statute grants jurisdiction over the complainant and the defendant. Russell said last week that he was updating Friday’s lecture to include the 1994 expansion of the domestic violence statute to situations in which the complainant was dating the accused or alleges that the accused is a stalker. The judge also has to speak to the party or review the written material and make a decision whether to proceed. “The judge has to be guided by instinct,” Russell explains, before he or she can go ahead with the TRO.

Says one municipal court judge who also has conducted training and asked not to be named: “I would say, ‘If there is any doubt in your mind about want to do, you should issue the restraining order.’” The judge adds, “I would never approach the topic by saying, ‘Look, these people are stripped of their constitutional rights.’”

Making Headlines

Much of the seminar’s rhetoric alludes to actions that keep the judges out of the headlines, which are mentioned in the taped seminar repeatedly. Near the beginning of his presentation, Judge Graham Ross, reacting to Russell, says that dealing with domestic violence “is not something that we can take a shortcut on. Forgetting about reading your name in the paper—and that certainly is very troubling, I don’t want to read my name—but that’s really secondary.

“The bottom line is we’re trying to protect the victim,” Ross continues. “We don’t want the victim hurt. We don’t want the victim killed. So yes, you don’t want your name in the paper, but you’d feel worse than that if the victim was dead. So yeah, your name will be in the paper…if you’ve done something wrong. And I’ve said that to my municipal court judges. If you don’t follow the law after I told you what to do, I will guarantee that you will be headlines. That’s not a threat. That’s an absolute promise on my part. This is serious stuff.”

The AOC’s Kessler says the media references are a training technique, and judges aren’t influenced by public opinion polls. The focus, she says, follows the statute’s emphasis on protecting victims by dealing with the dynamics of domestic violence and the importance of intervention. “When there is a discussion about headlines,” she says, “it tends to be more in recognition of what they already are aware of and concerned about.”

One former judge agrees that judges don’t work wearing blinders, but says that if worries about bad publicity affect their work, “it defrauds the system.” A current municipal court judge who has been through the training on domestic violence says, “We have to stand back from the hysteria and the newspapers and all and do what’s right.”

But most others disagreed. The “approach isn’t bad because it’s got a shock value,” says retired judge Robert Penza.

A current municipal court judge liked the realism of the media references. “A newspaper headline can be death to a municipal court judge’s career,” says the long-time jurist, “and the prospect of an unfavorable newspaper headline is a frightening one.” The judge added, however, that attention-getting devices must not be confused with legal principles.

And the judge paid the overall approach a backhanded compliment frequently repeated in some form among the former and current judges contacted for this article. Referring to Russell, the judge declared: “What he said is valuable because he is expressing the state of affairs. He should be commended for his candor, although I must say I find his viewpoint to be anathema.”

Lip Service: What Passes for Fair and Sound Restraining Order Policy in Michigan (and, Largely, Everywhere Else)

June 10, 2014June 17, 2023Moderator Leave a comment

I’ve tried in earnest to field a lot of questions about the rules and practices that apply to restraining orders. A lot of the answers don’t make any sense.

Judges and authorities don’t question the fairness or sense of the rules, because that’s not their job. Lawyers sometimes question them but may not be fully aware of them themselves. And defendants, who are terrorized and railroaded through, often have no recourse but to complain afterwards about injustices they’re not always able to explain.

Let’s shed some light on a few of these injustices with the help of the Kalamazoo County Prosecutor’s Office. Its website’s “Personal Protection Orders” page is here.

“A police officer called and informed me of a PPO [personal protection order]. Is a phone call effective without personal service upon me?” This is a question the likes of which bring visitors to this blog regularly.

Most attorneys, if asked this question, would probably say no, it isn’t sufficient—and for good reason. The average person who’s issued an order of the court has no idea what its significance is. A cop’s calling and telling him or her about it—“Hi, a protection order has been issued against you”—hardly qualifies as making him or her aware of prohibitions whose violation s/he can be arrested and jailed for without being tried before a jury for anything.

In Michigan, however, “oral notice” (lip service) is apparently deemed “good enough.”

Notice no actual confirmation that a defendant has even been orally informed of a court order is required (like a signature, for example). It’s sufficient if a police officer (or clerk) files a form that says the defendant was told of its “existence.” This say-so is called “proof.”

This “proof,” once “entered into the computer system,” authorizes a police officer to arrest the defendant for violating an order of the court that s/he may not even have been given a copy of. The defendant’s so much as saying hello to the plaintiff now qualifies as a crime for which s/he can be arrested and punished.

(The Kalamazoo website later contradicts itself with this statement: “The police might not arrest the restrained party, especially if the officer did not witness the acts violating the PPO, or if there was insufficient proof that the Respondent had been served with the PPO papers before the alleged violation occurred.” This suggests that service does require that a police officer place a copy of the order in the defendant’s hands. You see from these kinds of inconsistencies why so many people complain that officers they question seem to make up answers on the spot.)

You may be thinking that with policy’s being so wishy-washy, there’d have to be evidence that the defendant committed a violation of the order before a police officer could arrest him or her. Not so. A violation, which the defendant may not even understand to be a legal trespass, just has to be reported to a police officer once the order is in the system.

I like the phrase “warrantless arrest,” because one of the meanings of warrantless is lacking justification or proof. To be clear, the basis for hauling someone off to jail may once again be somebody’s say-so. An officer doesn’t have to witness anything.

An order itself is, of course, issued on somebody’s say-so. Consider:

An ex parte order may be obtained by a plaintiff without the defendant’s knowing a thing about it (that’s what ex parte means), and obtaining the order is an investment of two and a half hours’ time tops. Most of this is waiting. The actual audience with a judge may only take five minutes. Observe, further, that “PPOs do not require a court hearing.” That means there’s no follow-up mandated by law. Unless the defendant knows to request a hearing to challenge the allegations against him or her—which may include anything from harassment to stalking to battery or worse—the order (possibly based on a five-minute interview) is a done deal, and those allegations remain permanently stamped on the defendant’s public record.

To repeat for emphasis: A judge may never so much as clap eyes on the defendant, who’s just a name scrawled on a form.

As if all this didn’t sound bent enough, contemplate this, finally:

This means that if the plaintiff on the order opts to contact the defendant, that’s perfectly okay. The person who goes to jail is the defendant.

Does this mean a malicious plaintiff can bait the defendant into violating a court order by calling, texting, or emailing him or her, or showing up at his or her home or place of work?

Right. (People report answering the phone and actually being told, “Gotcha!”)

The Kalamazoo County Prosecutor’s Office is hip to this potential source of abuse, however. It admonishes plaintiffs in the sternest terms not to “send the wrong signals.”

On Withdrawing Restraining Orders That Were Obtained Impetuously (and on the Influences That Militate against Conscience)

June 7, 2014July 15, 2023Moderator 4 Comments

Since I began culling various “motions to dismiss” that allow plaintiffs in different states to vacate (cancel) restraining orders that they’ve applied for, the motion forms have attracted between 10 and 40 visitors a day.

Dropping a restraining order is a straightforward process. The restraining order applicant returns to the courthouse and files an affidavit (sworn statement) explaining his or her reasons for wishing to have the order dismissed, which may require an additional hearing before a judge. On its surface, the procedure is easy-peasy (albeit inconvenient and possibly nerve-wracking).

If the restraining order was petitioned in anger or the petitioner simply acted “without thinking,” withdrawing it is furthermore an ethical no-brainer, and it may be sufficient for the petitioner to tell the court that s/he no longer considers the order necessary.

Potential complications, nevertheless, are manifold. Applications for restraining orders, even ones falsely or impetuously obtained, may have been motivated or encouraged by others, and withdrawing them must be done against their urgent disapproval. These others are often family members or girlfriends who get swept up in the drama, which can excite a frenzy approaching bloodlust.

Some minor domestic fracas or even just an expression of discontentment may become for them a point to concentrate their collective resentments toward men or toward the particular man who’s been accused (and the gender reverse isn’t inconceivable).

“Don’t do it!” plaintiffs may be told. “You’ll get in trouble for lying and go to jail!” Plaintiffs with children may moreover be terrorized with doomful predictions of harassment by child protective services: “They’ll take your kids!”

Concerns about being prosecuted by the state for falsely alleging fear are unwarranted. Concerns about the state continuing to sniff around a plaintiff’s household, however, aren’t baseless. It happens.

Here, for example, is how judges are prompted to proceed in Texas:

When an applicant seeks to dismiss the protective order or wants to withdraw an application for a protective order, the court should have the request investigated before ruling.

The nanny state’s presumption that plaintiffs’ fears are real and urgent makes obtaining restraining orders, even by arrant fraud, child’s play. But the same presumption means the state may be reluctant to concede that it was duped. It’s been primed, in other words, to look for mischief, and it doesn’t always passively back down.

Returning to The Texas Family Violence Benchbook (a benchbook is an instruction manual for judges):

Note that accusers are automatically nominated “victims,” and those they accuse are automatically presumed to be “batterers”/“abusers.”

Judges are told to be suspicious. No benchbook includes “pissed off” as among the motives for procuring a protective order. Acknowledging that allegations may be made impulsively or spitefully is contrary to the conceits of the system.

Women’s advocates, who are sometimes party to restraining order applications, also tend to discourage retractions, because second-guessing discredits “the cause.”

Too often decent people who reconsider impulsive acts succumb to fears of punishment or cruel scrutiny from the system, or fears of alienation or rebukes from friends, family members, or “advisers.” The choice to undo a spiteful whim, which may be fulfilled in mere minutes, is agonizing.

The petitioner who knows s/he was guided to apply for a restraining order by motives ulterior to the ones s/he alleged to a judge should even so favor conscience over personal or peripheral interests, because the defendant is certain to be in at least as much agony—and unjustly.

False Restraining Orders That Allege Emotional Abuse ARE Emotional Abuse

June 5, 2014February 19, 2018Moderator 23 Comments

A theme that emerges upon consideration of restraining order abuse is lack of empathy—from impulsive or false accusers and from those who abet them. Plaintiffs who act either spitefully or viciously seldom appreciate the ramifications of their actions. They may possess what we call a normal conscience but either don’t think or, in the heat of the moment, don’t care.

The horror is that this same indifference extends not only to authorities and officers of the court but to feminist advocates for restraining orders and the public at large, who are persuaded that the gravity of violence against women trivializes all other considerations. Their indifference may in fact be unconsciousness, but when people’s livelihoods and lives are at stake, unconsciousness is no more pardonable.

It’s ironic that the focus of those who should be most sensitized to injustice is so narrow. Ironic, moreover, is that “emotional abuse” is frequently a component of state definitions of domestic violence. The state recognizes the harm of emotional violence done in the home but conveniently regards the same conduct as harmless when it uses the state as its instrument.

From “Are You a Victim of Emotional Abuse?” by Cathy Meyer:

Emotional abuse is used to control, degrade, humiliate, and punish a spouse. While emotional abuse differs from physical abuse, the end result is the same….

Note the writer’s conclusion that emotional abuse is equivalent to violence in its effects.

Her orientation, of course, is toward victims of domestic violence, but her judgment is just as applicable to false allegations, whose intent is to “control, degrade, humiliate, and punish.”

Plainly the motive of most reasonable feminist arguments and appeals, at least as that motive is understood by those making them, is to induce empathic understanding. They want people to care.

Here’s yet another irony. Too often the perspectives of those who decry injustices are partisan. Feminists themselves are liable to see only one side.

“But my side’s more important” isn’t a rebuttal but a confirmation of chauvinism.

In the explication quoted above, the writer compares the conduct of emotional abusers to that of prison guards toward prisoners of war, who use psychological torment to achieve compliance from their wards. Consider that victims of false allegations may literally be imprisoned.

Consider further some of the tactics that Ms. Meyer identifies as emotionally abusive:

Isolating a spouse from friends and family.
Discourag[ing] any independent activities such as work; taking classes or activities with friends.
If the spouse does not give into the control, they are threatened, harassed, punished, and intimidated by the abuser.
Us[ing] the children to gain control by undermining the other parent’s authority or threatening to leave and take the children.
Control[ling] all the financial decisions, refus[ing] to listen to their partner’s opinion, withhold[ing] important financial information and mak[ing] their spouse live on limited resources.
Mak[ing] all major decisions such as where to live, how to furnish the home, and what type of automobile to drive.

Now consider the motives of false allegations and their certain and potential effects: isolation, termination of employment and impediment to or negation of employability, inaccessibility to children (who are used as leverage), and being forced to live on limited means (while possibly being required under threat of punishment to provide spousal and child support) and perhaps being left with no home to furnish or automobile to drive at all.

The correspondence is obvious…if you’re looking for it. Opponents of emotional abuse need to recognize it in all of its manifestations, because the expectation of empathy is only justified if it’s reciprocated.

Impulse: How Restraining Orders Encourage and Reward Tantrum Behavior and Why Feminist Advocates Should Be the First to Push for Their Reform

June 3, 2014June 29, 2023Moderator Leave a comment

It’s often fairly remarked that feminists tend not to acknowledge restraining order abuse, let alone express resentment toward female offenders. There are exceptional instances, however, as you’ll see below.

It’s also remarked that rash or false allegations mock and discredit the suffering of genuine victims. The respondent in the forum exchange that follows, though she doesn’t say as much, clearly agrees.

Notable about the response, whose tone is reproving, is that its writer recognizes that restraining orders may be sought impulsively to gratify a “tantrum” and get their defendants “in trouble” (which recognition fittingly uses the language of the playground).

Notable, contrariwise, however, is that the respondent discourages the petitioner of the restraining order, who’s admitted to proceeding impulsively, from following through with her expressed intention to rectify an act that may have been motivated by spite. The respondent is the executive director of AARDVARC (An Abuse, Rape, and Domestic Violence Aid and Resource Collection), and behaviors like those the questioner owns up to undermine her endeavor’s credibility.

Notable, finally, is the respondent’s observation that once the state machine is roused, it can be tough to quiet again—like a swarm of killer bees.

The slack standards applied to the restraining order process cut both ways. Not only do they make it easy to lynch defendants undeservedly based on a few brief statements rendered in minutes; the drive-thru, come-one-come-all policy they authorize urges plaintiffs to proceed full-steam ahead without consideration of consequence to themselves and their families.

Plaintiffs shouldn’t be able to incriminate others impulsively, and those who are baited into doing so have as much reason to fault the state as they do to fault themselves.

Representatives of victims of domestic violence and rape, furthermore, are at least as keenly aware as anyone that people follow vicious impulses when there are no checks on their behavior. Logically, then, feminist proponents should be the first to perceive that if state processes have no reins, they’ll be abused. These activists should, accordingly, recognize restraining orders’ potential for abuse and be at the forefront of advocacy for more rigorous and responsible policy.

