Gimme a Break: A Response to Marlisse Silver Sweeney’s “What the Law Can (and Can’t) Do about Online Harassment”

Reprehensible violations complained of for decades by men and women continue—and continue to be ignored. Victims’ accounts are slighted as mischaracterizations, exaggerations, or, at best, freak instances of system failure.

The only thing rare about abusive accusations is their susceptibility to exposure, which plaintiffs, trial judges, and other beneficiaries of dragnet statutes militate against, as do the laws themselves. The expense of hiring representation (possibly on a few days’ notice) to controvert allegations that may be immune to either verification or disproof (and may even have been lodged in a different state and demand travel to appear in court for what may be a 10-minute hearing), procuring transcripts, filing an appeal or appeals, etc. is prohibitive for the average defendant (who may meanwhile be homeless). Resisting a juggernaut has unseen tolls, besides, like moral exhaustion.

The alternative costs can include denial of access to children, companion animals, home, and property; loss of job or even employability in a field in which one has earned an advanced degree or otherwise received lengthy, specialized training; increased vulnerability to further accusations, governmental intrusion, and rights abrogations; and, consequently, diminished security and health.

Lying by plaintiffs, even if detected, is seldom acknowledged and almost never punished. What should be automatic grounds for dismissal of a complaint is not. Plaintiffs’ attorneys lie, and even the police may construe facts and statements liberally to suit a pat narrative. Trial judges emphasize in their rulings what they want the record to reflect and downplay or omit what they don’t. The researcher who concludes that an absence of prosecutions for lying means lying is infrequent or doesn’t occur has eagerly capitulated to a logical fallacy.

A corollary of these facts is that no posited false allegation rate, whether of harassment or physical or sexual assault, is or could be remotely accurate.

Allegations leveled in the uncharted territory of civil court, which minimally number in the millions each year, are neither proved nor disproved, per se, and the actual volume and variety of allegations, which may be of literally anything an accuser can write on a fill-in-the-blank form or say aloud during a hearing, are registered nowhere but in the psyches of the accused. An exact figure even of the gross number of complainants who come before the court in a given year is indeterminable. Rulings in restraining order, family court, and domestic violence cases are moreover based on what judges are inclined to (or expected to) believe; judicial opinions are not based on “proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” despite the gravity of their consequences. Except in a few states, even allegations of sexual assault are adjudicated according to the very lowest standard of evidence. Although ubiquitously represented otherwise, everything in this left field of the law is speculative—and it always has been.

Journalist Cathy Young, who has crusaded against extremism in gender politics for most if not all of her career, has perennially raised the question of whether protective orders, “intended to serve as a shield for victims, often end up being misused as a sword by overzealous courts and unscrupulous pseudo-victims.” The particular story from which the preceding quotation is drawn goes on to report: “This issue, which a few fathers’ rights advocates and attorneys have been trying to raise for several years, is finally getting some attention….” Consider that word finally. The story ran in 1999. Protective order laws have only grown more expansive, accommodating, and punitive since.

Posts on this blog formerly exceeded 400. Its author has endeavored to reconstitute the site, which includes posts on all aspects of the contemptible institution of law called the “protective order.” Most of the site’s newer posts, written since the author’s most recent attacks in court, revolve around one. That post introduces aspects of a hermetic process that no stranger to it could reasonably imagine. Especially noteworthy is that the conflict the post details is unextraordinary. Contrary impressions a reader might form are not ones s/he would derive from any finding of a court. The same motives and patterns of behavior by plaintiffs and judges may inform most “abuse” cases—or all of them to some extent. An outsider would never know. As that post stresses, beyond defendants’ being reluctant to raise objections in public because apprehensive of scorn, further rights privations by the government, termination of employ, etc., they may be judicially forbidden on pain of incarceration from telling others how the court “administers justice.”

The controversy the post highlights is distinguished from the commonplace only in that the plaintiff is a public official, and the defendant, after a decade of defying misrepresentations to the police and the court, was able to secure legal counsel, transcripts, and appellate court access on the taxpayer’s dime, because the plaintiff overreached. The defendant also possessed the training to show what others cannot. He had resources available to him, in other words, that few in his position ever do. His case is otherwise unremarkable, and his privations have been far less grave than those of many other defendants who’ve shared their stories with him over the years. The unremitting stresses of the matter his case concerns have nevertheless denied him the value, enrichment, and enjoyment of his life.

