It’s estimated that two to three million restraining orders are issued each year. It’s also estimated that a significant number of them, if not a majority, are based on fraud (i.e., lies intended to mislead). It’s further the case that lying in court is ignored. To quote Texas attorneys Beth E. Maultsby and Kathryn Flowers Samler, for instance: “Lying (perjury) is rarely acknowledged or punished.”
Judges are authorized to approve restraining orders in spite of evident lies by petitioners, because the honesty of plaintiffs isn’t the standard according to which rulings are to be formed.
Consider that if millions of people (counting both false accusers and the falsely accused) are every year having it impressed upon them by judges that lying is not only okay but profitable, then social ethics is taking a pretty significant hit—and at a pretty significant rate.
Our courts are actively eroding it, no matter whether by design or not.
(Model Penal Code § 250, introductory note (1980): “Offenses in this category affect a large number of defendants, involve a great proportion of public activity, and powerfully influence the view of public justice held by millions of people.”)
Judges, who don’t let those who stand before them forget that what they say is very important, every minute contradict and devalue the moral principles that they’re supposed to represent and uphold by not only tolerating lying but rewarding it (and thereby encouraging it).
When truth and honesty are discounted, all moral principles are cheapened.
Putting a positive face on this by defending a corrupt process as a social good, finally, is a fraud on everyone.
Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com
TALKING BACK to restraining orders 
Grant Dossetto (@GrantDossetto)
August 20, 2014
2nd try.
PPOs and funerals don’t mix well. You never forget everything surrounded with burying a parent. I’ve had the misfortune of watching both of my parents die by the time I was 23. When my father had a heart attack I was just 14 years old. He passed in his sleep, before my mom had dragged him off to bed he had fallen asleep in my room while we were watching TV together and drooled on my pillow. When he didn’t wake the next morning I can remember opening his mouth to try to resuscitate him and seeing how his tongue was already blackened from lack of oxygen. It was the first time I had to let in an EMT through the wide double front doors to go through the motions to tend to someone who was already gone.
Eight years and two months later I was celebrating a birthday party with my twin brother. He had just been commissioned as an artillery officer in the Marine Corps and was heading to Fort Sill in Oklahoma for training in a couple weeks so it was a going away party as well. It ended with me carrying my Mom up from the bottom of the stairs that led to the basement, blood trickling from the back of her head. She had had a stroke bringing up a food tray and collapsed. The right hemisphere of her brain immediately ceased all activity. I got to stand over another pair of EMTs, this time dabbing her eyes with a tissue. The pupils, fully dilated, failed to show any reaction. She maintained enough brain function to throw up, trying to recover from the worst concussion you could imagine, but by the next day a second opinion came back that she could not survive. My brother and I pulled the plug and held her hand until she forgot to breathe on her own. It took less than a half hour. It was a brilliantly sunny Michigan May day, those days that make suffering through the gray winter worth it. It’s hard to imagine something more at odds with how I felt.
Two days later I was at the funeral home planning her funeral, only to come home to my stepfather and a business card from a sheriff. I had a PPO out against me. I hadn’t seen her for over a year at that point, the last thing I had said to her was to notify her my mom had died and I was giving the eulogy at the funeral, that I would like her there even though we had our differences. The order had been issued ex-parte which requires the court to classify me as an immediate threat who will cause imminent and irreparable damage, per Michigan law. I did not meet those criteria. The hearing was held without my knowledge or participation. I called the sheriff back and he went through what I would later come to find out was the front page of the order. He essentially told me I had been contacting her and now I couldn’t. He asked me to drive to downtown Detroit, a half hour away to be served the order. Seeing as I had seven hours of funeral activities in a day and a half I told him that would be impossible. He said he’d mail it to me. I was never notified that I had just days to appeal or given an explanation of the consequences of the order. The order was never mailed to me. I tried twice to notify the officer that I had not received the PPO. He brushed it off once and the second call went to voicemail and was never returned. The first time I saw it was two weeks ago, it is a permanent file in the Macomb County Courthouse, file #10-2184-PH. I was marked a threat by my government without me present or ever having physical possession of the order. There is no way for me to have the order removed.
I had graduated college with honors in 2009 while working two jobs including one that got me noticed in the field I endeavored to make a career out of. I helped to manage part of my University’s endowment fund and the returns generated earned us a 2nd place finish in the RISE conference (watch CNBC in Mid-March and you’ll see it). We finished in 2nd place out of 270 entries from 70 different countries. In 2008 and 2010 the fund I helped manage returned over 10% compared to an overall market that fell by around 30%. It took me some time to find a job in my field (2009 wasn’t a bumper year for finance) so I took what I could get and worked to improve my resume. I passed the first CFA exam, only 34% did, that December and was hired in June of 2010 to work at a brokerage firm. The Securities and Exchange Act of 1937 requires those working in my field to be fingerprinted and to submit that to the FBI national database. This is on top of normal background checks, disclosure of any and all charitable donations as well as political donations, etc. Ironically we don’t have to pee in a cup for a drug test but everything else goes well beyond that which my engineering friends, et al. have been subjected to. I went to the Livonia police department and had my prints pressed in ink the old fashioned way on the standard place card to be delivered to my employer by my first week of employment. The card then was supposed to finds it’s way to the proper regulatory authorities before getting passed through the system. A month after I began work at the brokerage I was called by my boss after hours and told to mail back in my key. He fired me while out of town over the phone. I can only assume it had to do with the active PPO out against me. I never got hired again while the PPO was in effect and it took me until 2012 to get another job in a broker’s office. To this day I have never been sponsored to get my licenses and I am sure I never will. I can pass the CFA but cannot take an order for a trade. The PPO destroyed my career. Combine that with my Grandparents going through their own personal troubles (one had emergency quadruple bypass surgery and is suffering from dementia. One was declared terminal and hung on for two and a half years as his kidneys shut down until he was also unable to tell reality from fiction. One had a hip replacement turn into a seven surgery odyssey that involved a severe staph infection which ravaged her for most of a year (her sed rate was over 140 for any doctors who will see this). She needed over 50 blood transfusions over that period and probably just recovered from fatigue in the past twelve months). I got a lifetime of bad news I couldn’t control in a couple years and it took it’s toll on me. Combined with the PPO and it was too much. I suffered from severe depression that still surfaces at times now. I’m not perfect and that is my cross to bear.
