Many of us have been victims of people using restraining orders against us!
Here is a letter from a reader who had this experience.
Hi Kris, it's been a long time. I thought I'd update you regarding my situation. You may publish this if you like.
Here is a letter from a reader who had this experience.
My friend and I were victimized by the same individual who had us served with bogus temporary restraining orders in 2010. We are both middle aged females. Our petitioner is a 6'4 professional athlete. He threatened another one of his ex-girlfriends, (because we "packed up on him"). A few weeks later, she died in a mysterious accident.
Several years and many court battles later, I decided to take a different career path. I am now 42 years old, and in my 1st year of law school. I love every class, every word uttered, and every opportunity this experience can afford me. One of my motivating factors was what my friend and I had to deal with, on our own, because a non-American citizen abused our legal system in order to satisfy his own agenda.
My motivation for law school is quite different from that of my fellow classmates. I doubt they've been in a situation in which they felt helpless in a domestic violence hearing, and were unable to afford representation. Though I'm specializing in Entertainment Law, I plan to do quite a bit of pro bono work in the field of bad faith litigation, including helping those victimized through the courts.
What Mr. Knight is doing with this blog is important work. I've already pointed several of my classmates to this blog. If there are repercussions for deceiving the court, if a few cases of abuse of process prevail, perhaps this abuse will at least diminish. Many women worked very hard for many years in order to get legislation passed so that these temporary and permanent orders could be issued. For anyone to abuse that right is perverted. That kind of abuse cheapens the real victim who desperately needs the protection of the court.
I encourage everyone who has been a victim of a bogus restraining order to support individuals such as Mr. Knight, and keep writing your local and state representatives. There are people who can empathize with you and help you. Don't give up, and don't cross any lines so that you prove your accuser to be right. Keep up the good fight, and I hope to return in 3 years with a license to help you.
Thanks,
Lived with a man and a woman. The man I had a sexual relationship with, while the wife encouraged it. After a year the wife wanted a romantic relationship with me as well, and once I didn’t comply, I was banished from their home. With witnessing a new side to these people I felt vulnerable to them with the knowledge that not a lot of people knew the truth of our relationship, so I subsequently posted to my Facebook that my relationship with the husband had ended. Within in an hour he attacked me in my home- beat on me, vandalized my property, and threatened if I ever shared my story with anyone, he’d kill me, followed by that, he said he knew people in the New York area that would ensure me a devastating existence. He was arrested and given a restraining order. Weeks later I was served with one on basis that I wrote of my truth with them online in a blog. He and his wife backed it the restraining order up in court with lies: they felt threatened by me, stalked them, drove by their home, and because they had children that it was seriously important for them to be protected. At first they were told they had no basis, no proof, and that at that point writing of someone online didn’t hold any legal merit. I followed by taking the blog down that I had written about my experience with them. Honestly, my blog seemed like protection to me, to write publicly, because watching him lie in court was as if I was watching a virtual stranger work to make me a bad person, make themselves look like victims of me, and it seemed like there was nothing I could put past he and his wife. Later I was served again, and by the basis of one social media site having his name still there, only his name, I was given a restraining order. I don’t write about them anymore online anywhere, and now for the third year he has renewed the restraining order. His order that protected me lapses this month, and yes it worries me. Should I be? And how worried should I be?
ReplyDeletePlease sign: https://www.change.org/p/utah-state-governor-and-law-makers-change-the-laws-governing-protective-orders-set-an-automatic-expiration-date-as-other-states-do
ReplyDeleteThank you.