Readers are encouraged to compare and contrast that case’s revelations with predominately mainstream commentary that spans almost 30 years, and to weigh the implications. They’re urged to consider, for instance, that while the “silence breakers” of the #MeToo movement have been collectively named 2017’s “Person of the Year” by Time Magazine, millions of others with contrasting stories must go on anguishing or seething in obscurity, because their silence is enforced by the state—with ukases and guns.

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WomensLaw.org:

“A restraining order or protective order is a legal order issued by a state court which requires one person to stop harming another person. It is also sometimes called a protection order, an injunction, an order of protection, or some other similar name.”

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HerJustice.org:

“An order of protection is a Court order that tells your abuser to stop abusing you. It may also tell your abuser to stop abusing your child(ren). The order tells him in detail what he must do and must not do.”

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Stephanie Chavez, Los Angeles Times (1989):

“Once granted, the court document commonly orders an abuser to move out of his or her house and keep 100 or 150 yards away from it and the people inside. Abusive fathers or mothers are told to stay away from their children’s school and not telephone family members. Temporary custody of children and even cars can be granted.

“The abused simply walk into the courtroom, receive an application from the clerk and sit back in the bench to explain in handwritten accounts…why the court should referee their relationships.”

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Attorney Liz Mandarano, Huffington Post (2011):

“There are between 2 and 3 million temporary restraining orders issued in the United States annually. Despite their huge impact on a person’s emotional and financial well-being, in order to receive a temporary ‘stay away’ order of protection, one needs only to allege that he or she ‘feels’ threatened…. There does not need to be any history of domestic violence whatsoever.”

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Attorney Joseph E. Cordell, Huffington Post (2015):

“Essentially, all the alleging party must do to obtain a protection order is tell the judge they feel it is necessary.”

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WomensLaw.org:

“In many states, you can file for a restraining order against anyone who has stalked or harassed you, even if you do not have a specific relationship with that person. In addition, most states include stalking as a reason to get a domestic violence restraining order.”

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Elizabeth Black, Ms. Magazine (2010):

“This spring, the Maryland legislature killed a bill that would have brought Maryland’s restraining order policies into line with every other state in the union. Remarkably, in Maryland, a stalking victim seeking help is required to prove her case with ‘clear and convincing’ evidence….”

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Cathy Young, Salon (1999):

“Even feminist activists are willing to allow that restraining orders can be misused as a ‘coercive tool’—by men. In 1995, in Somerville, Mass., Stephen Gruning broke into the apartment of his ex-girlfriend, Rhonda Stuart, and went on a shooting rampage, wounding her and killing her brother and her new boyfriend. When press reports revealed that Gruning had earlier obtained two temporary restraining orders against Stuart, women’s advocates were quick to point out that such orders were very easy to get, ‘regardless of the facts.’”

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Attorney Elaine Epstein, former president of the Massachusetts Bar Association and the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association (“Speaking the Unspeakable,” Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association Newsletter, today out of print, quoted below by Prof. Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D., in “Family Violence in America: The Truth about Domestic Violence and Child Abuse,” 2006) (1993):

“Boston attorney Elaine Epstein…has accused her peers of succumbing [to] the ‘media frenzy surrounding domestic violence’ and of doling out restraining orders ‘like candy.’ ‘Restraining orders and orders to vacate are granted to virtually all who apply,’ and ‘the facts have become irrelevant,’ she writes. ‘In virtually all cases, no notice, meaningful hearing, or impartial weighing of evidence is to be had.’”

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Deseret News (1997):

“‘They’ve made it too easy,’ said [attorney Alan] Barber. ‘It’s a classic case of overreaction. It’s turned into a free-for-all.’

“Recent sharp increases in demand for protection orders [reflect] abuse of the law, not increased need or awareness of family violence, Barber argues. The easy-to-obtain orders are being improperly used to resolve property disputes and child-custody fights, and judges are not acting to stop the abuse, he said.”

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Virginia Black, South Bend Tribune (2014):

“A man who was shot in a work dispute learned a few days later that a judge granted a protection order against him—requested by the man who shot him.