Sex, Restraining Order Abuse, and the “Dark Triad”: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy

May 31, 2014June 29, 2023Moderator 2 Comments

“Socially aversive personality traits such as Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and Narcissism have been studied intensively in clinical and social psychology. […] Although each of these three constructs may have some unique features not shared by the other two, they do appear to share some common elements such as exploitation, manipulativeness, and a grandiose sense of self-importance. Accordingly, Paulhus and Williams (2002) have called these three constructs the ‘Dark Triad’ of personality….”

—Kibeom Lee and Michael C. Ashton

“Members of the Dark Triad tend to be especially untrustworthy in the mating context.”

—Daniel N. Jones and Delroy L. Paulhus

Restraining orders are commonly used to sever relationships. The assumption is that the applicant of a restraining order has been the victim of mistreatment. Many who’ve been implicated as abusers, however, report mistreatment by manipulative personalities who then exploited court process to dominate them, garner attention, and/or deflect blame for their own conduct—typically by lying through their teeth.

It turns out there’s a sexy phrase for the collective personality traits exhibited by manipulators of this sort: the “Dark Triad.”

Several of the posts on this blog have discussed personality-disordered and high-conflict people (who may be personality-disordered), and such people are a central focus of the work of attorney, mediator, and therapist Bill Eddy and psychologist Tara Palmatier, whom I’ve frequently quoted and who’ve written volubly about abuses of legal process by predatory personalities. Narcissism and psychopathy, two of the constituents of the Dark Triad, also qualify as “Cluster B” personality disorders.

As should be evident to anyone who’s read up on these matters, there’s a high degree of overlap among attempts to define, differentiate, and distinguish the mentally kinked.

The context in which the phrase Dark Triad is applied is interpersonal relationships that are familiarly called “romantic.” This should be of interest to victims of court process, because their abusers are more often than not current or former spouses, boy- or girlfriends, or intimates.

The concept of the Dark Triad should also be of interest to them because clinical labels may only roughly match their abusers’ conduct, conduct like deception, inexplicable betrayals, irreconcilable (mixed) messages, etc. (behaviors that “don’t make sense”). People who fall within this (subclinical) delta of personality quirks represent their interest and intentions to be sincere, and reveal them, often abruptly, to have been shallow or even sinister.

From “How the Dark Triad Traits Predict Relationship Choices” (Jonason, Luevano, & Adams):

The Dark Triad traits should be associated with preferring casual relationships of one kind or another. Narcissism in particular should be associated with desiring a variety of relationships. Narcissism is the most social of the three, having an approach orientation towards friends (Foster & Trimm, 2008) and an externally validated ‘ego’ (Buffardi & Campbell, 2008). By preferring a range of relationships, narcissists are better suited to reinforce their sense of self. Therefore, although collectively the Dark Triad traits will be correlated with preferring different casual sex relationships, after controlling for the shared variability among the three traits, we expect that narcissism will correlate with preferences for one-night stands and friend[s]-with-benefits.

In contrast, psychopathy may be characterized by an opportunistic, exploitive mating strategy (Figueredo et al., 2006; Jonason et al., 2009b; Mealey, 1995). Booty-call relationships by their very name denote a degree of exploitation. That is, individuals use others—their booty-call partner[s]—for sex by a late night phone call with the expressed or implied purpose of sex (Jonason et al., 2009). Therefore, we expect that after controlling for the shared variability among the three traits, psychopathy will be correlated with preferences for booty-call relationships. Such a relationship may be consistent with their exploitive mating strategy. Last, although prior work has linked Machiavellianism with a short-term mating style (McHoskey, 2001), more sophisticated analyses controlling for the shared correlation with psychopathy has revealed that Machiavellianism might not be central to predicting short-term mating (Jonason et al., 2011). Therefore, we expect Machiavellianism to not be correlated with preferences for any relationships.

What we’re talking about, basically, are people who exploit others for sexual attention and/or satisfaction (that is, players). The common denominator is a disinclination toward or disinterest in what’s called a “meaningful” or “serious” relationship. The motive is noncommittal, urge-driven self-pleasure (assisted masturbation, as it were). Psychologists sometimes remark in writing about narcissists in other contexts that they entertain “romantic fantasies” but conclude that these fantasies are exclusively about personal feelings and not interpersonal anything.

What we’re talking about in the context of abuse of restraining orders are people who exploit others and then exploit legal process as a convenient means to discard them when they’re through (while whitewashing their own behaviors, procuring additional narcissistic supply in the forms of attention and special treatment, and possibly exacting a measure of revenge if they feel they’ve been criticized or contemned).

Since it’s only natural that people with normally constructed minds will struggle to comprehend the motives of those with Dark Triad traits, they conveniently set themselves up for allegations of harassment or stalking, which are easily established with nothing more than some emails or text messages (that may, for example, be pleas for an explanation—or demands for one). People abused by manipulators who then abuse legal process to compound their injuries typically report that they were “confused,” “angry,” and/or “wanted to understand.”

This is the Jonason & Webster “Dirty Dozen” scale for assessing Dark Triad candidacy:

I tend to manipulate others to get my way.
I tend to lack remorse.
I tend to want others to admire me.
I tend to be unconcerned with the morality of my actions.
I have used deceit or lied to get my way.
I tend to be callous or insensitive.
I have used flattery to get my way.
I tend to seek prestige or status.
I tend to be cynical.
I tend to exploit others toward my own end.
I tend to expect special favors from others.
I want others to pay attention to me.

Victims of restraining order abuse by manipulative lovers or “romantic” stalkers will note a number of correspondences with their accusers’ personalities, as well as discern motives for their lying to the police and courts, which elicits special treatment and attention from authority figures…and subsequently every other sucker with whom they share their “ordeal.”

*Some specialist monographs on this subject are here.

WomensLaw: A Domain Name That Says All You Need to Know about Where Restraining Order Reform Needs to Start

May 30, 2014June 29, 2023Moderator 6 Comments

The biggest challenge to sensitizing people to abusive restraining order policies that are readily and pervasively exploited by malicious litigants can be summed up in a single word: sex.

Women, who are often victims of abuse of court process, don’t want to implicate women in their injuries; they want to blame their false accusers, who are frequently men. Appreciate that this urge to blame men is the reason why restraining orders as processes of law exist in the first place.

Appreciate also that men aren’t the force behind the perpetuation of the status quo, and pointing fingers in their direction isn’t going to change that fact.

In the last month, I’ve sifted the Internet to discover what types of restraining order are available where and how to undo their misapplication. The most thorough source of information on restraining orders offered by the various states that I’ve found—and one I’ve repeatedly returned to—is WomensLaw.org.

It’ll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about restraining orders in your neck of the woods. Its domain name will also remind you why restraining orders exist and what they signify (there is no MensLaw.org).

After decades of rampant abuse’s being tolerated and with restraining orders’ having become a familiar institution, men have hopped onto the abuse industry bandwagon, and their malicious exploitation of restraining orders will probably continue to escalate with the passage of time.

The authorship of restraining orders, however, is by women, for women. Anyone with an interest in social justice or in reforming a handily abused process that fractures families and derails lives every day must acknowledge this fact and resist the reflex to divert blame from where it’s due.

The women who advocate for restraining orders don’t necessarily understand that they’re abused, why they’re abused, how they’re abused, or what the consequences of their abuse are. And they’re not going to take men’s word for it.

Ungoverned: Restraining Order Laws in Arkansas

May 29, 2014February 24, 2018Moderator 2 Comments

not-governed

I’ve combed the Internet in recent weeks for motion-to-dismiss forms applicable to restraining orders issued in the 50 states. For Arkansas, there’s nothing to be found. Zip. If that weren’t suggestive enough that the process is a lock, consider the above entry excerpted from a 2011 Arkansas Court Bulletin.

This means an accuser may be awarded exclusive entitlement to the family residence; sole custody of children; a monthly stipend from the former breadwinner, who may find himself out of a job subsequent to being issued a “domestic abuse” restraining order; and reimbursement of costs. Filing for a protection order, in other words, may gain a plaintiff everything and cost her (or sometimes him) nothing—whether the allegations it’s based on are true, hyped, or lies.

The case commentary (which you’ll observe publicly discloses the names of the parties to the action) concerns a man who was served with a notice to appear in court to answer allegations of “domestic abuse” six days thence.

Rough translation: “Dear sir, you’re expected in a courtroom next week to respond to allegations that you beat your wife.”

For people who know nothing about restraining order processes, appreciate that this man was given less than a week’s time to prepare a defense against obviously serious charges with obviously serious repercussions. In six days, he was supposed to come to grips with public allegations that may have horrified him, procure an attorney’s services, gather relevant evidence and testimony, etc.

Six days.

The bulletin reports that the man “sought a continuance [postponement], which was denied.” He didn’t attend the hearing. The commentary doesn’t indicate a reason. His request to have the order set aside, because the expectation of an immediate response didn’t conform to the Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure, was also denied. Why? Because the Arkansas Domestic Abuse Act trumps the rules of civil procedure.

This case exemplifies why restraining order adjudications strike so many people as Kafkaesque: “I move—.” “No.” “Then—.” “No.” “But—.” “The rules don’t apply in your case, sir, and we don’t negotiate our decisions.”

Defendants’ being railroaded, of course, is nothing extraordinary. “Emergency” restraining orders may allow respondents only a weekend to prepare before having to appear in court to answer allegations—very possibly false allegations—that have the potential to permanently alter the course of their lives.

Extraordinary is the Arkansas courts’ openly and nonchalantly recognizing in a bulletin that their protective order process is “not governed by the rules.”

Its proceedings are “special.”

“Redeeming Feminism”: Making It about Equality and Not Victimhood

May 26, 2014August 10, 2023Moderator 2 Comments

Since the publication of this post, the feminist blog it cites and criticizes has been made private.

When criticizing injustices wrought by prejudicial, feminist-motivated laws and court procedures like the restraining order process, restraint isn’t easy to pull off.

It’s nevertheless worthy of striving for, because the gender divide that fosters the perpetuation of these prejudicial laws and procedures needs to be bridged—for the sake not just of their male victims but of their female victims, too.

I came across a blog yesterday titled, Redeeming Feminism. It arrested my attention, because its banner reads, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

The dramatic irony is lost on the blog’s author, but this is, of course, the argument against feminism, whose “second wave” has done at least as much to promote and enforce sexual bigotry as it has to eliminate it. (First-wave feminists, who sought to dissolve gender discrimination instead of cement it, were those who pushed for the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment from which the quotation above derives.)

Some feminists categorically can’t be reasoned with. They’re the equivalents of high-conflict courtroom litigants who reason with their feelings. But I don’t get the impression that the author of this blog is one such, and I think there are many self-styled feminists like her out there. She seems very much in earnest and without spiteful motive. Her intentions are well-meaning.

To judge from the wattage of her smile in the photograph of her on her blog, however, she’s never been stalked by someone only to have that person publicly and persuasively accuse her of stalking, or had it falsely suggested to authorities and the courts, for example, that she’s violent or a danger to children.

To quote a falsely accused woman I’ve corresponded with for the past six months, a professional nurse and mother of three who’s been through years of hell, that sort of thing “changes a person on a cellular level.” Had the blog author been subjected to what my correspondent has been—or what most of the respondents to this blog and to other blogs and petitions it links to have been—her smile would be considerably more muted (which would be a shame, because it’s a good smile).

This is the shortcoming of most vigorous feminist advocacy out there: It tends to see only what it was looking for in the first place. Its argumentation is based in the abstract. I wouldn’t wish the real on anyone, but before taking up arms, advocates of one position or another have a moral obligation to look up, down, and sideways.

The post on the referenced blog that I read is called, “Anti-Feminist Memes pt.3: ‘Domestic abuse, Men are the real victims’.” It rebuts the rhetorical strategies of counter-feminist “memes” on the Internet.

This is a meme.

This type of meme is extremely popular. In looking for memes to write about for this blog project, this theme was one of the most prevalent. Memes like these send a lot of messages simultaneously. First, they suggest that feminism is rooted in hypocrisy. They want us to assume that feminists not only support negative gender restrictions on men, but that they also encourage policy that will oppress men. A lot of these memes have phrases in them like “according to feminists,” “feminists believe,” and “feminist logic.” It’s not enough for these memes to suggest that men are oppressed more than women claim to be, the meme must also suggest that feminism causes and supports violence against men, with the aim of total male oppression.

Her criticisms, though spirited, lack balance. The “memes” she refers to don’t actually “suggest feminism is rooted in hypocrisy” (though this is certainly true of today’s feminism) or posit that “men are oppressed more than women,” nor do they appear to want anyone to “assume” anything. What they do is point out and denounce a double standard, which is an endeavor every true feminist should commend. The author of the blog doesn’t address the double standard; she takes a defensive tack and asserts that women are victims of violence and that such “memes” insensitively ignore this urgent fact.

This line of (emotional) reasoning basically says never mind if there is a double standard, because women are victims. It’s a logical bait-and-switch—and one that betrays unawareness that women are also injured by the same double standard.

These, too, are memes.

Laws that have arisen and been fortified in the last three decades in response to demands for the curtailment of violence against women are applied unequally and unfairly (which is another way of saying they disregard the most basic tenets of our Constitution). The prevalence of violence in the world is completely beside the point. John Doe isn’t his brother’s keeper and can’t justly be held to account for the actions of others. The fact is whenever anyone makes a complaint of domestic violence today, whether a woman or a man, his or her allegation may be presumed valid, especially in civil court, and the reason why this is so owes to feminist lobbying, which has engendered prejudice against defendants (who, once upon a time, were only men). When allegations of abuse are exaggerated or false, the consequences are often the same as they would have been had the allegations been true. Innocent men and women are rubbed out every day by procedures that are virtually automated. They’re criminalized, exiled from their families, stripped of property and resource, and sometimes barred from employment and even left living out of their cars or homeless.

The blog writer, a young woman, is piqued by domestic violence, as should we all be. Matters peripheral to it, like legal inequities, are lost in the shadows cast by its specter—and shouldn’t be. Even the specter itself is seldom scrutinized.

It must be considered, for example, that the authority for the statistic “1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime” cited by this writer (and which is commonly cited) is a pamphlet: “Domestic Violence Facts.”

Consulting its footnotes, you’ll find that this stat is derived from something called the National Violence Against Women Survey. In other words, the figure’s based on what women report on questionnaires.

Last week, I was sitting outside of a Starbucks in a posh strip mall and observed a couple standing 20 feet distant from me in the company of two others. The woman repeatedly belted the man in the shoulder and chest with a closed fist, and then proceeded to pinch him a series of good ones. He laughed and cringed from the attack. “Did you fart?” she demanded. He giggled. She punched him a few more times—good, resonant thwacks like you’d hear if you slapped a ham. She was still punching and pinching him when I turned back to my laptop.

