“On the Receiving End of a Sociopath’s Lies”: A Professional Mom’s Story of Restraining Order Abuse

The following account is reproduced almost verbatim from an email of recent vintage. Its writer is a professional woman and single mother of three with whom I corresponded last year while she was embroiled in strife—legal, medical, and emotional (a synergy of torments that’s been reported here before). The capsule version of her story is that she was in an abusive relationship (including violently abusive), sought a restraining order, which was dismissed on appeal, and then was issued an order petitioned by her abuser, which she reports was based on fraud, and which was nevertheless upheld despite her appealing it. She brought criminal charges, also. Her abuser smoothly extricated himself from those, too. The victim of assault is the one with the “restraining order” on her permanent record. She asked that I not use her name because she’s “terrified of  the possibility of repercussions.”

In her own words, which more poignantly express the psychic trauma of procedural abuses than any I’ve ever read:

My active involvement with my sociopath has, mercifully, ended.

[H]e refused to accept a plea deal, he took his assault case to a jury trial, and he was found not guilty by a jury of his peers. His lies were, apparently, more believable than my truth, or, best case, the jurors didn’t really believe him but couldn’t find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I’ve seen enough of the court system to learn that the truth is completely immaterial, and that the officers of the court will consistently choose the “easy” ruling over the one that is true. If the matter before them requires some thought, some extrapolation, some reading between the lines, and/or some backbone, forget it. The truth will be jettisoned faster than a grenade with its pin pulled.

I don’t really know how to describe how profoundly my brushes with domestic abuse/restraining order abuse/generalized legal abuse have affected me. In a few short months, a year will have passed since the criminal trial against my abuser took place. Four years will have passed since the whole odyssey began on Easter of 2011, when I walked into the police station and reported my abuser’s attack after agonizing overnight about whether or not I should do so. Imagine that—agonizing overnight about whether or not to report a crime! On some level, I must have known even then how very awry it all could go.

Let me just attempt to put this into perspective: I have lived through my parents’ divorce. I have boarded an Amtrak train headed for New Orleans at 16 years old in an effort to escape a miserable childhood. I have been scarred by the shame of being a high school dropout and then gone on to receive a college education. I have experimented with more drugs than I can count on two hands. I have traveled all over Europe with little more than a backpack and a few pfennigs. I have been robbed at gunpoint while working third shift in a Shell-Mart in Anniston, Alabama. I have scuba-dived off the coast of Honduras. I have watched my stepmother fight to regain pulmonary function after she was stabbed by a purse-snatching punk in the alley behind her home in Washington, D.C., only to watch her die an agonizing death from lung cancer fifteen years later. I have held a lion cub in my arms. I have lain helplessly in a hospital bed as not one, not two, but three premature babies were whisked from my body and transferred straight into the NICU. I have survived breast cancer, and then my mother’s untimely death from a hospital-acquired infection four months after my diagnosis. I have been sliced and diced and blasted by radiation. I have been exposed to, and treated for, tuberculosis. I have lived through bacterial meningitis and undergone a blood patch procedure after a botched spinal tap. I have been resuscitated with Narcan after being given too much IV narcotic during an acute episode of kidney stones. I have skydived over the Newport, Rhode Island coastline. I have loved multiple dogs and cats and then held them in my arms when it was their time to leave this earth. I have fought for my children and for myself against a relentlessly bitter spouse during a contentious, protracted divorce.

Not one of those things has affected me as deeply as being on the receiving end of a sociopath’s lies, and the legal system’s subsequent validation of those lies. There is no “coming out the other side” of a public, on-the-legal-record character assassination. It gnaws at me on a near-daily basis like one of those worms that lives inside those Mexican jumping beans for sale to tourists on the counters of countless cheesy gift shops in Tijuana.

I have sort of moved on; I mean, what else can one do, particularly when one has young children? But the horror, outrage, shame, and, yes, fury engendered by being wrongly accused by a perpetrator, and then having that perpetrator be believed, chafes at me constantly. Some things born of irritation and pressure are ones of beauty, like a pearl, or a diamond, but not this. This is a stoma on one’s soul—it never heals, it’s always chapped and raw, and if you’re not careful, it can leak and soil everything around it.

