#MeToo Backlash: D.A.R.V.O. Lawsuit Defense & Recovery Fund

Thank you for stopping in.

This is admittedly lengthy, but what I have to talk about has taken up six years of my life. I think I get to ask for a few minutes of people's time.

THANK YOU to everyone who has donated so far — I can't tell you what it's meant. Thank you so very much again.

It is well known that abuse thrives in silence, but no one seems to say the second part: that silence is rewarded. While breaking that silence is met with further abuse.

In 2019, I received a set of serious and credible allegations about a systematic pattern of sexual misconduct against young women, by a fellow member of the local theater community. I believed the allegations, I absolutely still do, and I carried them forward as the allegiant requested, and as several people close to the situation advised, including a rep from our local organization serving survivors of domestic and intimate partner violence. The man at the center of the allegations inexplicably sued me for defamation. 

These D.A.R.V.O. lawsuits (Defend, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender — a tactic used by narcissists, abusers, and predators) are on the rise, as a direct backlash to the #MeToo movement.

Let me be clear:

I didn’t ask for these allegations to be handed to me, I did not make any decisions about how to handle the allegations without consulting others, the allegations had no direct connection with me whatsoever, I never made a direct accusation, and yet here I am. I was a messenger — a concerned adult who was informed about an alleged pattern of sexual misconduct against young women in my community — and as the messenger, I have taken a huge bullet that's ripped through my life for six years and counting, all for responding completely appropriately.

So what has that bullet actually looked like?

I have always worked with kids, and I’ve always worked in the arts, severely undervalued fields, which means that I was already fairly low income, in an increasingly dreadful economy. Suddenly, someone making less than twenty dollars an hour needed to pay a lawyer hundreds per hour, on top of trying to make ends meet. A high level of financial need does not create a high-paying job, so this has meant that I have had to work multiple jobs, without rest, for years on end, including through a pandemic, to pay an attorney out of pocket. I had no other path available to me — lawyers who work pro bono are nearly impossible to find, and lawyers who work pro bono for this issue apparently don't yet exist. So I simply had to hyper-overwork for years. I don’t mean that I merely had a second or third job — I’ve had up to six at a time. Six. There were periods of time I have spent working literally 24 hours a day — I would be teaching during the day, I would go straight to a bartending shift at night, and then return not home, but to a pet-sitting job. And this, coupled with the extreme and multi-layered stress of the lawsuit itself, has gone on for six years. 

That’s not just an unfortunate set of circumstances on paper — it's a catastrophe that's lived in my body. People seem to think that this has been an inconvenience — no, it has been an IMPOSSIBILITY. It’s not that I’ve had to forgo vacations and other luxuries — I’ve had to regularly choose between gas and groceries, and sometimes didn’t even have the means for those. Beyond that, I can't tell you how many experiences and opportunities this has robbed me of. I had been training with Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, for instance, to become an Intimacy Professional. But the cost of this lawsuit ground that process to a halt. What an ugly irony, that I could have had a thriving career by now, working to ensure people's safety around sexuality in theater and film, but this case stood in the way of that, and still does. Instead, I remain stuck in a cycle of constant low-paid overwork, constant fight or flight, constant survival mode, and constant extreme stress.

It's a popular trend now to say that you need to "let yourself rest," but I haven't had the option to rest for years. They say that if you don't rest, your body/system will eventually MAKE you rest, and this has happened repeatedly — I've had multiple physical/systemic breakdowns, including repeatedly losing 30-40lbs in 6ish weeks leading up to court dates. And I've just had to keep going. I've been FORCED to just keep going. This experience of staying in an unrelenting state of survival mode, of fight or flight, for over a half a decade — including the stress of never knowing how violent a man apparently enraged with me might become — has wreaked absolute havoc on me physically, and the health ramifications have been enormous. I’m beyond tired, beyond exhausted, beyond burnt out — my whole system is blown to hell. Stress attacks the body, and after years of this lawsuit, mine’s begun to break down. I have severe back problems (just had an MRI), failing vision (I need surgery), and heart trouble (I"m on two meds). The list goes on.

I have said over and over again — this BS is going to take me out with a heart attack, a stroke, or a bullet. Guess we’ll see how prescient that turns out to be.

Then, after being dragged through all of that for five years — simply because I believed a young woman about a pattern of behavior against her and others, and agreed that what she had to say needed to be a conversation — the judge stepped in and ensured that the jury found against me at the trial. Pretty stunning outcome, quite unexpected, and I have a lot to say about it.