“A father already chafing against restricted visitation with his toddler daughter after an argument with the mother of his child cried foul when, a few months later, he was slapped with what he calls an unfair protection order.

“A young woman who told police her car was vandalized by an ex-boyfriend was surprised when a letter arrived in the mail, telling her a protection order had been granted against her. It was sought by the ex’s new girlfriend.

“‘I just feel like you shouldn’t just be able to say whatever you want,’ the woman said, ‘and have something like this on your record.’”

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Attorney Gregory Hession (author of MassOutrage), YouTube (2016):

“[W]e’re used to due process, we’re used to rules of evidence, we’re used to innocence until proven guilty, we’re used to burdens of proof that you have to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt before you can deprive somebody of rights—all of these things are completely thrown out the door in these cases. So the case that would appear before that was a regular case, you know, somebody even just not having their driver’s license or something, has 10 times as many rights as the parent who then appears in the next case and has their children taken away without any of those rights.”

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Loyola Law Prof. Aaron Caplan, Hastings Law Journal (2013):

“Many structural factors of civil harassment litigation lead to higher-than-usual risk of constitutional error. As with family law, civil harassment law has a way of encouraging some judges to dispense freewheeling, Solomonic justice according to their visions of proper behavior and the best interests of the parties. Judges’ legal instincts are not helped by the accelerated and abbreviated procedures required by the statutes. The parties are rarely represented by counsel, and ex parte orders are encouraged, which means courts may not hear the necessary facts and legal arguments. Very few civil harassment cases lead to appeals, let alone appeals with published opinions. As a result, civil harassment law tends to operate with a shortage of two things we ordinarily rely upon to ensure accurate decision-making by trial courts: the adversary system and appellate review.”

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Alan Feuer, The New York Times (2010):

“Family courts in New York City provide clerks to help victims of abuse who cannot afford lawyers pursue orders in cases that do not involve criminal charges. Peter J. Passidomo, chief clerk of the city’s Family Court system, said the process is as simple as filling out a form….”

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Northern Illinois University Law Prof. David H. Taylor, et al., Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy (2008):

“The ease with which ex parte orders can be obtained creates the opportunity for…misuse, allowing an ex parte order of protection to be granted on the basis of flimsy or false allegations. [E]x parte orders of protection are granted routinely at an extraordinarily high rate; in some jurisdictions, nearly one hundred percent.”

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Julia C. Mead, The New York Times (2005):

“In 2004, 13,358 orders of protection were served in Suffolk County, 25 percent more than in 1993, according to the Sheriff’s Department. (Comparable figures for Nassau were not available.) And because of a 1997 state law that reclassified certain violations as felonies, the number of new felony prosecutions involving violations of orders more than doubled in Suffolk, reaching 694 last year, compared with 257 in 1996, according to the district attorney’s office.”

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Cathy Young, The Boston Globe (1999):

“With the order in effect, any contact becomes punishable by up to two and half years of imprisonment. Legally, it doesn’t matter if the contact is accidental, or if it happened with the purported victim’s consent or at her initiative. Fathers hit with restraining orders based on trivial or uncorroborated allegations have been jailed for sending their kids a Christmas card, asking a telephone operator to convey the message that a gravely ill grandmother would like to see her grandchildren, or returning a child’s phone call.”

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Laura Mansnerus, The New York Times (1998):

“[L]egal experts agree that in ordinary civil suits, lying is rampant and prosecution for lying is rare.”

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Russ Bleemer (“N.J. Judges Told to Ignore Rights in Abuse TROs,” New Jersey Law Journal, today preserved only on an archived website that had been devoted to non-custodial parents’ rights) (1995):

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

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

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Attorney David N. Heleniak, Rutgers Law Review (2005):

“Imagine the following hypothetical scenario. Following the initial enforcement of a [temporary restraining order], which alleged physical abuse, a husband/defendant is thrown out of his house without so much as a toothbrush. He is allowed to take his wallet with him but is prohibited from taking his checkbook because the police officers fear that he might maliciously exhaust the marital assets. He isn’t given a place to shower or sleep, and only has enough money in his wallet for a few meager meals. During this period, when his main concerns are about his physical survival, he is told that there will be a [final restraining order] hearing ten days from the filing of the complaint. Having no legal background, he has no inkling of the consequences of this hearing or of the goings on of a courtroom. He has not been advised he has the right to have an attorney represent him, and doesn’t realize he needs one. He couldn’t afford one if he did, but he has no right, unlike a criminal defendant, to be provided with free counsel. He arrives at court on the hearing day woefully unprepared, tired, unshowered, unkempt, and disheveled. Unaware that the Supreme Court has declared that ‘the ten-day provision does not preclude a continuance where fundamental fairness dictates allowing a defendant additional time,’ he does not ask for one.