These days, when sleep escapes me, which seems to be fairly frequently, I often relive the various court hearings associated with this shit show. One is the court hearing for the restraining order that my abuser sought against me (and which was granted) based on his completely vague, bullshit story that he felt “afraid” of me—this from the beast that had assaulted me on numerous occasions, slashed my tires, and had a documented history of abusing previous girlfriends. Another is his trial for assault and battery, during which I was forced to undergo a hostile, nasty, and innuendo-laced cross-examination by his scumbag defense attorney in front of a courtroom full of strangers. But the hearing that really gnaws at me and fills me with an almost homicidal enmity for the judge overseeing it is the one where I was requesting a restraining order against my abuser, this after a particularly heinous assault in the days following my cancer diagnosis and my partial mastectomy.

That judge apparently believed my abuser’s bald-faced, self-serving, and absurdly improbable lies over my detailed, accurate, and horrific account of his behavior immediately following my surgery. That judge believed that a well-dressed, employed, and reasonably intelligent woman would drag her ass to court a week after a life-threatening diagnosis and major surgery just to harass her blameless ex. My memory of the surreal, humiliating, and completely unexpected ruling that day, made even more galling by the judge’s proclamation that he found the defendant to be “more credible” than me, is as grievously harrowing today as it was then.

To say that I feel indignant about it would be an understatement. Take indignation, add a dollop of pain, some hefty pinches of fear, embarrassment, and hopelessness, and a heaping dose of fury, and you’ve got a toxic mix of emotions that, if I don’t actively squelch them whenever they surface, could blow the top of my skull clean off. No amount of therapy can mitigate this particular affront; I’ve learned that the best I can hope for is some measure of containment. Kind of like radioactive waste.

foreverI will have that prick’s bogus restraining order on my record today, tomorrow, next week, and on and on into perpetuity. I am a licensed professional whose employers require a full background check prior to being hired. I honestly don’t know how that restraining order was missed by the company that my most recent employer contracted to perform my pre-employment vetting. I live with the ever-present dread that someday, someone will unearth the perverse landmine that my abusive ex planted in my legal record, and that dread hasn’t lessened one whit since the day the restraining order was granted.

I understand that the existence of a past restraining order can be a valuable red flag for the police when dealing with domestic abusers and stalkers. Most domestic abusers are repeat offenders, so prior bad acts can help to establish a pattern that law enforcement should be aware of (though, confoundingly, these same bad acts are not admissible during any trial). Even though I’m not necessarily comfortable with the existence of a permanent registry of all restraining orders—both those that are sought and those that are actually granted (which, as you know, is what currently exists)—what I’m not comfortable with is that this information is available not just to the police, not just to other governmental agencies, but to the public at large! My height and weight taken while at the doctor’s office are protected by law. A hospital cannot disclose if I was treated there for a sore throat. But an inflammatory, defamatory, embarrassing, unsubstantiated, and oftentimes false restraining order affidavit can be obtained by whoever strolls into a courthouse and requests a copy from the clerk.

I don’t believe this registry will ever be abolished, because restraining order abuse isn’t “sexy” and no one thinks it could ever happen to her, but can we at least limit who can access this information and the circumstances under which they can access it? It’s mind-boggling to me. It’s just so goddamn devastating to the people who are unfairly stigmatized, and, call me pessimistic, but I don’t think these casualties will ever have a voice.

[Today] I’m working full-time at a job that I basically enjoy, and my three children are flourishing. I no longer feel that I am defined by my intensely negative experiences with my abuser and with the legal system, or that my life is being hijacked on a daily basis. I go days at a time without any of this crossing my mind. To say that I have “gotten over it,” though, would be a lie. A piece of me was lost because of this, and an emotional fissure was left behind, that, from what I can tell, simply cannot be fixed or ignored. My only succor is my halfhearted hope that karma is, indeed, a bitch.

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Learning to Talk the Talk: Resources for Victims of “Disturbed” People Who’ve Also Been Victimized by the Courts

“[Narcissism] is, in my opinion, the single most damaging and maladaptive tendency seen in sociopaths. When taken to extremes, it can lead to seriously abusive patterns of behavior that are repulsive and idiotic, both from any sort of ethical perspective and from the perspective of sheer self-interest. It is also fundamentally misunderstood. The word ‘narcissist’ connotes, to most people, merely personal vanity taken to an extreme. This is not what the word narcissism means in the context of sociopathic psychology. Narcissism…means the inability to understand that other people exist as distinct entities from oneself—with their own wants, emotions, and personal space—combined with a grandiose and exaggerated perception of self. The ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ described in the DSM is in my opinion simply the identification of sociopathic individuals who allow their own narcissistic tendencies to become so severe that [they begin] to ruin their lives and the lives of those around them.”

