HOW TO HANDLE FALSE ALLEGATIONS - PART 2

LINK to online version

To review, this is a series of columns in which I am addressing how to handle false accusations of domestic violence (or worse), especially if you are a husband and/or father.

In Part 1, I laid out the “pit” I found myself in in May 2018 and how false accusations led to the loss of my minor children for five years.

I ended that first column by urging the reader to not leave your interests to your lawyer and to at least get a fundamental understanding of legal procedural basics.

There’s a lot to know, but the most important procedural thing to know is this: Motion-Opposition-Reply.

After the legal proceeding is initiated by a complaint or petition, there will usually be a number of motions. A motion is when a party moves the court to do something. The important thing to know is that you have a right to either oppose the motion or reply to the other party’s opposition to your motion. Not knowing this is what cost me my children and five tragic, damaging, and expensive years.

In my case, I had moved the court for custody of my children. The other party opposed my motion on grounds that I had sexually abused my children and supported her opposition with declarations from two of my adult daughters.

My then-attorney failed to file a reply which left the court no option but to assume the allegations were true and deny my motion for custody. But that was only the beginning of the damage because those unanswered allegations became headlines in May 2018 when for a full week I was smeared in the local media as a wife-beater and a molester of my own children.

Had my attorney filed a reply, I could have presented evidence disproving the allegations, and, while the press may have still done the story, at least my side, and maybe even a court decision in my favor, would have been in the record. Years of damage might have been avoided.

The problem was that at the time I didn’t know that I could have filed a reply because I completely trusted my attorney who not only failed to file a reply but chose not to inform me of her decision not to file.

Two months after the fact, and after being destroyed in the media, an attorney friend asked me if I filed a reply. I didn’t even know what that was. He told me. I called my attorney to inquire. Let’s just say I ended up firing that attorney and got my retainer back.

Bottom line is you must know your rights in court. That’s why it’s called a “justice system.” You always have a right to respond. True, there was no guarantee that the court would have ruled in my favor had I replied, but at least my reply would have been in the record.

The foregoing is critical because at the beginning of a case there is likely to be a flurry of false allegations - just mud up against the wall - in an attempt to overwhelm you and make you throw in your bloodied towel. So remember: Motion-Opposition-Reply.

Just to be clear, this isn’t legal advice. Just my experience. So going on.

The next thing to know is never - I repeat - never speak to the other party once legal action is initiated - or even once it looks like legal action is coming. Keep everything in writing, preferably email as email is easier to authenticate than texts or even physical writings.

However, if you must communicate orally, record your communications. It doesn’t have to be a secret recording. You are in a legal battle at this point and it should be understood that “everything you say can or will be held against you in a court of law.” So record, record, record.

The next thing is to gather, gather, gather. Search everywhere for anything and everything written: cards, letters, notes, emails, texts, messages, everything. You are going to need to prove - if the allegations are false - that not only was there no evidence of what you are being accused of, but that prior to your breakup, you had  mostly normal and even loving relationships with your now-accusers, and written communications are the best evidence.

Now, before I go on to the next step, there is something you should already be doing: take care of yourself, especially physically. You’re going to need your health - every bit of it.

See you next time.

Tim Rohr has resided in Guam since 1987. He has raised a family of 11 children, owned several businesses, and is active in local issues via his blog, JungleWatch.info, letters to local publications, and occasional public appearances. He may be contacted at timrohr.guam@gmail.com 

HOW TO HANDLE FALSE ALLEGATIONS - PART 1

LINK to online version

On Father’s Day 2014, this paper ran a feature titled “The Ultimate Father.” The article was subtitled: “Tim Rohr knows the definition of the word ‘father’ very well. He is the father of 11 children.” The article featured a big picture of my wife and I with our 11 children.

Four years later, in May 2018, I was smeared for an entire week in local headlines as a wife beater and a sexual molester of my own children.

The allegations were false, and according to credible estimates, such allegations against men in particular are false 55% of the time. But I couldn’t rely on estimates. I had to prove those allegations false or lose everything.

So how does a husband and a father defend himself against those kinds of allegations coming from his own family? And just as important, how does a man, a husband and father, recover from the angst and despair wrought by such a malignant situation?

I’ve been hesitant over the years to share any of my personal story relative to this drama for two reasons: 1) I didn’t (and still don’t) want to hurt any of my children by dragging any of this into the present; and 2) I wanted (and still want) to leave my door open for reconciliation. So other than the foregoing, I will be reserved about further details.

However, because my aim in this series of columns is to give some hope to other husbands and fathers (and even wives and mothers), who may find themselves in similarly desperate straits, it is necessary to describe the “pit” I found myself in in 2018 so I can share how I clawed my way out of it, and how, if you find yourself in the same pit, you can too.

Why and how those things happened to me at that time is not unrelated to my role in exposing the largest clergy sex abuse conspiracy and scandal per capita in the whole Catholic world. In order for the “bad guys” to “save Apuron,” it was critical that I be “taken out” before Apuron was taken down.

But I digress. I’ll get to that story another time.

So back to the point: what to do if you find yourself falsely accused of abuse by your spouse or even your children - and I should add: formally accused in a legal proceeding.