“During the hearing, our hypothetical plaintiff introduces hearsay and examples of prior bad acts that are not allowed under the rules of evidence. Unfamiliar with the law, the defendant does not object to the judge’s consideration of the improper evidence, but simply insists that the evidence is untrue. Unable to take the plaintiff’s deposition prior to the hearing, he is surprised when she brings up prior events that were not alleged in the complaint. Taken out of context and twisted so as to only be partially true, the introduction of this evidence hurts his defense. He hasn’t thought of these events for years and, caught off-guard, cannot articulate to the judge what really happened.”

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Attorney Christine Sullivan, The Valley Patriot (2013):

“The husband and wife both love their children and spend as much time with their children as possible. There has never been any physical or mental abuse in the marriage, but the marriage simply isn’t working. After a stressful weekend of arguing, the husband tells the wife that he wants a divorce. That same afternoon, the husband is served with a restraining order, alleging that he has physically abused his wife and his children.

“He has five (5) minutes to gather some personal belongings from his house, while being accompanied by a police officer watching his every move. Other than what he can put in a bag in five (5) minutes, the husband has only the clothes on his back and no place to go. Worst of all, his children, the ones that he loves more than anything in life and that he is used to seeing every day, have now been ripped away from him for at least ten (10) business days and he is powerless to do anything about it.

“How can this happen?”

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Attorney Steve Fischer, TribTalk (2017):

“I’m early for county court and my client and I watch the case before ours. It’s a protective order. A husband pleads, ‘Your honor, I just got served last week, the police threw me out of our house, my wife took all our money and hired an attorney who filed a divorce with a restraining order. I don’t have money now for an attorney and I miss my children.’

“Nothing out of the ordinary here….

“Enacted by the Texas Legislature in 1979, protective orders have been hailed as a powerful deterrent to family violence—so much so that the penalties to perpetrators have steadily increased, along with the rights awarded to the victims. Yet I wonder…[h]ow often are they abused to give one person an overwhelming advantage in divorce and custody cases? Approximately 85-95 percent of these orders are against men; are they always at fault?”

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Wendy McElroy, Foundation for Economic Education (2010):

“[Domestic violence] is a deeply politicized issue. Gender feminists cast it as a quintessential crime of male oppression; ‘get tough’ prosecutors and politicians use it as a career path; and an ‘industry’ of researchers, social workers, lawyers, therapists, and other experts acquire status and income from DV.

“The incentives are for more and not less enforcement, and those accused become increasingly vulnerable to false accusations and the suspension of their due-process rights.”

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Georgetown Law Prof. Deborah Epstein, William and Mary Law Review (2002):

“During the 1980s and 1990s, victim advocates lobbied aggressively and successfully to change [domestic violence] policies in many jurisdictions. Today, many [prosecutors’] offices in major urban centers have adopted aggressive ‘no-drop’ prosecution policies: cases proceed even when a victim recants her original story and testifies for the defense. In cases where the victim does not wish to cooperate, prosecuting attorneys pursue alternative litigation strategies, treating domestic violence cases as they would homicides….”

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Cathy Young, Forbes (2009):

“[P]ublic policy on domestic violence in the U.S. is heavily dominated by feminist advocacy groups. For the most part, these groups embrace a rigid orthodoxy that treats domestic violence as male terrorism against women, rooted in patriarchal power and intended to enforce it. They also have a record of making grotesquely exaggerated, thoroughly debunked claims about an epidemic of violence against women—for instance, that battering causes more hospital visits by women every year than car accidents, muggings and cancer combined.”

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Sarah Miller, Time (2014):

“The worst part about writing everything you’re about to read has been the ever-present thought, Please God, do not let Women Against Feminism think that I am even remotely on their side. I will never, ever, be ‘against feminism’—whatever that means.”