—Clinically diagnosed sociopath and blogger

I encountered this exceptional writer in an online forum recently and quoted much of what he had to say about the motives of the sociopathic mind, as well as his “insider” conclusions about what makes narcissists tick. He corroborated some of my own lay suspicions and corroborates as well the belief of psychologist Tara Palmatier, who has written volubly about abuses of legal procedure, that the personality disorders most damaging to others stem from sociopathy.

This writer, who very plausibly calls himself a “high-functioning sociopath” but who doesn’t otherwise identify himself, perceives people with these personality disorders (specifically, narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder) as “low-functioning sociopaths” who are prone to indulge hedonistic (that is, pleasure-seeking) impulses, both to their own detriment and that of those who run afoul of them. Put plainly, they hurt other people to gratify the urges of their haywire brains. This writer’s ideas are carefully and lengthily qualified, and with convincing earnestness and intelligence, and I urge anyone who’s interested in a nuanced understanding of disordered brains and their eccentricities to visit this writer’s blog, as well as that of the aforementioned psychologist, Dr. Tara Palmatier, for personal and clinical perspectives on disordered personalities and how to deal with them.

The reasons the personality-disordered are often brought up in this blog are two: (1) because these people have limitless capacity to destroy the lives of others and no scruples or inhibitions about lying to disown accountability for their actions, and (2) because their victims, who are also often victims of legal clashes people like this instigate to distance themselves from their crimes, don’t have the words or concepts to qualify what in the hell just happened to them.

Those who’ve been pursued by or had relationships with disordered personalities, particularly narcissists, whose peculiarities aren’t prominent and easily distinguished as aberrant, may be inclined to doubt or question their own perceptions (which narcissists are masters at manipulating) and may be no more able to characterize the conduct and chronic lying of such people than as “hurtful” or “disturbed” or “psycho.” The motives of the personality-disordered aren’t easily explicable, because they don’t make any sense. Until you’ve been initiated and made an earnest effort to comprehend such bewilderingly anomalous minds, you don’t have the tools to even articulate what you’ve been subjected to. It’s no wonder, for example, that blogs about victimization by narcissists have titles like An Upturned Soul and Out of the Fog—or that using the search term “narcissist” on Amazon.com yields 1,028 returns (including the titles, How Many Lies Are Too Many?: How to Spot Liars, Con Artists, Narcissists, and Psychopaths before It’s Too Late and Web of Lies: My Life with a Narcissist).

Fascinatingly, reading the blog of the “high-functioning sociopath” I’ve commended, and considering that sociopaths are popularly said to be emotional vacuums, there’s no avoiding the impression that he is very empathic, though his isn’t an “I feel you” empathy so much as a reasoned, analytic (“I feel me”) one, which actually makes for very lucid explication unmuddied by touchy-feely distractions that are hardly soothing, anyway, to people who’ve had their lives derailed and are looking for answers rather than palliatives.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*The original blog cited and recommended in this post, QuestioningSociopathy.com, has since been deleted by its author.

Differentiating the Frauds of Sociopaths and Narcissists: A First-Person Perspective

“I became suspicious of my own traits after extended contact with another sociopath, with whom I clicked instantly.”

—Clinically diagnosed sociopath

The above remark in an online forum caught my eye, because it validated a suspicion I’ve nursed that sociopathic people identify with and gravitate toward one another. It’s predictable, really, that people with common perspectives should be mutually attracted, as well as drawn to particular fields, for a couple of examples, institutional research and law. Italics that appear in the quoted paragraphs below, which are by the same male speaker, are added. This speaker, whose comments will be illuminating to students of anomalous brains, is not the author of the book whose cover is used as illustration.

“Generally our impulsive and charismatic personalities mean we become friends easily. For example, both of my flatmates are sociopathic, although probably to a lesser degree than myself. I’m able to freely talk with them about manipulative behavior, and we occasionally teach each other tricks based on our own areas of social expertise. Working as a group, we can very easily mask one another and cooperate to more effectively manipulate others. We also mutually operate on the same rationally motivated, prosocial basis, and as a result we find it very easy to trust one another as our motivations are all identical, and we’re aware of that.

“An awful lot of my sociopathic friends are aware, because I had the conversation with them and ‘woke them up.’ I tend to deliberately gather other socios around me and then make them self-aware, which has created a very interesting little social circle around me. We talk about it quite regularly, because it often comes up when we’re venting to each other or discussing our emotional responses.