What someone like the author of the blog I’ve cited would never conceive is that had this man called the cops and alleged that his wife assaulted him, there’s a very excellent chance that horseplay like this could cost her everything she owns, including her identity. “Did she punch him?” an officer might ask of witnesses. “Well…yeah, but….” And that might be that (criminal restraining order to ensue). It happens. Sometimes even the reports of onlookers precipitate arrests.

What everyone must be brought to appreciate is that a great deal of what’s called “domestic violence” (and, for that matter, “stalking”) depends on subjective interpretation, that is, it’s all about how someone reports feeling (or what someone reports perceiving).

Important to recognize is that how someone reports feeling about being punched or pinched may depend a lot on how that person is feeling toward the puncher or pincher at the time (or at a later time). In other words, actions that are harmless can be represented however a person wants to represent them.

When the state gets involved in private, interpersonal matters, consequences can be severe. What the “memes” the referenced blog writer confronts are concerned with is public perception that translates into law. Fervent condemnations of domestic violence don’t simply inform general opinion; they inform legislation and the application of laws by police officers and judges.

Feminist predilections, both to blame men and to perceive “violence” everywhere, encourage and, consciously or not, endorse exaggerated, impulsive, and/or false allegations. Feminism’s basic message to women today is, “You’re a victim.”

Is there any person walking the face of the planet over the age of five who hasn’t been slapped, punched, kicked, spanked, pinched, poked, or threatened? That’s a rhetorical question. Everyone has been the “victim of violence” if not the “victim of domestic violence” sometime in his or her life. The difference is not everyone is going to characterize him- or herself as a “victim.”

When someone like the author of the blog I’ve referenced uses the phrase domestic violence, she means wanton physical abuse and household terrorism, which is what the phrase used to mean. That’s not, however, how domestic violence is any longer defined by the law. The same phrase may be applied to angry phone calls—even a single angry phone call (which may easily be misrepresented or not even real). This blogger’s outrage is sympathetic; she’s just unconscious—as most people are—that the messages she’s outraged by aren’t veiled arguments in defense of battery; they’re rejections of a feminist message that has jaundiced popular perceptions and corrupted our laws and how they’re applied.

The zealousness of the public and of the authorities and courts to acknowledge people, particularly women, who claim to be “victims” as victims has produced miscarriages of justice that are far more epidemic than domestic violence is commonly said to be. Discernment goes out the window, and lives are unraveled based on finger-pointing. Thanks to feminism’s greasing the gears and to judicial procedures that can be initiated or even completed in minutes, people in the throes of angry impulses can have those impulses gratified instantly. All parties involved—plaintiffs, police officers, and judges—are simply reacting, as they’ve been conditioned to.

When everyone’s simply reacting, nobody’s actually thinking.

The road to feminism’s redemption will only be paved when feminists begin making observations like this.

You Be the Judge: On Those Who Blame for a Living, Restraining Orders, and the Golden Rule

May 22, 2014August 6, 2023Moderator Leave a comment

Restraining order laws authorize lives lived decently to be discredited by judges in minutes, judges who know little or nothing about the people they presume to size up in a glance.

Defendants, men and women from all sectors of the social spectrum, report being made to feel like sex offenders based on knee-jerk character assessments and no certain facts. Parents and spouses are exiled for “offenses” alleged to be domestic violence that besides being unconfirmed may be unworthy of the label. Families are torn to pieces by accusations that may amount to no more than “name-calling, belligerent telephone calls at work, [or] a one-finger salute” (quoting DivorceSource.com, now defunct).

Judicial partiality in the restraining order arena is coyly called “paternal” by its practitioners. What it’s called by those whose lives are permanently altered by it for the worse is careless, callous, and/or cruel. Allegations that cost people their ambitions, children, life savings, and sanity may be exaggerated, cooked, or spitefully manufactured—sometimes obviously so.

Yet rigid or even scalding denunciations from judges are commonly remarked. Social, political, and professional imperatives encourage and excuse tyrannical conduct from agents of the state who’ve been entrusted with protecting citizens’ civil rights and dignity, and these imperatives and this conduct are overdue for scrutiny, reproof, and realignment.

The superficial standards of arguably ill-conceived laws license neither judicial dereliction nor imperiousness.

Axiomatic in law is that “a judge is not the court.” This recognizes that judges are human beings, subject to foibles and flaws like everyone else, and what the law recognizes, judges must also. They, too, are imperfect parents, spouses, and people.

Here are some recent news stories that should serve as reminders that no one is above a measure of humility:

“Judge ‘Tried to Frame’ Love Rival for Drugs, Assault in Years-long Scheme” (2013)

“Judge’s Lawyer Husband Accused of Domestic Battery” (2009)

“Judge Hits Daughter: Caught on Tape” (2011)

“Alameda County Judge Charged with Elder Theft” (2013)

“Illinois Judge Charged with Possession of Heroin, Guns” (2012)

“Judge’s Daughter Wrecks Car, Kills Boyfriend in Drunk Driving Accident…and Sues the Driver That She Hit” (2008)

“D.C.’s Top Judge Charged with Wrongdoing” (2014)

“Judge Censured For Interfering In Son’s Kitten Abuse Charges” (2015)

“Judge Charged with Stealing Cocaine from Evidence of Cases He Presided Over” (2013)

“Broward Judge […] Charged with DUI” (2013)

“Randolph County Judge Charged with Breaking Court Code because of Affair” (2014)

“Judge’s Husband Sentenced for Hitting Her with Frying Pan” (2009)

“Superior Court Judge Charged with Extreme DUI” (2012)

“Former Philadelphia Judge Charged with Theft, Conflict of Interest” (2014)

“Drug Court Judge’s Daughter among 10 Arrested on Pot Charges in Wilmette” (2013)

“Federal Judge Charged with DWI, Dash-Cam Video Released” (2014)

“Pennsylvania Judge Gets 28 Years in ‘Kids for Cash’ Case” (2011)

“Judge’s Wife Makes Opposite Statements” (2011)

“Judge’s Property Transaction Leads to a Charge of Fraud” (2013)

“Judge’s Wife Charged with Attempted Murder, Accused of Poisoning Him with Antifreeze” (2013)

“New Orleans Municipal Court Judge’s Wife Arrested after Biting Husband, Threatening Officers” (2014)

“Judge[…]’s Son Indicted on Six Felonies, Nine Counts Overall” (2014)

“Texas Judge’s Wife ‘Implicates Him’ in Triple Murder” (2013)

“Judge Arrested in Connection with Wife’s Killing” (2023)

If members of the public aren’t to stereotype judges and their families according to such stories—of which the foregoing are but a smattering—then it’s only just that judges be expected to show the strangers who appear before them and whose welfare and prosperity may rest in their hands the same discernment and benefit of the doubt.

How Men Lie on Restraining Orders: A Tutorial for Feminists

May 18, 2014June 29, 2023Moderator Leave a comment

The topic of this discussion is vicious men—not real men but the kind who’d make false allegations against a woman and ruin her for self-gratification or -gain.

Below is an excerpt from a standard restraining order form. Apply your imagination and consider how a man might exploit the opportunity it affords to trash a woman’s life. I’ll guide you. See the tick boxes and blanks? What he’d do is flick the cap off his Bic and write lies in the spaces provided. It only takes a few minutes.

A false complainant might allege, for example, that his girlfriend stalked him, coerced him into having sex, threatened to kill him, beat his daughter or made her smoke crack, etc. His motive might be revenge, or his motive might be to deflect blame from himself for actually engaging in the same or worse activities. Restraining order petitioners may be the real offenders, and the courts graciously provide them with the chance to compound their victims’ torment and walk away scot free. The first one up the courthouse steps is the “good guy.”

Besides a pen and a few minutes to kill, the only requisite for upending a woman’s life this way is a malicious will. For men to apply for false restraining orders against women is usually free (that is, the cost is covered by the taxpayer), as the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) mandates it be.

All there is to making allegations on restraining orders is tick boxes and blanks, and there are no bounds imposed upon what allegations can be made. A false applicant merely writes whatever he wants in the spaces provided—and he can use additional pages if he’s feeling inspired. The basis for a woman’s being alleged to be a domestic abuser or even “armed and dangerous” is the unsubstantiated say-so of the petitioner. Can the defendant be a vegetarian single mom or an arthritic, 80-year-old great-grandmother? Sure. The judge who rules on the application won’t have met her and may never even learn what she looks like. She’s just a name.

The worst that happens is a fraudulently accused woman appears for a hearing after a week or two of sleepless nights (possibly spent living out of her car) and manages to persuade a judge that she’s not a stalker, child-beater, or whatever. Although even this won’t ensure the judge finds in her favor and dismisses the order, let’s say the judge does dismiss the order.

The false accuser is subject to no sanctions from the court and is at no risk of prosecution from the state, and it isn’t guaranteed that the dismissed restraining order will be expunged from the woman’s public record, which may be the public record of a kindergarten teacher, a therapist, or a police officer (even dismissed orders are stigmatizing and cost people jobs).

The man’s just out a little time and may still have cause to smirk.

And, anyway, he can always file for another restraining order later on. There’s no statutory ceiling on how many times he’s authorized by the state to do this. The sky’s the limit. He could even reapply for multiple restraining orders from different jurisdictions to up the fun.

High-conflict litigants can consume years of their targets’ lives like this. Between rounds of false allegations, their targets may languish in a personal hell, unable to reconcile themselves to betrayals and lies, unable to work in chosen professions because unable to rinse those lies from their public faces, and never knowing what to expect next or when. Whatever familial and social infrastructures depend on them may obviously crumble, besides.

How men lie on restraining orders and make wrecks of women’s lives—and how easily—should be clearer now.

How women lie on restraining orders and make wrecks of men’s and other women’s lives is exactly the same way.

SPITE: Feminism and Restraining Order Rampancy

May 15, 2014June 29, 2023Moderator 1 Comment

“I wasn’t thinking when I wrote my domestic abuse statement in Virginia against my boyfriend.”

“Can I get a permanent protection order against my spouse’s lover?”

“How [do you] bait someone into violating a restraining order?”

—A few recent search terms leading to this blog

I stumbled upon a video presentation the other day by a self-styled anti-feminist activist Karen Straughan, who’s blogged for a couple years under the moniker “girlwriteswhat.” I thought her talk, “Feminism: Socialism in Panties,” was evenhandedly confrontational, nervy, and smart.

Responses from feminist quarters that I hastily gleaned yesterday suggest that this activist’s denunciations have raised some hackles. I noted, though, that more than one woman respectfully remarked that she’s “articulate,” if “biased.” She’s in fact very articulate. And something I don’t think her female critics are able to appreciate is that her “bias” is a counter-bias and that she isn’t employing rhetorical strategies that are any more tendentious or inflammatory than those used by the people she draws a bead on.

For feminists to argue that turnabout is foul play is silly, and it’s interesting to observe that when dogma’s challenged using its own tactics, it pitches a fit.

The same impulsive emotional reasoning exemplified by this foot-stamping is what’s suggested by the search terms that introduce this post (to which I could have appended thousands more of a similar nature).

The large-scale injustices perpetrated by the restraining order process (on both men and women) are the product of impulsive emotional reasoning, as is the process itself. What may have started out as a sober guard dog 30 years ago has transformed into a manic dragon that arbitrarily spits fire when fingers are snapped, particularly nail-polished fingers. It doesn’t warn its targets to back down; it torches them.

There’s an ancient philosophic principle called the golden mean that advocates avoidance of extremes (“moderation in all things”). According to this principle, if something gets too far off-kilter in one direction, you have to counteract the imbalance by excessively striving in the contrary direction. If the above-referenced activist strikes some as overstating her case, they might consider that she’s endeavoring to knock things back toward equilibrium.

Reading through online comments about her, I was familiarized with the acronyms MRM and MRA, which apparently stand for “men’s rights movement” and “men’s rights activist,” respectfully. One thread about her I found was titled, “What do Feminists think about YouTube blogger ‘Girl Writes What,’ a Female MRA?”

You see from this question how far abroad feminism has strayed and why equity feminists are appalled by what they call the “feminist establishment” (a.k.a. “The Sorority”). The motive of the feminist movement that was underway when I was a kid was to dissolve distinctions and dichotomies between the sexes. Yet as conversational prompts like this one show, today’s so-called feminism promotes division: Us versus Them. Its compulsion is to split everyone into camps. The original idea was to have everybody recognized as the same, irrespective of whether they had an innie or an outie between their legs.

The thrust of today’s mainstream ideological feminism is to blame, subjugate, and punish, not unify. Feminism has betrayed itself.

It has also betrayed women. Something that’s long been a source of curiosity to me is that while the feminist establishment is often criticized as misandronist (man-hating), it’s rarely criticized as misogynist (woman-hating).

Yet inducing women to self-identify as victims can hardly be called “empowering.” If the source of power isn’t you, the power isn’t yours. What inducing women to self-identify as victims is, rather, is denigrating to feminine self-respect. The feminist establishment doesn’t encourage women to cultivate or rely on personal agency; it infantilizes them and urges them to apply for paternal protection (and the abuse and domestic dispute industries have been glad to profit by the ensuing strife).

Contemporary feminism has conditioned women to identify themselves respective to men, namely, as their victims. It’s thoroughly preoccupied with men—to the point of fixation. (The online conversational threads I’ve just looked at either concerned bitching about men or bitching about women who don’t bitch about men.)

The original feminist platform argued that women should identify themselves as independent people. Feminism, however, has become entirely male-centric. There is no feminist identification independent of men.

Prejudicial laws and court processes criticized in this blog and elsewhere are a societal response to women’s conceding that they lack personal agency. Consider that the reason why infants cry for help is because they’re incapable of meeting their own needs (incapable, literally, of standing on their own two feet). Women are much more capable than they’ve been led to believe.

Restraining orders are by and large sought impulsively—in the millions every year. Both motives and the engine that generates them are virtually automatic.

Interesting to me, finally, is that men have adapted to the new status quo (“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”). Most of the complainants of court abuses who’ve responded to this blog are women, some of whose lives have been shattered by lies and fraud. Men have hopped onto the abuse industry bandwagon, too, and the time may come that the equality that feminism is supposed to be advocating for is realized in the form of both sexes’ exploiting state protections to bash each other into a uniform goo.

A Legislated License to Lie: Nothing CAN’T Be Falsely Alleged on a Restraining Order

May 12, 2014June 29, 2023Moderator 7 Comments

Battery, rape, child molestation—any heinous allegation imaginable can be made in a petition for a restraining order, and it can be made falsely without consequence to the accuser.

Victims of false allegations often ask incredulously, “Can somebody say that?”

There’s nothing that can’t be alleged to the courts (or, for that matter, to the police). There’s no such thing as “can’t allege.” A judge might view allegations of genocide or conspiracy with aliens to achieve global domination as suspect—or s/he might not. Certainly there’s nothing to stop a restraining order applicant from making these allegations, and there’s nothing to stop a judge from crediting them. Neither accusers nor judges are answerable to a literal burden of proof.

