As my lawyer was on vacation, her partner attended the hearing in front of Judge Ruest. She was the judge who issued the PFA order and was thus assigned to be the judge for violation hearings. I believe this was the first time I’d been in a courtroom besides attending a traffic-court hearing when the person that ran a red light and hit Rita and Caleb decided to fight the ticket he was issued.
At the hearing, I mentioned that I couldn’t understand why the kids were even on the order. Judge Ruest says, “I don’t know why they’re on the order; they shouldn’t be. I must have just signed without reading it.” This response dumbfounded me as I assumed she’d written the order or at least had an assistant write it. At the very least, I thought she would read an order she signed. I realize later that it is common practice for the lawyer representing the plaintiff to write an order and then give it to the judge to sign. Judges presumably assume that the plaintiff’s attorney will be “fair” to the defendant in the order. I am not sure who was representing Rita at the time as this was about the time she changed lawyers from Laura Robbins to Tonia Torquato. I suspect either Laura or Tonia wrote the order, which is essentially a boilerplate form.
It was also at this hearing that Judge Ruest mentioned that this was one of the two PFAs she’d issued to friends who applied for them simultaneously. That friend turned out to be Maureen Cassidy; she was trying to move her five daughters to Florida. I knew Maureen fairly well because our kids overlapped in age, with one daughter in Caleb’s class and another in Amanda’s. In fact, at one point after Rita had filed for divorce but before I had moved out, Maureen came over, and I helped her make a resume and look for jobs in Florida; she didn’t have an internet connection at her house. I had met her husband a few times, and he seemed like a nice guy, although I have no idea if there was any abuse. I think they were getting divorced because he had had a sexual relationship with the college-age babysitter.
Even though Judge Ruest agreed to issue a new order that did not include the kids, she decided to give me six months of “intensive domestic violence” probation. I was utterly shocked but quickly accepted that six months of probation would not be too difficult.
After the hearing and still not completely understanding that Effexor was making me manic, I spent more days barely able to sleep. At some point, I noticed my cell phone had no service. I called AT&T, and they told me Rita had canceled my line from the family plan; Rita controlled this account. I asked about transferring the phone and number to a new account, but they told me Rita hadn’t released the number, and I would need to get a new one. I went to Walmart and got a new account.
Sometime very late that night, while at my office, not being able to sleep, I panicked because Amanda had been having a lot of medical problems at the time, and Rita had no idea how to contact me. My attorney was still on vacation and unreachable for the next week or so. This situation led to the second PFA violation.