I had been friends with her from September sophomore year of college until midway through my senior year. In a month I went from being someone she took to Facebook at one in the morning and publically said she loved me for anyone to see to accusing me of felony property damage, tire slashing in particular. She had gotten involved with a bad crowd, joined a terrible varsity team at school, and in a year she went from seeing me 3 or 4 times a week where we enjoyed movies, card games (she cheats at Euchre), parties, went to school football and hockey games, she sought me out in the parking lot to the on campus church and asked me to sit with her at mass. I can’t think of an act of friendship much more intimate than that. When we were close she was on the Dean’s List. A year later I had sat through a lot of bad nights. She had been crying on the phone with her father for hours because her supposed teammates had thrown insults at her, the next time I saw her she was angry about being forced to be a representative of the school for the NCAA’s Student Athlete Committee (like they care about what a D-II athlete thinks about their multi-billion dollar industry) that she said she didn’t have time for. In April of my Junior year she asked a mutual friend of ours to do cocaine, not exactly something a happy person says. The next fall I heard about how her parents didn’t give a damn about her and in November she called my roommate and I over only to snap at us until she kicked us out just before 10 to take a tablespoon of Nyquil that would force her to sleep. She also talked about how she had been getting dizzy and suffering from vertigo which got her a prescription medication. A doctor had said it was iron deficiency, I can tell you from personal experience it was stress. Her grades slipped to C’s. At some point I was going to get involved. What friend would I be if I stood by and watched? Like most men (I think) once I decided I had a role to play it was going to be a big deal until it was resolved. Feminism has lately decided that trait is obsessive and dangerous. I’d say it is normal, go to Wikipedia and type in an entry for a male dominated interest i.e. comic books or video games then compare it to the entry for Sex and the City. You already know the answer. Men have narrower interests but we put a lot into them. Compared to the 7,000 words a female says in a day we grunt out barely 2,000. If something makes those 2,000 though it matters.
Houghton is a small town, population around 10,000 and our school has an undergrad student body of about 6,000. Wal-Mart, and not much else, is a big deal there as the copper and iron mines shut down decades ago driving out industry and families with it. Not surprisingly we saw each other a lot my second half of my senior year. I saw her at the gym, had class in an adjacent room two days a week, she worked next door to my lab twice a week, and I worked in the same building as her lab. I stopped by her house because it was a bad situation given the fact the last thing she had said to me were criminal allegations. We talked for hours, getting along enough that I sincerely believed we had patched things up. She was still miserable though, one thing got her to brighten up like the girl I first became friends with, and that was a goal to go to Med School, reasonable for a biomedical engineer.
That was never going to happen if she didn’t make wholesale changes. I invited her out to the movies when I was going out with my housemates who she was friends with. I said she should come to the surprise birthday party I was helping to throw for a mutual friend. Get her back to the group she was successful with, not exactly controlling. You’ll make a lot of money as a doctor and meet a lot of people, I wasn’t intent on locking her away from the world. For that I got another round of false allegations (destroying the front quarterpanel of her car). She had already been terrible at track her sophomore year, she got worse her junior year and regressed further her senior year.
Place Name Year School Time
2 Vallar, Kayla JR Grand Valley 55.98
4 Hohmann, Zoey FR Ferris State 57.39
9 Chandler, Adrienne JR Grand Valley 59.88
12 Bildner, Katie FR Hillsdale 1.00.52
13 Rotter, Becky FR Northern Michigan 1.00.84
16 [Name Redacted] SR Michigan Tech 1.04.77
I redacted her name because this isn’t about public humiliation. The point of showing the results is that if you know someone is going to fail, you stop it. Period. End of story. Do everything you can. A year and a half before this race was run I knew that she would never be competitive. Obviously, she didn’t make it out of her heat and never raced in the finals. She fell short by several seconds in a race that requires one revolution on a track. To be frank, she never should have been there at all. 1:05 won’t cut it in high school. At almost any other school she would have never made the team. If that is your main extracurricular activity to put on a resume you’re in deep trouble. At Tech, the track team is so bad that she was actually the captain.
Women – Team Rankings – 21 Events Scored
Grand Valley St. – 291 Ashland – 146
Hillsdale – 136 Northern Michigan – 70
Findlay – 62 Saginaw Valley St. – 34
Ferris St. – 23 Tiffin – 20
Northwood – 19 Lake Superior St. – 14
Michigan Tech – 3
Every event scored gives 10 points for first place, 8 for second, and 6 down for third to eighth. Each event is worth 39 points. In 21 events, there are just shy of 820 total points possible. Tech scored less than one half of one percent of the total possible. My senior year, when I had identified that she wasn’t going to change the culture of the team but sink to their level, they scored a total of 5 points. 3 points. If this was a rap battle, it would be time to drop the mic. In academia, I could write QED immediately underneath those tables. Does anyone doubt why I had been working so hard to get her out of there? My public high school would beat them straight up. That’s a problem.
Being last place always comes back to culture and a last place culture molds last place people. They weren’t friends, they weren’t teammates, they didn’t care about each other. That magic that creates a good team, the camaraderie was entirely absent. When you have no friends, when you aren’t a friend to others, bad things happen. Thomas Sowell’s favorite Russian parable, Boris and Ivan, is instructive in the motivations of those who made up the Tech track team. It is impossible to be happy surrounding yourself with those who coerce failure as a precondition to be part of the group. It is a misbegotten notion that if you can get everyone to fail, it absolves you of your own failure. Relativism, moral or otherwise, is fertile ground for terrible evil. Like egging on someone you live with to falsely attack someone you don’t even know. Similar to enablers who give an addict his next fix or his next shot, the thing these people truly fear is someone in their group achieving. Sometimes you can learn a lot by finding out who doesn’t like you. I believe it was Tennyson that said a man cannot make a friend without making a foe. Failure was a fait accompli, I’d fight against that for someone I’m close to always. Being right never felt worse. I have no doubt that Tech’s track team is the worst scholarship collegiate varsity team in the United States of America. When you have admitted you are a failure as an engineer as she had, opportunity and happiness require a better extracurricular record than that. I just tried to be a leader, a normal thing for a senior in college. Education means to lead. If I had been that bad for three years, my entire career, I would have been subjected to a lot worse than I ever said to her. I was sharp but only after I had exhausted every other option.