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Dorothy Cummings McLean, LifeSiteNews (2017):

“[C]olumnist Emily Lindin has tweeted her contempt for men falsely accused of sexual assault or harassment.

“‘Here’s an unpopular opinion,’ she wrote. ‘I’m actually not at all concerned about innocent men losing their jobs over false sexual assault/harassment allegations.’

“Lindin next tweeted her belief that ‘false allegations VERY rarely happen….’”

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Sandra Newman, Quartz (2017):

“[F]alse rape accusations almost never have serious consequences.”

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Harvard Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz, Observer (2015):

“On an intellectual level, I could understand what it must feel like to have people think that you are guilty…when you know you are innocent. But until it happened to me, I would have no real comprehension of what it actually feels like, on an emotional level. My education is now complete: I understand—really understand—why it is so important to protect the innocent as well as to punish the guilty.”

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Janice Shaw Crouse, U.S. News & World Report (2012):

“At the outset it is important to say, emphatically, that no decent person would stand by while a more powerful, stronger or bigger person physically abuses or batters someone more vulnerable. Everyone should want to end violence against women, but the Violence Against Women Act misses the mark. It ends up creating a climate of suspicion where all men are feared or viewed as violent and abusive and all women are viewed as victims. Decent people should be outraged at the climate of false accusations, rush to judgment and hidden agendas that characterize the situation that has developed during the 18 years of this law.”

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Brittany Pierce, New England Law Review (2012):

“While abuse prevention orders can protect an individual who is suffering abuse, the procedure for issuing abuse prevention orders is itself subject to abuse. In Massachusetts, Chapter 209A defines ‘abuse’ very broadly, giving judges ample discretion in deciding whether to issue an abuse prevention order. Unfortunately, this discretion has engendered lenity, and judges often grant abuse prevention orders unnecessarily. Individuals who wish to gain an advantage in a divorce proceeding, or want to punish a family member or former significant other, can easily obtain an abuse prevention order by vaguely alleging fear.”

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Chanta L. Jackson, NJ.com (2008):

“Certainly abused women need protection and support, but there are many troubling aspects of the Domestic Violence Prevention Act’s restraining order provisions that merit judicial or legislative redress.

“Under the law, it is very easy for a woman to allege domestic violence and get a restraining order (aka ‘protection order’). New Jersey issues 30,000 restraining orders annually, and men are targeted in four-fifths of them. The standard is ‘preponderance of the evidence’…, and judges almost always side with the accusing plaintiff.

“Under the law, the accuser need not even claim abuse. Alleged verbal threats of violence are sufficient, even though it’s almost impossible for the accused to provide substantive contradictory evidence.

“The restraining order boots the man out of his own home and generally prohibits him from contacting his children. Men are cut off from their possessions and property, and some end up in homeless shelters. Yet most have never had a chance to defend themselves in court.”

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Justin Jouvenal, The Washington Post (2012):

“The number of requests for restraining orders in Virginia has exploded in the past six months, and a review by The Washington Post of more than 50 applications found that neighbors, co-workers, friends and even strangers are using a new law that makes them much easier to get.

“Advocates for victims of domestic violence said the state’s novel approach is a major step forward, but others are worried that the law is so broad that courts are being strained by the requests and that some are seemingly frivolous or calculated to gain leverage in pending litigation, such as child-custody suits.”

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KSTP.com (2017):

“Minnesotans involved in custody or domestic disputes, or those who feel threatened or that they’re being stalked, can apply for [a restraining] order online. The application includes descriptions of harassing behaviors like repeated incidents of unwanted acts or gestures.

“Once approved, an order can remain in effect for up to two years. Anyone violating an order can be arrested.”

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USA Today (2014):

“Restraining orders give victims of domestic violence a tool to keep their abusers away or at least have them arrested if they come close. Anyone in a relationship with recent history of abuse can apply, and the order can be signed the same day.”

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Shannon Houser, Fox News (2017):

“When someone needing services calls A Better Way, the first question they ask is ‘are you safe?’ Then, ‘what can we do to make you safe?’ Often, victims are encouraged to file protective orders. To receive a protective order, there does not need to be an active criminal case and a judge generally only takes 24 hours to approve or deny the request. Advocates said most requests are approved.”