“Academia is full of narcissists and sociopaths. So is the legal profession. Virtually any ‘prestigious’ career that offers a lot of potential cash will contain socios, but at the same time there will be some of us almost anywhere as many socios choose the easiest lifestyle possible, which isn’t compatible with those sorts of high-level careers. All fringe subcultures have a higher than average representation of socios, and the drug subculture is absolutely infested with them.”

Reading this person’s analysis of the differences between sociopaths and narcissists, which is very self-aware and forthcoming, was equally interesting, and those who’ve been traumatized by personalities of these types, may also find it significant.

“It’s the difference between ‘I am better than those around me’ and ‘I am fundamentally different [from] those around me, because I have a bizarre and somewhat broken brain.’ Narcissists believe they excel because they’re amazing at everything; sociopaths accept that we’re cheating.

“I very rapidly psychoanalyze others and then use their self-image and insecurities against them. For example, say I spot a woman who’s very insecure and in need of male validation. I can compliment her in exactly the way she wants and needs, and as a result foster emotional dependence, which can give me what I want. Or if you’re badly educated and insecure about your intelligence, I’ll show interest in you as an intelligent and well educated man, and tell you how smart I think you are and how much potential you secretly have, and as a result you’ll end [up] feeling ‘special’ and get the feelings of excellence you crave. Which can give me what I want. Etc., etc. It would take a very long time to explain every possible outcome, but generally it relies on telling people what they want to hear. This is my style, though, and some other socios can be VERY different. Female sociopaths tend to use self-victimization and foster ‘white knight’ behavior in men above all else, for example.

“I can be very passionate about some things, and that’s genuine. I care about my closer friends (because they’re mine) and the women I’m sleeping with (because they’re mine). I avoid negatively affecting those people at all and can actually be very, very protective of them—which in practice ends up being a mutually beneficial relationship.”

This person also validated my conviction that narcissists possess a far greater potential to damage others.

“I f*cking hate narcissists. They’re even worse than us, and they manage to delude themselves into believing that they’re the nicest people on earth. I hate the effect they have on other people, because it’s completely, needlessly damaging, and my own ethics are utilitarian, so the sort of wastefully cruel behavior they participate in just strikes me as stupid and childish.”

He corroborates the most basic defining attributes of the sociopath—and the character traits and tendencies he limns are ones familiar to me as a daily reader of people’s ordeals with sociopathic partners or former partners.

“I don’t feel any guilt. I have no idea what guilt even feels like. I have very few emotions at all. Most of my social interactions with non-socios are pure acting. I also have the full-on stereotypical predatory stare unless I remind myself to ‘act’ as if I’m making normal eye contact, which is a dead giveaway. I feel like most people are just zombies rather than real human beings at all.

“I don’t have a conscience. I use the word hate all the time, but I’m not sure I know what it truly means, to be honest.

“Most of my emotions are what is described as ‘shallow’—that is, they are short-lived, theatrical, and don’t affect my thought processes to the same degree as a normal person. Anger is heightened, and I have a capacity for truly blind rage. I have fallen in what I perceived as ‘love’ with another sociopath in the past, but whether that was mutual obsession or what a neurotypical person would describe as ‘love’ is a mystery to me, although I did care about her deeply.

“We’re almost invariably very smart and possessed of higher than average verbal and social intelligence. Acting is just…easy, for us, for some reason. It’s something we all seem to learn naturally. It is absolutely just acting, and if you can watch a professional actor bring tears on command then you understand how we do it.

“I think all sociopaths get off on power. We tend to view ourselves as distinct from other people (in a way that very easily slips into narcissism) and as ‘natural leaders’ (which we sort of are, in all fairness), and we enjoy being in those positions. I enjoy success, and I enjoy demonstrating that I’m more able than others. Sexually, I tend towards being extremely dominant and aggressive; however, I’d rather find submissives who enjoy that experience than shoot myself in the foot by needlessly harming other people. I think this need to demonstrate dominance over others is inherent, but you can deal with it in different ways; I’d rather be heavily involved in BDSM and a careerist assh*le than satisfy my need for dominance by needlessly murdering other human beings, but I do suspect that that need is why the most maladjusted and broken sociopathic individuals sometimes deliberately harm others for kicks, or even kill.

“Fringe sexual preferences [are] virtually ubiquitous. They don’t bother me at all, because they’re really fun—and drug use allows me to experience some of the emotional extremes that I would otherwise be denied.”

He also contradicts the psychopath stereotype.

“Animals love me for some reason. Cats especially will always pick me to sit on if there [are] multiple people in the room. Dogs respond to my eye contact and mannerisms by being very submissive.