I suppose there is no shortcut through the grief, so the first thing to do is to just suffer it. Your grief will probably go through the well-known Kubler-Ross pattern of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

You don’t have to get to “acceptance” before taking the next step though. In fact, this pattern of grief can repeat many times. And there is never any predicting when that “jab of red-hot memory” - as C.S. Lewis described it - is going to erupt out of your heart and into your throat. So just accept it. Cry as much as you need.

Ultimately, though, especially if you find yourself in court, you must get your wits about you because it is very likely if you have been thus accused - falsely accused - that your accuser is hoping you will break before you can turn the tables. The idea is to accuse you of violence to make you react violently so your accuser can say “See, Your Honor. There he goes again!”

The next thing to do is get an attorney, especially if the other party has already initiated legal action. Due to court rules which set out timelines, you will need to immediately file whatever you need to file to initially protect yourself.

However, and this is a big “however,” do not - I repeat - do not leave it to your attorney to see to your interests. You must - I repeat - you must educate yourself as if you are your own attorney, at least on the procedural basics.

The failure of one of my attorneys (I had six - not including myself) to file a reply to the most damning of the allegations left the court no option but to take my children away from me - a situation that persisted for five terrible years and caused untold damage to those children.

The problem was that I didn’t even know - at the time - that I could have replied, and that had I replied, I might have put a quick end to that traumatic mess. But because I left my interests to “the professionals,” I lost my children.

More next time.

Note: For the readers of this blog, I share more details and resources at a link in the side bar: "Keep Breathing."

Tim Rohr has resided in Guam since 1987. He has raised a family of 11 children, owned several businesses, and is active in local issues via his blog, JungleWatch.info, letters to local publications, and occasional public appearances. He may be contacted at timrohr.guam@gmail.com    

GOOD NIGHT JIMMY BUFFET

By Tim Rohr

So, a bit ago, via FB, I learned of the death of Jimmy “Margaritaville” Buffet. 

I wasn’t necessarily a fan when he was big, mostly because I was living in the same Caribbean he was singing about at the time, and there was little access to any media other than what local stations were playing which was mostly reggae, soca, and calypso (and not Jimmy Buffet). 

Buffet’s music played to a mostly imprisoned, citified youth who could only fantasize about the Margaritaville I was living in during the early 1980’s. And it was a real Margaritaville…except of course that in the Caribbean islands I lived in, very few drank Margaritas…or even knew what they were. 

The drink of choice was “rum and coke,” or “rum and orange,” or “rum and anything,” or sometimes just rum, since at 99cents a fifth (in those days) the rum was cheaper than anything you could add to it. 

So economics prevailed and margaritas never competed with Cruzan Rum (made in St. Croix, Virgin Islands only a bike ride away from my home in those days). 

Someday (I promise) I will write a book - or at least an extended blog post - about those heady, youthful days in St. Croix when rum was cheaper than water or cheese.

But, for the purposes of this short post, I want to recall the night I spent “in Margaritaville.” 

It was many years after I had lived and left St. Croix, moved to Guam, married, and raised a family of 11 children.

It was August, 2018. 

I had spent nearly 48 hours flying to the other side of this planet to “visit” my two youngest children who had been functionally abducted from Guam a year earlier and relocated to St. Croix, Virgin Islands. It wasn’t a court-ordered visit, but it was close to it. Attorneys were involved and I was permitted two 90 minute SUPERVISED visits over the course of a couple days. 

It was a really terrible time. (The police were called on me three times - another story.)

To get to St. Croix, I flew from Guam to Japan to Newark to Puerto Rico, where I arrived about 9pm where I would have to overnight in the PR airport until 11am the next morning to catch the 20 minute puddle-jumper to St. Croix. 

It was a familiar route to me, even though the last time I had taken such a route was nearly 40 years earlier when I first relocated to St. Croix in 1981 to teach at a local high school. 

The PR airport, at 9pm, or at least the terminal I was in, was deserted, hard, and cold. There was not a piece of carpet to lie on; and the hard, cold, ancient linoleum-tiled floor was freezing. I was in terminal B. And at the entrance to terminal B was a restaurant with the emblazoned name “Margaritaville.” 

It was closed. 

I lay on the cold linoleum floor with my head on one bag and my feet on another. I had the presence of mind to wear a suit jacket on this trip, not because I wanted to wear a suit jacket, but because it had lots of pockets for things like passports and such. 

I thrust the suit jacket over me and thought of my beloved youngest children who I hadn’t seen in over a year as I stared at the word “Margaritaville” and watched the biggest rats I had seen since I last lived in the Caribbean scurrying about Margaritaville helping themselves to whatever last night’s patrons had left on the floor. 

It was a long cold night. A very long cold night. I made it to St. Croix the next day and saw my children.

But it would be 5 more years of many more cold nights before at least one of them could be mine again. 

Good night Jimmy Buffet. Thanks for keeping me company in Puerto Rico. If for only that one good deed, I pray you make it to heaven and aren’t “wasting away” somewhere else. 

Thanks,

Your Friend, Tim

As a P.S., the following is from a story on Breitbart:

The song (Margaritaville) soon inspired restaurants and resorts, turning Buffett’s alleged desire for the simplicity of island life into a multimillion brand. He landed at No. 13 in Forbes’ America’s Richest Celebrities in 2016 with a net worth of $550 million.

Of course, those of us who live the "island life," really, know that there is nothing "simple" about it at all and that it is in fact notoriously complicated. Yet...those of us who live here...choose it...for reasons that don't make sense...even to us sometimes. And that's just fine.