A common problem that many parents in child custody battles experience is the malicious false police reports generated by the nasty ex exhibiting sociopathic behaviors. Such people may suffer from a personality disorder associated with pathological lying such as BPD or NPD, but not all people with BPD or NPD will resort to filing false police reports.
You might think that when the police investigate and find that the ex lied or can’t keep her or his story straight, that will be the end of it. But for many target parents, that is not the case at all. Instead, the nasty ex takes those reports and uses them as the basis for spreading defamation that looks very official and credible looking to the average naive person on the street. With a little effort, she or he can have dozens or more people believing the lies by using the police reports to deceive and manipulate them.
Sometimes, false police reports even get people arrested wrongly. Look at what happened to the father in the article Ben Vonderheide Exposes Pennsylvania’s Abusive Child Profiteering Racket [1]. He was falsely arrested and his son taken from him. Later, his falsely accusing ex and her new boyfriend were convicted of filing false police reports in a criminal court with its far higher evidentiary standards than family court. But he is still suffering from the damage caused by the false police reports even years later.
More often, false police reports and the resulting “official looking” papers generated are used to defame and harass the target parent. This is a common element in the distortion campaigns [2] practiced by Borderlines, Narcissists, and other abusively dishonest personalities.
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What Police Reports Contain
Police reports do not have a standard format. Not only do they vary from department to department, there can even be multiple versions of a police report for a single incident.
A typical police report contains several informational sections. These include data such as the following:
- Name(s) and identifying information on alleged victim
- Name(s) and identifying informaton on alleged perpetrator
- Incident location
- Date and time of incident
- Name(s) of witnesses
- Alleged crime expressed as possible charges, usually expressed in terms of legal code
- Alleged victim’s description of alleged crime
- Initial statements of police officers
- Lists of evidence collected or seized
- Interviews with witnesses
- Follow-up interviews with alleged victim
- Interview with alleged perpetrator
- Follow-up interviews with other parties
- Results of field tests
- Results of lab tests
Sections 1 to 8 are found in nearly every report. Depending upon what happened, the police may never get around to creating or adding the rest. Furthermore, it is not unusual for the police to start circulating a report without the later sections even if they have them or are working on them. “Victim’s reports” are often reports handled out to people claiming a crime was committed prior to investigation without any verification whatsoever of accuracy. Yet because they are on “official” paper, the average naive Jane or Joe might actually believe they are accurate and truthful when neither is even remotely certain.
For instance, see the arrest report for Henry Gates [5], President Barack Obama’s professor friend who works at Harvard University. There is no indication of follow-up investigation whatsoever. You only see the first few sections reflected on that report. Gates comes off looking like he might be a burglar resisting arrest.
But that’s not the only version of the report circulated. See a second version of the Henry Gates police report [6]. Now he looks like a guy who is overly accusatory about racism and mean to cops.
Notice the differences? One has a booking record reflecting an arrest, the other has a much more extensive description of the incident. The first was circulated by FOX News. The second was circulated by a website called A View From the Right [7].
Police reports don’t determine guilt. But if you didn’t already know about this case from the news and a friend of your showed you the first report and said this man is a robber who resisted arrest, would you believe it? There isn’t anything to contradict it, in fact it looks like it might match what your friend is saying.
Now if you got the second report, that one shows that Sergeant Crowley thinks the man lives in the house but is acting very aggressively. If your police hating friend showed it to you after expressing an opinion, you might think it appears that Crowley intentionally lured an upset Gates outside his home so he could arrest him for being disorderly in public. If your cop friend showed it to you, you might think Gates is a raving nut and deserved to be arrested.
What’s the truth? Whatever it is, it certainly isn’t entirely captured in the police reports.
Various news organizations published and then hid different versions of these police reports. Others have speculated they were trying to hide the behaviors of Gates [8] for various reasons. When the mainstream news media with experienced reporters can’t even keep the police reports straight, do you think you will be able to understand and detect an inaccurate or false police report? The odds are good that you will be unable to do so.
