Break the Silence Against Domestic Violence
Statement – 12/2/20
How I Went from Being in Love to Being in Fear.
By Scott Roat
In 2015, I met a woman and thought we were to be soulmates. We dated for a year and half before she ghosted me – the most confusing style of breakup. Because I had made commitments to her, I stuck with her to see if I had promises to keep – I’d told her that I would stick by her, and frankly, I didn’t know if she was going through something, as there was suddenly zero communication.
I wrote her some love letters, as people do who seek clarity and closure, which behavior I find both normal and healthy. After completing a hike on a trail that I’d walked for over 15 years, I went back in to talk to her – I wanted to see if we were still together. I met her just two hundred feet from the parking lot and we walked back to our cars together, where she told me we were broken up. Though I still didn’t know why the change of heart, I knew I didn’t like being treated like that, and unfriended her on social media immediately. That evening she came to a Fire Dept outreach function and I respectfully gave her plenty of berth. She was unafraid, of course.
I am a writer and so I wrote her twice more – I really didn’t understand how we could go from life partners to stone cold like a light switch. At this point I simply wanted some clarification – my letters were normal. She asked me to stop contacting her, and I complied immediately. It was frustrating, but my number one criterion for relationship is that my partner also want to be with me.
She ended up on a trail and her car was not at the mouth of the trail, so I entered unwarily. I showed her this trail I’d walked well over a decade. There were no problems, but when I saw her, I wanted to respect her, and so aborted my own hike in favor of her own, causing me to tromp across a tick-laden field to give her plenty of room. I know I didn’t need to do this, I was being kind. I then wrote her an email which made it into the courts in which I ask, “These are trails that I showed you and that I’ve walked for over a decade. Can we see about working through a resolution, so we don’t feel awkward when we invariably run into each other?”
To my shock, she dragged us into court by filing a temporary restraining order. It did not contain any truth. Rather than fight it, I agreed when she asked by signing a Mutual Stay Away Order that was bilateral – she also would have to stay away from me. I even wrote it.
We live in a small rural area, and she began going where I go and complaining when she would see me there. I was still quite naive at this point. I’d lived here seventeen years at that point to her two years, so I set about to share the space with her, giving her about two thousand feet berth if we chanced upon the same location due to weather, or waiting until she was done, avoiding her as best I could. This only happened once – luckily, I barely ran into her. At first.
Then she planned a trip to Buenos Aires to coincide with dates she knew I would be there, because I’d asked her to go on those dates on numerous occasions. She said she could not travel then. I wasn’t going to go at first, since the breakup, but all my friends know what a world traveler I am, and knew it would be helpful with me moving on with my life after such an enigmatic breakup. Since I had a friend and we’d already made plans to meet there much earlier in the year, I decided to continue on my trip.
This was where I began to realize my ex is crazy – she sought me out there, somehow able to find me in such a large foreign city a hemisphere away. She and her witness later describe finding me, stating boldly that I was chased, my witness added we were battered, and everyone confirms I was followed through the city while on a tour – the sole statement I made, and to which all parties agree, is, “Are you following me?” when she entered group I was with of thirty people. I literally hid in my hotel room after this second run-in.
She brought these incidents back to the US court system and claimed I was obsessed with her. Her father allegedly has a place there and she got a lot of traction with that. She never did prove if her father does have a place there or even if they traveled together; my observation was the single time I’d met him that this father/daughter relationship was so strained, I couldn’t have imagined them going out to dinner together, much less travel internationally.
That marked the beginning of the terror. I wasn’t given a speedy trial and it lasted over a year. She was unable to prove a single claim though she relentlessly cyberstalked me online. I take an awful lot of photos, so she had a selection – by way of example of her tepid claims, she claimed a picture of a motorcycle sitting on its own was about her. Though groundless, it showed she used multiple fake accounts to stalk me even though she was blocked, and even tried to obscure this fact by altering evidence. The courts followed the narrative, not the facts.
As I further and further restricted my movements in my own hometown, she planned her activities to continually go where I was and to complain when she saw me there. The courts listened. She did not say I approached her – rather, she retracted it as soon as she did, and never said I tried to talk to her. Don’t you think if I were obsessed as claimed I’d have done those things? So, her whole complaint to the justice system was that she sometimes had to see me, that’s it: because I walk my dogs, I like Nature, and I sometimes buy groceries, this was not unexpected. I began to suffer what Dr. Karin Huffer coined “Legal Abuse Syndrome.”