At no point was the plaintiff's original defamation claim actually proven, as NO claims in the allegations were disproven. Quite the contrary — they were repeatedly corroborated, including by his own witness. However, as far as I understand it, the judge did not let the jury read the full list of allegations. I have never been given a reason why.

Then, on the ninth day of a ten-day trial, the day before the jury went into deliberations, I had a witness testifying. Her story was included in the list of allegations — she was ANOTHER young woman testifying to the truth of the claims, and giving her account of this man's character. The judge stopped her testimony, removed her as a witness, and struck her testimony from the record. He said that her testimony was "collateral" and therefore "potentially confusing to the jury." For the life of me, I cannot understand how her direct verification of part of the allegations I was sued over was "collateral," rather than directly relevant. It was damning, but not at all collateral, nor in any way confusing. (The plaintiff's character witnesses, meanwhile, were allowed to wax poetic for about a hundred years about what an unimpeachably swell guy he is. But my material witness was cut off and tossed out.) The judge then took it upon himself to speak at length about "defamation per se," which can be a number of things, but in this case, he was referring to falsely accusing someone of a crime.

Here's the "defamation per se" story: I was one of THREE women on a small theater committee who brought up similar concerns about this man, and his pattern of conduct with young women. (Neither of the other two women were sued.) My concern stemmed from a casual conversation with a young woman, during which she mentioned a serious incident with this man, which contained a crime. After being heavily pressed to do so by the committee, I repeated her verbal allegation to them, citing it as the reason I personally didn't think he should continue on with us. I contacted her a few hours after the meeting to double check and ensure that I WASN'T somehow accidentally supporting a false accusation before they brought it to him. It was then that she cleared up that detail, and wrote and sent to me her series of actual allegations about this man's pattern of behavior toward young women. I contacted the committee immediately, and the original allegation never went any further, did not reach him or anyone else.

Note: I wasn't sued over this initial conversation. And during the course of five years of this BS lawsuit, no one mentioned that small conversation, nor "defamation per se" — until the judge himself shifted the entire focus of the trial on the day before jury deliberation. He then told the jury, and I quote, "Even if it's an accident, you MUST award monetary damages."

You MJST award monetary damages.

If I were on that jury, I would have felt that I'd just been ordered by the judge to find against the defendant. This doesn't seem right to me, and I believe this is the only reason the jury found against me.

This is the same judge that went on and on at the beginning of the trial about his role as "merely the referee." But apparently keeping the full list of allegations from the jury, removing my witness and striking her testimony, and then, in my opinion, effectively ordering the jury to find against me does not read like the conduct of a referee at all. That seems a lot more like someone taking the ball away from both teams, strolling down the field (because no one can touch him) and simply tossing it through the goal on behalf of one team.

And here's the fundamental problem with the judge's "defamation per se" claim: it never happened, according to the law. Beyond the fact that I said this to about five people, and retracted it hours later, so it went nowhere and did not in any way affect the plaintiff, there's the fact that I never directly accused him of a crime. I never said anything as a statement of fact, which is part of the definition of "defamation per se" — I always couched it as an allegation. In other words, I never said "He did this" — I said "I was told this." And this is supported by email evidence from the time. Again: the "defamation per se" claim that the judge rammed down the jury's throat simply never happened.

There are also legal defenses to "defamation per se," one being that the outcome would likely have been the same had the false claim not been made. It absolutely would have been, given the other allegations, and the fact that they were repeatedly verified. Yet another defense is if it's in the public good, and given the nature of the other allegations, I'd argue that it was.

But, again, when the judge apparently withholds vital evidence and then — all on the day before the jury deliberates — abruptly removes your witness and her testimony, makes a brand new case against you, and finally — again, in my opinion — orders the jury to find against you, there's not really a chance to build a defense. The judge, in my *constitutionally protected opinion,* not only actively protected the plaintiff — he stepped in and tried the case for him.

And what do you know — I lost.

I don't understand how that's legal. It's certainly not right.

(I reported him to my state's Commission on Judicial Conduct. They replied that they don't cover judge's mistakes. I'm left wondering what exactly their function is.)