She got a job in electronic health records which doctors from Harvard and Stanford said were marginal way back in 2009 in the Wall Street Journal. They worried the records would be used to ration care. That is consistent with what happens in Canada, Britain, and other countries where socialized medicine exists. It would seem odd that it would be different in America as government becomes more involved. Add in what we know about the VA and it makes a lot of sense. The New York Times has written several articles about the failure of EHRs and their use for fraud. Locally, a doctor here in Metro Detroit billed Medicare over $10 million in a single year and has been indicted for falsely diagnosing healthy adults with cancer to subject them to chemo and radiation so he could rip off the taxpayers. Mickey Kaus, a California Democrat, likened it to Mao’s Great Leap Forward (which killed over 100 million people). Doctors have said it is the single greatest impediment to care they face. For someone with a degree with the word medical printed on it, that’s a problem for future opportunities besides the obvious moral implications of being involved in the industry. The 2009 stimulus paid EHRs $20 billion and we haven’t gotten anything for it. If you are a Michigan tax payer you gave her a scholarship (yes, really) and got nothing in return. If you pay federal taxes, you helped provide her a salary so that a bureaucrat can deny your family member care. My catechism taught me about Zaccheus, I’m assuming hers did too. Compare that to 3 to 6 months to fix her resume to get to Med School. She would have been just turning 22, that’s on schedule in my book.
She had been fired in barely two years there and came home, I guess. In April 2013 she filed another PPO against me even though I had not seen her in over 4 years. I had made no attempt to try and meet up with her. It was also issued ex-parte, probably because of the first one. She began texting me less than three days after it had taken effect and didn’t show up to the appeals hearing that I scheduled. I missed parts of three days of work to fight an order that she didn’t even feel like defending. In two weeks the same court, Wayne County this time, ruled against me then for me. I was not the only PPO to be overturned, far from it, and the entire docket (about 12 cases) were decided in fewer than 30 minutes after we waited over an hour for the judge who was late. Is that justice? How can I ever respect the courts again? I sued her after that, in her response to my complaint she admitted that I had never done anything illegal. You wouldn’t know that by my public record.
By comparison, the judge who issued the 2010 order, James Biernat Sr., is famous for presiding over the “comic book murder” case, it was big enough to make Dateline and the other true crime outlets. He overturned a guilty conviction from a jury and demanded a retrial. The action was extraordinary, held up on appeal by a split decision. The Macomb prosecutor publically rebuked him as being soft on crime. That made national news, all the cable outlets covered the second trial which yielded the same result, guilty. He was rebuked by two dozen jurors, three appellate justices, and the prosecutor. It’s funny, if he had just given me a hearing, let alone a 2nd, I truly believe a PPO would never have been issued. A questionable judge who is soft on guilty murderers didn’t have a problem destroying a 23 year old he had never met for non-threatening, legal contact. How could you not believe that the system is hopelessly broken? I’ve contacted my local representative to voice my concerns and it was ignored. Hopefully writing about my experiences will yield a better result.
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Moderator
August 21, 2014
I’ll work with the revision, Grant, and get some feedback or ask you some questions about it within the week. Basically, you need to talk about the restraining order more at the start. As the account runs now, the emphasis is on the loss of a loved one (which is completely understandable).
I appreciate this is painful to revisit. Please don’t interpret my editorial remarks as dispassionate. Since you’re writing about a restraining order, though, that story needs to be the scaffolding on which you hang all of the other details.
Let me restructure what you’ve written and run it past you, so you don’t drive yourself crazy. I won’t post anything until you sign off on it.
I’d rather the story be in your own words, but I’ll have to insert segues and let you rewrite.
Quick preliminary reorientation:
Word that a protection order had been issued against me came in the form of a business card that a sheriff handed my stepdad. It was waiting for me upon when I got back from the funeral home, where I had just picked out a coffin for my mother.
Mom suffered a stroke during a birthday party for my brother four days earlier, fell headlong down a flight of stairs, and sustained a massive concussion. She was diagnosed brain dead less than 24 hours after that. My brother and I removed her from life support and held her hand until she forgot to breathe on her own.
I hadn’t seen the person the business card concerned in over a year. My last contact with her [how?] was to notify her that my mom had died, that I was giving a eulogy at my mom’s funeral, and to ask that she please come in spite of our differences.
She sent a restraining order instead, which besides [something that speaks to your sense of betrayal or turmoil] also destroyed my career.
I’m 23 years old and can never practice the profession I earned my degree in.
The composition’s rushed, but that’s the idea. From there, you would move to the details of your relationship and your career trajectory. Other details of your family tragedies could be interwoven. I’ll work on it and get back to you.
Meanwhile, Grant, have you investigated the Michigan statutes to see (1) whether you could still apply for an appeals hearing, and (2) whether you could move the court to vacate the order as “void”?
The opportunity to move the court to grant you a hearing may extend for the term of the order’s effectiveness. Look at the actual law. Never mind what the order says or what the police have told you. I’ll look too as soon as I can. Also see if your never having been served a copy of the order constitutes failure of service. I remember looking at a page about how restraining orders in Kalamazoo County (in fact I quoted it), and it contains contradictions. A judge may view your case sympathetically. Also, if you were able to move for a hearing, your accuser might not show—which would probably mean a default judgment in your favor (dismissal). When was the order issued, and is it still active?
Another thought would be moving the court to grant you a “new trial” (possibly on various grounds like you were never served, you were in the middle of a family crisis, the allegations were fraudulent, and the order is an absolute bar to your ever having a career in the field you earned your degree in).
A final thought, if the order has expired (or when it does), is to have an attorney “ask” your accuser to cooperate in vacating it by a nunc pro tunc motion to the court. This last option is the most feeble, but attorneys can sometimes be persuasive, and the impediment to your employment could be mentioned. It’s possible your accuser may be in a different place than she was.
I’d really like to see you recover your life. Quick apprise me on what all you’ve done to date legally. I’m not an attorney, and everything I’ve mentioned is just meant as food for thought, but it’s possible there’s still a legal remedy that could at least get this off your record.
