The question in the title of this post isn’t a hypothetical one.
People are nominated rapists by default (as well as “domestic abusers,” “stalkers,” or what have you). They’re accused by restraining order petitioners in civil court (sometimes without their knowledge) and don’t or can’t respond. So they’re found guilty…without a trial.
Let’s say you live in Rhode Island, and someone persuasively accuses you of rape in California in a five-minute recitation before a judge. Now, you either drop everything, hustle your butt to the opposite coast, and convince a judge otherwise…or, presto, you’re a rapist; a default ruling will be entered against you automatically. The ruling will be preserved, too, on your permanent public record.
No cop will have investigated the accusation, no prosecutor will have vetted it, no counsel will be appointed to defend you, and no special allowances will necessarily be made to ensure you have a practicable opportunity to defend yourself. If you fail to appear in court at the appointed time, tough luck.
This is how, whether you’re a man or a woman, you can be deemed a rapist without the court’s knowing a thing about you other than your name. (Yes, women, too, are accused of rape in civil court, that is, of having coerced an unwilling partner to have sex.)
While a default restraining order judgment just means you’re prohibited from contacting or approaching the petitioner of the order, your presumed guilt can be used as “factual evidence” against you in other governmental procedures. You may be represented as having a “history” of domestic or sexual violence (based on a default judgement on what may have been a completely false accusation).
A case that has inspired several recent posts, that of a Virginia man accused in Colorado of “domestic abuse, stalking, sexual assault, and physical assault,” exemplifies this horror.
Nathan Larson, whose markedly troubled wife filed a string of unsubstantiated allegations against him before months later being institutionalized, taking her own life, and leaving behind a child she had told him she had miscarried, must respond to a “dependency and neglect petition” that represents him as an unfit parent.
This item appears among its arguments to the court:
[Mother] and Father have a history of domestic violence that includes, but may not be limited to, the issuance of temporary restraining orders in cases […] and the issuance of a permanent restraining order in case […] which was entered by default on January 16, 2015, placing the welfare of the Child at risk.
What this categorically states is that a “history of domestic violence” exists. Then it casually notes that this alleged history is based on a default ruling. The temporary orders mentioned were also ex parte, i.e., issued offhandedly in 10-minute procedures performed in the absence of the accused. In other words, no probative investigation of the claimed violence was made by a judge or anyone else. The so-called history is a handful of accusations rendered to various judges in minutes by a woman who would subsequently be committed for allegedly hearing voices prompting her to “hurt or kill” her child. The couple’s domestic relationship had “lasted 75 days total,” making the word history that much more inapt. The claimed violence and the judicial ruling validating it were made seven months after Nathan’s wife had moved out, and Nathan didn’t travel from Virginia to Colorado to dispute the claim in court. There was no evidence, and there was no trial.
Based on a default judgment, Nathan is represented as a “violent abuser” who’s a risk to the child he didn’t know he had, and consequently he may be denied any role in her life. If it serves the interest of the state, he can also be characterized as a rapist based on the same ruling, one entered automatically.
He is a “rapist by default.”
Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com
Martha
June 30, 2015
This is so crazy. In my youth no one would even HEAR that a woman was raped, they blamed us instead…I was the victim of forced intercourse against my will but being the person I am I worked through it and still have a hard time blaming a guy for it. It was to my credit that I stopped an ex husband from his “forcing” of me. Even though they were jackasses otherwise i would have to say that to their credit they were gentlemen. Most good men and I would still say that there are more good men than bad ones just as there are more good women than bad ones, except in some cultures where violences is encouraged against men and women. ISIS comes to mind. The sadness of this is that the both men and women lose when this kind of backlash and violation of civil rights is allowed to occur. I don’t see that as often in Israel as the U.S. but we have a more corrupt government than Israel does generally…I saw my brother get his child taken away from an alcoholic mother but later when he tried to sexually abuse me or actually did sexually abuse me while my parents turned a blind eye to it, I was actually glad….this younger generation of women my daughters not so young anymore one will be forty and the other 38 which is still young…were taught well by both of us even though we were divorced…So sad…but this restraining order s#$t has got to stop….I mean my second amendment rights were violated( what gives the right for the state to do THAT in a state that has liberal gun laws?) I am in a wheelchair and am likely to be able to kill a burly squat man who does bench presses on the courthouse floor for crying out loud!) because of the incompetence of the so called JUSTICE COURT…one good JP does not a good justice court make…The really amazing thing is that if you can manage to make it through the emotional morass of feelings, you might actually get a good run at an actually good and fair appeal in Yavaapai County anyway. Michael is screwed as my son said and as my case manager who helps me to deal with my PTSD symptoms which you can imagine are considerable heightened into the HYPERALERT state by now especially as police and constables have been traipsing through my bedroom for the last year due to this guy..yeah my bedroom as I sleep in the LR because I am so poor…Turns out Judges Hancock and Goldstein have managed to have excellent reputations in both appeals and mentally ill family law and domestic partnerships. They are both well known for their shrewd and fair adjudications…be that as it may the stress of all this may take a long time to recover from and considering I am moving to Israel at one of the worst times in recent memory…I am not sure what is going to happen…but here in the US at least…these restraining orders need to be screened more thoroughly. Even the lead JP who knew Michael was meshuggah gave him an ex parte decision against me when he KNEW that he was crazy unless of course by sheer volume he simply forgot…who knows? Is ANYBODY LISTENING? I wonder…
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Moderator
June 30, 2015
The Israelis report the same thing:
“Representatives of the Israeli Bar Association Report False Accusations of Domestic Violence Have ‘Reached Epidemic Proportions’”
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