As the infamous David Letterman case shows, even the most outlandish allegations easily duck judicial radar. For anyone unfamiliar with the case, here’s Massachusetts attorney Gregory Hession’s synopsis and commentary (quoted from “Restraining Orders Out of Control”):

One day in December of 2005, Colleen Nestler came to Santa Fe County District Court in New Mexico with a bizarre seven-page typed statement and requested a domestic-abuse restraining order against late-night TV host David Letterman.

She stated, under oath, that Letterman seriously abused her by causing her bankruptcy, mental cruelty, and sleep deprivation since 1994. Nestler also alleged that he sent her secret signals “in code words” through his television program for many years and that he “responded to my thoughts of love” by expressing that he wanted to marry her.

Judge Daniel Sanchez issued a restraining order against Letterman based on those allegations. By doing so, it put Letterman on a national list of domestic abusers, gave him a criminal record, took away several of his constitutionally protected rights, and subjected him to criminal prosecution if he contacted Nestler directly or indirectly, or possessed a firearm.

Letterman had never met Colleen Nestler, and this all happened without his knowledge. Nonetheless, she requested that the order include an injunction requiring him not to “think of me, and release me from his mental harassment and hammering.” Asked to explain why he had issued a restraining order on the basis of such an unusual complaint, Judge Sanchez answered that Nestler had filled out the restraining-order request form correctly. After much national ridicule, the judge finally dismissed the order against Letterman. Those who don’t have a TV program and deep pockets are rarely so fortunate.

If allegations like these don’t trip any alarms, consider how much easier putting across plausible allegations is, plausible allegations that may be egregiously false and may include battery, rape, child molestation, or the commission of any other felony crimes.

What recent posts to this blog have endeavored to expose is that false allegations on restraining orders are very effective, because the “standard of evidence” applied to restraining order allegations both tolerates and rewards lying. The only thing that keeps false allegations reasonably in check is the fear that malicious litigants may have of their lies’ being detected. Normal people at least understand that lying is “bad” and that you don’t want to get caught doing it.

To some degree at least, this understanding restricts all but the mentally ill, who may be delusional, and high-conflict litigants, who may have personality disorders and have no conscience, or whose thinking, like that of personality-disordered people’s, is overruled by intense emotions, self-identification as victims, and an urgent will to blame. Normal people may lie cunningly or viciously; high-conflict people may lie cunningly, viciously, compulsively, outrageously, and constantly.

The fear of getting caught in a lie is in fact baseless, because perjury (lying to the court) is prosecuted so rarely as to qualify as never. Most false litigants, however, don’t know that, so their lies are seldom as extravagant as they could be.

Often, though, their lies are extravagant enough to unhinge or trash the lives of those they’ve accused.

Appreciate that false allegations on restraining orders of battery, rape, child molestation, or their like don’t have to be proved. Restraining orders aren’t criminal prosecutions. Allegations just have to persuade a judge that the defendant is a sick puppy who should be kenneled. An allegation of battery, rape, or child molestation is just a contributing influence—except to the people who have to bear its stigma.

More typical than utterly heinous lies are devious misrepresentations. Accusations of stalking and untoward contact or conduct, which may simply be implied, are a common variety. The alleged use merely of cruel language may be very effective by itself. Consider how prejudicial a female plaintiff’s accusing someone (male or female) of forever calling her a “worthless bitch” could be. Substantiation isn’t necessary. Restraining order judges are already vigilantly poised to whiff danger and foul misconduct everywhere. In processes that are concluded in minutes, false or malicious accusers just have to toss judges a few red herrings.

Irrespective of the severity of allegations, the consequences to the fraudulently accused are the same: impediment to or loss of employment and employability, humiliation, distrust, gnawing outrage, depression, and despondency, along with possibly being menacingly barred access to home, children, property, and financial resource. This is all besides being forced to live under the ever-looming threat of further state interference, including arrest and incarceration, should additional false allegations be brought forth.

Even if no further allegations are made, restraining orders, which are public records accessible by anyone, are recorded in the databases of state and federal police…indefinitely.

This “advice,” which urges restraining order applicants to rehearse, comes from the California court system and is offered on a page titled, “Ask for a Restraining Order.” The page’s title is not only invitational but can be read as an order itself: Do it. Note, also, that finalization of a restraining order may be based on less than “3 minutes” of testimony and that the court prefers it to be.

Recourses available to the falsely accused are few, and even lawsuits that allege abuse of process may face hurdles like claim preclusion (res judicata), which prohibits previously adjudicated facts from being reexamined. Never mind that the prior rulings may have been formulated in mere minutes based on fantasy and/or cooked allegations. Victims of defamation, fraud on the police and courts, and intentional infliction of emotional distress may moreover face stony indifference from judges, even if their lives have been entirely dismantled. And it should be stressed that attempting to rectify and purge their records of fraudulent allegations, which are established in minutes, can consume years of falsely accused defendants’ lives.

Recognizing that there are no bounds placed upon what false accusers may claim and that there are no consequences to false accusers for lying, the wonder is that more victims of lies aren’t alleged to be “batterers,” “rapists,” and “child molesters.”

How “Preponderance of the Evidence” Rewards Restraining Order Fraud and Why Bigger Lies Work Better than Smaller Ones

May 9, 2014June 29, 2023Moderator 2 Comments

Recent posts to this blog have discussed American evidentiary standards and stressed that the standard applied to civil restraining orders, “preponderance of the evidence,” has nothing to do with proof. According to this standard, a judge should find in favor of a restraining order plaintiff if s/he figures there’s a greater probability that the plaintiff’s claims are true than that they’re totally false.

The word to bear in mind here is probability.

I’ll give you a for-instance. Let’s say Person A applies for a protection order and claims Person B threatened to rape her and then kill her with a butcher knife.

Along with the allegation of the rape/death threat, Person A tells Judge A that she and Person B dated for six months, that she dumped Person B, that he refuses to leave her alone and insists that she’s the love of his life and that if he can’t have her no one will, and that she’s terrified of him. Person A shows Judge A a text message from Person B that says, “I want what’s mine.” She also tells Judge A that Person B insisted that she engage in sexual role-playing during their relationship and that he liked to spank her. “Sometimes he was very rough and scared me,” Person A says. Too, she says she thinks Person B jealously monitored her email correspondence and adds that he frequently accused her of seeing other men behind his back (“He would just suddenly go off sometimes for no reason”).

Judge A doesn’t know Person A, and all he knows of Person B is what Person A has just told him. How does Judge A determine that there’s a greater probability Person A is telling the truth than that she’s lying? With no certain facts other than a text message, he can’t. He issues a protection order anyway, because Person A might be telling the truth, and he doesn’t want to be answerable to his conscience or the public if she were to come to harm.

Person B, who didn’t actually threaten to rape or kill Person A, is more than unsettled by the allegations against him and appears in court to deny them. He tells Judge B that he and Person A dated for six months after she hit on him at a party, and that they had discussed moving in together but that he discovered Person A had been cheating on him and angrily demanded that she return expensive gifts she had asked him to buy for her during their relationship. He tells the judge that Person A laughed at him and called him “a fool,” and that he’s never been abused this way before. “She was horrible to me,” he says, “and I was only ever nice to her.” Person B also tells the judge that Person A was sexually withholding, and would often, he realizes now, use the promise of sex to manipulate him, and that he had never hit her, even in fun. “There was no role-playing,” he says indignantly. “That’s a complete lie!” Person B admits that he may have heatedly called Person A “a sick bitch” when he last saw her and slammed her apartment door behind him. Person B also admits to sending the text message, but testifies that he’s never struck or even threatened another person in his life.

Judge B has no more ascertainable grounds for determining whether Person B threatened to rape and kill Person A than Judge A did previously. On the basis of Person B’s admitted rage and reason for feeling vengeful, however, he rules in favor of Person A and affirms the protection order. The alleged rape/death threat, which may have been influential but was otherwise irrelevant, is preserved on public record along with allegations of “constant temper tantrums,” “violent sex games,” and stalking. The protection order is also recorded in the databases of state and federal police.

Person A circulates the details she shared with the court, which are embellished and further honed with repetition, among her friends and colleagues over the ensuing days, months, and years.

Person B, a widowed engineer, is fired from the position he’d occupied for over a decade with a national defense contractor. Consequent to his being terminated, Person B’s daughter, whose tuition at an Ivy League university he’d been paying, is forced to drop out of school 12 months shy of graduation with honors.

This scenario, though purely allegorical, is mirrored to a greater or lesser extent by thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of restraining order cases adjudicated in this country every year (false allegations, including false criminal allegations, may moreover be made to the police, besides the courts). Its gender reversal (Person A = male; Person B = female), while less probable, is also entirely possible. Women, too, are falsely accused of threats, violence, stalking, and other crimes on restraining orders, including felonies. Feminist advocates of restraining orders, consciously or not, defend the daily dismemberment of women’s lives across the map.

(Besides facing loss of employment and employability, victims of false allegations and distortions of the truth may be forcibly removed from their homes and prohibited access to their children, money, and property. Legal derelictions, besides, make such victims vulnerable to further state interference, including arrest and incarceration, upon additional false reports’ being filed by malicious accusers.)

The point of the above hypothetical is neither to deny that real rape or death threats are made nor to characterize complainants of such abuse as liars. Unquestionably many complainants, particularly of extreme abuse, honestly and reasonably fear for their safety. Its point, rather, is to illustrate that the truth of any allegation made pursuant to the procurement of a restraining order is literally irrelevant (except to the accused). It’s not the brief of judges of restraining order cases to determine whether individual facts are truthfully reported, nor is ascertainment of the truth or falsity of individual allegations required by the standard of “preponderance of the evidence.”

This standard is satisfied by probability, which is gauged according to a judge’s personal lights. It doesn’t depend on certainty of anything.

Emphatically noteworthy of a standard that’s satisfied by probability is that it acknowledges from the start that truth doesn’t matter. A standard that relied on proof wouldn’t contain the word probability or its derivatives at all.

Consider further that lying is rarely if ever prosecuted or even acknowledged by the courts.

Consider finally this question: If the object of a restraining order applicant is to win—and it always is—what tactics will most assuredly be effective in persuading a judge that his or her allegations (on balance) are probably true? The answer is lying, lying luridly and sensationally, and lying copiously, particularly about facts that are impossible to verify (facts that in a criminal case would be discounted or dismissed).

Because “preponderance of the evidence” is based on the overall forcefulness of allegations rather than the truth or falsity of one, two, or a few of them, the most effective way to win a restraining order case is to lie hugely.

As should be obvious, “preponderance of the evidence” is seldom if ever actually satisfied in cases where restraining orders are awarded, because specific claims on restraining order applications are often impossible to accurately assess as even 51% likely to be true. “Satisfaction” of this standard is based, instead, on the acceptance that the sum total of allegations (their tenor or essence), which collectively support an overarching allegation of “fear” or “distress,” can together be called “preponderant” (which means more potent, convincing, or influential).

In other words, there’s no point in malicious litigants’ lying small.

They Don’t Have to Be True, Just “Truthy”: Civil Restraining Order Allegations and the “Burden of Proof”

May 6, 2014June 29, 2023Moderator 1 Comment

“Preponderance of the evidence, also known as balance of probabilities, is the standard required in most civil cases. […]

“The standard is met if the proposition is more likely to be true than not true. Effectively, the standard is satisfied if there is greater than 50 percent chance that the proposition is true.”

—Wikipedia, “Legal burden of proof”

As the previous two posts have discussed, “preponderance of the evidence” is the standard according to which restraining order allegations are “tried.”

Note that the odds of its being accurate, assuming all conditions are equal, may be only slightly better than a coin flip’s.

Accusations on restraining orders that are adjudicated by this standard may include any of the following (along with any other allegation conceivable): simple or aggravated assault, simple or aggravated battery, stalking, cyberstalking, sexual abuse, false/unlawful/forced imprisonment, peeping, criminal coercion, reckless endangerment, child abuse/molestation, “menacing,” “terroristic threatening,” theft, arson, criminal mischief, extortion, burglary, criminal trespass, sexual harassment, incest, offensive touching/“lewd fondling,” kidnapping/abduction, malicious property damage, injury or killing of animals/pets, larceny, rape or statutory rape, or other felonies, including (in New Jersey and Alaska) homicide.

See for yourself: “Standards of Proof for Domestic Violence Civil Protection Orders (CPOs) by State.” And appreciate that accusations like these need not be made against domestic partners or other members of a shared household. They can be made against friends, lovers, work associates, neighbors, exes, exes’ new spouses or boy- or girlfriends, rivals of any other sort, nondomestic family members, former family members, strangers—you name it.

Accusations on restraining orders may alternatively amount to no more than “annoyance.” The same standard is applied to the allegation of rape as is applied to allegations of nuisance, and irrespective of a plaintiff’s actual claims, the implications of a restraining order, which is a publicly accessible record and one preserved in the databases of state and federal police, are threat, stalking, and/or violence.

Restraining orders are understood to be issued to “sickos.” Nobody hears “restraining order” and thinks “Little Rascal.”

Consider that the initial determination of the truth or falsity of a restraining order plaintiff’s allegations is grounded on a brief interview between the plaintiff and a judge. Consider further that the judge will likely have never met the plaintiff before; that the judge may therefore have no basis whatever for forming an opinion of the plaintiff’s honesty, soberness, or sanity; and that the defendant upon whom judgment is rendered is just a name on a form.

If the “legal burden of proof” defined in the epigraph didn’t already sound sketchy enough, observe that unless a defendant has a prior record of misconduct, no empirical grounds exist even for a judge to decide that there’s a 51% probability that the plaintiff’s telling the truth—other than, perhaps, whatever physical corroboration the plaintiff may provide, which may be none, may be forged, or may be misrepresented.

Restraining order allegations are essentially established (and essential establishment is all that’s required) on the forcefulness of a plaintiff’s claims. The truth or falsity of individual allegations is literally irrelevant (except, of course, to the defendant who has to live with them for the rest or his or her life). A judge isn’t a fact-finder in these cases; s/he’s a bookmaker.

It’s all about the probability that a plaintiff’s claims are more true than false, and the fixer of the odds is a single judge—or at most two.

In other words, the standard “preponderance of the evidence” is hokum. It’s basically an authorization for a judge to act according to his or her discretion, which is a lofty way of saying that it authorizes a judge to decide however s/he wants. Allegations, including of felony crimes, don’t have to be true, just “truthy.”

If, prior to forming a decision on a restraining order petition, a judge were required to at least meet the defendant; and if it weren’t the case that the judge had likely had it impressed upon him or her that s/he should prejudicially regard the plaintiff’s allegations as true; and if it weren’t the case that societally conditioned expectations urged the same prejudice…then there might be a reasonable hope that a judge could perform the computation required by “preponderance of the evidence” with some degree of accuracy, allowing that a “degree of accuracy” should be acceptably conclusive.