I couldn't appeal the judgment, because you are only given thirty days, and my resources and energy were, and remain, completely annihilated. I couldn't afford a lawyer for an appeal and, again, pro bono lawyers aren't much of a thing. Which brings me to another huge point: we do not have a justice system, we have a privilege system. (I say that, acknowledging that what I faced was only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what others have faced in our justice/privilege system. Communities of color, and black and Latino men in particular, have been targeted by this system for as long as it's existed, and to much, much greater harm, including mass incarceration and death.) The fact that I couldn't appeal this ridiculous judgment simply because I didn't have the means to pay for it is obscene. The fact that men can bring these suits at all, with no legal barriers, is beyond obscene. There's a whole category of illegal lawsuits under the heading of "Abuse of Process" — frivolous lawsuits, bad faith lawsuits, SLAPP suits — and these D.A.R.V.O. suits live up to many of those categories to a laughably blatant degree. And yet, there is no apparent barrier to bringing these suits against women. (I was actually originally sued for zero substantive or material reason — the plaintiff sued me because he had no information, and apparently felt both entitled and enraged.) The financial abuse in these cases starts when the lawsuit starts — there's no need for a verdict for these suits to deeply harm women. So why, if these suits have no basis but rage and revenge, are they allowed to move, unfettered, through the system, while the women facing them suffer horribly?

Given that many if not most of the men bringing these D.A.R.V.O suits know full well what they've done, that the allegations about them are perfectly true, targeted financial abuse is the point. (Which, again, is supposed to be illegal. But here we are.) As such, material resources for women facing these suits must meet the overwhelming material needs that these suits create. Pro bono attorneys specializing in these cases must be plentiful, readily available, and easily findable/accessible. I cannot tell you what an exhausting and defeating slog it is to try to find one, and to hear "No" again and again and again, from sources that claim to care about women's causes — ACLU, National Women's Law Center, Legal Aid, and more. (Imagine this labor on top of everything else, only to be told "No" so many, many, many times, while these same orgs tout their love and support for women and girls, for #MeToo, and so on..) This needs to change — pro bono lawyers for these cases cannot be rare and elusive, as these cases are spreading like wildfire. (Please see my update, below, for articles about other women facing these suits.)

Quite frankly, the law itself needs to change. "Defamation per se," which includes a category for "sexual misconduct," in a (r*pe) culture like ours, creates harm and denies justice — much the opposite of its purported intended effect. The reason it's in place is because the damage from a specific set of false claims is preemptively assumed to be so great that the monetary punishment becomes automatic. I call absolute horsesh*t. Look at who we just elected to the White House. Look at our Supreme Court. Look at the horrific recent case in France. Look at the 70,000+ member group chat in Germany. Look at the rallying cry of "Your body, my choice." Look at the fact that nearly ZERO percent of r*pists see a day in jail. Look at EVERYTHING. Given our ACTUAL (r*pe) culture and circumstances, this law leaves categories flung so widely open that they reverse in on themselves, and what actually winds up happening is that people's ability to speak freely about their experience is restricted, if not fully silenced, on pain of legal consequences. The law is being successfully subverted (or simply used in its current, untenable form) in order to abuse women when they try to talk about abuse.

If women are legally prohibited from speaking up about patterns of abuse toward them, how exactly are we supposed to have these conversations that the #MeToo movement promised us access to?

This case, and every case like it, begs a simple, fundamental, and horrifying question: do men still own women? Do men still have the legal right to do whatever they want to women, while women do not even have the legal right to speak of it?

It would seem so.

And the public rhetoric around this issue is so utterly backwards that it becomes full on propaganda. One of the plaintiff's witnesses sat on the stand and repeated the oft-used BS line that "It only takes an allegation (to ruin a man's life)." I beg to differ. It only took receiving an allegation for this man to apparently have the legal right to violate my life for six years and counting. Meanwhile, false accusations continue to barely, barely, barely, barely exist:

"Studies suggest the prevalence of false reporting on sexual assault is between 2% and 10%, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. And there’s a big caveat to those numbers: 'Research shows that rates of false reporting are frequently inflated, in part because of inconsistent definitions and protocols,' the resource center said. For example, some law enforcement agencies might label a r*pe claim as 'false' just because there’s not enough corroborating evidence to prosecute. (Those cases would be more accurately described as 'baseless' rather than false.')"

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/03/health/sexual-assault-false-reports/index.html

But the law won't change any time soon.

Therefore, I feel it is the responsibility of the #MeToo Organization, and the National Women's Law Center, and groups like them, to aggressively address this wave of backlash, and formalize a massive amount of support for the women facing these lawsuits. As it stands, these organizations only offer services to women who are directly targeted by sexual harassment and abuse. There is not yet a category for women being hit with the violence of these abusive lawsuits. But #MeToo started a movement, and now men are using the court system to silence and punish that movement, and women like me are being heavily victimized along the way. This D.A.R.V.O. lawsuit trend needs to be recognized as a category of abuse unto itself, and met with a hell of a lot more power than individual women struggling to fight each individual lawsuit on their own, in a total vacuum. Worse than a vacuum — in a wood chipper.