“I like cats and dogs, and I enjoy having them around, so I don’t see any reason to hurt them. The idea of hurting an animal does not make me feel guilty at all, but I do see it as unpleasant.”

His derision of narcissists betrays resentment that sociopaths should be popularly or psychologically associated with these undisciplined and self-delusory slaves to their compulsions. Below is his response to the inquiry, “In your [opinion], do narcissists a) know fully that they’re lying when they’re gaslighting you? b) truly believe the twisted version of reality they present you with, or c) talk themselves into believing their own lies gradually because it suits them? This question is something that causes me a lot of pain and confusion when being gaslighted. Some part of me still wants to believe they are good people without malice….”

”This depends on exactly how self-deluding any given narcissist is, and from an external perspective it’s very hard to tell. I avoid gaslighting [see footnote]…but if I [were] to do it, I’d be fully aware that I was lying. On the other hand, narcissists are extremely unlikely to ever admit it to themselves, because their entire self-perception is completely distorted. It’s likely to be a combination of B + C in practice; A would be behavior more characteristic of a true sociopath. Keep in mind that narcissism is a sliding scale of self-delusion in practice; the worst examples will be B, but the majority are likely to be C. A narcissist is just a sociopath who believes [his or her] own bullshit, really. I wouldn’t say they’re ‘good people’ but they’re not fully conscious of what they’re doing.

“Assume everything they say is bullshit until you see at least some evidence. You don’t have to tell them this, but be absolutely cynical.

“Any extreme displays of emotion are not real.

“Do NOT do anything to give them any more power over you than they have—lending or borrowing money, making minor concessions, etc. They will use it against you.

“Narcissists have incredibly unstable self-esteem. Keep this in mind, and you may be able to motivate them into doing what you want to some degree.

“I think sociopaths are born, and narcissists are made from some of those sociopaths. I don’t think every person has the potential to be a true narcissist based on nurture. People who are naturally ‘sociopathic’ aren’t evil, because we can be incredibly socially symbiotic if we’re aware of the value of prosocial behavior.”

It’s fascinating to me to contrast my impression of this highly intelligent man, who’s a self-acknowledged sociopath with a reasoned code of ethics, with what I know of the narcissist, who’s a parasitic sponge and chronic and impulsive liar. The narcissist is infantile; designing, perfidious, and fraudulent to the core; and wantonly vengeful and destructive. This man, who’s clearly very singular in his self-awareness, lucidness, and honesty may be a sociopath, but after observing how willfully “neurotypical” people lie and treacherously betray others, I’d much sooner trust his motives and integrity than theirs.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Wikipedia: “Gaslighting is a form of mental abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory, perception, and sanity. Instances may range simply from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.”

Bullying: A Proposition for Psychological Study Inspired by Accounts of Restraining Order Abuse and Fraud

I’ve just corresponded with another victim of tag-teaming involving false allegations made to authorities and the court that were augmented and exacerbated by false rumors and group threats made on Facebook, hyped protestations of fear and danger circulated among friends and family, etc.

This moved me to investigate whether there’s a label for this kind of misconduct and if group-bullying is a recognized social phenomenon.

What I discovered was that group-bullying certainly is a recognized social phenomenon among kids, and it’s one that’s given rise to the coinage cyberbullying and been credited with inspiring teen suicide. The clinical term for this conduct is relational aggression, and one of the forms it takes is defamation by spreading rumors and gossiping about its victim, or publicly humiliating him or her. We’re talking about the vulgar mischief most of us thought we’d escaped when we graduated from high school.

The restraining order process is paternal and infantilizing, and its use mirrors children’s running to adults to adjudicate a perceived or claimed injustice (which is among the reasons why such processes are objected to and derogated as demeaning to women by equity feminists like Camille Paglia). Among the consequences of the availability of restraining orders is the promotion of developmental reversion, a regression into adolescent or even pre-adolescent modes of behavior.

Explications of group-bullying don’t identify one gender or the other as the likelier abuser, though relational aggression is said (by Wikipedia) to have been primarily observed and studied among girls.

Bullies, despite being quite morally competent, tend to engage in morally wrong behaviors because of several reasons, including a lack of moral compassion. In general, bullies seem to engage in a kind of cold cognition and have a good theory of mind. They also have an average to good social intelligence. These skills seem to be especially important in order to use relational aggression in an instrumental manner—for achieving specific social goals. As mentioned previously, male and female bullies usually score differently on sociometric measures. Male bullies often fall in the socially rejected category while female bullies tend to fall in the controversial category. They can be popular yet not liked.