How Sociopaths Alter Police Reports for Defamation Purposes
Police reports don’t tell the whole story, but they can be incriminating and misleading. This is exactly why sociopathic parents like to file false police reports and then use them to defame and harass their victims.
It is a common trick for a sociopathic parent to spread around incomplete versions of police reports that omit the investigative sections that reflect what the police found when they interviewed witnesses, collected and tested evidence, and tried to piece together what really happened.
The first sections typically identify the alleged victim and alleged perpetrator. But they don’t say “alleged” on them. All it takes to get a police report naming somebody as a perpetrator, offender, or some other incriminating term is to lie to the cops. They will gladly hand a copy of the false police report on request to the false accuser, thereby providing her or him with ammunition to attack the actual victim. Now the real perp, the sociopathic parent, has a document that has the police falsely calling the real victim out as a perpetrator. She or he may start showing this to teachers, principals, doctors, nurses, pastors, neighbors, family members, and more to destroy the reputation of the target parent and to incite these people to help them attack and ruin the target parent and keep the children away.
Later sections include statements by the alleged victim. Often the police will talk with this person more than once. Sociopaths often have trouble keeping their “facts” (really lies) straight. So if there are two or three different interviews with police, there will likely be two or three (sometimes even more) variations of the lies with significant differences. How can they fix this? Simple, leave out all but one version. Often it simply takes not copying the entire report to turn a complete report that clearly looks like a nutcase’s ravings into convincing looking abridged report.
If somebody shows you a police report to try to convince you that her or his ex is a psycho abuser, be very skeptical. If you don’t see all or nearly all the sections I mentioned above in the report, particularly repeated interviews with the alleged victim and with other witnesses, you are probably looking at an incomplete report. You should strongly consider that the person is trying to deceive and manipulate you. This is all the more likely if you have never spent significant time with the accused person. Pathological liars are adept at identifying gullible people who lack sufficient insight to resist their deceit and manipulation. Having little direct knowledge of the accused means you are likely to be gullible.
If all the sections are there, read them all and see if it makes any sense. Look for inconsistencies, particularly in the accuser’s story. Often these people are such liars that they can’t remember what they said from day to day. Every time they tell their victimhood story, it will be different. That’s likely because it didn’t happen like they said.
Look for motivations. Why is this person showing you the report, anyway? If it seems the person is trying to get you to take sides, play the victim, solicit you for money to help, or otherwise get something from you, the odds are high that she or he is trying to deceive and manipulate you.
Ultimately, if somebody was never charged with a crime, you should be extremely skeptical of the police report. Except possibly for the well-connected, that generally means the case was so weak that the prosecutor’s office thought they would lose.
Be Somewhat Skeptical Of Convictions, Too
Sadly, in this era of government tyranny and routine violations of people’s rights, a conviction doesn’t always mean actual guilt, either, even if the accused person “confessed” to the crime.
Prosecutors like to scare people with extreme scenarios to force them to plea-bargain so they can claim another “win” when running for re-election without having to spend much time on the case. Go after an accused shoplifter with accusations of murder (somebody died in the store, they must have caused it even though there are no witnesses or evidence!), trumped up threats of 50 years in prison and then offer to plea down to a 1 year sentence with full probation. Many innocent people will take that “deal” and admit guilt or plead “no contest” even if they didn’t commit a crime because they can’t accept the risk, no matter how slight, of spending the rest of their lives in prison, especially for a crime they didn’t commit.
If they have seen public defenders in action, they know many of them are so incompetent, lazy, or unethical that they won’t even bother to try a serious defense against a weak prosecution case. Thus the falsely accused may believe that a conviction with probation is way better than exhausting one’s life savings on lawyers with no reimbursement possible even if they are sure they would be able to prove their innocence. When you consider the full implications of fighting false criminal charges via an expensive trial, it is clear why some people plead “no contest” or “confess” to a crime they didn’t do.