Even if you’ve prosecuted a lawsuit unsuccessfully, bear in mind that what happens in one court isn’t necessarily going to be known to another judge. It’s all about laws and procedures. Don’t think in terms of rhyme and reason, because often there is none.
I’m a little beat, so pardon delayed responses, but I’ll pick away at what you’ve sent.
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Grant Dossetto (@GrantDossetto)
August 21, 2014
There were two orders, one in 2010 in Macomb County which expired long ago but is still a public document. I went to the court and looked it up in less than 5 minutes just a couple weeks ago. That was the one which was never served but in the file it is recorded as being orally served which is supposedly enough. I’ve already documented how limited that oral service really was and had no idea, nor any way, to fight back against the order in the two weeks which I am required to appeal.
The second one was filed in 2013 and I had it terminated on appeal. That PPO referenced the 2010 order, there is a box for it on the application. I had to miss work one morning because the serving officer (Deputy Jackson, the same guy I talked to in 2010) wouldn’t show up there. Says something about the stigma and effects of the orders. Missed work to attend my appeal hearing that she didn’t show up to. Missed work again the next week when the PPO was still entered into LEIN even after I won the appeal and I had to go to the State Police office and personally ask for the terminated order to be removed that never should have been entered. Ironically, the law demands orders are entered into LEIN without waiting for appeal. Just another example of how the system works to tar someone as fast as possible, often without the opportunity for much recourse. I would assume, although I haven’t checked, that I could go to Wayne County Circuit Court and look up that PPO as well. It was an active court order for two weeks so it should remain a public document.
I asked my attorney if he could get both orders expunged. He replied that there was no way of doing this. I can only assume that my lawyer knew what he was talking about. It was consistent with what others have said.
I talked to my local state rep and his advice was to have her prosecuted for a felony. I still believe that reform of the system is a better idea Namely the ex-parte stuff must go. If not, there should be consequences automatically triggered for the petitioner and the ordering judge if an ex-parte order is issued and overturned and the order should be immediately sealed. Seems like common sense to me. I can’t get much traction in doing that. Hence why I want to tell my story and maybe it will be something that others can use to fight back against what I consider to be a flawed system.
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Moderator
August 21, 2014
Did you bring a lawsuit against the woman, Grant?
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Grant Dossetto (@GrantDossetto)
August 21, 2014
Yes. I dropped it…don’t ask. It will do the job of keeping her from filing another PPO which was the important part. If she did, I am on record as being willing to go the all the way. I filed it in August of last year after the second PPO, the one I got terminated . She filed a response in which she admitted I had done nothing illegal. According to my lawyer the judge was…not particularly excited by the case.
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Moderator
August 22, 2014
In that case, Grant, it may be worthwhile for you to consider (now or anytime) having an attorney request that the plaintiff cooperate in moving the court to vacate the earlier order.
The order has expired, so it’s not doing its plaintiff any good, and its residue is hurting you. A nunc pro tunc motion is a legal reset (Latin: “now for then”). The plaintiff wouldn’t be bound to reply to your letter. All you could do is hope. It’s possible, though, that she may be glad just to put all this in the past.
Your lawyer’s approach wouldn’t have to be hostile. It could be conciliatory—more of an intermediation than a threat. The lawyer could just say you agree never to contact her again and explain to her that there are no legal consequences, and that if she consents, that will be a complete end on the matter.
I’ll send you a copy of a letter I paid an attorney $3,000 to prepare as an example. If you used it to show an attorney of your own, your cost would probably be considerably less (and I’d be glad for my expense to benefit somebody).
The person in my case has never had cause to relent, because her story has never been doubted. But your accuser hasn’t succeeded as well and knows what it is to be on the defensive. Also it sounds like she doesn’t have a lot of money to throw around. So she may not want to hazard further legal conflict. Your lawyer could just make it clear you have no interest in holding anyone accountable for anything; you just want your career options restored. It’s just a reset: no tricks, no harm, and no foul.
I’ll still work on your story. I just want you to be aware of this option.
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Grant Dossetto (@GrantDossetto)
August 11, 2014
I’d like you to make this it’s own guest post if you do that sort of thing. If not, I will be happy to leave it here.
Help! The Government Has Labeled Me A Threat!
My True, and Terrible, Experience with Restraining Order Abuse
“When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball players, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. Now, I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed…the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.”
-opening monologue to Patton(1)
My trials start, as they usually do for young men, with a girl. Cliché, but true. We met the first week of my sophomore year in college, at Michigan Tech, in 2006. That day she was just the friend of a friend of my roommate’s. Before long she was more than that, part of a group of 5 of us that became close friends. When she had to move out of her dorm at the end of her freshman year, I was there to help, taking her stuff down M-26 to a self storage unit for the summer. We shared a religion, both had only one brother who was close in age (my brother is actually a twin) and enrolled at Purdue, were middle class, had an affinity for the Tigers and Red Wings. Her favorite Tiger was Pudge Rodriguez and I can remember her finding Facebook groups for Curtis Granderson to try and get me to join back when Facebook was more individualized, not the middle aged soccer mom message board it has become. The only one I ever accepted was clever, the title jokingly saying 70% of the earth is covered by water and the rest belonged to the then Tigers centerfielder. She made it a point to see if I had saw that one saying approximately, “it may be a little thing but I like to show the people I care about that I have been paying attention.” We went to movies together, on campus and off, went to school football and hockey games (both in Houghton which is in the Keweenaw Peninsula jutting into Lake Superior and in Detroit, 10 hours apart). I can tell you she cheated when playing Euchre, a one time experience trying to wait out an October blizzard that was never repeated. My roommate, who I still talk to nearly every day, has a great picture of the two of them at Cedar Pointe. I could tell you what her ACT score was and that her older brother was born premature just like I was. She even went so far as to seek me out in the parking lot to the on campus Catholic church, asking me to sit with her at mass (is there a more intimate act of friendship than that?) She got the best grades of her college career then. She’s even bought me dinner on occasion. My grades went up when I found them too. I had found those who made me a better man. I didn’t know how to put into words how important those friends were until I saw the following passage from CS Lewis:
“In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative love is, I think, often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together; each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others. Those are the golden sessions; when four or five of us after a hard day’s walk have come to our inn; when our slippers are on, our feet spread out toward the blaze and our drinks are at our elbows; when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk.”
