Not all women get RO’s when they ask for one, and not all crazy vindictive nuts who clear out the joint accounts are women.
How do I know? I lived it. I can tell you another thing - No money? No counsel. You are shit out of luck.
My friend has actually been contacted by the woman who took out the restraining order (against him).
What happens to a person who violates a RO in such fashion?
I don’t know. That happened to me once. A long time ago I liked a girl and gave her a note where I came on too strong (I was young and pretty socially inept, but that was over a decade ago). She panicked and the police came after me. I never broke the law and was never convicted or booked of a crime, but the police said I had a restraining order (the police lied to me tons of times that night though, so I have no idea if I ever even had a restraining order or if that was another lie. I never went to court and when I called to follow up a year later they said there was no record. To this day I have no idea if I ever even had a TRO, and I don’t even know if my interrogation counted as an arrest. I think not since I wasn’t booked, read my rights or handcuffed).
Anyway, after that the woman who took it out started sending me emails and making phone calls despite me asking her to stop on multiple occasions. But I was terrified of the police (cops are extremely thuggish when the whole ‘innocent dove woman/big bad man dynamic’ is activated in their reptilian brains), so I never reported it. I was way more scared of the police than I was of her.
I still have a lot of resentment about that. She committed a crime against me that the police were trying to accuse me of doing to her (harassment and stalking). An objective, professional, trustworthy cop is worth his weight in gold and I would’ve loved to have had access to one throughout this whole situation. We need more of them and less of these authoritarian ex-marines with chips on their shoulders.
As noted earlier in this thread, unless she is specifically barred from contacting him in the order - which will generally not be the case - she can contact him as much as she likes and she is not in violation of anything. By contrast, if he responds to her initiative, he is in violation and can go to jail.
People who are the subjects of ROs are advised to hang up the phone immediately if they are called by the protected person, for example - otherwise they can go to jail even if the call was initiated by the other party.
I would have to imagine that in the real world a prosecutor is somewhat less likely to prosecute, and possible a judge less likely to convict, if it’s clear that the contact was initiated by the protected party. But there are no guarantees, and people can and have been convicted for such contact.
Would having a gun at home be considered possessing it “in or affecting commerce”?
The unclean hands doctrine should be invoked. This means that a party cannot invite activities of which they then complain.
this thread would be a whole lot more clear if people mentioned what kind of TRO they are discussing.
In my state, Kansas, at the state court level I can think of five different types without researching it–those made within divorce cases, under the Protection from Abuse act, under the Protection from Stalking act, under the common law Injunction article, and as conditions of bond in a criminal case.
under the Protection from Abuse act and under the Protection from Stalking act in Kansas an interlocutory appeal is useless because trial on the merits occurs within twenty days by legislative mandate. These cases are also at the MAgistrate level, and the only appeal is de novo, meaning the entirety of it is heard over and anything at the lower level is irrelevant (unless you have a transcript of it, whereby you can impeach testimony.
Analysis would vary accordingly.
Other points–If you win a restraining order case that someone filed against you falsely, you can sue for malicious prosecution, which means someone falsely initiated court process against you. You wouldn’t be able to do this in say a divorce case where you beat the restraining order part but a divorce was granted anyway.
If someone uses process for an object not intended by the legislature or courts, such as the example of extorting money, they can be sued for abuse of process. You do not have to win the original case.
You cannot sue for slander for any pleading to a court because it is protected speech.
I have never heard of a civil tort for perjury, but that seems an appropriate redress. Perhaps I will write my legislator again. : )
Too many people just blow a restraining order off thinking it means little, as they weren’t going to be contacting that person anyway. If more of us took appropriate action, there would be less abuse of abuse going on.
People please keep in mind that laws on these kinds of abuse orders vary state by state and that makes it impossible to opine on various points asserted without knowing what state the action occured in.
nvm
I think prosecutors can pretty much do whatever they want in this regard. And WRT domestic abuse specifically, there is a big move these days to disregard the wishes of victims in deciding whether to prosecute - the thinking is that many women are reluctant to leave their batterers and should be protected over their own objections. So the prosecution is not prosecuting because of the complaints of the protected party. They’re prosecuting because they need to protect the protected party, whether they like it or not.
The protected party can go to a hearing in support of lifting the RO, but while their request may be given considerable weight, it’s by no means a sure thing that it will be granted.
Well, yes this is true in one type of restraining order, which for the purposes of legal analysis could be designated as “bond condition” or “probation condition,” depending on whether it’s pre or post-conviction. At any rate, since this kind of restraining order is under criminal jurisdiction it is not the equitable relief that many TROs are, such as the streamlined procedures often called “Protection from Abuse” or “Protection from stalking” or even an injunction under the common-law injunctive statutes.
In these cases under the jurisdiction of equity, the victim is the one prosecuting the matter, and in those cases the clean hands doctrine is applicable, and the court should be made aware when someone clamoring for relief is actually inviting the behavior they complain of. anybody with this problem should plead unclean hands as generally you are not entitled to relief in equity if your hands aren’t “clean.”
Not all plaintiffs mean harm when they call the person they supposedly need protected from. Often women us these kinds of orders to put themselves in complete control of the relationship to teach their man a lesson. They abuse the courts as “relationship police” meant not to sever a relationship but to control it on the woman’s terms.
Meet America’s modern “empowered” woman.
Yes, we should definitely go back to the days when women had zero protection.
Of course that’s a far cry from what I said. I’m decrying the abuse of restraining orders, not advocating some return to a time when women had no rights.
But you’re not alone in thinking that rights for women means its within their rights to abuse the court system and their defendants.
David, glad to see you join the thread. I thought that this one died a while ago. It is impossible to try to point out to activist that TRO’s are used all the time not for protection, but as punishment to the ones receiving them.
And, if you point this out you are all of a sudden labeled as “supporting violence” against women, or not caring about women in the least. You will never ever be able to get one of them to admit that it might be possible that TRO’s are sometimes used in an abusive way. They will retort that it doesn’t matter if one or two men have their lives destroyed as long as women are protected. Those of us who have suffered from a false allegation are nothing more than “collateral damage”. But no amount of reasoning will let the logic shine through. See my posts up thread and see the responses by some, it will boggle the mind.
This might just be because you never have an alternative to offer.
No one denies that restraining orders are sometimes abused, and this abuse has the consequence of making it harder for those who need one for legitimate reasons to get one (been there, done that).