According to the group-bullying paradigm, you have the bully, or ringleader, and a number of orbital “bully-reinforcers and assistants,” besides peripheral outsiders who are less committal but may nevertheless participate.

Bully-reinforcers and assistants do not normally initiate aggressive actions themselves, but they support, reinforce, and/or assist the bully. They often have rather large friendship networks when compared to outsiders, victims, and their defenders. These individuals are similar to bullies in regards of their personal characteristics. Female bully-reinforcers and assistants usually score low on social acceptance and high on rejection by their peers while male bully assistants have average scores on both, and bully-reinforcers are often quite popular among their peers. The characteristic that is common among all these individuals across both genders is low level of empathy.

(I’ve been subject to this misconduct, including by two women who claim their own brothers were victims of false allegations by other women. Interestingly, this didn’t deter these “bully-reinforcers” from participating in the identical misconduct. I’m curious now to learn whether it’s the case that morally diminished or vacuous people tend to gravitate toward one another.)

It’s noteworthy, of course, that upon consideration of the personality-disordered, sociopaths, and bullies (in this context vis-à-vis restraining order abuse), the underlying character qualification that’s repeatedly echoed is “low level of empathy” (and clearly there may be overlap between these types, that is, an offender may be all three in one—in fact, I just learned a single person can have multiple personality disorders). It’s disturbingly noteworthy, what’s more, that though the quoted typologies in this discussion are meant to apply to children, adults will have no difficulty in recognizing other “adults” to whom they’re equally applicable. Deplorably, the “social goals” that motivate bullying by adults may be little different from those that inspire teens: revenge, self-exaltation or -advancement by alienation of another, dominance, attention-seeking, and/or sport.

The restraining order merits special inquiry by psychological researchers, because it (1) allows a bully or false accuser to make allegations outside of normal channels to judges who are, effectively, parental strangers (nullifying any potential for in-group contradiction or negative social fallout, including in work settings); (2) authorizes the bully or false accuser (and his or her minions) to then spread false rumors within normal channels that have received external and official validation; and (3) enables the bully or false accuser to many times more effectively arouse attention and third-party (outsider) participation, because his or her allegations have been officially (parentally) legitimated.

Because of its innate procedural prejudices and low evidentiary threshold (in cases, zero), the restraining order as a medium of lying is uniquely disinhibiting even while promising exorbitant rewards to a bully or false accuser. Incidence rates of false allegations derived from other contexts are therefore wrongfully expected to cross-apply to this medium and are extravagantly low by contrast.

That the recognized by-products of adolescent bullying, furthermore, including depression, difficulties in academic performance, and undermined feelings of competence may likewise manifest in adult victims of bullying but with the additional consequences of loss of employment or employability and familial disruption or dissolution makes the need for critical scrutiny of adult bullying facilitated and authorized by restraining order abuse that much more urgent.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Claiming Fear and Harassment to Terrorize and Harass: How to Deal with Serial Restraining Order Abuse

“Can anything be done when someone constantly gets TROs [temporary restraining orders] falsely…?”

—Search term leading to this blog

This conduct is properly labeled harassment and stalking, and (absurdly) deterrence of this conduct is properly achieved by applying to the court for a restraining order.

The court may be resistant to acknowledging that this sort of thing happens, but it’s in fact a wonder that it doesn’t happen on a larger scale. Restraining orders are free and easily got by claims of apprehension or by outright and calculated fraud, including false allegations of dismaying specificity or even manufactured evidence. (You can’t make this stuff up: I remember reading several years ago of a false accuser’s situating a chainsaw in her driveway and then summoning police to photograph the tableau, which she represented as a “warning” from an ex—vivid, indeed.)

Victims of serial restraining order petitioners must be assertive and present their cases reasonably. Harassment is, by definition, behavior that’s intended to disturb, disrupt, and wear down, and that’s repeated over time. As easy as it is for a crank or a sociopath to continuously obtain restraining orders, it nevertheless represents a very deliberate and sustained course of action that’s furthermore clearly evident of fixation (i.e., stalking).

Provided that a separate case is opened by the victim who alleges chronic harassment by restraining orders, the fact that his or her abuser applied for restraining orders against him or her first isn’t an obstacle.

Essential is showing a pattern of deviant and repetitively malicious misconduct.

Short of applying for a restraining order to arrest this misconduct, the value of which is to discredit false allegations a malicious accuser may make in the future, a victim’s only “easy” remedy is to relocate beyond a false accuser’s reach. Restraining orders may still be issued but cannot be served.