Short of any formalized sources of support, including a change to the free speech-prohibiting "defamation per se" laws, and the apparent total lack of barriers that allows these abusive suits to move through the court system, communities need to show up for women in their midst being targeted with these lawsuits. Communities need to rally around these women and absolutely flood them with support, starting with financial support, as these are financial attacks first and foremost. And, as I've outlined, financial abuse carries over into psychological and emotional abuse, which absolutely becomes physical abuse.

Trust me, however — communities are NOT showing up for these women.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I never should’ve had to face ANY of this. And I remain shocked and heartbroken at the degree to which I’ve had to face all of this totally alone, particularly in a relentlessly self-described "feminist" town.

To be fair, many people in my community did not know that this was happening, but a good number did, and from that sample set, I can tell you that the degree to which I was not only unsupported, but decisively abandoned, and in many ways scapegoated, has been really eye opening, and quite frankly disgusting. In a lot of instances, the social disruption that these allegations created was treated as a worse problem than the allegations themselves, and I was overtly blamed. In others, people quietly just left my life. (One example was the person who showed up to the trial one day — I was very moved at the show of support, but it turned out that he wasn't there to support me, but the person who was nervous about testifying. One day of testifying, and she had his support. Five years of abuse, and I didn't hear a word. This was a friend of over twenty years.)

Add to this the fact that these allegations spanned ten years — a full decade — before they reached me. And, according to the allegations, there were witnesses. I never should have heard a word about this, because the alleged pattern of behavior against young women should have (and could have) been stopped in its tracks a decade prior. Where the hell were the avenues to formally report allegations like these, especially in our supposedly feminist community? Why was I the first person to take a stand about this issue? Never mind what I went through — if these allegations are true, I'd like to know why this alleged pattern of behavior against young women in our feminist little town was allowed to continue for ten full years before someone did something about it. (Please note: I'm not the hero of this story. I didn't speak up — someone else did that. I was simply the one who listened.)

If the heavily credible allegations are true, let me say this quite clearly: sixteen years is a long time for a community to fail its own principles by accident.

It's an even longer time to fail its own daughters.

This is a community that crows to the hills about its own feminism. Yet here was a SEARING feminist issue raging through their midst, and those who knew largely looked the other way, at BEST. These are people who would otherwise loudly rally around the IDEA of "believing women." Here was their chance, and they absolutely bolted when that idea became a reality.

Believe women ... except in this case. Believe women, even when it's someone you know .... except in this case. Believe women, even when it's someone you like ..... except in this case.

What do people think that believing women actually entails? A little weeping over a cup of tea? And then we go back to keeping the whole thing quiet? "Believing women" can't just be an empty phrase.

People seem to love the *idea* of feminism, of #MeToo, of supporting women and girls, until it's no longer a tidy bumper sticker or an anonymous hashtag. If you can't solve it with a knitted pink hat, or a clever meme, or voting for someone in a pantsuit and then dusting off your hands, then people turn away, and even repudiate you for bringing this ugly reality into their comfortable fantasy. What a vicious, vicious shame — because this is exactly how we stay stuck.

So then what does feminism actually look like? Well, I argue that it doesn't LOOK like anything. The very problem is leaving feminism in the realm of aesthetics, rather than action, and in rhetoric, rather than reality. Bumper stickers and other labels, pithy social media shares, and pink hats aren't where feminism ENDS — those things are where feminism BEGINS. Like any and all other activism, feminism must be, at its core, an ACTION. Feminists must, in some way, actually PRACTICE what they preach, well beyond loud self-proclamation. (This borrows from Angela Davis' quote: "In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist — we must be ANTI-racist.") The reason that this is so imperative is that the other side — misogyny, patriarchy, sexism — is VERY active. These lawsuits are only one facet of the constant action of a (r*pe) culture bent on harming women. But they're a growing one, and must be addressed decisively.

One way to do that is to, as I said, flood these women with support, starting with financial support. SHOWER them with money. It is WILD to me that someone like K.Rittenhouse or D.Penny can raise literal millions after murdering people in the name of white supremacy, but I take steps to disrupt an alleged pattern of abuse against the daughters of my "feminist" community, and I can't even get my lawyer's fees covered when I get attacked for it. But there you go — that's the point. This lack of real action is, again, exactly how we stay stuck, and exactly why we're losing so many battles on so many fronts. Rhetoric without action is a huge part of how and why we landed where we are, as a nation. This is not difficult math.