Further Reading
Ben Vonderheide Exposes Pennsylvania’s Abusive Child Profiteering Racket [1]
Relationships and Divorces with Someone Who Suffers Borderline Personality Disorder [9]
Co-parenting With A Sociopath (Borderline, Narcissist, etc.) [10]
Personality Disordered Abusers in Family Law Courts [11]
Personality Disordered Abusers in Psychological Evaluations [12]
False Child Porn Persecution: The Child Custody Scenario [13]
How to Win Custody by Framing Your Ex for Child Sexual Abuse [14]
Cambridge Police Officer To Obama: Butt Out of My Arrest [15]
18 Comments To "How Sociopathic Parents Use Police Reports for Defamation"
#1 Comment By Kari McDonald On September 15, 2010 @ 1:22 pm
Oh my gosh does this need to stop…We called an attorney and talked to the sheriffs/pd dept’s. False cry wolf reports ruin lives young and old. The victims need a better system.
PD needs to get documented complete Q and A. when false cries accountablity w/ fines and jail time.
Your thoughts on how to make a difference?
#2 Comment By Perplexed On September 15, 2010 @ 5:19 pm
Not always the truth in most instances. In domestic violence most women are scared to tell the truth in the event their abuser will kill them if the victim exposes them in midst of trial. It is the intimadation factor the fear that is a human characteristic that one feels compelled to cover up for the one they love hence why stories of an incident upon investigation remain inconsistant. The victim feels responsible they feel like it is themselves to blame. They feel as if they are the ones who has betrayed thier abuser even though their abuser has punched them kicked them pulled their hair made them bleed spit in their face threaten to kill them, by then after many years of brainwashing the victim has much distortion of what is real, they feel the legal system will side with the abuser hence because of perspectives such as this story which makes a battered women without self esteem not even try to battle the fight.
#3 Comment By Rob On September 16, 2010 @ 12:31 am
Perplexed,
Nobody should be subjected to DV or abuse. However, the “proof” required today for accusers is essentially any lie will do, no evidence is required.
This is bad not only for the falsely accused but for the people who are actually being abused, too. That’s because it makes actual abuse victims seem much less credible because so many people know of cases in which false abuse allegations were used to harm somebody they know.
The false accusers are effectively using psychological, legal, and financial attacks (effectively legally permitted violence that is almost certain to be rewarded) on others. This is contributing to making it harder for actual DV victims to get the help they need.
False abuse allegations should be universally condemned, just as actual DV should be. Instead, they are routinely used in divorces and custody battles for one side to get an advantage.
When a false abuse allegation can be proven to have been false by criminal evidentiary standards, there should be mandatory prosecution of the false accusers with restitution, fines, and/or jail time if convicted.
TRO’s need to be changed so that both parties have to stay away from each other and nobody is treated as guilty until after there is a chance for defense against the allegations. As it stands today, the accuser instantly gets the court to treat the accused as guilty. They are often banned from seeing their children, kicked out of their home, and saddled with huge financial commitments all without any due process.
If somebody wants the “protection” that such orders offer, they should be willing to stay away from the other party, too. Essentially a TRO would become a “mutual keep away order” applying to both parties equally.
There’s a second reason for this. There are some cases in which a malicious ex will get a TRO and then engage in actions designed to create contact by which they can have the police arrest their victim.
TRO’s really do not offer much actual protection as they are today. If the person is really dangerous, filing one is likely to trigger a violent response. If they are not truly dangerous and especially if they are innocent of the accusations, it is going to create a lot of animosity. Think about it, if somebody falsely accuses you and gets you banned from seeing your kids, thrown out of your house, and labeled a criminal in the eyes of the public when you did nothing wrong, wouldn’t you be upset?
There’s no doubt that violence in families is a problem. But it is a myth that it is all the fault of one gender or another. In the majority of violent families, both [16]. Erin Pizzey is one of the many early DV activists who used to subscribe to the concept of men are abusers and women are victims. But she changed her mind on this, writing about how she saw [17]. To be doubly clear, I’m not saying that I don’t believe DV accusations are ever true. Rather, there is often far more to the story than the accusation and if the fully story is known, it would be clear that there isn’t a clear victim.
