I still remember the shock of the moment, the moment when I realized my family’s life was about other people’s agenda and there simply was no place for truth or the best interest of the children.

            No one thought it would happen, not even Patricia’s attorney. He knew his case was so weak that he began the hearing asking for a compromise, for a mutual restraining order as opposed to a finding for domestic violence that he thought was impossible.

            Well to everyone’s surprise except Patricia and the hearing officer, Patricia’s attorney won his restraining order. The hearing officer ruled that if Patricia felt threatened she was threatened and thus I was guilty of domestic violence.

            My attorney objected, obviously threatening someone is a form of domestic violence, but if the only standard for conviction was the belief by the ‘victim’ that a crime had occurred then anyone was guilty of anything at anytime.

            To this day, this hearing is the one true part of our story that creates genuine anger on my part. Listen to it if you wish (June 26, 2002 Hearing). I still find it difficult to do so.

            Other people’s agenda included a hearing officer going through her own nasty divorce, a divorce that include the suicide of her own twelve year old son shortly after hearing our case. Large on the ‘other people’s agenda’ is the need to report success under the Violence Against Women Act in order to keep the civil Domestic Violence Court fully funded.

            The Violence Against Women Act or (VAWA) first passed Congress in 1994 with funding of 1.6 billon. An updated version passed in 1998 with 3.6 billon in funding. The Republican Congress and White house reauthorized the law in 2005 and funding remained at these levels.

            First and foremost, VAWA provides a third of the money to shelters, additionally the act provides access to many federal services for victims of domestic violence to include housing, health, and vocational.

            Part of the act was thrown out for technical reasons and part of the act was dropped after objections by the ACLU to some of the presumptions of guilt found in the original act, and in 2005 some accountability standards were imposed, but overall the act has provided assistance to millions of women and children in this country.

            One of the new programs introduced by VAWA was the funding of civil domestic violence courts within most local state court districts.

            Domestic Violence Courts now fall into two separate court systems. The first is criminal – the police show up at your house, arrest the abuser, and the district attorney prosecutes for either misdemeanor or felony domestic violence. If convicted, the abuser receives criminal punishment in the form of jail time, probation, required treatment, etc.

            VAWA introduced a new court system under the civil court system, removing the involvement of the police and the district attorneys. Under this system, the victim files a complaint in civil court (example – the third one Patricia filed ), receives an immediate temporary order of protection (example – the third temporary order of protection Patricia received), and a hearing before a judge appointed hearing officer who can recommend to the judge a restraining order for as long as two years. In reality, the ‘recommendation’ to the judge is a literal rubber stamp on which some clerk stamps the judge’s signature. In Bernalillo county the judge has no specific knowledge of the protective orders issued in her name until they come back to bite her. All of these actions are suppose to occur within ten days of the complaint.

            Since the restraining order is civil in nature there are no criminal penalties involved. Typically, the abuser is ordered to maintain a defined physical distance from the victim, ordered to surrender any firearms owned, and the abuser’s name is entered into a federal database of domestic violence offenders. If the abuser violates the restraining order, the court can then jail the offender as a contempt of court action.

            The value implied in the new civil system is evident. A victim does not need to convince the police or the district attorney of the validity of his or her claims in order to receive a temporary restraining order and this fact alone may have saved thousands of lives as a victim received a necessary respite from abuse, time to make decisions, time to act.

            Courts across the country issued over one half million of these civil restraining orders in the last year --One half million.

            Among those receiving a temporary restraining order was late night talk show host David Letterman from a judge in Santa Fe for psychic violence against a woman living in the town.

            The civil Machine requires the complainant to establish a domestic relationship with the alleged abuser. In David Letterman’s case, the complainant alleged a long time psychic relationship.

            The press made fun of the judge for issuing this restraining order, but they missed the fact that he did not issue the order and knew nothing about it until it came back to bite him. A clerk took a rubber stamp out of his desk and stamped the judge’s signature on the order.

            But I guess the David Letterman restraining order meets the same level of proof that Hearing Officer Lopez reached in awarding a restraining order against me. In both cases, all that is necessary is that the victim felt abused.

            Most courts quickly realized the connection between domestic violence and divorce and placed the civil domestic violence under the divorce court system.

            Okay, think about this for a moment, the relationship is obvious. In way too many divorces, the issue of domestic violence is raised almost with the first filing in Court and now the Courts found a way to deal with these allegations and receive federal grant money for doing so.  The Machine’s divorce attorneys found another platform for increasing their fees and another arena to prolong the divorce conflict in.

It is interesting that some groups now claim men file more civil domestic violence complaints then women. I am not sure I believe it, but in six civil domestic violence hearing involved in our story. Patricia filed two, another was an attempt by her to resurrect a previous ruling overturned, one was filed by her second husband, one was filed by her second father in law, and one filed by me.

            Doubtless, many of the allegations of domestic violence are valid and the civil domestic violence Machine provides a way of bringing the knowledge of this violence out into the open and allow it to be addressed.

            But just as true, many of these allegations are untrue and the civil domestic violence Machine has become another tool in the arsenal of the divorce conflict. If you listen to the hearing on Patricia’s first claim, you will notice her attorney used the time with me on the stand arguing that my refusal to grant Patricia a bifurcated divorce was another example of my domestic violence.

            You can associate each of Patricia’s filing with conflict regarding the divorce and children. She filed the first one after I intervened in her attempts to medicate our thirteen year old son for ‘depression’ – literally she left the doctor’s office and went to the courthouse to file the compliant, children in tow.

