Here is my situation and I believe it's somewhat unique, but hopefully someone out there has some insight. About 12 years ago, my brother in law (husband's brother) had a falling out with my husband and myself. This was the result of my brother in law suing my dad over a business partnership that went bad. The lawsuit turned very ugly (as those things tend to do) and my husband who was and is very close to my dad, decided to sever all ties with his brother. This had all taken place in FL. A short time after that, we moved to California and have lived here ever since. We have not spoken to my brother in law in 12 years.
5 months ago, I launched a photography studio. I had been a photo-hobbyist for years and decided to turn it into a business. I chose a business name, a domain name, registered my business, and built a website. I began working and doing quite well. I often advertised on various website, registered with review websites, and created blogs. This was all of course to increase my SEO -- to get my name to come up when someone searched for me. One day, I googled my name and found a vile, horrible, and untrue review of my business services on a review website. I chalked it up to either a jealous competitor, or someone just playing games with me. Then another "review" came up... and more followed. Each time the person became more aggressive. They accused me of having a criminal record, of acting inappropriate with my clients, of being on drugs, and of generally being this horrible monster of a person (ALL untrue). The person always always put my personal address, phone number, and email addresses in their review... they found many different websites on which to do this to me. It became apparent that it was someone who knew me very well. Soon they were making reference to my children and making implied threats... saying "you have pictures of your children on your photography website, now the whole world knows it, and there are alot of scary people out there..." (I never said that my children were on my website, so it was someone who knew what my children looked like; I had pictures of them in my portfolio but a stranger would never know that!). The person said they knew my daily routine, they named my children's school, and said they saw me everyday. I became very fearful for my safety and my family's safety. He knew even said he knew what kind of cars we drive, what our house looks like, etc. I am embarrassed to say but he even attacked my body saying that I have "huge and gross breast implants". At this point, I contacted the police. Because I did not know the identity of the stalker/harrasser, the police didn't want to help. I began keeping a diary and printed out all the comments. From May - October, I had over 40 of these harrassing comments printed. Often they would be directed to my email he would give the website my email address and it would automatically notify me. I should note that each time the person logged onto one of these websites to harrass me, he created a new profile -- always a woman's name too. You could tell it was the same person due to the writing style and the same spelling errors in all posts.
Fast forward to early October. He made a mistake. He posted yet another harrassing comment on a website under a user name that he apparently had already used previously. When I clicked on the user name (which I always did in hopes of learning something about who this was), I found a short list of people he had "reviewed". It was just me and one other person. I click on the review about the other person and it's nearly identical to the types of harrassment against me. Only this was another woman, someone I did not know and who lived in Colorado. Like in my case, he gave out her name, address and phone number. I decided to call her because I knew that she and I had a common link; whoever was doing this to me, was doing it to her too.
When I called her, she and I tried to figure out who we might both know. We decided to email each other our entire contact lists to see if there were any matches. BINGO! She recognized the name of my brother in law and his small tropical fish business (which he runs out of his house); she had been a customer of his, and was unhappy with her purchase, so she asked for her money back (the fish was dying when she got it). He refused to refund her, she charged back her credit card, and got her money back that way. The posting he made against her (actually, several she found after googling her name) was just a few days after the chargeback. At this point I knew it was my brother in law who had been stalking me all this time. Backtracking about a month, I had written emails to all the websites on which he posted, asking if they could release his contact information to me because I was being harrassed. One of the sites agreed and sent me his email address (it was not his "regular" email, but a yahoo account he probably created to harrass people, I presume). When I initially got that email address I emailed to it not knowing his identity and said "cease and desist" -- he did not respond but I do know he received it because he mocked me about it on a later harrassment posting. So after I found out his identity on October 8th by comparing notes with this other woman, I once again sent an email to that yahoo account this time addressing my brother in law by name and telling him "I know it's you, I intend to file a court case." Since I sent that email, there has been no more harrassment.
The next day, I filed a restraining order. It is my understanding that you can seek a restraining order under these circumstances and I was granted a temporary one -- but the court date is Nov. 12th to determine if the order will be made permanent. I have submitted to the court the following items: the 40 print outs showing what he wrote (printed right from the websites themselves), the email string between myself and the woman in Colorado showing how we determined who was harrassing both of us, affidavits from my parents and my husband vouching for the fact that I had experienced extreme harrassment from a stalker for the past 5 months, and finally screen shots showing the profile that he created to prove he is the same person who harrassed both myself and the other woman. But here are my concerns:
1. I am unclear as to whether my case qualifies for a restraining order, because all harrassment happened not in person but through the internet.
2. My brother in law has already responded with a letter to the court denying EVERYTHING, and saying that I am framing him.
3. I have his IP address and I know his ISP, so can I ask the judge to subpoena those websites in order to get more solid proof that it is him?
4. I have left voicemails for 3 attorneys asking if they would be interested in representing me for the court date, and none have called me back, so I will most like be doing this all on my own (my husband will go too of course). Since it's not your usual reason for obtaining a restraining order (i.e. he did not attack me physically), I am not sure how to best make my case to the judge.