She joined the Tech track team in the second half of her sophomore year. We still saw each other, every week and a half to two weeks. Lunches, dinners, watched the Super Bowl together. It was apparent that just after a couple months running around with the new crowd, and one bad season, she was quickly losing happiness. Too much of our meetings were spent with her lamenting about team politics, nasty attacks from her supposed teammates meant to get her to tow a decidedly unimpressive line, and being forced to represent the team, and school, in inane NCAA PR (yes, they do try to claim with a straight face that student athletes matter to them) that she was adamant she didn’t have time for. Then she moved in with those same teammates she conspicuously failed to ever complement. By that fall, the first half of my senior year, she was miserable. She began complaining about dizziness when she stood up, it being bad enough that she needed to see a doctor. He diagnosed it as iron deficiency. If he had been there the same Friday night she called and asked me and my roommate to go over to her house he’d have come to a different conclusion. After getting snapped at by her for an hour and a half she downed a tablespoon of Nyquil and shuttled us out the door. The excuse was that she had suddenly started feeling sick, I am sure that it was because she was depressed and needed to get to tomorrow faster than her body clock would allow. In previous meetings she complained about her father and asked one of our group if he’d do cocaine with her. She didn’t mean to actually do it but her tone meant she wanted to, it was a list of red flags a mile long. I’m not brilliant, the stress was obvious. I don’t need to be a doctor to know that was causing the dizziness.
I should have gotten involved sooner than I did. Her grades had gone from the Dean’s List the year before to C’s (low enough that her cumulative GPA had dropped to a 3.0) and she was referring to herself as a failure of an engineer. By that November, I was trying to get her to hang out with the rest of the group more often and had taken to make sure to tell her the truth that she had lost sight of. She was smart, charismatic, attractive, that life could truly be great for her. I meant every word of it. In a month she went from posting on a Facebook note at 1:30 in the morning how much she loved me (not the first time she had used the four letter word to describe how she felt about me, we were close) to ignoring me and then accusing me of a criminal felony, slashing the tires on her car. I will never understand why that happened, even with the wisdom of years and a reading of Gone, Girl (bad joke) I’d be lying to say it makes sense. We often look at the latest celebrity disaster and say how those close to them need to intervene. No one ever says what to do when your intervention is rejected. I decided to stay the course.
My last semester we saw each other constantly, she had gotten a job that year across the street from my lab. I worked in the building that housed her lab. We had class twice a week in adjacent classrooms. I saw her going to the gym. The previous semester we had both had class in the Electrical Engineering building in back to back hours so I’d see her coming out as I was going in. The off campus Catholic Church, St. Ignatius, was less than two blocks from her house. Houghton is a 10,000 person town four hours from “big” cities like Green Bay and Duluth. Tech is a 6,000 person campus. The Wal-Mart is a big deal, quintessential small town America. Most people know each other and it would almost be eerie not to see someone than it was to see them. Shockingly, we bumped into each other. I was always a gentleman, or as much as I ever am. It was frequent enough that I didn’t want a false felony accusation to be the last thing she had said to me. It could have been terrible if that exploded again given everything. I stopped by her house on the third Saturday of January and I thought that, after a wide ranging discussion that was civil and lasted for hours, we had actually patched things up. She was still miserable though. Sitting through excuses about how the coaches were doing training that she didn’t respond to is not a fun way to spend an afternoon. It was over a full calendar year after she had joined the program and she was not getting better, she was regressing. Conferences were months away and I could have told you then that she was going to fail. I was pretty sure before but that talk removed any doubt. Her future was slipping away, there are consequences to failing, doors do close. She didn’t have normal ambitions, she wanted to go to Med School (logical for a Biomedical Engineer). It was obvious that without major changes that she would fall short. There was no reason for that, if she was surrounded by actual friends and true teammates it wouldn’t have happened. I once again redoubled on efforts to get her to join the rest of us when we were having fun or hosting a surprise birthday party, hoping that she’d figure out how good things had been and knowing that if she did that her resume would come back. She is a year younger than me so this was her junior year. If she made the Dean’s List the rest of her time as a student as well as taking over the summer the classes she had done poorly in, her transcript would have been med school worthy by the time she graduated the next May, maybe the end of that summer. She would still have been 21.
For that I got a second round of false allegations, this time I had smashed in the front quarter panel of her Grand Prix (that’s closing in on two thousand dollars in fictional damages). False allegations, even if you know they are wrong have a way of making you doubt yourself. I have spent time seeking out the wisdom of others to reinforce what I already knew. Here’s what I’ve found. There is no way to stop bad behavior if you don’t tell the other party that how they are acting is unacceptable. That really isn’t possible without talking face to face. I wasn’t nasty, just firm in that there is clearly a problem here and it has to be resolved. Bill Parcells, once wrote in the Harvard Business Review, that confrontation is required for leadership. Education means to lead. Many schools embody this in their name. My high school was named for Winston Churchill. For that, the stalker allegations started. My senior year was the best year of my life academically, a 3.94 GPA in 36 credit hours and I worked two jobs, one of which got me international recognition. My team finished in 2nd place in the value investing conference at RISE in Dayton. If you watch CNBC in the middle of March you probably know what that is. We outperformed every Ivy League endowment fund my senior year. In the two years from 2008 to 2009 the fund grew by 10% which was world’s better than the stock market as a whole. It was even more impressive considering I could only be long equities and bonds, no shorting allowed. I was good at finance, it was what I wanted to do for a career. I didn’t have time to stalk anyone, considering I was burning 70 hours a week on school. In busy weeks, I was doing that in four days. My faculty advisor said I needed to devote so much time to my work that I should fail at everything else. I met his goals, and still found time to live life, to succeed elsewhere. I did it while fighting depression related to what I’ve been writing about today. I did it while still fighting for a friend who was giving up on herself. I did not have time to obsess though.