            Her second complaint, an attempt to revive the overthrown initial restraining order, occurred when several actions in the divorce failed to turn out the way Patricia wished. Glen was removed from her care. She had put Glen’s dog down. She cancelled Montie’s sixth birthday. She failed to get the FBI to arrest either the Guardian or myself for subsequently celebrating Montie’s birthday out of town. And the JPO office vindicated Glen concerning Patricia’s allegations of animal abuse and desire to see him incarcerated (The Dog I Never Knew and Montie’s 6^th Birthday).

            The third one involved our fighting over the home (blog) and Patricia sought the restraining order as an end around to end this conflict.

            Contrast this to Patricia’s second father-in-law filing over the constant harassing telephone call Patricia made from the jail in order to contract their son, her second husband (hearing). Or my filing against Patricia’s newly discovered biological father who fronted to me as a new hit man and threatened me with seeking visitation with the children (hearing).

            Back on the other side, Patricia’s second husband when he filed for divorce also filed a civil domestic violence complaint pretending he was me (hearing).

            And there are the times the Machine goes horribly wrong.

            In June of 1999, a father, under a restraining order, violated the restraining order and took his three children from the mother’s front yard. The mother made numerous contacts with the police in the attempt to locate and assure the safety of her children. The police ignored the woman’s pleas and the following day the father showed up at the police station and opened fire on the station. The police returned fire and killed the father. In the father’s truck cab, the police discovered the bodies of the three children (Supreme Court Ruling).

            For various lawyer reasons, in 2005 the Supreme Court ruled the police had no responsibility to the mother or the children to enforce the civil domestic violence restraining order. The lawyer talk aside, basically the Court acknowledged that the police have no way to determine the quality of civil domestic violence restraining orders and for every single monster such as Gonzales out there were tens of Patricia’s.

            Although come to think of it, the police did show up when Patricia called and told them she had a court order that prohibited Glen from being alone with his siblings in January of 2003. Glen, just fourteen, took care of it before Jessica and I got home from church, asking the police officer who came to the house to see if his mother could present a copy of the order.  Patricia declined to meet with the police since the order did not exist.

            This raises the question about the value of the Machine, of the civil domestic violence courts. If the police are not listening, and believe me they are not, how much protection is there in an order of protection? The Dixie Chicks raise some valid points.

            And this leads us to the events of this week.

            On Wednesday, Bernalillo County Sheriff deputies shot and killed a man in the civil domestic violence area of the courthouse. Between forty and sixty people witnessed this act of violence.

            Honestly, I do not believe I will find a great deal of fault with the actions of the deputies. The victim, John Hevener, appears to have left the deputies with little choice.

            But this case illustrates my concerns about the Machine, in this case the domestic violence civil arm of the Machine.

            If you read this blog carefully, you will realize my children have been in that area. I have been in there several times and each time the room was full of children.

            How many of those forty to sixty witness were children? I imagine quite a few. Again, the actions of the deputies in defense of children become easier to support, but the fact remains – children witnessed this act of violence, children present because someone in their family was accused of an act of domestic violence.

            Lord, it makes you wish the mental health profession could help.

            The physical area where the shooting occured is an area of tension. You walk through the door and the emotions of fear and anger are overwhelming on the faces of those confronting you.

There is an attempt in the design of the area to address this issue. The public area is ‘U’ shaped. The base of the ‘U’ is the entrance and the court employee area where you file your paperwork or pick it up. The left side of the ‘U’, is reserved for those accused of domestic violence, on the right side of the ‘U’ is the area reserved for those filing the charges. The hearing rooms are off the right side and those filing are ushered in first.

The parties are separated but you realize the source of all of your fear or the source of your anger is only a few feet away from you, just around a corner. I am sure when the final story is told about this weeks events; we will discover Hevener literally turned the corner. 

Perhaps we should spend a little of this grant money on redesigning the area to completely segregate the petitioner and the respondents, give them each their own entrance and room, but if we spent money on this there would be less for lawyers and bureaucrats. As a final jab, I will note the security measures for the hearing officers are more extensive then those for the children present.

The most dangerous people surrounding the Machine are those who believe they have answers. They are the lunatics who develop these systems and then defend them without thought of consequence, change, or improvement.

Besides rebuilding the area, I have a couple of thoughts.

First, no temporary restraining order should be issued by a clerk. I know the bureaucrats claim there is no time and they can not often meet the ten day requirement for a hearing, but this is more the reason for quality. A few minutes visiting with complainant may provide worlds of clarification. In most cases the temporary restraining order will be issued, in some cases a hearing can still be scheduled without a temporary restraining order being issued, and in those rare David Letterman cases, the complainant can be shown the door and spare us all the embarrassment.

Anyone who wishes to defend the system needs to explain to me the urgency of a civil domestic violence case where the rights of a United States Citizen are abridged by issuing even a temporary restraining order without access to a hearing officer or judge. Obviously the Supreme Court agrees with the police that there is a question of credibility. Let me add my own story – the civil domestic violence court awarded Patricia a temporary district court order giving her back the children without knowing State Protective Services had removed the children from Patricia the day before for abuse. 

Second, in addition to allowing a finding of domestic violence, allow the hearing officers to enter a finding of frivolous charges.  Such a finding should prohibit someone from filing a complaint for a certain period of time or without representation. This finding would not prohibit a complaint in a criminal domestic violence case; indeed I believe such a finding should directly point this out.

Third, I continue to advocate for a case management approach to difficult divorces, most likely under the current horrible Guardian Ad Litem system (GAL Article). Provide the Guardians with the support systems necessary to reduce costs and improve quality.

I am really happy with idea one and idea three in addition to rebuilding the area. Idea two merits further thought and discussion.

I realize that we are never going to ask the tough questions. The reports arising out of the accountability of the 2005 renewal of the act are bare statistical. We are not asking the tough questions – Does civil domestic violence courts help or hurt families? Are families protected? How much do the courts add to the cost of divorce?