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Lynh Bui, The Washington Post (2017):

“The center is meant to be a one-stop shop of services to help those navigating domestic violence. They can obtain help in filling out a protective order, getting housing and, in the case of Stay In Touch, finding emotional support, all in one place.”

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Forensic psychologist Deborah C. Tyler, American Thinker (2011):

“In recent years I have seen false allegations of physical and sexual abuse made to gain advantage in the workplace, schools, and divorce and custody conflicts. I have also seen psychology—which has refined methods for determining the truth in these emotionally fraught charges—distorted and ignored in order to favor the accuser.”

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Jessica Masulli Reyes, DelawareOnline (2016):

“Then, his ex-wife leveled another accusation of domestic violence. This time, the Dover Police Department found that his court-ordered GPS ankle monitor put him miles away from his ex-wife at the time she said the violence occurred, he said.

“After an investigation, the police swiftly cleared him of all eight charges….”

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Nicole Darrah, Fox News (2017):

“As Berrott was cooperating with police, Garcia was making threats to herself under his name…. Investigators reportedly found that it wasn’t possible for Berrott to have sent one of the threats because he was in custody at the time.

“‘He didn’t do any of this. He was charged with eight criminal cases and is innocent of all of them,’ prosecutor Britni Cooper told the [Houston Chronicle]. ‘I’m horrified, actually, and can’t imagine what this guy went through. It’s a nightmare.’”

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Cathy Young, Independent Women’s Forum (2005):

“[L]ike many movements that have pursued worthwhile social goals, the battered women’s movement has also had a more extreme side. Many activists have openly acknowledged that a radical political philosophy played an important role in shaping the movement and its worldview. In the 1982 book, Women and Male Violence: The Visions and Struggles of the Battered Women’s Movement, the late Susan Schechter wrote that the battered women’s movement was organized primarily by two groups: radical feminists, who saw women as an oppressed class in a society dominated by a male power structure, and socialist feminists, who ‘joined an analysis of male domination to one of class and race oppression.’ Both of these groups were distinct from liberal ‘women’s rights’ feminists, who wanted simply to ensure equal treatment for women within the existing structure of society.”

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National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (2011):

“You have bullshit; we have research.”

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Phyllis Schlafly, The Phyllis Schlafly Report (2005):

“[The Violence Against Women Act] funds the re-education of judges and law enforcement personnel to teach them feminist stereotypes about male abusers and female victims, how to game the system to empower women, and how to ride roughshod over the constitutional rights of men.

“VAWA encourages women to make false allegations and then petition for full child custody and a denial of fathers’ rights to see their own children. VAWA promotes the unrestrained use of restraining orders, which family courts issue on the woman’s say-so.

“VAWA-funded centers engage in political advocacy for feminist legislation such as the ‘must-arrest’ laws even if there is no sign of violence and even if the woman doesn’t want the man arrested, and the ‘no drop’ laws which mean the government must prosecute the man even if the woman doesn’t want him prosecuted.

“It’s time to stop VAWA from spending any more taxpayers’ money to promote family dissolution and fatherless children.”

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Attorney Joseph E. Cordell, Huffington Post (2011):

“A…report published earlier this year estimated that 85% of protective orders are entered against men. I believe that upwards of 90% of those orders are products of tactical divorce considerations.

“In fact, many people are encouraged by their lawyers to seek this protection without cause because of the beneficial position gained by this strategic move.

“These orders are easy to obtain—all a woman has to do is say that she is in reasonable fear for her safety. Documented evidence of abuse is not required.”

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Prof. Sarah L. Desmarais, et al., Journal of Family Violence (2009):

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

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Prof. Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D., The Independent Review (2004):

“The assumption that the government has a legitimate role in ameliorating the problem of fatherlessness…glides quickly over the more fundamental question of whether the government has had a role in creating the problem. What we see in the ‘fatherhood crisis’ may be an optical illusion. What many are led to believe is a social problem may in reality be an exercise of power by the state.”