I tried to be the man that Tom Landry would want, “A leader is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.” Why is that so important? Well, I believe that leadership is the epitome of love. Epictetus, the Ancient Greek slave and philosopher, talked about how everyone must at some point say to yourself who you want to be and do what needs to be done to get there. The key, hang around people who get the best out of you, those who lead. The Polynesians who settled Hawaii use the word kumu to mean teacher…and lover. To be successful you just have to surround yourself with those who love you. It may not be easy but it is surprisingly simple. She had stopped doing that and the rest was predictable. I guess I could have taken a victory lap when a year later she had regressed even further as a track athlete. Her results from the 400 meter dash at conferences her senior year:
Place Name Year School Time
2 Vallar, Kayla JR Grand Valley 55.98
4 Hohmann, Zoey FR Ferris State 57.39
9 Chandler, Adrienne JR Grand Valley 59.88
12 Bildner, Katie FR Hillsdale 1.00.52
13 Rotter, Becky FR Northern Michigan 1.00.84
16 [Name Redacted] SR Michigan Tech 1.04.77
I redacted her name because this isn’t about public humiliation. The point of showing the results is that if you know someone is going to fail, you stop it. Period. End of story. Do everything you can. I knew that she would never be competitive. Obviously, she didn’t make it out of her heat and never raced in the finals. She fell short by several seconds in a race that requires one revolution on a track. To be frank, she never should have been there at all. She was uncompetitive. If that is your main extracurricular activity to put on a resume you’re in deep trouble. She was also the captain of the team which was equally awful on the whole.
Women – Team Rankings – 21 Events Scored
Grand Valley St. – 291 Ashland – 146
Hillsdale – 136 Northern Michigan – 70
Findlay – 62 Saginaw Valley St. – 34
Ferris St. – 23 Tiffin – 20
Northwood – 19 Lake Superior St. – 14
Michigan Tech – 3
Every event scored gives 10 points for first place, 8 for second, and 6 down for third to eighth. Each event is worth 39 points. In 21 events, there are just shy of 820 total points possible. Tech scored less than one half of one percent of the total possible. My senior year, when I had identified that she wasn’t going to change the culture of the team but sink to their level, they scored a total of 5 points. 3 points. If this was a rap battle, it would be time to drop the mic. In academia, I could write QED immediately underneath those tables. Does anyone doubt why I had been working so hard to get her out of there? The program is terrible, worse than most public high school teams and most definitely worse than my alma mater. What would Winston Churchill say about adults performing below children? Being last place always comes back to culture and a last place culture molds last place people. They weren’t friends, they weren’t teammates, they didn’t care about each other. That magic that creates a good team, the camaraderie was entirely absent. When you have no friends, when you aren’t a friend to others, bad things happen. Thomas Sowell’s favorite Russian parable, Boris and Ivan, is instructive in the motivations of those who made up the Tech track team. It is impossible to be happy surrounding yourself with those who coerce those around them to failure. It is a misbegotten notion that if you can get everyone to fail, it absolves you of your own failure. Relativism, moral or otherwise, is fertile ground for terrible evil. Like egging on someone you live with to falsely attack someone you don’t even know. Like enablers who give an addict his next fix or his next shot, the thing these people truly fear is someone in their group achieving. Sometimes you can learn a lot by finding out who doesn’t like you. I believe it was Tennyson that said a man cannot make a friend without making a foe. Failure was a fait accompli, I’d fight against that for someone I’m close to always. Being right never felt worse. I have no doubt that Tech’s track team is the worst scholarship collegiate varsity team in the United States of America. When you have admitted you are a failure as an engineer, a good job, opportunity, happiness requires a better extracurricular record than that.
If I had the same record it would have taken a lot less than three years to get a strong rebuke and what would have been said to me would be a lot worse than anything I ever said to her. One last time I went to bat to get her back on the right track. America is a great place, ever forgiving. Even though she was at a place that she never could get a job as a biomedical engineer, med school was just a semester away. If your grades don’t cut it, a school usually requires 27 to 30 (it varies) credits of basic science and mathematics to trump your transcript. Having been an excellent undergraduate student at one time, she would have tested out of enough of that to be eligible by the end of that year. Combine that with an internship and she would have been a quality applicant barely after her 22nd birthday. That isn’t behind schedule in my book. I highly suggested that, it seemed like a smart idea to me.
Instead she gave me a nasty email reply to tell me she was going to a job that is a dead end. It was one I had actually been interviewed for (never turn down a chance to hone that skill, even if you don’t have any intention of ever taking a potential offer). She went to work for the most despised industry of health care(2). It’s a fifty year old industry (a dinosaur for tech) that has only recently become mainstream because of corporate welfare. The stimulus bill threw $20 billion at hospitals to adopt electronic health records. Obamacare made adoption necessary. From Breitbart to the American Thinker(3) EHRs have been exposed as a grand fraud with disastrous consequences by conservatives. On the other end politically, the New York Times, and others, haven’t been shy about pointing out how bad the technology is. Costs haven’t been lowered(4), care hasn’t improved and fraud has exploded(5). Here in metro Detroit, there is a famous case involving a doctor who defrauded Medicare by over $10 million in a single year by purposefully misdiagnosing patients with cancer. Now that billings are done with a click rather than a complicated paper trail, Medicare and Medicaid waste has ballooned to over $60 billion dollars a year according to the CMS. Since EHRs are standardized there is no good way for insurers to snuff out which doctors are good and which are poor. It has materially altered care for the worse and the cost is prohibitive enough to impact access. Think all of the horrors of the Obamacare website on a grand scale. The sad thing is that was the goal all along. The VA scandals give proof to that. If politicians were just looking to line their pockets they’d green light failed ideas that go bankrupt a couple years later like Solyndra, Fisker, or, a local company to me, A123 Systems. EHRs haven’t gone the way of green energy because they are the propaganda to excuse the rationing that is coming with socialized medicine. That has been known for over a half decade at the Wall Street Journal(6). Mickey Kaus, a California Democrat, compared it to Mao’s Great Leap Forward(7) (which killed 100 million people). As a Catholic, I consider her involvement in that my greatest failing. It violates the sanctity of life that is a cornerstone of my faith. It would be like knowing someone who works in an abortion clinic. I thought I was being remarkably pragmatic. I didn’t crusade publically against immoral cronyism, I just tried to keep anyone I know from being attached to it. That destroys opportunity, it destroys freedom, and consequently it destroys happiness.