(Yes, dealing with these obscenities forces people to completely uproot their lives.)

Filing a lawsuit is always an option, but it’s never one easily realized, and a successful prosecution is very demanding and stressful, and is only reliably accomplished with the aid of an attorney, making it very expensive besides.

I live in the formerly Wild West. One brush with a nut who exploits the system this way makes you yearn for the lawless days when you could call someone into the street and settle a dispute with an expeditious showdown…and then grab a slice of pie at the diner while the undertaker tidied up.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

“Three Times She Said I Ran Her Over”: On the Nature of False Allegations and False Accusers

There was a story out of England last summer about a Zimbabwean refugee, a mom, who clashed with a neighbor over a parking place—a parking place—shortly after moving into her cul-de-sac. The dispute was brief but inspired the neighbor to begin accusing her of crimes. She called the police and claimed the Zimbabwean woman had “stabbed her with a screwdriver and a set of keys” and that she had “smashed into her car and used her keys to scratch her vehicle.” Then, after police determined the allegations were baseless and issued the woman a harassment notice, she began keeping her neighbor under video surveillance.

The neighbor’s account:

“It has been a very unhappy nightmare.

“I’ve had so many different people knock on my door questioning me—that is really scary, even if you know you’ve done nothing wrong.

“It’s really difficult to cope.

“I am a quiet person; I don’t like conflict. I don’t understand why she’s doing it.

“Three times she said I ran her over. It frightened me, because I’d look out the window and see police looking underneath my car, and your heart starts pounding.

“Once she phoned the police in front of me and said, ‘Help me, my neighbour’s stabbing me’ and they were out straight away.”

In this story, the fraud was hoist on her own petard and eventually issued a restraining order for her misconduct. The horror is that had this woman sought a restraining order instead and then made her false allegations, the neighbor’s torment could have been magnified manifold. This is particularly easy to accomplish in the United States.

All of her allegations—stabbing, vandalism, vehicular assault—would have remained on her target’s public record had these allegations been made on a restraining order. And the suspicion of the authorities and courts would have been reversed.

This blog was contacted over the summer by a solitary woman in her 60s, living alone, who similarly aroused the wrath of her neighbor, who proceeded to accuse her of threatening behavior, sought a restraining order against her, and eventually accused her of killing her horse. To avoid further false allegations, the formerly independent senior was forced to abandon her home and rely on the kindness of strangers for a roof and a warm bed.

It’s difficult enough impressing upon someone that restraining orders are issued casually through a process that entails no more than a few-minute theatrical audition. Impressing upon him or her that people willfully and persuasively lie without any motive but malice is next to impossible. “Why would people do that?” they ask, incredulous. One answer might be for attention or for kicks. The simple answer, though, is this: “Because they can.” It isn’t just the case that allegations to authorities and judges may be exaggerated or invested with a little hammed hysteria; they may be calculatedly, sadistically, and hugely false.

And when sadistic impulses aren’t discerned and shut down—and, when they’re ventilated on a restraining order, they often aren’t—they may be indulged by the system repeatedly, even over many years, and to the ruination of their victims.

False accusers are never prosecuted in civil cases, and if they’re sanctioned at all, it’s only in highly publicized cases.

The question people should ask is, “Why wouldn’t people lie?” And the answer should be, “Because they’d go to jail.”

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Lying Back: On Taking the Low Road against Restraining Order Abusers

One of the most common questions that brings recipients of false restraining orders to this blog is how to prevail in an appeals hearing against an unscrupulous liar.

Because restraining orders are easily applied for and typically cost applicants nothing but a lunch break, they’re unparalleled as instruments of malice. With a few strokes of a pen and some calculated fictions conveyed to a judge with the right touch of hysteria, a liar can undo a target of his or her wrath in short order, permanently sullying his or her reputation, subjecting him or her to public disparagement and disgrace, and possibly denying him or her access to home, children, pets, and property. If word gets out, that target may lose his or her job and moreover have a highly prejudicial blot on his or her record that impedes him or her from getting a new one. More than one respondent to this blog has reported being jailed on fraudulent charges or left homeless and destitute.

Multiple restraining orders against a number of people marked for vendetta can even be applied for back to back by a single plaintiff.

False allegations are routinely accepted by the courts at face value—the attention paid to such allegations is scant at best—and if those whom false allegations are leveled against are heard from by the courts at all, it’s only after the allegations against them have been presumed true. An appellant may furthermore be granted no more than 15 or 20 minutes to try to convince the court that it erred in its initial decision. The expectation of a fair and just hearing, therefore, is next to nil.