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Attorney Gregory Hession (author of MassOutrage), YouTube (2012):

“[A]t this point, in many, many of our lives, we probably either have experienced or know somebody that’s experienced some encounter with family law, particularly, but at least the law in general. There was a time in America where that generally would not have happened. Most times people could spend their whole lives without ever having anything to do with the law. Maybe they watched something happen. But here and now in this United States, for example, 500,000 children are right now in the custody of the state…. [T]hat’s an astounding number.”

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Jonah Valdez, Voice of San Diego (2017):

“San Diego Superior Court is no longer providing court reporters for family law proceedings.

“Court reporters are responsible for creating an exact record of what was said during hearings, depositions and trials. Not having a court reporter present in court means there is no verbatim, written record of the proceedings.”

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Wendy McElroy, Fox News (2002):

“Miller’s suicide is symbolic of a frightening global trend: an alarming rise in male suicides. According to a round of studies conducted in North America, Europe and Australia, one reason for the increase may be the discrimination fathers encounter in family courts, especially the denial of access to their children.”

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Prof. Augustine J. Kposowa, Ph.D., Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health (2000):

“When data were stratified by sex, it was observed that the risk of suicide among divorced men was over twice that of married men…. Among women, however, there were no statistically significant differentials in the risk of suicide by marital status categories.”

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Dan Bilsker, Ph.D., and Jennifer White, Ed.D., BC Medical Journal (2011):

“[W]hile accumulating empirical evidence confirms that men in Western nations consistently die by suicide at higher rates than women…, surprisingly few explanatory frameworks have been developed to account for this persistent pattern.”

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Christie Blatchford, National Post (2017):

“Early on the morning of March 9, Jeramey apparently rigged his truck so that when he drove down an embankment…his neck would break.

“In a scrawled and bloody suicide note found in the truck, he wrote: ‘FAMILY LAW NEEDS REFORM. I recommend mandated lower costs and less reward for false claims of abuse. Parental Alienation is devastating. I loved my children as much as a husband and father could. I see no light. Recommend; an authority consistent during high conflict separations: It is exploited in family law.

“‘Sorry Dad and Angie. I’m very sorry.’

“He was 45 years old when he died….”

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Suzette Reynoso, Eyewitness News (2017):

“According to the American Association of Suicidology, white middle aged men have the highest suicide rates in America, and the numbers have continued to climb for the past 10 years.”

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Lindsay Holmes and Anna Almendrala, Huffington Post (2016):

“Suicide continues to be a mostly white male phenomenon in the U.S.; white men made up 83 percent of the 33,113 male suicide deaths in 2014.”

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Vicki Larson, Huffington Post (2011):

“We’re used to men being violent. Literature, movies and video games are full of heroes and antiheroes who kill and maim their way into our hearts and nightmares. At the same time, we tell boys to ‘suck it up’ instead of expressing pain, leaving them few emotions but anger. Then we chastise them when they actually get angry—or live in fear of their anger. And sometimes we use the one emotion we’ve allowed them to our advantage.”

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Southern Poverty Law Center:

“The so-called ‘manosphere’ is peopled with hundreds of websites, blogs and forums dedicated to savaging feminists in particular and women…in general. Although some of the sites make an attempt at civility and try to back their arguments with facts, they are almost all thick with misogynistic attacks that can be astounding for the guttural hatred they express.”

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Michael Lerner, The New York Times (2016):

“Instead of challenging this ideology of shame, the left has buttressed it…. The rage many white working-class people feel in response is rooted in the sense that once again, as has happened to them throughout their lives, they are being misunderstood.”

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Gina Benevento, Al Jazeera (2017):

“[A] new far-right universe has come to power in the White House, and whether you listen to Jeff Sessions, nominee for Attorney General, or examine leaked Trump team proposed budgets, funding for the Violence Against Women Act will cease. That means 25 grants focused on ‘reducing domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking by strengthening services for victims and holding offenders accountable’ will disappear.”

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KMOV.com (2016):

“News 4 has been tracking the story of the unusual case of an ex-parte order of protection being filed against [an] 8-year-old…. On September 7 he was removed from school by Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department deputies and was told he can’t go back until after the order of protection is lifted.”

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Lisa Bourne, LifeSiteNews (2017):

“The abortion facility volunteer who almost ran over a Catholic priest with her car while fleeing the scene after attempting to steal pro-life signs has filed for a restraining order against the priest.”

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