Even though I had not seen her for over a year and she was leaving the state she was granted an ex-parte restraining order against me. Ex-parte orders are supposed to be issued only in dire circumstances when there is an obvious and immediate threat and a delay for a hearing could result in irreparable harm. Obviously, that situation didn’t apply here. The hearing is assisted by the courts through the PPO office which aids petitioners with forms and helps them fill out and make their case. It is, to my knowledge, the only type of action, civil or criminal, in which that happens. Hearings are held in front of a judge without the knowledge of the other party as to their occurrence (that’s what ex-parte means). When you find out what was going on in my life at that time you’ll again realize quickly I didn’t have time to stalk anyone.
The end of May saw me holding the hand of my mother as I pulled her off life support. She had suffered a sudden stroke. In minutes she had lost all functioning in the left hemisphere of her brain. I can still remember watching the EMTs as they dabbed at her eyes with a paper towel, her dilated pupils failing to react. The eye is a remarkably expressive organ, until it isn’t. Hopefully you never have to see a loved one breathing but already dead. The last thing I had said to my accuser was an email telling her that I was to be giving the eulogy at my mother’s funeral and, despite the problems we had been having, I would appreciate it if she attended. Coming home from preparations at the funeral home I was handed a business card from the Sheriff’s Department, Deputy Jackson, by my stepfather (my dad died from a heart attack when I was 14). I called him back and was told a PPO had been taken out against me. He promised to mail me the order because I was reasonably refused to burn an afternoon to drive to downtown Detroit to meet him and he wasn’t going to come back out to my house in Livonia. There was no talk about how to appeal the decision (you must do it within days) and the order was never mailed. I called him back twice to let him know but he didn’t show much concern. Sadly, in Michigan law, a mere phone call, no matter how limited the conversation was, counts as oral service. I was found in violation of Civil Law at a hearing I wasn’t aware existed and served the complaint without actually being served. Once again, no other court action allows for that. In fact, not being able to locate a defendant and serve them a civil complaint in person or through certified mail is grounds for dismissal. I have to endure a permanent public record with no way to object. I am 10-2184-PH, just run a background check on me. Even though the order expired years ago and was never violated if you are so inclined call the Macomb County Court Clerk’s office and they will send you a copy to read. Or walk in. I did last week, the file is in the basement now but it takes less than five minutes for them to bring it to you to peruse.
At the time, besides burying my mother, all three of my remaining Grandparents were gravely ill. I had turned down a job dealing with Florida pension funds that February because I could not afford to move away. On my Dad’s side, my Grandmother had emergency quadruple bypass surgery and is now gradually slipping away into dementia. On my Mom’s side, my Grandmother had complications from hip replacement. She needed a second surgery after her femur broke at the attachment point. It then got infected, severely. For the doctors reading this, her Sed Rate jumped to 145. The infection ravaged her for two more surgeries and nearly six months. Her fever ran at 102 degrees or higher and limited sleep was disrupted by it breaking with a bout of the sweats every night. We had to change her bed sheets daily. She couldn’t walk and we had to take her to an infectious disease specialist in another network. He finally suggested the right cure that involved having her sit for an hour for 40 consecutive days to receive a cocktail through a pic line. The infection had spread to a previously replaced knee which required it to be taken out, a block filled with antibiotics replacing it for ten weeks, and a new mechanical knee to be put in afterwards. There was one other one that I’m missing. Suffice it to say, it was not a good time.
Seven surgeries in two years that left her immobile. She required 50 blood transfusions because her body was too weak to replace what she was losing with each operation. That meant that she was hospitalized for at least a week rather than the day or so which has become standard procedure. One of those times she was overdosed with morphine that put her into a state just above a coma. Having finally gotten back to even, it was years before she regained her vigor. She will never be fully mobile again. Concurrently, my Grandfather was slouching towards death as his lungs, heart, and kidneys all shut down. He was diagnosed as terminal in 2009 but survived until fall of 2011. Palm Sunday 2010 saw him have a cardiac event that brought his blood pressure to 39 over 20. His body was unable to filter out toxins from the blood so the last year and a half we had to admit him to the ER around once every month because the ammonia in his blood brought on episodes that made him believe he was living in someone else’s home or worse. He didn’t sleep and often times would try to walk out at night which meant someone had to pull night duty to keep an eye on him. My Grandma needed surveillance in the day and my Grandpa needed it at night, it was a 24 hour job. We actually had to tie a bell to my Grandpa so we knew when he was on the move. He’d sleep for a couple of hours and then get up and sit at the kitchen table for hours, his head sinking down as he warned about a mythical riot going on at the jail in which he hadn’t been a cop for 20 years. Oh, those table sessions.
Speaking of law enforcement, with a PPO I could never get hired into that profession like my Grandfather, 3 uncles, mother and brother all have done at various levels in their life. Even though it is classified as a civil misdemeanor there are actual consequences to having them issued against you. You are unable to purchase or possess a firearm, you aren’t allowed to appear within the vicinity of the person who put one out against you (if you were living with the petitioner you would lose your rights to your house and your family), the order is entered into the Law Enforcement Information Network (LEIN). Having a court order entered into LEIN means that it is accessible by any law enforcement personnel in the country. If I was to go to California, a couple thousand miles away, and like a clueless tourist found myself going over the speed limit, the on car computer system would highlight the order if I was pulled over. The message is a pernicious one, I’m a threat. What was a routine traffic stop now has the cop moving one hand to his gun. That’s a pretty easy way to cause a pedestrian situation to become a tragedy.
After graduating from school I had trouble finding a job in finance (2009, go figure) so I worked at what I could get while studying for the CFA exam which I passed in December of that year, a 34% pass rate, and had finally gotten into the field as a broker’s assistant. To work in a brokerage you must be compliant with federal law. The Securities and Exchange Act of 1937 requires you to be fingerprinted and submit them to the FBI database. I have to disclose all political donations and any public mention, including a testimony for a charity, can serve as grounds for dismissal. The start date for my employment was late June 2010, I had the fingerprints taken at the Livonia, MI police department that week. Before the end of July I was fired from that job, the broker called me on my cell phone after hours while he was out of town and told me to mail in my key. Just about the time that he would have finally turned in my fingerprint profile and it worked through the system.
I was unable to get a job until the PPO expired, and then only in community banking. I have gotten one other chance to work in the career I wanted. I was hired in to be a client associate, essentially a secretary who cut checks for clients, wire transfers, answered phones and dealt with the copious amounts of paperwork that a heavily regulated government industry. The job required a GED. I was hired and promised that I’d be sponsored within a month for my Series 7 and 63 licenses (you have to be sponsored to take the test unlike a Bar Exam). I was never allowed to sit for the license exam.
