Codifying Abuse
Use of our legal system for abuse is an open secret; where is the care?
“Lawyer fucked me” - Shawshank Redemption
The failure of the King County Washington Prosecutor to prosecute rapes is a factor in law enforcement not bothering to investigate them in the first place. Neither department is doing its job, allowing abusers to win and leaving plenty of broken stairs for all of us to fall down.
My old lawyer is a great guy and was holding them accountable. He couldn’t keep me on due to workload, and I couldn’t afford to pay him anymore anyway, but he’s doing the lord’s work on behalf of the women who were sexually assaulted and trafficked by a small-time Seattle rapper. I don’t even remember and didn’t recognize his name.
Nobody seems to want to touch what happens in the family, namely marital rape and child abuse, unless/until it is severe. My dissolution lawyer said so. Their half-assed attitude makes targets of this sort of abuse less safe. It tips our hand and offers no help, and then the abuse escalates. Thanks.
Nobody suffering abuse should have to wade through a mountain of red tape to make themselves or their children safe. I’m still not through the motherfucker, and I think I hear a Yeti.
The journalist who broke the rapper story never responded to me when I wrote regarding the similarities. I live in a suburb of Seattle, our police department uses the same prosecutors. Imagine a pattern.
Covert abuse isn’t sexy enough when the motto is, “if it bleeds, it leads.” Emotional pain is harder to monetize, I suppose.
In my case, he was never even asked for a sworn statement, and I am referred to as “Jessica” (never my name) throughout the police report. The forensics officer admonished me for writing texts that were too long (my evidence). They really should just fire their advocate and give you a swift kick in the ass when you walk in. It would save time.
The 2-3 aggravated rapes (I was asleep, also using medical cannabis) and aggravated indecent liberties (I woke up in time and dumped his ass on the spot, even the older kids remember) were rolled into one crime that in no way resembled what was reported. Hilarity ensued.
We are not allowed to “press charges.” It was spun as not allowing a target of abuse to dismiss what the officers observed (like a handprint on my face) under duress. The prosecutor rejected the charge because it did not meet the criteria for the (lesser) crime it was classified as and because “it was too hard to prove” despite written admissions via Facebook messenger, his lies (he claimed it was our anniversary, which was still 2 weeks away, these guys are not Columbo or Kojak) given an ongoing contentious divorce with custody.
I explained pretty clearly my concern with leaving three special needs children to live with a sleep rapist every other week. The first and only thing I learned in the stupid court-mandated parenting class was that a convicted sex offender was not eligible for custody of children.
Best of fucking luck getting that conviction.
I am beginning to believe “contentious divorce” is code for “abuse we’re gonna ignore”
There is no statute of limitations; it’s never too late to kick it back and demand what passes for an investigation. People were told at the time contact information was given. Who the fuck is Jessica?
Look what has progressed since.
How do I even “report” covert abuse? I’ve spoken to every agency and been contacted by almost none of their referrals, and small things like where I can fucking live and if I can afford rent continue to be dictated by our abuser, whom none of us will see. After three years of separation plus three years of divorce, after taking everything materially, I had to give? Which fucking box do I check to make it end, please?
The best part is that the DV advocate, who works in their office, understands the problem. I swear I’m not just talking directly out of my ass about how broken this is because it happened to me. My story is not REMOTELY unique. They are everywhere. I’m just saying it louder for those in back.
Shit is fucked up.
Why is it so hard to fix? When it comes to child custody, it is their responsibility to do better, not shrug and wait for the worst to happen. I didn’t accept it for myself at 15, and our children don’t accept it. There’s no reason to ask why; it’s all a matter of public record now. Nobody CARES, which is fair for the population at large, but some people are paid to give a fuck. It’s like being punished (again) for marrying a jackass. I’ve sworn off marriage, I hate your system, what is the path OUT, please?
Be wary of the one crying loudest about being the victim, or persecuted (I told you this guy was just like Trump, raised liberal though, relatively pampered, the youngest).
Refer back to that drama triangle thing. That’s why going grey (ignoring) this type works. You don’t feed into their shit. Except sometimes, legally, you must.
It is the trick of the abuser to make things as complicated as possible, so authorities assume you are bitter over divorce and pulling some shit with custody. They project their shit on you first with a smear campaign and everyone acts like they’ve never seen the oldest damn legal tactics in the book.
Move: I asked for a Guardian ad litem.
Counter Move: Ex falsely claims financial hardship [before busting out a $50k trust fund used in abusive litigation every other week, summer 2020 shortly after. He told people he had to pay it back, but it had restrictions to be used only for his own legal fees, which is weird for a loan, so I doubt it. The point is he lied, then my lawyer wondered if he had won the lottery with all of his filings.