As the procedure exists today, there can be no such reasonable hope.

No Proof Necessary: Why Restraining Orders Are Abused and Why Restraining Orders Exist

May 1, 2014June 29, 2023Moderator 22 Comments

Advocates of restraining orders consider this standard too demanding.

The previous post addressed American standards of evidence and observed that with a single exception, the standard that’s applied to restraining order adjudications, “preponderance of the evidence,” is the least demanding.

Both the award of restraining orders and their being made “permanent” are at a judge’s discretion. (One of the meanings of discretion is “freedom to choose.”)

Even in Maryland, the exception to the rule, where final decisions to approve restraining orders must meet the intermediate standard of “clear and convincing evidence,” issuance of restraining orders is discretionary.

In other words, it’s pretty much up to whether judges feel plaintiffs’ allegations are more probably true than not. (Some states call this “good cause” or “reasonable grounds.”)

As previously remarked, this means the legitimacy of restraining order claims is always iffy. This is beside the fact that issuance of restraining orders proceeds from brief, one-sided interviews between plaintiffs and judges, and hearings to finalize them, which may be held mere days later, may themselves be nearly as cursory. Prejudice in favor of complainants, furthermore, has been conditioned if not explicitly mandated, and is all but universal.

What must be emphasized is that in a significant number of cases, despite their bearing criminal imputations or implications, the word evidence isn’t actually applicable.

This is the standard according to which restraining order allegations are “vetted.”

The phrase standard of evidence is misleading, because we’re accustomed to equating the word evidence with proof.

A restraining order may be approved on no more ascertainable a basis than an accuser’s alleged emotional state, that is, the claim of fear may be sufficient. Even when “evidence” is adduced, it may of course be misrepresented—and easily. Doctoral candidates’ oral exams are far more rigorous than restraining order hearings.

Worthy of note is that their tolerance of an absence of proof is both the reason why restraining orders are criticized and the reason why restraining orders are defended.

The only “justification” for restraining orders is the absence of proof.

This isn’t as counterintuitive as it sounds. Crimes alleged on restraining orders are prohibited by criminal statute. Assault, for example, may of course be tried in criminal court.

In that case, however, satisfaction of the standard “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” is necessary.

Restraining orders are stopgaps. What do you do if someone’s threatening you or knocking you around, but you can’t prove it? You apply for a restraining order. It takes an hour—or at most an afternoon—and gratification is immediate. The provision of instant relief was one of the germinal motives of restraining order laws.

All well and good, and there’s no question that people are abused all the time in ways they could never prove in criminal court. But what if an accuser is neurotic, mentally ill, or maliciously lying to gratify an ulterior motive?

There’s no failsafe built into the system. Recognize this, and the limitless potential restraining orders have for abuse becomes obvious.

What restraining orders do is make it easy for the system to dispense with a great number of complaints in short order that would otherwise gum up the works. They also keep a number of special interests happy and a lot of people busy and flush.

This wouldn’t be a big deal if their consequences were minor and restraining orders left no traces once their terms expired. This, however, isn’t the case. Restraining orders, which are prejudicially presumed by the public to be issued to stalkers and batterers, are public records that are not only preserved in the databases of the courts that issued them but in those of state and federal police.

This assertion, which originates from the Maryland governor’s office and which presumes only genuine victims apply for restraining orders, argues that allegations ranging from “serious bodily harm” to “rape or sexual offense” should be adjudicated according to the same standard as contract or insurance disputes (as they are in every other state).

Direct consequences to their recipients, besides harassment and public humiliation, may include eviction from their homes and denial of access to kids, money, and property; and proximal consequences may include loss of employment and employability—along with all of the psychological effects that ensue from such losses, among which may be loss of enjoyment of life. Victims of delusional or malicious accusers may moreover be subject to arrest and incarceration if additional allegations are filed.

Pretty big deals, all of them, especially when the precipitating allegations are trumped up. Lives are undone by less.

Few suggest that restraining orders should be abolished, because no one wants to be accused of indifference to victims of domestic violence. The justification for restraining orders, finally, is coercive (and maybe always was).

Restraining orders should be abolished—or radically reconceived.

It’s true that restraining orders help victims out of abusive situations, and this is huge; but in a nation founded on the principle that all people are equal, no group’s interests excuse injury to other people. Aid to those in abusive situations, including children, must not come at the expense of others whose entitlement under the law is the same.

This doesn’t mean those in abusive situations should be written off; it means the present “solution” needs to be revised, because it’s unconscionable.

Coercive influences on law related to violence against women have generated wild imbalances in how allegations of stalking and domestic violence are treated, and have besides promoted unreasonable expansions of statutory definitions (“domestic violence,” for example, can mean a single act, which may not even qualify as violent). Our laws have become rattletraps.

Adjudication of restraining orders, catchalls that bear the stigma of stalking and violence and which may include these allegations among an assortment of others, is particularly problematic, because criminal allegations as severe as rape may escape being answerable either to a jury or to the standard to which they should properly be subject.

That standard is “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“American Law is Irresponsible”: The American Civil Standard of Evidence and Abuse of Restraining Orders

April 26, 2014June 29, 2023Moderator 10 Comments

“On the European continent, for the court to hold against the defendant, the judge must be convinced that the facts brought forward by the plaintiff in support of the claim are indeed true. In principle, continental law does not make a difference between civil law and criminal law […]. By contrast, U.S. law has three different standards of proof […]. In criminal law, the charge must be established ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ In civil law, normally the plaintiff wins if only ‘the preponderance of the evidence’ is in [his or] her favour. Only in a limited number of civil law matters, of particular gravity for the defendant, the intermediate standard of ‘clear and convincing evidence’ must be met.”

—Dr. Cristoph Engel

The monograph from which this quotation is excerpted, which is by a professor of experimental law and economics, begins by candidly remarking that “American law is irresponsible.”

No argument here.

At the root of restraining order injustice is the lax evidentiary standard applied to plaintiffs’ allegations. Not only may allegations on restraining orders be false; a judge doesn’t have to be convinced that they’re not false to find in favor of their plaintiff.

Excepting in Maryland, which adjudicates the merits of civil restraining order allegations based on the intermediate standard of “clear and convincing evidence,” the standard applied to restraining orders is “preponderance of the evidence.”

If claims seem more likely true than false, “preponderance of the evidence” is satisfied.

In other words, the law is contented if a single judge (not a jury of independent thinkers) reckons the allegations against a defendant are “probably true” (or “maybe true” or “true enough”). To be effective, all allegations have to be is compelling.

Making allegations compelling isn’t a tall task for people in the throes of bitter animosity, as restraining order plaintiffs typically are, and it’s a cakewalk for unscrupulous liars, who are hardly rare among restraining order plaintiffs.

Officers of our courts have furthermore had it impressed upon them that they shouldn’t question allegations made pursuant to the procurement of restraining orders, which are presumed to be sought by those in need of protection.

The legal standard familiar from TV and the movies, “proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” is reserved for criminal prosecutions. For a judge to find in favor of a civil restraining order plaintiff, no proof of his or her allegations is necessary.

Why this is a big deal is that being publically accused is agonizing. Cops and constables serve restraining orders on people at their homes, and just the documents themselves terrorize and shame (as they’re meant to). Allegations on restraining orders, what’s more, are never harmless. Even alleged minor offenses like harassment are inevitably tinged with overtones of danger and/or sexual deviancy. Plaintiffs are inclined to make their allegations as sensational as possible to justify their applications to the courts, and the courts are inclined to find threat or perversion even where none may exist to justify their intrusions into defendants’ lives.

Defendants are met with damning fingers from all directions—and enduringly, because restraining orders (and the allegations on them) are public records, accessible by anyone, that never disappear.

What makes this an even bigger deal, especially when evidence is fraudulently represented or allegations are false, is that restraining order defendants further face loss of employment and employability, as well as loss of access to kids, home, and property in a majority of cases.

Revisiting a phrase used by the author of the epigraph, such losses easily qualify as “particularly grave” and should therefore require the application of a more conclusive standard of evidence by our courts than “close enough.”

Exacerbating the injustice of this tenuous standard is that restraining orders are issued based solely on the word of their plaintiffs (ex parte). Decisions that may result in the losses enumerated above proceed from testimony given in interviews rarely lasting longer than 10 minutes.

Such hearings are far more perfunctory than probative. Basically a judge is just looking for a few cue words to run with and may literally be satisfied by a plaintiff’s saying, “I’m afraid.” (Talk show host David Letterman was notoriously issued a restraining order based on the petition of a woman who accused him of mentally oppressing her through her TV.)

What you have, then, on top of the presupposition of guilt, is a wishy-washy protocol yoked to a wishy-washy evidentiary standard.

It’s true that defendants are afforded the opportunity to challenge allegations leveled against them and actually address the court, but these follow-up hearings, also mere minutes long, are necessarily biased by the court’s prior findings.

The issuance of a restraining order (based on a few-minute chitchat) already represents a ruling, and the court’s disposition isn’t to contradict itself. This bias, authorized by a low evidentiary bar, too often translates to follow-up hearings’ being little more than theater—and an opportunity to subject defendants to additional humiliation and scorn.

Judges coyly criticize their partiality as “paternal.” Considering, however, the steep toll that that partiality may exact from innocent defendants, this self-excuse is nothing shy of obscene (and underscores the cognitive disconnect to which judges are prone between their performances in the courtroom and the effects of those performances on people’s lives).

Clearly the motive for applying a diminished standard of evidence to any courtroom procedure is not to decrease the likelihood of error. The lower the standard of evidence is, that much greater is the probability that miscarriages of justice will occur. When such miscarriages equate to innocent defendants’ being subjected to public humiliation and defamation, loss of employment, and effacement from their former lives, besides their having to tolerate the ever-looming possibility of incarceration following further false allegations’ being made against them, nothing less than the highest standard of evidence is conscionable.

The criticism of the writer of this post’s epigraph that “American law is irresponsible” doesn’t even begin to say it.

A Scratch, a Push, a Pinch: “Domestic Violence,” False Allegations, and Restraining Order Abuse

April 21, 2014June 29, 2023Moderator 2 Comments

The subject of this excursion is “domestic violence,” which phrase is placed in quotation marks because it’s a suspect term that’s become so broadly inclusive as to mean virtually anything a user wants it to.

This is how domestic violence is defined by the American Psychiatric Association—and by many states’ statutes, as well:

Domestic violence is control by one partner over another in a dating, marital, or live-in relationship. The means of control include physical, sexual, emotional, and economic abuse, threats, and isolation.

Emphatically noteworthy at the outset of this discussion is that false allegations of domestic violence have the same motive identified by the APA that domestic violence has: “control”; have the same consequences: “psychological and economic entrapment [and] physical isolation”; use the same methods to abuse: “fear of social judgment, threats, and intimidation”; have the same mental health effects on victims: “depression, anxiety, panic attacks, substance abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorder”; and can also “trigger suicide attempts [and] homelessness.”

A domestic violence factsheet published by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence features a “Power and Control” pie chart. These segments of it are ALSO among the motives and effects of false allegations.

Accordingly, then, making false allegations of domestic violence is domestic violence.

When I was a kid, domestic violence meant something very distinct. It meant serial violence, specifically the habitual bullying or wanton battery by a man of his wife. The phrase represented a chronic behavior, one that gave rise to terms like battered-wife syndrome and to domestic violence and restraining order statutes.

These days, however, domestic violence, which is the predominant grounds for the issuance of civil protection orders, can be a single act, an act whose qualification as “violence” may be highly dubious, and an act not only of a man but of a woman (that can be alleged on a restraining order application merely by ticking a box).

As journalist Cathy Young observed more than 15 years ago, the War on Domestic Violence, which was “[b]orn partly in response to an earlier tendency to treat wife-beating as nothing more than a marital sport,” has caused the suspension of rational standards of discernment and introduced martial law into our courtrooms. “[T]his campaign treats all relationship conflict as a crime. The zero-tolerance mentality of current domestic violence policy means that no offense is too trivial, not only for arrest but for prosecution.” Reduced standards of judicial discrimination inspired by this absolutist mentality further mean that even falsely alleged minor offenses are both credited and treated as urgent and damnable.

Consider this recent account posted to the e-petition Stop False Allegations of Domestic Violence:

My boyfriend accused me of DV after an argument about separating and my 18-month-old…. The officer arrested me in front of my daughter, and when I asked why, he said he had a scratch on his arm.

A scratch.

The woman goes on to report that she spent two days in jail, had to post a $5,000 bond to get out, and that she was subsequently “displaced” from her former life.

Here’s another:

My ex-husband told the police that I pushed him, even though a witness had called the police on him for pushing me. He was completely drunk…but I got arrested instead. Right in front of my stunned family.

And another:

I was accused of domestic violence because I pinched my ex-husband when he pinned me and my son between two trucks. He ruined my life.

A scratch, a push, a pinch—which may not even have been real but whose allegation had real enough consequences.

I’ve also heard from and written about a man who caught his wife texting her lover and tried to take her phone. The two rowed for an hour, wrestling for it. The upshot was that the man was arrested and tried for domestic violence and ended up having to forfeit the home they shared to his wife, into which she had already moved her boyfriend.

(This week, I was contacted by a man trying to vacate an old restraining order whose story is identical: “[T]he only incident was in 2008 when I caught her cheating and tried to grab her phone.”)

False allegations to shift blame for misconduct are common, as are stories like these—stories of lives turned upside down by acts of “violence” that are daily tolerated by little kids—and they’re the motive of my politically incorrect two cents.

I read a feminist bulletin about domestic violence not long ago that featured for its graphic a woman who had very conspicuously been punched in the eye. Her injury was certainly more serious than a scratch or a pinch, but it, too, may have represented a single occurrence and was an injury that would heal within a month or two at the outside.

The gravity with which a single act of assault like this is regarded by the justice system can’t be overstated. The perpetrator is liable to have the book thrown at him.

By contrast, false allegations of domestic violence—or any number of other disreputable offenses—aren’t regarded by the courts or the public with any gravity at all, and their injuries don’t go away.

I work outside with my hands most days—which I wouldn’t be doing if I hadn’t had my own aspirations curtailed by the courts years ago (not based on allegations of domestic violence but on ones sufficiently crippling). I bang, stab, and gash myself routinely. From stress, besides, I’m prone to the occasional ruptured capillary in one of my eyes. I wouldn’t tolerate someone’s hurting a woman—or anyone else—in my presence, but at the same time, if I were offered the chance to recover my name, my peace of mind, and the years I’ve lost by taking a punch in the eye, I’d take the punch. In fact, I’d take many more than one.

I think other targets of false allegations who’ve had their lives wrung dry by them would say the same.