I’m not perfect, been wrong before in making market predictions, that is impossible, but if I had never been fired back in 2010 things could have been quite different. At the end of 2010 I published a Gundlach-esque powerpoint presentation about how getting short China would have been a good idea. In 2011, Hugh Hendry, a famous British fund manager, shorted Japanese companies in cyclical industries (i.e. steel) that did a large amount of their business in China. He earned 52% that year, the best hedge fund performance on the planet. At the end of 2011 I got an article published saying that the Australian Dollar was overvalued and that you should be averaging into a short position (Australia is a second derivative of China so it was the next step in my short China idea) over the next three to six months. It peaked in March 2012, falling close to 25% in the next year and a half. It is still a good idea in case anyone is wondering. I got fired from my last job, the one I was promised to be licensed at, for saying publically that long duration treasuries were a good buy. This year the 30 year treasury is up close to 18% considering capital gains and interest. That’s not a bad record. That isn’t a bad life. I’ll never have that career all because nothing I do now changes the fact I’m seen as a threat. For what it is worth, I like wheat futures now. If this makes it to print keep your eye on that over the next six months to a year. I just get to sit idly by and watch life pass me by. I can’t stress how this fact, mixed with the trials of family health and tragedy, brought me to my knees. There were days that I didn’t think I’d make it through. There were even more days that I wished I didn’t have to live through. Like I said, everyone has their failings.
Unfortunately the story doesn’t end there. In 2013, she filed a second PPO, this time in Wayne County where I live. Stunning that her previous job was measured in months before she left. And no, if you’re wondering, I did not try to meet her somewhere. I haven’t seen her since 2009. Less than three days after she was granted it, ex parte of course, she sent me multiple text messages. I could have gone to jail for answering them. I guess I’m not an immediate threat to her. I appealed this time and the order was rescinded. She didn’t even show to the appeal hearing. I sued her, in her answer to my complaint written in plain language was finally the truth. I never did anything illegal. If I were present at either of my PPO hearings I could have told a judge that. Are you surprised that the grandson, son, nephew, and brother of law enforcement officers (present and past) would respect and live within the law? Instead I found out after the fact and am considered obsessed for wondering why I have been convicted by the American equivalent of a star chamber for a thought crime. Instead I am 10-2184-PH, guilty of one count of standing athwart history and yelling stop, one count of refusing to define deviancy down. In a generation we went from bipartisan support for Patton’s idea of America to bureaucratic subversion of what men are supposed to be. What would Buckley or Moynihan say about that? Where do I go to get my reputation back?
Link dump, I don’t feel like going back in and adding them back to this format from Word:
1.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b5g1avyCSA
2.) http://health.usnews.com/health-news…issatisfaction
3.) http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/…care_data.html
4.) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/bu…says.html?_r=0
5.) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/bu…e-billing.html
6.) http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/…452302125.html
7.) http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/21/ob…#ixzz39W5PGd60
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Moderator
August 12, 2014
I’d be glad to post your story, Grant. It would have to be significantly revised, though. You’re a very good writer, and your chronicle of the story is exacting, but you’d need to pare out less essential information and put topmost details that will arrest a reader’s attention. Sadly, perhaps, those are these: crime, sex, treachery, and pain.
These are the compelling points in your narrative:
and
If it would be worth the investment to you, start at one (or both) of these points. Don’t work chronologically but in terms of most to least significant, working in details (and, if you want, quotations that support your own statements) as you go. Be as Spartan as you can.
I’m working on a side project that’s very demanding just now, so my attention’s diverted, or I’d try to help you streamline and restructure.
Think journalistic/newswriting. Maybe read some models to get in that frame of mind. I can try to help in three or four weeks.
All that aside, let me say I’m horribly sorry. You’re not the first finance student who’s told me he’s basically been barred from ever practicing the profession he studied and trained for. The last one I talked to (who wanted to work on Wall Street) said he was considering novel-writing as a fallback (God help him). That’s how demolishing this kind of mischief is.
You have my condolences and my admiration for persevering in spite of what strikes me as wanton cruelty. If people actually met those who abuse process (and others) this way, they’d be amazed, because they never seem like monsters. And they certainly don’t think of themselves that way.
I don’t get it. I can be at least as self-preoccupied as anyone, but when I encounter that utter absence of empathy from people—people who often have no excuse—I question whether there’s really anything we can call “human values.” And I’m a humanities student. I’ve met people like this who call themselves “poets” and “students of philosophy.” They even think of themselves as “honest” and “good” people.
Does it feel like you’ve basically been scapegoated—that is, that you’ve been nominated as an excuse for failings that the owner of those failings doesn’t want to accept responsibility for?
I ask, because I think in a lot of these instances the accused become for their accusers a source not just of blame but of identity: “I’m a victim. It’s his fault.” This is among the core convictions of “high-conflict” people (see the most recent post on the blog: “Larry’s Story”).
Abuse of process seems to be urgently attractive to losers, and they’d be sympathetic if it weren’t for the fact that they trash lives. That’s what judges don’t get. They “think” (a term that overestimates the degree of cognition involved) that these things just “go away,” so it’s no big deal if they cater to the delusions of the histrionic or otherwise pathetic. Even the practitioners of law themselves don’t comprehend the injustice they administer. Our legislators and administrators—they’re totally clueless.
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Grant Dossetto (@GrantDossetto)
August 12, 2014
That wannabe novelist was me (God help me :)). I’ll tweak it and resubmit, would you like me to post the revision here or somewhere else?
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Moderator
August 13, 2014
I wondered after I replied yesterday. I’m sorry nothing worked out. I seem to recall you were pursuing a legal action (the suit you refer to, right?).
I may finish what I’m working on next week. I’ll help if I can. Post a revision by comment or by email (link in copyright line).
I would start very straightforwardly. This kind of thing: “I learned a PPO had been issued against me the day I bought a coffin for my mom.” That or that and another sentence or two could be a paragraph by itself.
In novel terms, more Kurt Vonnegut than John Fowles is how you probably want to write for a medium like this.
As a lit student who was an almost Ph.D., I think you have strong writerly instincts. You also have something that’s probably essential to commercial book success: determination.
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