Source
r/raisedbynarcissists•
grimpaper

Restraining Order - Any experience going to trial?

[Advice]

I looked into a restraining order. Apparently the Ns can contest it and which point it goes to a judge trial. My Ns have plenty of money and will certainly get a legal team and private detectives. I suspect they will bring every extended family member out of the woodwork to state they never saw anything abusive. I suspect GCSibling will also testify to that and there will be perjury.

Trial would be expensive in terms of hiring a lawyer and I think Ns would drag it out to run up the tab since they know they have the financial advantage. I am also afraid of being abused on the stand by them.

Does anyone have experience with trying to get a restraining order when it comes to a trial and you have well-off Ns who are going to fight it non-stupidly?

Posted May 1, 2015, 9:20 PM UTC

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Firefly54•

You might want to try your local domestic violence shelter and your state's victim assistance office. Both should be able to walk you thru the process although it is unlikely they will be able to offer legal assistance. The Domestic Violence shelter may be able offer counseling as well.

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grimpaperOP•

I can afford a lawyer fortunately. It would be painful though -- more than my car is worth. I met with one to find out the above. I can start the claim on my own, but once it goes to trial you really need a lawyer just to handle the court procedures correctly, but especially if the opposition is coming at you with one.

I just want to know what kind of emotional rollercoaster I'm up against and if any problems or therapy I may have had as a child will be dredged up and (successfully) used against me. I want to know how many extended family members will be there to testify against me and how my friends and coworkers may be dragged into this.

I think this is something only others with rich, viscious Ns would really know or understand.

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SeaTurtlesCanFlyGot questions? Use the message the mods link in the sidebar!•

I recently got a restraining order against my stalking n-father. If you dig around in my post history, the whole story is there.

I recommend calling your local police department and asking them if there are any local resources in your area to help you with this. This is what I did and I was pointed towards the YWCA where I was given a ton of free help. There may be something like this in your area.

Where I live, you are more likely to get a restraining order when you have a paper trail. It is important to document all unwanted visits, keep all letters, texts and emails so you can show harassment.

Where I live, I was told to send him a registered letter of no contact. Then, when he was caught on my property, getting him arrested for trespassing was no problem. I then was able to bargain with him to drop the charges IF he would agree to a 2 year restraining order. He is a business owner and reputation is a big deal to him, so he really had little choice but to agree. This is how I got my restraining order anyway. Different localities have different laws, though.

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grimpaperOP•

Thanks for the heads up. I'll go mining some time indeed!

As for the other points:

I asked a lawyer about the letter of no contact but was told that wouldn't help or do anything. I guess my locality is like that.

The police have told me however that my Ns are allowed to come to my door and that is not considered trespassing -- neither is parking on the street in front of my house because it is a "public street." They know I have made it clear that I do not want a relationship. In fact, once we tried to say 'no' to a "gift" they brought up and when the police came, they slipped it to my confused SO. The police were HELPING my abusers FORCE something on me that I tried to reject.

I worry that my paper trail is not enough or not often enough.

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SeaTurtlesCanFlyGot questions? Use the message the mods link in the sidebar!•

Ouch. It sounds like it is harder to catch someone for harassment where you live. That really sucks.

I wonder if r/LegalAdvice might have any advice. You would probably have to tell them vaguely where you live to get pertinent advice, though.

Before you go to r/LegalAdvice, just check this out... It is some wording I used on another comment about posting over there.

A note to our members who have never been to r/legaladvice before. They can be really helpful, but it is important that, when you post, you think about this from the r/legaladvice perspective. Here are some tips...

For example, do not use RBN jargon. Most people on the internet are not going to know what a "n-mom" is, so drop the RBN jargon such as "ACoN," "FLEAS," "e-dad," etc.

r/LegalAdvice has a very different purpose from RBN and a different culture. They want to know the facts of your story, so they can advise you about the possible laws involved. While RBN is very interested in validating your feelings and offering moral support, r/LegalAdvice is not. r/LegalAdvice just wants to know exactly what happened, so they can tell you what laws might be able to help you.

I don't mean to scare anyone off from posting over there. They can be a great help, but we just want to give out some tips on how to have a better experience over there since some of our users just copy/pasted their RBN post into r/legaladvice and that did not go well at all.

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grimpaperOP•

Do they give opinions? I've already talked to a lawyer -- but they didn't want to say yes or no. The lawyer said it's really a matter of what the judge thinks.

I'm a little worried if I give too much information though Ns will find it and use it to get the upperhand in court.

I'll probably make a throwaway to do this. Thanks for the tips.

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Petskin•

Lawyers usually want to avoid giving straightforward advice, that's normal to the breed. The problem with advicing strangers is that the advice/opinion is based on the story told, and only that - which story may or may not reflect the reality. Also, laymen don't usually recognize which bits of information lawyers need, and if important details are missing, the advice/opinion can be very wrong.

If it is about "what the judge thinks" then you'd want to know what exactly the problem point is (and how to make your case stronger in that sense). Is it about evidence missing, the acts themselves maybe not being counted as harassment or what? I would guess that you need to prove you're being harassed, so if you have no other evidence but your own story, the results may not be good. If you have a paper trail of things, photos of bruises, recording of phone calls or a neutral third party as a witness, the relatives' stories would fall rather short.

If you ask in the abovementioned subreddit (or any lawyer), do concentrate on what you can prove, and what you can get evidence of later on. Do state which things are provable facts and which ones are assumptions; some, for example, might be allergic to kitchen psychology diagnoses (even here I've read several stories of narcs having blamed their victims being narcs!) After all, the art of lawyering is all about making predictions of how well (stuff that happened) fits the (description of X in the law), and whether the court would be likely to judge in your favor, they need to know what they have to work with.

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PhantomFairyVenus of the Hard Water Area•

I've been through the court restraining order process OP, happy to share but I'm in England - my experience is the English legal system.

Not sure where you are, but if you want the English experience I'm happy to help x

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