In my 20s, I was run down in the road when I left my vehicle to go to the help of a maimed animal. A 35-year-old guy, driving on a lit street under a full moon, smashed into me hard enough to lift me out of my shoes. The consequences of my injuries are ones I still live with, but a few surgeries and a year later, I was walking without a noticeable limp. I haven’t given the driver another thought since and couldn’t tell you his last name today. I think it started with an M.

Not only do I dispute the idea that physical injuries are worse than injuries done by fraudulent abuse of legal process; I don’t believe most physical injuries even compare.

And I think victims of domestic terrorism, whose torments are ridiculed by false accusers, would acknowledge that the lasting damage of that terrorism is psychic, which further corroborates my point.

Such violation promotes insecurity, distrust, and a state of constant anxiety—exactly as false allegations to authorities and the courts do, which may besides strip from a victim everything s/he has, everything s/he is, and possibly everything that s/he hoped to have and be.

There are no support groups for victims like this—nor shelters, nor relief, nor sympathy. Victims of lies aren’t even recognized as victims.

I’ve written recently about the abuse of restraining orders by fraudulent litigants to punish. What needs observation is that the laws themselves, that is, restraining order and domestic violence statutes, are corrupted by the same motive: to punish. Their motive is not simply to protect (a fact that’s borne out by the prosecution of alleged pinchers).

Reforms meant to apply perspective to these statutes and reduce miscarriages of justice from their exploitation have been proposed; they’ve just been vehemently resisted by the feminist establishment.

Laws that were conceived decades ago to redress a serious societal problem have not only been let out at the seams but are easily contorted into tools of domestic violence. This hasn’t been accomplished by fraudulent manipulators of legal process, who merely take advantage of a readily available weapon; it’s rather the product of a dogmatic will to punish exerted by advocates who wouldn’t concede that even real scratches, pushes, or pinches are hardly just grounds for having people forcibly detained, tried, and exiled.

(Female) Stalkers, False Allegations, and Restraining Order Abuse

April 16, 2014July 1, 2023Moderator 1 Comment

Restraining orders are maliciously abused—not sometimes, but often. Typically this is done in heat to hurt or hurt back, to shift blame for abusive misconduct, or to gain the upper hand in a conflict that may have far-reaching consequences.

There’s a cooler, more methodical style of abuse practiced by people who aren’t in intimate daily proximity to their victims, however, that’s alternatively called stalking, bullying, or mobbing. These words have distinct meanings but are nevertheless porous, because motives for the behaviors they represent are the same: coercion, punishment, domination, and control.

There’s a lot of crossover between them—as is there crossover between the various high-conflict personality types who engage in these behaviors, who contrary to popular perception may be women.

Journalists’, psychologists’, and bloggers’ representations of those with personality disorders that stem from sociopathy tend to use gendered language that implies most abusers (or the worst abusers) are male. Possibly this is because many who write about sociopaths and narcissists are female, and their experiences are of abuse by men. Or possibly this is because making women out to be villains is ungallant. Or possibly it’s assumed that men can’t be victims of women, even sociopaths, because men have nerves of steel or because their general physical advantage carries over into all contexts. Neither of the latter beliefs is true, and when the context is abuse of legal process, it’s usually the case that the bigger you are, the harder you fall.

Consider these illustrated WikiHow tutorials on “How to Spot a Sociopath” and “How to Identify a Psychopath,” which are pretty good, except that the reader is likely to get the impression from the cartoons that all sociopaths are men.

They aren’t.

These “tips” from “How to Spot a Sociopath” are at least as applicable to women as men, and suggest why abuse of legal process, including restraining order abuse, is so attractive to the sociopathic mind—and why it comes easily to sociopaths or to those who manifest sociopathic traits.

“Most sociopaths can commit vile actions and not feel the least bit of remorse. Such actions may include physical abuse or public humiliation of others. If the person is a true sociopath, then he or she will feel no remorse about hurting others, lying, manipulating people, or just generally acting in an unacceptable way.”

Sociopaths often know how to make others believe they are the victim while actually being the aggressor.
Sociopaths tend to blame the victim for their shortcomings. They can never admit to fault and instead attack the victim. Key factor in any DSM diagnosis.
This type of person will tell you things to get you to forgive them and then say they never told you. This is a tactic to play mind games.
If a person is “too good to be true,” they probably are. This is the case for any DSM diagnosis, including sociopathy, borderline [personality], and narcissism.
Most are aware of their need to hide cold traits, and are good actors (have adapted to being different)….
Some scientists believe that sociopaths suffer from damage to the prefrontal cortex which regulates emotions and morality, etc.
Sociopathic behavior is strongly inherited, so look at problems in the family as a clue to a person’s real personality.
Some experts say that a great number of sociopaths were also child abuse sufferers.

The same tutorial, despite its gendered cartoons, references a book published last year titled, Confessions of a Sociopath, which is by a female sociopath who uses the penname M. E. Thomas—and who’s an attorney and law professor, which shouldn’t be particularly surprising to anyone who’s been exposed to legal practitioners.

It may be that not all sociopaths are fairly typified as stalkers and bullies, but if you read this review of Confessions of a Sociopath, you’ll appreciate that motives for abusive conduct come readily enough to the sociopathic psyche.

Thinking of women as stalkers or bullies is just something we’re unaccustomed to or something we treat lightly.

In a series of hers titled, “Female Stalkers,” psychologist Tara Palmatier notes that “female stalking behaviors are portrayed as ‘funny’ or ‘cute.’” We’ve been conditioned—and “we” includes the police and judges—to think of women as both harmless and helpless. Women don’t hurt people.

They do, though.

Popular perceptions of “stalking,” domestic violence, and other abuses tend inordinately to inculpate men. The object of observing that women also act hurtfully isn’t to suggest that women more often act hurtfully than men but to controvert the popular notion that they don’t or can’t, which is both false and largely to blame for the absurd ease with which legal process is maliciously abused.

Accounts submitted to this blog by both men and women indicate that individuals of either gender may and do abuse legal process to torment others, horribly and sometimes for years on end. Either sex may engage in cyclic mind games, as well: manipulating another into trust and then punishing that trust (“It’s okay, I’m sorry, come here”…WHACK!). Repeatedly. One woman’s (mother’s) account of this, shared a few months ago, is numbing: affairs by her (probably borderline personality-disordered) boyfriend followed by apologies followed by recriminations (rinse, repeat) followed by false allegations to the police, to the court, to child protective services, to the military, and on and on.

Most group-stalking or -bullying (mobbing) acts reported to this blog, though, are orchestrated by women. These include combinations of behaviors like making false allegations, spreading false and ruinous rumors with the help of negative advocates (accomplices), using social media to taunt and intimidate from multiple directions, etc. These passive-aggressive forms of abuse to punish, frighten, and dominate—which, depending on the context, may alternatively be called bullying, harassment, or stalking—are usually viewed as less harmful than physical assault. This perception is facile, however, and wrong.

A recent male respondent to this blog, for example, reports encountering an ex while out with his kids and being lured over, complimented, etc. (“Here, boy! Come!”), following which the woman reported to the police that she was terribly alarmed by the encounter and, while brandishing a restraining order application she’d filled out, had the man charged with stalking. Though the meeting was recorded on store surveillance video and was unremarkable, the woman had no difficulty persuading a male officer that she responded to the man in a friendly manner because she was afraid of him (a single father out with his two little kids). The man also reports (desperately and apologetic for being a “bother”) that he and his children have been baited and threatened on Facebook, including by a female friend of his ex’s and by strangers.

Harassment by these means, which tends to be unrelenting but is just as bad when sporadic, creates anxiety and insecurity in its victims, and may well undo them not only psychologically but professionally, financially, and in every other possible way. False allegations (which alone gnaw and corrode) may lead to criminal charges, which may lead to incarceration, from which ensues traumatization of children and possibly loss of employment (from which ensues further traumatization of children…). Same thing with restraining orders, which may easily be obtained in an afternoon by spiteful fraud and which don’t go away—and may also lead not only to loss of employment but loss of employability in a given field.

When a restraining order is issued, it’s entered into state law enforcement databases as well as the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database. The pretense is that restraining orders are civil misdemeanors of no particular significance. Repeat: National Crime Information Center.

Records of restraining orders are public, besides, and accessible by anyone, and may moreover be recorded in public registries for easy access. Allegations on those records, no matter how scandalous and even if found to be exaggerated or maliciously false, aren’t censored.

Our perceptions of the consequences of public allegations, as well as the justice system’s perceptions of them, are completely schizoid. They’re neither actually “no big deal” nor actually treated as though they’re “no big deal.” And they’re certainly not “no big deal” to those falsely accused and everyone who depends on them. False allegations may range from stalking to sexual harassment to battery or worse.

The actuality is that allegations made on restraining orders, which may be utterly malicious fabrications, are presumed to be legitimate by everyone. Just the phrase restraining order instantly establishes the credibility of an accuser who may be a bully or stalker.

Applicants for restraining orders, it’s again presumed, are afraid of the people they’ve accused and want nothing to do with them. Accordingly, there are no limitations placed on the conduct of petitioners and no repercussions to them for their harassing the people they’ve alleged they’re afraid of. Restraining orders license abusers—bullies, stalkers, and their confederates—to act with impunity. Even when abuses are reported, the tendency of cops and court staff is to shrug.

Restraining orders, because they establish credibility with judges and police officers (based on no standard of evidence and on mere minutes-long “trials” that never approach conclusiveness), make further claims that bullies or stalkers allege, whether proximally or later on (even years later on), entirely plausible. Conflict can be rekindled and stoked endlessly and whimsically.

Lives are derailed this way: sanity compromised, careers sabotaged or sundered, savings exhausted, and on and on. Trials may lead to further trials without end.

And all of this may originate with sick games whose motives are dismissed as “harmless”—or even “cute.”

Rethinking “Stalking”: When Sociopathic Stalkers Apply for Restraining Orders

April 7, 2014June 29, 2023Moderator 7 Comments

“Stalking acts are engaged in by a perpetrator for different reasons: to initiate a relationship (i.e., Some call it stalking; [he or] she calls it courtship); to persuade/coerce a former partner to reconcile; to punish, frighten, or control the victim; to feel a sense of personal power; to feel a ‘connection’ to the victim; or some combination of all of the above. Stalking is a form of abuse, and most abusers ultimately want control over their victims. Therefore, stalking is about controlling a love object, a hate object, or a love/hate object. Both love and hate can inspire obsession.

“Abusive personalities and stalkers often lack or have selective empathy for their victims. In fact, a characteristic of stalking is that the stalker objectifies [his or] her victim. If you don’t see your victim as another human being with feelings, needs, and rights, it becomes very easy to perpetrate any number of cruel, crazy, malicious, spiteful, and sick behaviors upon him or her. What about stalkers who believe they’re in love with their victims? Again, this is about possession and control; not love. They want to possess and control you regardless of what you want.”

—Dr. Tara J. Palmatier, Psy.D.

Laws tend to define stalking as the exhibition of unwanted behaviors that alarm people.

What a broader yet nuanced definition of stalking like Dr. Palmatier’s reveals is that what makes someone a stalker isn’t how his or her target perceives him or her; it’s how s/he perceives his or her target: as an object (what stalking literally means is the stealthy pursuit of prey—that is, food).

Who perceives others as objects? The sociopath. Mention sociopath and restraining order in the same context, and the assumption will be that the victim of a coldblooded abuser will have sought the court’s protection from him or her.

The opposite, however, may as easily be the case.

Appreciate that stalking is about coercion, punishment, domination, and control of a target who’s viewed as an object, and it’s easy to see why the stalker in a relationship might be the petitioner of a restraining order, an instrument of coercion, punishment, domination, and control.

(“[T]o feel a sense of personal power,” furthermore, is a recognized reward motive for the commission of fraud. Pulling one over on other people, particularly those in authority, feels gooood.)

Appreciate, also, that a stalker’s motives for “courtship” (i.e., what s/he stands to gain from a relationship) may not be recognized by his or her target as abnormal at all. Nor, of course, will they be understood as abnormal by the stalker. What this means is, stalking isn’t always recognized as stalking (predator behavior), and correspondingly isn’t always repelled.

The Psychology of Stalking: Clinical and Forensic Perspectives notes that the majority of stalkers manifest Cluster B personality disorders, which I’ve talked about in the previous two posts, citing various authorities. People like this—borderlines, antisocials, narcissists, and histrionics—often pass as normal (“neurotypical”). They’re around us all the time…and invisible. Dr. Palmatier, a psychologist from whose writings the epigraph is drawn, has posited that Cluster B personality disorders “form a continuum” and “stem from sociopathy,” a trait of which is viewing others as objects, not subjects. Not only may others be unconscious of personality-disordered people’s motives; such people may be unconscious of their motives themselves.

(Out of respect for the author of the epigraph, I should note that my application of the word stalker in the context of this post departs from hers. The position of this post is that the person who pursues an objectified target and then displaces blame for aberrant behavior onto that target to “punish, frighten, or control” him or her is no less a stalker than the person who relentlessly seeks to possess his or her target. The topic of Dr. Palmatier’s exposition is attachment pathology of the latter sort.)

Contrary to the popular conception that stalkers are wallflower weirdos who obsessively trail dream lovers from a distance with the aid of telescopic lenses, stalkers may be socially aggressive and alluring—or at least sympathetic—and may exhibit no saliently weird qualities whatever.

Returning to Dr. Palmatier’s definition of stalking, what makes someone a stalker isn’t how s/he acts, per se, it’s why she acts the way s/he does. What makes an act an act of stalking is the motive of that act (the impulse behind it), which isn’t necessarily evident to a stalker’s quarry.

Placed in proper perspective, then, not all acts of stalkers are rejected or alarming, because their targets don’t perceive their motives as deviant or predatory. The overtures of stalkers, interpreted as normal courtship behaviors, may be invited or even welcomed by the unsuspecting.

The author of the blog Dating a Sociopath astutely limns the course of a relationship with a stalker (someone who views the other as a means, not an end with “feelings, needs, and rights”).

The sociopath wears a mask. But [s/he] will only wear that mask for as long as it is getting him [or her] what [s/he] wants. The sociopath is not emotionally connected, to you or anybody else. Whilst the sociopath might show connection, this would only be a disguise, to serve his [or her] own needs.

When the sociopath realises that [s/he] can have better supply elsewhere, or if [s/he] feels that supply with you is coming to an end, [s/he] will leave you without warning. The sociopath would have sourced a new victim for supply, but this would have been done behind your back and without your knowledge.

To do so, it is likely that the sociopath needed to play victim to the new source. Often [s/he] would have made complaints about you to gain sympathy and win support. Again, this will be something that you have absolutely no knowledge of, until later.

Consider her conclusion that a sociopath may “play victim” to acquire new narcissistic supply, and you’ll perceive how perfectly lies to the police and/or the courts (donning a new mask) may assist him or her in realizing his or her pathological wishes.