(I'll note here - the folks who have given the most were consistently those with the least to give. People on disability, on social security, people who work under the table, have all given considerably more than folks with healthy salaries or existing wealth. There's a lesson to be mapped out here, but this GFM is long enough as it is.)

Find other ways to support women as well — gift cards to grocery stores, to places like Costco etc, gift cards to Chewy if they have pets, gift cards for gas. Maybe offer to pay for something like a housecleaning service, or childcare, or go hog wild and offer to cover needed car repair or medical procedures like .... eye surgery. And add some roses to the bread — do they like massages? Restaurants? Mani/pedis? Movies? Museums? Bookstores? Do you perhaps have the means to offer them a weekend away in a nice spot that they like? They're going through HELL. Give them means for moments of solace from that hell. Communities certainly don't have to do ALL of this, but for god's sake, do SOMETHING. And if you do not have means to offer material support, let them know that you support them as a friend, that you know that what they're going through is wrong and dreadful, and that you believe them, and believe in them. I cannot tell you what a difference some of this would have made to me over the past six years.

But those years happened without any of that support, I faced them largely solo, and now here we are. My health has been torpedoed, along with a lot of my life trajectory, and the huge material debt remains. For the likes of me, especially after being forced through this BS ringer for the past half decade, my lawyer's fees from the trial add up to quite a sum. And there's also the obscene little judgment. (UPDATE: This guy dragged me back to court in November of '24, and now I owe the rest of the obscene little judgment by May 7th, or else I owe his lawyer fees and court costs. To be specific, I need to raise six thousand by then. II think this is their ideal aim - after court, I happened upon him and his lawyer having a smug, smirking conversation about what sounded like "I don't know if she thinks she'll win the lottery, haha...." Super charming. I have no doubt that these men, not to mention the judge, do not consider themselves the type to enjoy harming women. And yet.) But those things aren't quite a sum for everyone, or for many hands, and I need to find those people. I need to find those sources, who actually believe in this — in #MeToo, in feminism, in the welfare of women and girls — people who recognize that feminism needs to be a real world application, and not just a thought project. People who believe in this enough to literally put their money where their mouth is. Help me get free of this colossally stupid, unjust, and abusive debt I’ve been saddled with. Help me get free of this whole putrid mess.

I want to be done with this. I want to move on, and no longer think about this garbage. I'm tired of this stupid little man, and his stupid little lawsuit, taking up ANY space whatsoever in my life.

And all it takes is money. So please consider donating. And please also consider sharing this GFM — it would be helpful for this to go somewhat viral, and bring in more donors who sincerely care about this issue. And if you do decide to donate, please consider giving as egregiously as I have been FORCED to for six years and counting.

The alternative is that I simply file for bankruptcy. Again — all because I believed a young woman's credible allegations, and agreed that this needed to be a conversation. I don't think that I should have to do that, but if there's no other option, I will. Either this person gets his relatively paltry abuse winnings because people believe and support me, or he gets nothing. I'm good either way. If this was the cost of keeping young women and girls safe (and OF COURSE this is the cost, in a r*pe culture), then so be it. I'd certainly rather be financially bankrupt than morally bankrupt.

I've watched people around me thrive in these same past six years, and I'm happy for them, but this has prohibited/killed any chance I've had to thrive in that time. Help me do that now. Help me get rid of this abusive, abusive debt, help me be more available to my parents and to my extended family in the midst of struggles that they're going through. Help me because you recognize that what happened to me was categorically and catastrophically wrong. Help me because you recognize that I stood up for vulnerable members of my community, and got attacked for it. Help me because I actually DID the thing that people imagine, and say, that they WOULD do in this circumstance — believe women, stand up for women — and in our culture, there is apparently a very heavy debt to pay for standing up and doing the right thing.

Talking about these allegations wasn't the problem. The allegations were the problem. Talking about them was the solution.

Whether true or not, these allegations unquestionably needed to be a bigger conversation. And nothing in the past six years has dissuaded me from that. If you learn that there is a possibility that young people are being harmed, you look into it. You address it. You bring others into the conversation. That’s what you do.

But making that effort, and starting that conversation, got me successfully sued in a culture that prioritizes men and their feelings over women and their experiences. Again, we have a privilege system, and not a justice system. But this is your chance to offset just a tiny shred of that horrible reality. Help me rest. Help me recover from this abuse. Help me get away from this violence and back to my own life — help me, as I come away from this obscene little dumpster fire, get a chance to reclaim my own capacity to thrive.

I think I deserve that.

I hope you agree.

Thank you.