Move: I addressed the crimes in my strict response to 400 pages of rambling nonsense I had 3 days (I did not sleep and had to be told how to attach a file to an email) to respond to. I went over the length, the legal assistant fudged the font size, my attorney argued it was urgent and relevant. We fucked up.
Counter Move (I’ve been held to more bs technicalities than anyone I’ve met, ffs): Stricken in full
Move: The commissioner said on record, something like, “X obviously has done something to [me],” and ordered Family Court Services (free) to investigate the children’s special needs and domestic abuse.
Counter Move: Assisted by COVID, they dragged dates out, filing for extensions, making the dissolution last 18 months, after 18 months of separation. Each time they did, the investigation was postponed. When we mediated, they had not even spoken to our children, and ended the ordered investigation.
In the end, I responded and they did not. I have a piece of paper that said they would be acting only on my information, which means exactly nothing. That did not stop them from floating their “submission” which was never sent to FCS and the same bullshit I expected, something like:
Suddenly, after 10 years as a competent and nurturing stay-at-home parent with children who were thriving before this nonsense, I rejected being raped and suddenly became unfit and a degenerate because DJ.
Weird.
In Washington, we are mandated to try mediation first, unless domestic abuse or another reason is noted. Imagine someone noticing a judge ordering a DV investigation?! The mediator is not a judge, and there is no accountability for things that would otherwise be considered, like refusing to pay expenses as ordered or taking home under duress without payment, lying to CPS, and abusive litigation (in front of commissioners until then). We have to agree. He would not budge on 50/50 custody and would not stop until he had my Honda Fit, intended for my oldest daughter.
In the course of researching patterns of escalating covert abuse, I learned he “claimed” that car on our first date. It was brand new and dented by my ass in sexual assault I mistook for “passion.” Once I realized that, nobody in my family wanted anything to do with it. I got her a little used Yaris instead.
I was [cheap Airbnb] homeless, paying a nanny more than I earned (every other week; I made $50k) for childcare with no spousal support, no child-support or shared childcare expenses, and mounting legal fees. I was already in debt to that attorney and could not afford the $50k retainer or $100k anticipated expense of a trial that might lead to accountability. I couldn’t afford it.
I was so obviously maneuvered into that position it’s a little embarrassing. People pleasers take note. You can avoid a snare if you recognize the trap. I was traumatized, exhausted, and naive.
In hindsight, I would have probably been better off trying to forge forward, but I would have probably lost my job. His cunt shady-ass attorney is noteworthy for raising retainers for divorce in Seattle to $100k. I’m all for fleecing some tech brats, but our ONLY asset was MY home. Ex was strictly debt; that’s where my retirement and most of the small refi/quitclaim meant to “establish me” went. I saw less than $50k from my own sole asset and he started hounding me for a loan he then refused to pay back.
I was not trying to bury him financially AND I HAVE OVARIES. Abuse is not gender specific. He was not playing nearly the same sport. He outspent me 4.33x in legal fees before mediation started and she signed off his case a couple months ago. I paid my own legal expenses. He got $7,500 (he asked for twice that) ordered from me in contempt (he’s withholding children’s expenses for it, which I doubt is strictly allowed either) for letting our children attend their district-assigned boundary schools, citing I allowed my son to be promoted from middle to high school (on time, to the expected school).
Not their refusal to return or the bullshit parental alienation claims that didn’t work for Woody Allen either. Nothing he filed about was found, but he started throwing irrelevant things on. I couldn’t afford the legal fees to fight it.
As it turns out, the lawyer I once allowed to bully me was a one-trick pony. In this past year I could predict her actions and forewarn my counsel.
In a tiny way, it feels like dodging bullets doing bendy shit in the matrix.
She said I was a force of nature and unpredictable.
I took that as a fucking compliment, lol.
Except she said it to law enforcement before they met me, so it was meant to put me in danger. FULL service attorney. Fortunately, I’m fairly non-threatening and knowing none of this first commented on all the fun play equipment in the gym.
I think she took advantage of someone unwell to the detriment of our children despite claiming to be licensed as a guardian ad litem, and is on record defaming me to law enforcement and CPS; and can suck a bag of used dicks while awaiting my formal complaint, now that she is off our case.
I LOVE telling people all about her, lol. Can they make her name a wing of her palace after my children, who could have gone to college for what she earned in abusive litigation?
Don’t assume someone complaining about legal fees isn’t the cause of them. It’s fucking expensive to be petty, find another damn outlet. I was compliant, for fuck’s sake, not wanting to complicate things for our children.
And not yet recognizing the ongoing covert abuse. He’d gotten away with rape, after all. Covert abuse was not written into our domestic abuse laws until last July, but judges already had a whole-ass Appendix [H] about it in their manual when I began researching for my first protection order request in May. I was also denied one during temporary orders in dissolution and after reporting the crimes.
My cooperation ended when he withheld our children and filed for divorce (not custody).
