Month: September 2019

Categories
Domestic Violence False Allegations

Do False Allegations Represent a Form of Domestic Violence? A Delaware Judge Said ‘Yes.’

Ten years ago my marriage began to dissolve. My ex-wife soon discovered the “magic bullet” that would assure custody of our children. Her determination to “win at all costs” came very close to destroying my life.

From 2009 to 2012, I was subjected to five protection orders and nine arrests, resulting in a total of 21 criminal charges. Each and every one of those criminal charges eventually would be expunged from my record.

This onslaught of false accusations resulted in reliance on public transportation, homelessness, a Court-ordered GPS ankle bracelet, parental alienation, and incarceration. As a “victim” of domestic violence, she was entitled to receive free legal representation, rental assistance, and free furniture – all compliments of programs funded by the Violence Against Women Act. As a result, she was able to acquire de facto control over the course of the divorce and custody proceedings.

That wasn’t enough.

She then decided it was time for the Grand Finale, the proverbial “kill shot.” She scrawled these words on her body: “Bitch, I will kill you.” She added my initials, as if I were signing off on a calling card. She then used a sharp device to inflict scratch marks on her body.

She then drove to a side road, stripped to her underwear, and lay on the side of the road feigning a horrific attack. When the police and paramedics arrived, she told them that I and an accomplice had forced her off the road, beaten her, and attempted to rape her. An all-points-bulletin was issued to track me down, the evil man who had horrendously attacked his ex-wife.

But unbeknownst to her, the court had ordered me to wear a GPS ankle bracelet. The police soon located me at the Texas Roadhouse restaurant in Camden, Delaware. The officer ripped me from my vehicle, with another officer pointing his weapon at my center mass. I was handcuffed and transported to a holding cell at the Delaware State Police Troop 3.

Once detectives determined that I was nowhere in the vicinity of the staged attack, I was released. Four days later she was arrested.

She had intended for me to go away for a long time. Had I not been strapped with the GPS device, I would have been charged with horrific crimes and possibly forced to accept a “guilty” plea deal.

I subsequently filed for a Protection from Abuse (PFA) order based on the abuse that I had been subjected to from the false allegations I endured. This is the provision from the Delaware State Code tit. 10, § § 901, 1041 that defines an act of domestic violence: “engaging in a pattern of alarming or distressing conduct in a way likely to cause fear, emotional distress, or provoke a violent or disorderly response…unlawful imprisonment, kidnapping, interference with custody, or coercion; or any other conduct that a reasonable person under the circumstances would find threatening or harmful.”

My experiences of being falsely accused and arrested obviously fell within this definition, and the judge determined these acts did constitute acts of domestic violence. A Protection from Abuse order was granted against my ex-wife, including a no-contact order.

To my knowledge, this PFA against my ex-wife established a precedent in the State of Delaware. I was designated a victim of domestic violence based upon the false allegations that I had been subjected to for three years.

My ex-wife was arrested on September 1, 2012 and charged with several counts of false police reports and lying to the police. This was a defining moment, the day my life would begin to change. I was finally vindicated and exonerated.

If you have gone through, or are currently going through the nightmare of false allegations, I hope you might find my experience to be a source of insight and inspiration, to know you can come out on top of this kind of rampant injustice.

 

Additional information about my experiences:

Categories
Believe the Victim Trauma Informed

Highlights of New Special Report on the Neurobiology of Trauma

Recently the Association of Title IX Administrators (ATIXA) published a Position Paper on “Trauma-Informed Training and Neurobiology of Trauma” that sharply criticizes the assumptions, precepts, and methods of trauma-informed proponents. Now, the Center for Prosecutor Integrity has published a separate report that takes a deep-dive into the science behind trauma-informed theory, as expounded in a bulletin written by End Violence Against Women International titled, “Understanding the Neurobiology of Trauma and Implications for Interviewing Victims.”

Following are highlights from the CPI report titled, “A Review of ‘Understanding the Neurobiology of Trauma and Implications for Interviewing Victims:’ Are We Trading One Prejudice for Another?“, researched and written by behavioral neuroscientists Sujeeta Bhatt, PhD and Susan Brandon, PhD. A large part of their review, which contains 250 citations from the scientific literature, documents the “Over-Simplification and Errors in Descriptions of Brain Processes” of the EVAWI report:

  • “The impacts of trauma on memories and recall are widely variable. The stress accompanying and resulting from trauma may produce strong memories (McGaugh, 2000; McGaugh and Roozendaal, 2002), impair memories (Salehi, Cordero, and Sandi, 2010), have no effect on memories (Shermohammed, Davidow, Somerville, and Murty, 2019), or increase the possibility of false memories.” (p. 5)
  • “The  [EVAWI] authors describe one of the roles of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) as being to integrate “memory data into narrative ‘stories’ (p. 9);” however, recent research shows that the neural networks involved in narrative formation are currently unknown.” (p. 5)
  • “The description of ‘attachment circuitry,’ defined as that “which allows us to connect emotionally with other human beings,”  does not appear to be based on current findings.” (p. 6)
  • “The authors incorrectly name and describe “habitual behaviors” demonstrated by sexual assault victims.” (p. 7)

Bhatt and Brandon caution that an “undue emphasis on brain science increases the likelihood of hindering an investigation”  because it can promote confirmation bias and undue stereotypes, and create a false information effect (pp. 7-9) More fundamentally, the authors argue that criminal investigators do not need to use special interview methods with purported trauma victims:

“Examination of studies across these domains did not reveal any evidence to support the notion that victims of potentially traumatic events require interview methods that are different from those that have been shown to be most effective for accounts of events that are presumably not traumatic. In fact, one of the most robust – and most studied – methods of interviewing victims and witnesses, the Cognitive Interview, was constructed specifically for such interviews, as part of a request to the academic and scientific community by the U.S. Department of Justice to construct an interview protocol that was different from the accusatorial protocols common to American police departments (Kelly and Meissner, 2015; Meissner, et al., 2014). Previous reviews of interview protocols purported to be especially useful to trauma victims (e.g., the Forensic Experiential Trauma Interview; Meissner, 2014) also have failed to support the assertion that memory processes (encoding, consolidation, or recall) are so unique in instances of trauma that special protocols are necessary or even useful.” (p. 9)

Bhatt and Brandon conclude their analysis with this stunning critique:

“Unfortunately, the neurobiology of trauma information provided in the Wilson et al. (2019) bulletin does not contribute in any meaningful way to justify the need for trauma-informed interviewing methods….research has indicated that resilience, use of psychopharmacologic substances (e.g., drugs, alcohol), and frequency and type of trauma all affect the subjective experience of trauma, however, none of these mitigating factors are described in the Wilson et al. (2019) bulletin.

“The meaning of our current understanding of the brain, as described above, for investigations of assault is difficult to ascertain because the impacts of traumatic experiences on memories and recall are variable, as noted. This means that an investigator who makes assumptions about the status of an alleged victim risks biasing the investigation in ways that increase the likelihood that either the innocent will be found guilty or the guilty will go free.

“In fact, assertions about brain processes in instances of trauma run the risk of leading an investigator to assume that he or she knows how the case should proceed, what the victim feels, or what should happen with respect to the suspect.” (p. 10)

In short, “Over-generalizations and assertions in the bulletin that cannot be supported by current science make some of these descriptions problematic for the intended audience(s)” (p. 5), and “As written, the bulletin does not provide sufficient evidence to support conclusions reached on the basis of the anecdotes” (p. 3).