The blog post from which this quoted material is drawn concerns being abruptly discarded by a sociopath, which the writer notes may leave the sociopath’s quarry feeling:

Confused
Bewildered
Lost
Desperate for answers
A longing and neediness to understand
Wanting back the honeymoon stage
Unsure if the relationship is actually over or not?
Self-blame
Manipulated, conned, and deceived

Expressions of these feelings, whose motives are not those of stalkers but of normal people prompted by a need to understand the inexplicable, may take the form of telephone calls, emails, or attempts at direct confrontation—all of which lend themselves exquisitely to misrepresentation by stalkers as the behaviors of stalkers.

The personality-disordered answer primal urges, and among those urges is the will to blame others when their bizarre expectations aren’t satisfied—and they inevitably aren’t—or when others express natural expectations of their own that defy disordered personalities’ fantasized versions of how things are supposed to go.

The author of this blog, a formerly private man who had a restraining order petitioned against him characterizing him as a stalker (and who has been back to court three times since to respond to the same allegation, the least of several), has been monitored for eight years by a stranger he naïvely responded to whom he found standing outside of his house one day as he went to climb into his car.

I was a practicing writer for kids.

The first correspondent I had when I began this blog three years ago was a woman who’d been pursued and discarded by a pathological narcissist, who subsequently obtained a restraining order against her (by fraud), representing her as a stalker (cf. Dr. Palmatier’s “Presto, Change-o, DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender”).

She taught music to kids.

Last fall, I exchanged numerous emails with a woman who’d fallen for a man with borderline personality disorder, who abused her, including violently, then did the same thing after she sought a restraining order against him, which was denied.

She was a nurse who had three kids.

You’ll note that those labeled “stalkers” by the state in these cases—and they’re hardly exceptions—confound the popular stalker profile that’s promoted by restraining order advocates.

An irony of this already twisted business is that injuries done to people by their being misrepresented to the authorities and the courts by disordered personalities as stalkers ignite in them the need to clear their names, on which their livelihoods may depend (never mind their sanity); and their determination, which for obvious reasons may be obsessive, seemingly corroborates stalkers’ false allegations of stalking.

This in turn further feeds into the imperative of personality-disordered stalkers to divert blame from themselves and exert it on their targets. People like this fatten on drama and conflict, and legal abuses gratify their appetites like no other source, both because the residue of legal abuses never evaporates and because those abuses can be refreshed or repeated, setting off further chain reactions ad infinitum.

The agents of processes that were conceived to arrest social parasitism and check the conduct of stalkers are no less susceptible to believing the false faces and frauds of predatory people than their victims are.

Blame, No Shame: Restraining Order Abuse by High-Conflict, Personality-Disordered Plaintiffs

April 3, 2014June 17, 2023Moderator 16 Comments

“Court is perfectly suited to the fantasies of someone with a personality disorder: There is an all-powerful person (the judge) who will punish or control the other [person]. The focus of the court process is perceived as fixing blame—and many with personality disorders are experts at blame. There is a professional ally who will champion their cause (their attorney—or if no attorney, the judge) […]. Generally, those with personality disorders are highly skilled at—and invested in—the adversarial process.

“Those with personality disorders often have an intensity that convinces inexperienced professionals—counselors and attorneys—that what they say is true. Their charm, desperation, and drive can reach a high level in this very emotional bonding process with the professional. Yet this intensity is a characteristic of a personality disorder, and is completely independent from the accuracy of their claims.”

—William (Bill) Eddy (1999)

Contemplating these statements by therapist, attorney, and mediator Bill Eddy should make it clear how perfectly the disordered personality and the restraining order click. Realization of the high-conflict person’s fantasies of punishment and control is accomplished as easily as making some false or histrionically hyped allegations in a few-minute interview with a judge.

Contemplating these statements should also make clear the all-but-impossible task that counteracting the fraudulent allegations of high-conflict people can pose, both because disordered personalities lie without compunction and because they’re intensely invested in domination, blaming, and punishment.

Lying may be justified in their eyes—possibly to bring a reconciliation. (This can be quite convoluted, like the former wife who alleged child sexual abuse so that her ex-husband’s new wife would divorce him and he would return to her—or so she seemed to believe.) Or lying may be justified as a punishment in their eyes.

As Mr. Eddy explains in a related article (2008):

Courts rely heavily on “he said, she said” declarations, signed “under penalty of perjury.” However, a computer search of family law cases published by the appellate courts shows only one appellate case in California involving a penalty for perjury: People v. Berry (1991) 230 Cal. App. 3d 1449. The penalty? Probation.

Perjury is a criminal offense, punishable by fine or jail time, but it must be prosecuted by the District Attorney, who does not have the time. [J]udges have the ability to sanction (fine) parties but no time to truly determine that one party is lying. Instead, they may assume both parties are lying or just weigh their credibility. With no specific consequence, the risks of lying are low.

High-conflict fraudsters, in other words, get away with murder—or at least character assassination (victims of which eat themselves alive). Lying is a compulsion of personality disorders and is typical of high-conflict disordered personalities: borderlines, antisocials, narcissists, and histrionics.

When my own life was derailed eight years ago, I’d never heard the phrase personality disorder. Five years later, when I started this blog, I still hadn’t. My interest wasn’t in comprehension; it was to recover my sanity and cheer so I could return to doing what was dear to me. I’m sure most victims are led to do the same and never begin to comprehend the motives of high-conflict abusers.

I’ve read Freud, Lacan, and some other abstruse psychology texts, because I was trained as a literary analyst, and psychological theories are sometimes used by textual critics as interpretive prisms. None of these equipped me, though, to understand the kind of person who would wantonly lie to police officers and judges, enlist others in smear campaigns, and/or otherwise engage in dedicatedly vicious misconduct.

What my collegiate training did provide me with, though, is a faculty for discerning patterns and themes, and it has detected patterns and themes that have been the topics of much of the grudging writing I’ve done in this blog.

Absorbing the explications of psychologists and dispute mediators after having absorbed the stories of many victims of abuse of court process, I’ve repeatedly noticed that the two sources mutually corroborate each other.

Not long ago, I approached the topic of what I called “group-bullying,” because it’s something I’ve been subject to and because many others had reported to me (and continue to report) being subject to the same: sniping by multiple parties, conspiratorial harassment, derision on social media, false reports to employers and rumor-milling, fantastical protestations of fear and apprehension, etc.

The other day, I encountered the word mobbing applied by a psychologist to the same behavior, a word that says the same thing much more crisply.

Quoting Dr. Tara Palmatier (see also the embedded hyperlinks, which I’ve left in):

If you’re reading this, perhaps you’ve been or currently are the Target of Blame of a high-conflict spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, ex, colleague, boss, or stranger(s). Perhaps you’ve been on the receiving end of mobbing (bullying by a group instigated by one or two ringleaders) and/or a smear campaign or distortion campaign of a high-conflict person who has decided you’re to blame for her or his unhappiness. It’s a horrible position to be in, particularly because high-conflict individuals don’t seem to ever stop their blaming and malicious behaviors.

A perfect correspondence. And what more aptly describes the victim of restraining order abuse than “Target of Blame”?

This phrase in turn is found foremost on the website of the High Conflict Institute, founded by Bill Eddy, whom I opened this post by quoting:

Restraining orders are seldom singled out or fully appreciated for the torture devices they are by those who haven’t been intensively made aware of their unique potential to upturn or trash lives, but the victims who comment on this and other blogs, petitions, and online forums are saying the same things the psychologists and mediators are, and they’re talking about the same perpetrators.

Judges understand blaming. That’s their bailiwick and raison d’être. They may even understand false blaming much better than they let on. What they don’t understand, however, is false blaming as a pathological motive.

Quoting “Strategies and Methods in Mediation and Communication with High Conflict People” by Duncan McLean, which I highlighted in the last post:

Emotionally healthy people base their feelings on facts, whereas people with high conflict personalities tend to bend the facts to fit what they are feeling. This is known as “emotional reasoning.” The facts are not actually true, but they feel true to the individual. The consequence of this is that they exhibit an enduring pattern of blaming others and a need to control and/or manipulate.

There are no more convenient expedients for realizing the compulsions of disordered personalities’ emotional reasoning and will to divert blame from themselves and exert it on others than restraining orders, which assign blame before the targets of that blame even know what hit them.

Returning to the concept of “mobbing” (and citing Dr. Palmatier), consider:

The group victimization of a single target has several goals, including demeaning, discrediting, alienating, excluding, humiliating, scapegoating, isolating and, ultimately, eliminating the targeted individual.

Group victimization can be the product of a frenzied horde. But it can also be accomplished by one pathologically manipulative individual…and a judge.

The Restraining Order Plaintiff from Hell: Malicious Prosecution and the “High-Conflict Person”

March 30, 2014June 24, 2023Moderator 4 Comments

“The term ‘high conflict person’ has been popularised relatively recently in legal texts and general discourse to describe those people with certain behavioural clusters who are often observed in legal disputes. This is not meant to suggest that it is a new phenomenon. On the contrary, vexatious individuals and difficult clients are not new to agencies of accountability, lawyers, or mediators, especially those working in highly emotive legal dispute areas such as family law.”

—Duncan McLean

Since I’m neither a psychologist nor an attorney, I’m free to say politically incorrect things. Layman’s license authorizes me to clarify, for instance, that the high-conflict people referred to in the epigraph can be monstrous. A clinician might hesitate to call the conduct of high-conflict people sick, and a mediator would reject such labeling as counterproductive to compromise. Nevertheless, that conduct can be extremely sick and far exceed the bounds of words like contrary, vexatious, and difficult.

If you’ve been attacked serially by someone you trusted who’s abused legal process to hurt you, spread false rumors about you, made false allegations against you, and otherwise manipulated others to join in bullying you (possibly over a period spanning years and despite your reasonable attempts to settle the situation), your persecutor is an example of the high-conflict person to whom the epigraph refers, and understanding his or her motives may be of value to your self-protection.

What the author of the monograph from which the quotation above is excerpted means by “behavioral clusters” (switching to the American spelling) is a set of traits and patterns of habitual conduct. High-conflict people, people with personality disorders (or who at least manifest some of their maladaptive traits), are defined by clusters of observable characteristics that guide them to instigate and sustain conflict, including conflict through abuse of legal process. Borderline, antisocial, narcissistic, and histrionic personality disorder (collectively, the “Cluster B disorders”) are defined by such characterological clusters.

Personality disorders are grouped into clusters based on their predominant features, and it is the Cluster B disorders which typically present with high expression of emotions, neuroticism, dramatization, and hostility.

Cluster B disorders are categorised into the following four sub-types:

Borderline Personality – marked by instability of mood and intense anger, self-destructiveness, a poor sense of self, fears of abandonment, and manipulative behaviour.
Antisocial Personality – a disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others and the rules of society; a lack of empathy and remorse; exploitative, reckless, and irresponsible behaviour.
Narcissistic Personality – a pattern of grandiosity, self-love, and a need for admiration; a sense of entitlement and haughty, arrogant attitudes; preoccupation with success, power, brilliance.
Histrionic Personality – pervasive and excessive emotionality and attention-seeking behaviour; shallow or insincere emotions; inappropriately seductive or provocative behaviour; impressionistic and flamboyant speech.

Note that a single individual may possess traits of more than one personality disorder (or may have more than one personality disorder) and that these definitions are not impervious to overlap. “The people diagnosed with these four disorders are known for their frequent and dramatic interpersonal conflicts and crises. Their personality characteristics often bring them into disputes which involve many others to resolve—including the courts” (Cheryl Cohen, Jack Mahler, and Gwen Jones, “Managing High Conflict Personalities in Mediation”).

If a reader of this post takes nothing else away from the epigraph, s/he should at least note Mr. McLean’s remark that high-conflict, personality-disordered people are “often observed in legal disputes,” a remark echoed by the quotation immediately above, which comes from a different source. Although high-conflict personalities are a minority respective to the population as a whole, they’re disproportionately commonplace among complainants to the courts and other “agencies of accountability” (like child protective services and the police, to offer but a couple of examples).

[P]eople with Cluster B personality disorders are more likely to escalate their disputes to satisfy their underlying need for dominance, blame, denial of responsibility and, sometimes, revenge.

High-conflict people, plainly, are your false accusers and vexatious litigants from hell. They’re driven to divert blame from themselves and exert it on others (who may be their victims).

Restraining orders, due to their low evidentiary threshold and ease of procurement, are ideal media for abuse by those with no scruples about lying or manipulating others and a keen interest in exciting drama and mayhem.

Mediators are circumspect in their judgments, because their role is to pacify strife and facilitate bridge-building between disputants. Effectively doing their work depends on possessing an empathic understanding of the motives of high-conflict people, which may also be worthwhile to those who’ve been victimized by them.

Cognitive distortions, thoughts that are based on a false premise, are a significant feature of high conflict personalities’ thinking style. Often as a consequence of disrupted attachment or a dysfunctional or abusive upbringing, sufferers will develop cognitive distortions and defence mechanisms in an attempt to make sense of the world and to make their experiences fit their own emotions.

The mediator’s position is that high-conflict people are in a sense “unconscious” of their lies and manipulations. More accurate might be that such people aren’t self-critical; they rationalize their conduct, which may be much more impulsive than premeditated but is always relentless and nonetheless destructive. Certainly many psychologists are less generous in their estimations of how unaware the personality-disordered are of their deceits and manipulations—as their victims are bound to be.

That notwithstanding, the appearance of monographs like the one I’ve highlighted in this post is a big deal, because our courts and other “agencies of accountability” are pretty much clueless about personalities like the ones on which it focuses attention (as in fact are most victims of such people).

That’s not to say Mr. McLean’s observations are new. His paper, which was published last year, shadows the professional writing of therapist, attorney, and mediator William (Bill) Eddy, who’s been elucidating the challenges posed by people with personality disorders in the court system (particularly family court) for decades. The monograph, moreover, cites Mr. Eddy’s work more than once. More recently, psychologist Tara Palmatier, whose online explications of the behaviors of the personality-disordered also draw on the pioneering observations of Mr. Eddy, has written volubly, accessibly, and explicitly about abuses, including legal abuses, committed by high-conflict people (as have a number of other psychologists who zero in on the narcissist personality). Many, if not most, of Dr. Palmatier’s patients have been the victims of such abuses and/or abusers, and some of their personal accounts (“In His Own Words”) appear on her blog.

Returning to Mr. McLean’s paper (which, again, echoes summations of both Mr. Eddy and Dr. Palmatier):

High conflict behavior…can be broadly described as behaviour which escalates rather than minimises conflict. The individual tends to escalate because they receive some kind of secondary gain from the dispute, but contrarily, they are inclined to blame others whilst perceiving themselves as the victim. The displayed emotion is often disproportionate to the dispute in question, and often there is the presence of poorly regulated emotions in the form of anger, impulsivity, and criticism of others, whilst it is not uncommon to observe controlling and manipulative behaviours.