My goodwill ends when right about where fucking with my children begins. I’ll turn my cheeks, not theirs. My quarantine was with a paratrooper that looked a little like The Rock, on a small goat and alpaca farm. As pandemics go, I was living my best fucking life. I came to my senses when it complicated custody in temporary orders, but not before learning to show no mercy. Thanks Universe!
I tried and failed three times to get a protection order because they did not consider it an emergency. Everything I read, including county and state resources, told me that while they were in his care half-time, anything I did to poke the bear made them less safe. I had observed it after the couple of times I had lashed back out at him (not too bad; we use a parenting app). Once you know you have a shark, don’t treat it like a tadpole. One commissioner even suggested I was mistaking neglect and abuse for differences in parenting choices. She was going to offer me a follow-up trial with notification, and I declined, stating on record my children were not safe.
The last at least explained the emergency bit and urged me to revise my parenting plan. Somehow, authorities don’t “believe” you when you are forthright, and I guess they expect “real” targets of abuse to be more hysterical or something? I want the nonsense to end. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Not having one (and the emergency bit) seemed less concerning with the children physically with me; then he started grabbing them from school. I have blown through a lawyer and retirement (awarded to me in divorce for my tour of abuse, fuck that attachment) and made no real progress, because of the contempt and order to restrict abusive litigation could have prevented.
Ridout is the case law of the land here for child refusal. The case addresses neither abuse nor children with autism. It’s like speaking a different language trying to get the legal system to notice this can’t possibly fit every circumstance.
What a cautious (but not in favor of the children) commissioner said, encouraged the forced visits of children who left abuse and neglect because we hadn’t gotten to that yet, we were working on his bs contempt. Property rights to the children, more than anything else. What in the actual fuck?
At what point will the children's best interests be considered? One is about to turn 16, and none have seen their father in almost a year, and not willingly for years. There were some hostile lawyer-mandated forced visits, then he basically kidnapped them all from school and drove them around 5 hours while coordinating with someone via text and not telling them where they were going or what was going on. His 50% custody on our parenting plan because I can’t get shit done gives him the legal right to do this.
He tried to physically force my son, barely 100 lbs, back into his car, and the kids held a sit-in on an AM/PM floor for 45 minutes while I drove to pick them up as he walked in and out of the door setting the alarm off the whole time and my youngest popping up to see if it was me; sadistic fuck. Her therapist was surprised the clerk didn’t call the police.
Karma wins the day, I drove out of there with the kids like a bat out of hell, but I guess I needn’t have bothered, as his battery died. Good work, old Fit!
It’s like a playbook. If I can figure it out with zero days of law school, a judge could; they even have a manual about it, the prosecutor does too, and they are lauded nationwide for their documented policy on domestic abuse (zero stars from me on execution). Police know because there are damn laws written about it. They are too busy busting shoplifting rings for Target. Nobody tasked with doing so strictly CARES we are falling down all these stairs or that children are being left in the care of abusers.
I had no clue how unbalanced the law was until I encountered it. Maybe others haven’t seen this perspective. I knew about the excessive incarcerations disproportionately impacting black men and the obvious economic impact. Here, child support is reduced to $10 a month if someone is in prison, further encouraging women to stay silent. Further, my ex is a librarian for our library system and would surely lose his job anyway. That kept me quiet for too long as he was the “breadwinner”, then I reported it “too late” to be credible).
Family court, and probably the others, are tying the poor up in legal fees that also deny fair access and outcomes. A kid on the payroll at work who makes $10 an hour more than I do, which is modest (I just started), pays more child support for one child than my ex is paying for three while earning six figures + generous side income. It guarantees a decent, hardworking kid meets his financial obligations to his child and will stay in poverty for 18 years. Meanwhile, I can confirm we have been broke af for the last six years when there is plenty of income. I’m as pissed off for this kid (who I would never tell about this) as I am for the opportunities I can’t offer my own, either. I had my income imputed at tech wages (I never earned a decade earlier) and was forced to pay child support from my PUA of $127 a week. Fair’s fair, right?
All of this was accomplished by an attorney who was paid at least $200k. I was assured the courts would notice the disparity in power; they did not care. I had to file a poverty thing to file for custody for free, and it’s taken three years to get support revised with court orders allowing it in 1 (I did not agree to indefinite in mediation). It seems like something they should notice.
From what I read, they are supposed to flag DV cases to prevent railroaded mediations and skirting evaluations, but that’s how it went down for our family. I tried to assume the best: that it was Covid, but if that were the case, SOMEONE should have acted on the many requests I have made for help. They simply do not care.
Money is power. Justice is not blind; it is greedy. The law is for those who can afford it. Humanity should worry less about AI becoming aware and more about maintaining our own humanity; otherwise, what’s the difference? Could something trying to learn and adapt really do worse than we have by refusing?
How is Lifetime not knocking my door down yet?