1/21/2024 0 Comments Zombie hunter costume for boys![]() Many, for example, still routinely refuse to issue protection orders if a threat is made through social media or text messages, she said. In her view, she said, many judges likely have outdated views of domestic violence. Unlike lawyers in Illinois, Smith said, the state does not require judges to participate in continuing education. "People talk about them as if they’re handed out like candy,” she said. They have to be able to state what has happened to them and they’re afraid of what will happen to them.” “People who want or need orders for protection - and unfortunately death proves what we’re talking about - don’t run to court and ask for an order. "Lawyers have set this up and view those orders in that way,” Smith said. That doubt can be compounded by a myth that people who request an order do so to gain tactical advantage in a divorce proceeding, she said. Yet in divorce and family courts, she said, judges continue to doubt allegations of abuse that are long term, emotional or financial - and they don’t believe that abuse could “potentially become dangerous very quickly,” she said. "There’s this assumption that when we say ‘domestic violence,’ that it’s physical violence,” Smith said. To outside observers, those actions may seem innocuous, she said, but they can be part of a slow, steady acceleration of some of the most common behaviors in abusive relationships - coercion and manipulation, isolation and control. “If anyone who does not live in your house is continually coming into your house and taking your belongings, how are you gonna feel? These are very particular behaviors meant to terrify another person.” "Just think about it in the context of anybody’s life,” said Smith, who was aware of Becky’s case but unfamiliar with the details. Vickie Smith, CEO and president of the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said that allegations of Tim entering Becky’s home without permission should have been a red flag for the court. "This was the first time it really registered with her that she or her children could be in danger,” Reilly said. “She said that she was fearful of Tim,” Reilly recalled, adding that Becky had recently learned of a colleague who had been killed by an estranged partner. That September, the month before Becky asked for a restraining order, she texted her sister an ominous message. Becky Bliefnick was a mother to three sons. "His form of torture really was manipulation and control,” Reilly said. When Becky told Tim she didn’t feel safe around him and wanted to sleep with one of their children, she wrote, he threw her bedding into the basement. When she called police over one of the incidents, Becky wrote in the petition, responding officers told her that she needed a restraining order to prevent similar situations.Īccording to the petition, Becky also accused Tim of cutting down her favorite tree as punishment for “not doing things he’s been asking for for 10 years ” of threatening to toss out a family pet - Becky was an animal lover - because she wasn’t adhering to a strict workout regime and nearly hitting her and one of their children with a garden hose and reel during an argument. In the petition, he accused Becky of repeatedly calling him and demanding to speak to their youngest son of becoming combative at their children’s school after he declined to give her a letter that one of their sons had written to them and of harassing him via text to find out where he was with their children.īecky filed her own petition a month later, accusing Tim of repeatedly entering her home without permission and using their children to access the house and take things. 1, 2021, they were separated and he’d filed for divorce. ![]() Tim and Becky married in 2009, but by the time Tim filed a petition for a protection order on Sept. "The easiest thing to do is to go run to a judge and ask for an emergency order,” Schnack said.
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