High-conflict personalities are worse than liars; they’re liars who delude themselves that their lies are justified. They don’t reconsider or back down, and they’re capable of fomenting and sustaining conflict for years, including (especially in the case of narcissists) by gross fraud, smear tactics, and the enlistment of third parties to abet their frauds or participate in bullying their victims.

Because high conflict people tend to distort facts to suit their emotions, they often put a lot of energy into blaming other people for their cognitive distortions. The need to release internal distress results in reality-distorting defence mechanisms, such as projection and denial, which results in [their] failing to recognise their part in conflict. These cognitive distortions (also known as emotional facts) are frequently transferred to other people, which in turn often enables and exacerbates the behaviour.

In his paper, which I urge readers to consult, Mr. McLean includes actual transcript excerpts from cases heard in court that are both enlightening and impressive, and should encourage anyone in a legal clash with a high-conflict person who’s capable of obtaining the aid and representation of a mediator to consider it.

It’s deplorably the case that “rapport-building” is never an option in the drive-thru arena that is the restraining order process.

Examination of Mr. McLean’s professional insights into the specific personality disorders underscores how vexed resolving legal conflicts in this arena may be. He notes, for instance, that exposing a narcissist’s misconduct by confronting him or her with that misconduct or making him or her “look bad” will only fan the flames. He’s no doubt right, but in hearings that last mere minutes, painstaking assuagement of a narcissist’s ego isn’t practicable. Similarly he observes that among histrionics, “[e]xaggerated emotions and phoniness may be common initially.”

In a court process that’s concluded almost as soon as it’s begun, like a restraining order hearing, exaggerations and phoniness can’t be exposed through methodical cross-examination. The severity of a plaintiff’s allegations of apprehension may in fact excuse him or her from attending a hearing, altogether scotching the opportunity to expose his or her falsehoods by questioning.

Emphatically noteworthy, then, is the virtual absence from any but very lengthy and deliberate trials that are influenced by expertise like Mr. McLean’s of any chance to prosecute a capable defense against the frauds of high-conflict people.

How VAWA Has Turned Our Courts into Restraining Order Vending Machines

March 29, 2014January 23, 2018Moderator 3 Comments

Under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), our courts and police districts are awarded hefty federal grants (averaging $500,000) in return for having their officers (judges and cops) “educated” about how to respond to allegations of fear or violence.

Allegations made pursuant to the procurement of a restraining order, per the terms of these grants, aren’t to be questioned.

It’s a little known fact that qualification training for police officers is about a quarter of that required for certification to cut hair. It’s bad enough, then, that cops are licensed to act on impulse. Far worse is that judges are licensed to do so.

That’s because the belief that judges base rulings on facts is mistaken. Judges avoid this whenever possible. If principles of law (rules) authorize officers of the court to dodge making “judgment calls,” they will be dodged. Typically what a “just” ruling means is a ruling that can be justified according to the rules.

To give an example, imagine a bewildered restraining order defendant who’s been falsely accused. If s/he misses or blows his or her opportunity to defend, “claim preclusion” rules forbid him or her from having the case heard or reheard later. The facts don’t matter. The court is authorized to ignore them—and it will.

Remedial legislation has been proposed, such as Oregon House Bill 2966 (“Allows respondent against whom restraining order has been issued to request withdrawal of order based on false allegations of abuse”):

At any time after a restraining order has been issued under ORS 107.095 (1)(c) or (d), 107.716 or 107.718, and after the restraining order has been entered into the Law Enforcement Data System maintained by the Department of State Police and into the databases of the National Crime Information Center of the United States Department of Justice as required under ORS 107.720, and into any other manual or computerized database maintained by the Department of State Police for purposes of tracking restraining orders issued under ORS 107.095 (1)(c) or (d), 107.716 or 107.718, the respondent may request that the court withdraw the order on the grounds that the petition and order were based upon false allegations of abuse. The request may be made at a hearing requested under ORS 107.718 (10) or by a separate motion filed with the court by the respondent.

But as things stand, if false allegations are put over on the court, they’re put over for good.

Judicial process proceeds from rules first and facts second. Our entire system of law is based upon the principle of stare decisis, which says that what has previously been decided must be adhered to.

A restraining order, which is issued without a defendant’s even knowing about it and based on a few-minute interview between a judge and plaintiff, already represents a preliminary decision. If, on top of this influential fact, the rule impressed upon judges is that allegations aren’t to be questioned, then “decisions” to confirm restraining orders aren’t really decisions at all.

Disdain for a Feminist Institution of Law Isn’t the Same as Disdain for Women

March 29, 2014August 10, 2023Moderator Leave a comment

“I am the victim of false accusations [by] a female with sociopathic tendencies. She stabbed my husband [and] threatened to kill me, but for whatever reason filed for a domestic violence protective order on me. I value respect from people, so I do and act morally to maintain my relationships, but because any given person, whether sane or not, can go file a petition with its being granted depending on how it’s worded, I was treated like a criminal and not one time given the opportunity to inform even the judge that the petitioner had committed perjury. Only in [West Virginia] a felony can be committed and go unpunished. This is [an overlooked] flaw that needs immediate attention!!!! This not only jeopardizes my future, but my kids’ future, because if the petitioner wouldn’t have dropped it, it would [have been] filed in a national database, popping up whenever a background check is done on me, including [by] my college for my admission into Nuclear Medicine Technology…and this is all based on a drug-addicted, manipulating, vindictive person’s false accusations.”

—Female e-petition respondent

“Dangerous law easily used as a sword instead of shield. A Butte man died over this. His girlfriend, after making the false allegations, cleaned out his bank account. He committed suicide. His mother, Ruth, had no money to bury him. The girlfriend depleted his assets partying.”

—Female e-petition respondent

“I can relate to this topic, because I once made false allegations against my lover because I was a woman scorned and wanted to get even with him and make him feel the same level of pain that he made me feel. Luckily for him and me, I was convicted in my spirit and confessed to the court that I’d lied, and the matter was dropped. If I’d not been led to do that, my lie could have ruined this man’s life….”

—Female e-petition respondent

“It makes me sick that there are so many families affected by false allegations. The children [who] are affected break my heart. We have been living this nightmare for over a year now—over $40 thousand dollars spent, and this woman still keeps us in court with her false allegations…. At what point will the courts make these people accountable???”

—Female e-petition respondent

A recent comment to this blog from a female victim of restraining order abuse (by her husband) expressed the perception that criticism of feminist motives and the restraining order process, a feminist institution of law, seemed vitriolic toward women.

Her reaction is understandable.

What isn’t perceived generally, including by female victims of fraudulent abuse of process, is that the restraining order was prompted by feminist lobbying just a few decades ago and that its manifest injustices are sustained by feminist lobbying. It’s not as though reform has never been proposed; it’s that reform is rejected by those with a political interest in preserving the status quo.

Political motives, remember, aren’t humanitarian motives; they’re power motives.

So enculturated has the belief that women are helpless victims become that no one recognizes that feminist political might is unrivaled—unrivaled—and it’s in the interest of preserving that political might and enhancing it that the belief that women are helpless victims is vigorously promulgated by the feminist establishment that should be promoting the idea that women aren’t helpless.

It’s this belief and this political might that make restraining order abuses, including abuses that trash the lives of women, possible. Not only does the restraining order process victimize women; it denies that women have personal agency.

Nurturance of the belief that women are helpless victims puts a lot of money in a lot of hands, and very few of those hands belong to victims.

The original feminist agenda, one that’s been all but eclipsed, was inspiring women with a sense of personal empowerment and dispelling the notion that they’re helpless. The restraining order process is anti-feminist as is today’s mainstream feminist agenda, which equity feminists have been saying for decades.

Restraining orders continue to be doled out (in the millions per annum) on the basis of meeting a civil standard of evidence (which means no proof is necessary), pursuant to five- or 10-minute interviews between plaintiffs and judges, from which defendants are excluded.

So certainly has the vulnerability and helplessness of women been universally accepted that the state credits claims of danger or threat made in civil restraining order applications on reflex, including by men, because our courts must be perceived as “fair.” Consequently, fraudulent claims are both rampant and easily put over.

Restraining orders aren’t pro-equality and don’t contribute to the advancement of social justice. They do, though, put a lot of people’s kids through college, like lawyers’ and judges’.

Victim-Blaming: The “Patriarchal Paradigm,” Discrimination against Male Victims of Domestic Violence, the Frequency of False Allegations, and Abuses of Men and Women by Restraining Order Fraud

March 28, 2014August 17, 2023Moderator 1 Comment

“Accounting for the discrepancy between the empirical data and current public policy has been the gender paradigm (Dutton and Nicholls 2005), also known as the patriarchal paradigm (Hamel 2007b), a set of assumptions and beliefs about domestic violence that has shaped domestic violence policy on arrest, treatment, and victim services at all levels for the past several decades. A product of feminist sociopolitical theory, the paradigm posits that the causes of domestic violence can be found in patriarchy and male dominance…. Despite data that are inconsistent with the feminist perspective…it remains a dominant influence….”

—Journal of Family Violence (2009)

In a recent post, I wrote about false allegations of domestic violence and quoted a male victim who was arrested when he reported to police that he was being assaulted. The ensuing ordeal cost him his “career, [his] name, and three years of income” before the police department copped to wrongdoing and settled with him out of court.

Deplorably, this is what comes of asking for help from a system that’s been conditioned to perceive men as stalkers, batterers, and rapists (despite the fact that best population-based studies reveal as many as half of victims of partner violence are men).

According to findings by Dr. Denise Hines, more than a quarter of male victims of domestic violence who call the police are themselves arrested as a result (26%). Half of the time, responding police officers do nothing, and in less than one in five cases (17%) is a reported female abuser arrested.

Imagine the outrage of the National Organization of Women if half the women who reported being battered were blown off by authorities, or if one in every four women who reported being battered was herself arrested and prosecuted for assault.

This isn’t to say, of course, that the “patriarchal paradigm” promoted by feminist advocates and the Violence against Women Act (VAWA) doesn’t also brutally injure women.

Alternative to filing criminal complaints is the filing of civil protection orders—and this knife cuts both ways. Diminished standards of verification applied to allegations made in connection with restraining orders ensure that women, too, are abused by the state according to false allegations leveled against them by conniving men. The frequency of female victimization by men is lesser; the damages of that victimization are not.

Returning to the journal article quoted in the epigraph (Muller, Desmarais, and Hamel), consider:

Every state in the United States now authorizes its courts to issue civil orders of protection against domestic violence. Typically, a temporary domestic violence restraining order (TRO) is issued ex parte at the request of any plaintiff who expresses an “objectively reasonable subjective fear of being injured” (Miller 2005, p. 74), without the respondent (i.e., the alleged perpetrator) having to be present in court. TROs are granted for two- to four-week periods, at which point a hearing is held to determine if a permanent order is warranted, valid in most states for a period of one to four years. In California, as of June 6, 2003, there were 227,941 active restraining orders (including temporary and permanent) issued against adults, almost all of them for domestic violence. Of the domestic violence orders, approximately 72% restrained a man from a protected woman, 19% restrained a same-sex partner, and 9% restrained a woman from a protected man (Sorenson and Shen 2005). Of particular significance to family court cases, the protected parent almost automatically obtains custody of the children, without a custody hearing or a custody decision being made (Kanuha and Ross 2004; Sorenson and Shen 2005).

Various motives for lying to the court are both obvious and confirmed.

“Many TROs and POs [protection orders],” concludes a Hawaiian task force on restraining orders, “are obtained by one party to a dispute to try to gain advantage over another party in future or ongoing divorce proceedings or a custody dispute” (Murdoch 2005, p. 17). In California, the Family Law section of the state bar expressed concern that domestic violence restraining orders “are increasingly being used in family law cases to help one side jockey for an advantage in child custody and/or property litigation and in cases involving the right to receive spousal support” (Robe and Ross 2005, p. 26). A retired Massachusetts judge revealed to the press that, in his experience, one-third of restraining orders are strategic ploys used for leverage in divorce cases (“Retiring Judge” 2001). Attorneys Sheara Friend and Dorothy Wright, the latter also a former board member of a battered women’s shelter, estimate that 40 to 50% of restraining orders are used to manipulate the system (Young 1999). In some cases, mothers secure custody despite a history of abuse against the father or the children (Cook 1997; Pearson 1997).

As I prefaced these quotations by remarking, they shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that men don’t also lie to inculpate women (who may be the actual victims of domestic violence), because they do, as the study these quotations are drawn from suggests. The rate of false allegations between the sexes may in fact be equivalent (and as high as 50%).

The difference is that women far more often make allegations (and thus false allegations) against men than vice-versa.

Absent from all analytic studies and contemplations is the toll of false allegations and victim-blaming on those devastated by them, which can’t be quantified.

TALKING BACK to restraining orders

THEY’RE NOT JUST ABUSED BUT ABUSIVE

Tag restraining orders

“N.J. Judges Told to Ignore Rights in Abuse TROs”: A Retrospective Look at Vicious Restraining Order Policies 20 Years Later

Lip Service: What Passes for Fair and Sound Restraining Order Policy in Michigan (and, Largely, Everywhere Else)

On Withdrawing Restraining Orders That Were Obtained Impetuously (and on the Influences That Militate against Conscience)

Impulse: How Restraining Orders Encourage and Reward Tantrum Behavior and Why Feminist Advocates Should Be the First to Push for Their Reform

Sex, Restraining Order Abuse, and the “Dark Triad”: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy

Ungoverned: Restraining Order Laws in Arkansas

You Be the Judge: On Those Who Blame for a Living, Restraining Orders, and the Golden Rule

How Men Lie on Restraining Orders: A Tutorial for Feminists

SPITE: Feminism and Restraining Order Rampancy

A Legislated License to Lie: Nothing CAN’T Be Falsely Alleged on a Restraining Order

How “Preponderance of the Evidence” Rewards Restraining Order Fraud and Why Bigger Lies Work Better than Smaller Ones

They Don’t Have to Be True, Just “Truthy”: Civil Restraining Order Allegations and the “Burden of Proof”

No Proof Necessary: Why Restraining Orders Are Abused and Why Restraining Orders Exist

“American Law is Irresponsible”: The American Civil Standard of Evidence and Abuse of Restraining Orders

A Scratch, a Push, a Pinch: “Domestic Violence,” False Allegations, and Restraining Order Abuse

(Female) Stalkers, False Allegations, and Restraining Order Abuse

Rethinking “Stalking”: When Sociopathic Stalkers Apply for Restraining Orders

The Restraining Order Plaintiff from Hell: Malicious Prosecution and the “High-Conflict Person”

How VAWA Has Turned Our Courts into Restraining Order Vending Machines

Victim-Blaming: The “Patriarchal Paradigm,” Discrimination against Male Victims of Domestic Violence, the Frequency of False Allegations, and Abuses of Men and Women by Restraining Order Fraud