I’ve spilled a good deal of digital ink over the past 26 months articulating the manifold and manifest problems inherent in the restraining order process, and I’ve offered what limited information and modest advice I could to those who’ve been abused by it.

In doing so, I’ve tried to toe the ethical line: “speak to the allegations and show that they’re false,” “explain to the judge any ulterior motives the plaintiff would have for lying about you,” etc. I’ve counseled, in other words, fighting fire with water.

The more familiar phrase, of course, is “fight fire with fire.” I can’t endorse lying and won’t. But admitting that lying more effectively than your accuser may be the best defense against a false restraining order isn’t a lie.

The sad and disgusting fact is that success in the courts, particularly in the drive-thru arena of restraining order prosecution, is largely about impressions. Ask yourself who’s likelier to make the more impressive showing: the liar who’s free to let his or her imagination run wickedly rampant or the honest person who’s constrained by ethics to be faithful to the facts?

A fraud enters an appeals hearing with the advantage of already having had his or her lies recognized by a judge as true. An honest defendant not only faces the obstacle of disproving what should never have been taken for fact to begin with but must also fend off whatever new lies his or her accuser may have concocted in the meantime or may invent on the spur of the moment.

And that defendant may have all of 15 minutes in which to accomplish this, since restraining order appeals hearings may be allotted no more than half an hour on the court’s docket. A fraud knows exactly what facts to anticipate from an honest person (and can prefabricate false defenses); an honest person flies blind (and in this process, injured), never knowing what’s coming or from what direction.

Unscrupulous restraining order plaintiffs, who may be sociopaths or have borderline personality disorders, may falsely allege violence, bizarre sex acts, stalking, death threats, or worse. And they do so with complete indifference to the effects these allegations (and their being made publicly) have on their victims. Some liars are horrifyingly imaginative and color their frauds with lurid details that would inspire the envy of a professional screenwriter. Some liars—pathological narcissists, for example—are magnetic personalities, besides, who may have devoted followers willing to abet them in a fraud or who may readily persuade those who don’t know any better to take their side.

Should defendants lie?

This question has two possible interpretations:  1. Is it ethically conscionable? Or 2. Is it the only way to defuse an improvised explosive device that could shatter their lives? Depending on which of these interpretations is meant by the question, the answer could be negative or affirmative.

Should citizens in the civilized world ever be placed in the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t position of having to lie to the courts to counteract lies to the courts? The answer to that question is easy:  Hell no.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

“perjury and sociopaths”: On the Challenges of Contesting Restraining Orders Sought by the Mentally Aberrant, Deranged, or Ill

A recent respondent to this blog detailed his restraining order ordeal at the hands of a woman who he persuasively alleges is a sociopath. He says this label is generally scoffed at by people he explains the matter to and wonders how he could convince a judge of its accuracy.

Since this blog was published nearly two years ago, hundreds have been led to it by search terms that include words and phrases like “sociopath,” “mental illness,” “narcissist,” and “personality disorder” or “borderline personality disorder” (“bpd”).

This should hardly be a source of surprise.

Restraining order applicants aren’t screened based on their psychiatric histories. Sociopaths and narcissists, who are seldom clinically diagnosed in the first place, are moreover cunning liars and manipulators. Obtaining restraining orders—which are issued solely on the basis of brief interviews between petitioners and judges—is not only a simple matter for them but rewards their pathological drives for dominance and revenge.

Characterized generously, the restraining order process is fast-food justice. The ability and opportunity of most defendants to qualify allegations of sociopathy or insanity against their accusers—assuming these defendants even recognize these conditions—is effectively none at all. And unless a restraining order applicant is completely off the wall, his or her allegations won’t even cause a judge to arch an eyebrow. Applicants are in and out of restraining order interviews in a matter of minutes. Sociopaths are the smoothest liars you’ll ever meet, and the insane may be more convincing yet if they wholeheartedly believe their allegations in spite of those allegations’ possibly having no relationship to reality at all.

The imperceptibility of mental disorders is what makes them so difficult to expose (on this subject, see also these related posts).

I could go on about how easily the restraining order process is abused by sociopaths or the otherwise mentally aberrant. And I could describe to you the devastating effects their false allegations have on the lives of those they abuse. Instead I’ll close with some of the relevant search terms that have brought readers here since this blog’s inception. Identical search terms have been eliminated (“beating a narcissistic sociopath,” for example, rolls in regularly).

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Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com