Abuse is NOT Irrelevant

In a recent DVRO (domestic violence restraining order) hearing before Commissioner Michael Friel in Dept 12, El Dorado County Superior Court (South Lake Tahoe), evidence of ongoing abuse linked to infidelity was clearly presented, yet framed as requiring the "adjudication of infidelity" — and therefore deemed irrelevant by the court, as California’s no-fault divorce laws prevent the adjudication of infidelity. This ruling effectively treats infidelity-based emotional and psychological abuse as outside the scope of domestic violence protections in California family court.

• California law defines domestic violence broadly to include conduct that "disturbs the peace" by destroying a person's mental or emotional calm, which can encompass coercive control and patterns of emotional abuse.

  womenslaw.org

• However, court interpretations sometimes sideline infidelity-related abuse by viewing it as a private matter rather than actionable harm in DVRO proceedings.

• This creates a gap: Survivors who are clearly supported by domestic violence treatment agencies like Vista Rise Collective, still face barriers finding safety in the legal system.

  vistarise.org

• Result: Infidelity-based abuse is essentially treated as legal or irrelevant in practice, even when it causes profound harm. This is unacceptable.

My Story

I never expected that trying to save my marriage would become a fight just to have the abuse I experienced recognized as real.

The pattern was not a single incident. It was years of false accusations, location tracking, communication monitoring, isolation, and the demand that I constantly prove I had not cheated. There was even stalking, harassing, and public confrontations with an innocent local mother also falsely suspected. It was all very disturbing to witness. I had not, nor had I ever cheated. That did not stop the cycle. Walking on eggshells became the household norm. Marriage counseling made it worse.

Vista Rise Collective was the first place that treated the pattern as abuse instead of a “marital dispute.” Advocates there named the coercive control, the psychological harm, and the danger of sending a victim back into counseling with the person causing it. With their support, and with records from my own treatment, I asked the family court for protection.

Unfortunately, the court did not treat that harm as domestic violence. In the DVRO proceeding before Commissioner Michael Friel, the abuse was folded into “infidelity,” and infidelity was treated as something California’s no-fault system would not adjudicate. Even with treatment letters from Vista Rise documenting the abuse. Apparently, in El Dorado County you can legally harass and abuse your partner as long as you do it on the topic of infidelity. According to EDC Court rulings, that places the abuse beyond their protection.

What Vista Rise called psychological and emotional domestic violence, the court treated as irrelevant. What was not irrelevant, however, was my reactions to the daily abuse. Commissioner Friel called my emotional and distressed reactions to the daily hysterical accusations the “worst verbal abuse” he had ever heard. With regard to her daily accusations, location tracking, communication and website monitoring, and the constant demand that I explain away every coincidence in life in effort to prove my innocence, the court called that behavior “persistent, perhaps annoying”. I was stunned.

I was removed from my home. I was given about six hours a week with my children and ordered to attend a 52 week batterers intervention program even though I have never put hands on anybody, never had a charge against me, and am recognized by numerous local DV experts as a victim of severe domestic violence. My children had also lived with that abusive -err, irrelevant- pattern. The parent who reported it lost the house and most of the time, while the truly abusive party was now fully enabled by the court to continue their abuse unchecked. How can this be real?

However, that was not the end of the professional record. Numerous independent professionals who actually deal with these cases reached overlapping conclusions about my former spouse’s conduct: controlling behavior, coaching of our children, isolation, and harassment of domestic violence treatment providers and agencies. Those voices included CPS investigators; the court’s own custody resource counselor; Vista Rise; and the director of the batterers’ intervention program, which I had been court-ordered to attend.

On July 9, 2026, in a custody ruling, Commissioner Friel did not grapple with that body of work on the merits. Instead, he dismissed those professionals — all women — as people who “do not like to be challenged.” He treated the local domestic violence providers as biased and stuck in dated gender stereotypes. You read that right. He said my former spouse should use “more honey than vinegar” when dealing with those DV professionals — as if the problem was tone, not the conduct they had documented. Of Vista Rise, Commissioner Friel said, in substance, that their treatment model is no different than McDonalds…first come, first served.  

That is how every local domestic violence professional who had raised concerns unfavorable to my abusive ex was handled: not as investigators, clinicians, and court-connected staff who had independently seen the same pattern, but as a group of women who were too sensitive, too biased, or too easily offended to be believed. The substance of their reports was not the point. Their temperament was. Again…how can this be real? 

I am not asking a judge to rubber-stamp experts. Judges decide credibility. What I am asking the public to notice is the ground on which those professionals were rejected: gender stereotype, personality, and a theory that the first person through the DV clinic door wins. That is not a serious engagement with the evidence. It is a way of making male victimization, and the women who recognized it, disappear.

The damage was not abstract. Before that ruling, my relationship with my oldest child was still intact. The first visit after the July 9 order was July 10, and my oldest child refused to come. I have not seen my child in almost 2 months. The isolation and coaching that CPS and the other professionals had already flagged began unfolding immediately after Commissioner Friel rejected their concerns. I reported it to CPS. They suggested court-ordered counseling between my oldest child and me — the very repair the ruling had just made harder.

The hardest part has not only been the year of endless abuse via false suspicion and accusation. It has been watching it get reclassified as “irrelevant,” then watching the people who named it get reclassified as catty, biased, or only treating survivors because they were simply first in line. Abuse does not become less real because the victim is a father, because the method was accusation and control instead of a bruise, or because a Commissioner prefers a story in which the local DV experts are the problem.

I walked into court certain I had the same rights as anyone else. I believed the process would be rational, that evidence and expert testimony about the abuse I endured—and the abuse an innocent local mother endured—would be weighed seriously. I was wrong. The court treated that abuse as irrelevant, isolated my children from me, and then punished me for how I reacted inside that environment. Had I known this was possible, I never would have walked through those doors.

The last ten months were the most painful of my life. Every local DV professional looks at me with the same sincere mixture of sympathy and bewilderment. They have no explanations to provide me with. I watched every domestic-violence professional who raised concerns get dismissed and every piece of evidence waved away while my children were pulled further away. I never imagined a court could do that.

I will not stay quiet while other fathers assume they will be treated fairly. Seeking protection in domestic-violence court remains the single greatest mistake of my life. I have to warn fathers in this community—even if it means standing in public with a sign describing the abuse a cruel, uncaring court has enabled and continued.

Abuse is never irrelevant.

ps. to all the people who’ve come up to me in person, or told me their story on social media, thank you! You are not alone. I cannot believe this is the current standard/state of our communal institutions, but I am now dedicated to addressing this issue that is thoroughly destroying so many of our local families. I pray more will join me. God bless!

We are pursuing all legal avenues available to address this issue.

We welcome all legal assistance, and are eager to speak to any and all media to draw necessary attention to this critical issue.

Please contact via the email address below.

Disclaimer: This site is for public awareness and advocacy. It is not legal advice. Views expressed reflect personal experience and supported observations.

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