The Domestic Violence Hotline helped me to early understand what was going on, that I was being abused, and it helped to center me in my shock phase. I also reached out to our local DV agency and they apologized to me for over a year. Two higher-ups from their main office told me that they knew I was not the “perpetrator,” their word choice, and that sometimes perpetrators get in front of the victim and they end up representing the wrong party – it’s a known problem. I now donate to each agency.
Despite an inability to prove a single allegation, she eventually won a restraining order against me. A mere six days later at six in the morning, she began a phone harassment campaign that started with a maniacal victory laugh, upsetting my girlfriend and I in bed as we were disrupted from our sleep. She was to call a total of eight times, and phone records and screen-captures proved this unambiguously.
My witnesses were intimidated, screamed at in court, called liars – even though they are highly respected members of the Community. One was actually attacked in the courthouse foyer and the intimidation was captured on video, of which we were able to get a copy, to no avail. One of my witnesses was the County Sheriff, whose testimony was obstructed by the judge, even though he attended by phone. A County Supervisor’s wife was harassed twice, once being followed from a market where my ex apparently screamed at her, fists raised, spittle flying; the woman thought she would be hit and, though suffering from panic attacks for six weeks, she still screwed up enough courage to testify about the assault. A local “resiliency” leader was cornered by my ex who sought to disparage me – my reputation turns out to be stellar, so she wasn’t buying it; this woman describes my ex as being unable to control her emotions.
Friends and colleagues were now being attacked, she’d attacked me with her car, run stop signs to disrupt my travel, began giving me the finger, still went to where I went, and generally made my peaceful day-to-day one that could be thrown into dysregulated drama at any time. Despite approaching me numerous times on the beach and intimidating me, she claimed to somehow be afraid; ironically, I am disabled and had a very elderly dog – there was nothing to do but turn my back, exposing my vulnerability. I was a sitting duck and simply could not get away.
One day, she lay in wait for me on the beach and charged at me, screaming and cussing. I turned my back in fear and she ran right up to me, not touching me. This was the final straw and I reluctantly sought my own protective order. Though I could not prove it, to my surprise, she brought in video evidence of the event, proving my claim for me, showing she lay in wait, even contradicting her own statement, twice. Unbelievably brazen behavior that the courts ignored.
The judge, a new one this time, cited instead that when I’d entered a restaurant on a New Year’s Day when everyone in town was out, that I was responsible for her being there. There were no restraining orders in either direction. My ex described her own fixated behavior as she took photos of me by holding her camera backwards over her shoulder. The photo she presented showed me a) not sitting behind her as she’d claimed and b) not looking at her. Fact is, I never even knew she was there, never saw her, but her witness said she’d emitted a small gasp when she first saw me. Apparently that was enough.
Another order was issued and I do not know how to restrict myself further. It’s been the most untenable situation trying to avoid a woman that I would have been happily done with mid 2016. Most of 2020 has been uneventful, for which I am extremely grateful, as no longer being stalked has prompted some real recovery – I hate to say it, but COVID has been good for something!
However, she has still this year lain in ambush for me and has successfully made it impossible for me to visit my girlfriend at her place – so it has stressed my current relationship, and I have to be ever vigilant and on guard. The energetics of it are gone – I am no longer shaking in my boots, but the logistics are still a major concern – she literally does not have to prove a single claim, and can willy-nilly lie under oath, and it’s not a problem. Practically, I cannot even get away – she is a marathon runner, weighs more than I do, cannot control her emotions, and seems to be “gunning” for me. I remain afraid.
My ex is going to successfully tie me into her narrative of lies for seven and a half years – nine, if you count the relationship itself. The only thing I did was write love letters and ask her if we were still together – both actions I still find honorable. In all cases, I have tried to be more than respectful and willingly mitigate her concerns, even though I think they are childish, unrealistic, and abusive. I only have a few places I can go and feel safe, and engaging Nature with my dogs is no longer one of them. This is hands-down the most unnerving thing I have ever been through. I am a survivor.
I make this statement available to Break the Silence Against Domestic Violence. Copyright permission is given and they may use the story in whole or in part, in digital or analog, and in any manner they see fit. However, I do not hand over the story or the words in any capacity that will obviate my own future use, and reserve the right to use it to tell my own story in any way I see fit. I hope this helps another survivor deal with their own trauma and perhaps recover more quickly – I too believe that survivors’ stories need to be told.