5. If the judge denies my restraining order, what else can be done? I do not want to pursue a slander case because I have been told those are very expensive and my brother in law does not have anything of value to go after.
Any advice you could provide would be most appreciated. I just want the harrassment to be over with permanently -- for those 5 months I was an emotional wreck, and the harrassment took a major toll on me.
5 months ago, I launched a photography studio. I had been a photo-hobbyist for years and decided to turn it into a business. I chose a business name, a domain name, registered my business, and built a website. I began working and doing quite well. I often advertised on various website, registered with review websites, and created blogs. This was all of course to increase my SEO -- to get my name to come up when someone searched for me. One day, I googled my name and found a vile, horrible, and untrue review of my business services on a review website. I chalked it up to either a jealous competitor, or someone just playing games with me. Then another "review" came up... and more followed. Each time the person became more aggressive. They accused me of having a criminal record, of acting inappropriate with my clients, of being on drugs, and of generally being this horrible monster of a person (ALL untrue). The person always always put my personal address, phone number, and email addresses in their review... they found many different websites on which to do this to me. It became apparent that it was someone who knew me very well. Soon they were making reference to my children and making implied threats... saying "you have pictures of your children on your photography website, now the whole world knows it, and there are alot of scary people out there..." (I never said that my children were on my website, so it was someone who knew what my children looked like; I had pictures of them in my portfolio but a stranger would never know that!). The person said they knew my daily routine, they named my children's school, and said they saw me everyday. I became very fearful for my safety and my family's safety. He knew even said he knew what kind of cars we drive, what our house looks like, etc. I am embarrassed to say but he even attacked my body saying that I have "huge and gross breast implants". At this point, I contacted the police. Because I did not know the identity of the stalker/harrasser, the police didn't want to help. I began keeping a diary and printed out all the comments. From May - October, I had over 40 of these harrassing comments printed. Often they would be directed to my email he would give the website my email address and it would automatically notify me. I should note that each time the person logged onto one of these websites to harrass me, he created a new profile -- always a woman's name too. You could tell it was the same person due to the writing style and the same spelling errors in all posts.
Fast forward to early October. He made a mistake. He posted yet another harrassing comment on a website under a user name that he apparently had already used previously. When I clicked on the user name (which I always did in hopes of learning something about who this was), I found a short list of people he had "reviewed". It was just me and one other person. I click on the review about the other person and it's nearly identical to the types of harrassment against me. Only this was another woman, someone I did not know and who lived in Colorado. Like in my case, he gave out her name, address and phone number. I decided to call her because I knew that she and I had a common link; whoever was doing this to me, was doing it to her too.
When I called her, she and I tried to figure out who we might both know. We decided to email each other our entire contact lists to see if there were any matches. BINGO! She recognized the name of my brother in law and his small tropical fish business (which he runs out of his house); she had been a customer of his, and was unhappy with her purchase, so she asked for her money back (the fish was dying when she got it). He refused to refund her, she charged back her credit card, and got her money back that way. The posting he made against her (actually, several she found after googling her name) was just a few days after the chargeback. At this point I knew it was my brother in law who had been stalking me all this time. Backtracking about a month, I had written emails to all the websites on which he posted, asking if they could release his contact information to me because I was being harrassed. One of the sites agreed and sent me his email address (it was not his "regular" email, but a yahoo account he probably created to harrass people, I presume). When I initially got that email address I emailed to it not knowing his identity and said "cease and desist" -- he did not respond but I do know he received it because he mocked me about it on a later harrassment posting. So after I found out his identity on October 8th by comparing notes with this other woman, I once again sent an email to that yahoo account this time addressing my brother in law by name and telling him "I know it's you, I intend to file a court case." Since I sent that email, there has been no more harrassment.
The next day, I filed a restraining order. It is my understanding that you can seek a restraining order under these circumstances and I was granted a temporary one -- but the court date is Nov. 12th to determine if the order will be made permanent. I have submitted to the court the following items: the 40 print outs showing what he wrote (printed right from the websites themselves), the email string between myself and the woman in Colorado showing how we determined who was harrassing both of us, affidavits from my parents and my husband vouching for the fact that I had experienced extreme harrassment from a stalker for the past 5 months, and finally screen shots showing the profile that he created to prove he is the same person who harrassed both myself and the other woman. But here are my concerns:
1. I am unclear as to whether my case qualifies for a restraining order, because all harrassment happened not in person but through the internet.
2. My brother in law has already responded with a letter to the court denying EVERYTHING, and saying that I am framing him.
3. I have his IP address and I know his ISP, so can I ask the judge to subpoena those websites in order to get more solid proof that it is him?
4. I have left voicemails for 3 attorneys asking if they would be interested in representing me for the court date, and none have called me back, so I will most like be doing this all on my own (my husband will go too of course). Since it's not your usual reason for obtaining a restraining order (i.e. he did not attack me physically), I am not sure how to best make my case to the judge.
5. If the judge denies my restraining order, what else can be done? I do not want to pursue a slander case because I have been told those are very expensive and my brother in law does not have anything of value to go after.
Any advice you could provide would be most appreciated. I just want the harrassment to be over with permanently -- for those 5 months I was an emotional wreck, and the harrassment took a major toll on me.