That’s not to say that there is not a primarily responsible party in many of these mutual violence cases. But proving who it is may be impossible and your comment is hinting at this. That’s another reason for handling these problems by mutual keep away orders. It is far too easy for the courts to get it wrong and persecute the party who is generally the victim in the conflicts.
Rob
#4 Comment By Matthew On September 19, 2010 @ 3:44 pm
I have been a victim of false accusations for years now, ever since my ex met her new husband. (He was my son’s 5th grade teacher at the private Christian school where he attended while we were married. They were engaged 3 weeks after our divorce was final.)
I thought my situation was unique and accepted my plight. Now I am beginning to understand that she is mentally and emotionally unstable and I MUST fight this. If not for myself, for my children.
Where does one begin to combat such deceptive practices? I never imagined that a parent would be so sick as to do such things but I was naive. Are there civil rights groups who will fight on behalf of the innocent?
#5 Pingback By Telling Your Nasty Ex About BPD or NPD May Hurt You | angiEmedia On September 25, 2010 @ 3:09 am
[…] she resorts to simply fabricating “evidence” of her false claims. Other times, she will doctor documents that she then passes around to others to convince them I’m an evil dangerous person. She has […]
#6 Pingback By American Parents, Family Policy, and Courts Contribute to Poor Student Performance | angiEmedia On September 26, 2010 @ 4:19 am
[…] idiot, a coward, or has some agenda that is not good for the nation and its children.Further ReadingHow Sociopathic Parents Use Police Reports for DefamationSingapore Schools and Courts Enable Parental Alienation Child AbuseDivorce Books for KidsSerenity […]
#7 Comment By Rene On November 13, 2010 @ 12:49 am
Back in 2004 I was collecting court documents for my case to gain Child Visitation, I found a false restraining order my ex filed. She filed that I abused her and I was arrested for (I was never arrested nor abused her). Up until now, CSD has been withholding information from me without any legal order for the past 12 years. I have not seen my son for the past 15 years except once when he was 7 years old.
Those false accusations come from a person who happened to have 5 kids (including mine) from different fathers. Her mother is the legal guardian of 4 kids, (my son’s mother gave the second away) which she won’t let me visit my own son. On a phone conversation her own mother (the guardian) told me her daughter had turned into a crack addict. To me practically, both of them are very malicious people who endangered my son and the other kids, but seems the CSD and the Family judge know what they are doing. CSD and the Family court, are endangering our children by their inept judgments. You have read of Alaina Stockdill case right?
#8 Comment By Sara D. On March 20, 2011 @ 1:24 am
They not only will use police reports but they can give you a ton of trouble just by befriending a cop and having the cop do their dirty work for them. Several years ago I was being harassed by a mentally ill man who apparently became enraged when he thought that I somehow rejected him. Unbeknownst to me he’d made friends with a local cop and made false allegation that, get this, I was harassing him. Mind you at the time I was terrified and did everything I could to change my routine as much as possible and even tried to avoid leaving the house completely. This cop never even spoke to me, he just took the word of a known drug user; a guy who even had a record for assaulting an officer in another state! I learned the hard way that a good majority of these cops are literally borderline retarded and completely incapable of seeing when they’re being scammed once someone learns the trick of appealing to their inflated egos. I learned that if you ever need help call a lawyer, never call a cop! Police are misogynistic and think of women as whores, even when the situation would be clear to any 3rd grader. Be especially wary of any Irish-American cops, misogyny is their bread and butter.
#9 Comment By Alison Moxley On June 2, 2011 @ 1:48 pm
Wow, I thought you were writing this about me. My ex and I have a child and he pulled this very same stunt. To make a long story short, we had a custody order that gave us specific police precincts where we were to drop off our daughter. He tried to force me to go to a different precinct. I refused. He went to the other precinct instead, reported our daughter missing and filed a police report. He then went to the family court and filed a federal writ of habeas corpus (a document usually used to implore the government to release prisoners of war) and had the police come to my house and forcibly remove our daughter from my home. It took me several thousand dollars in legal fees to fight it in criminal court. AND our three year old witnessed it. He was so excited because he felt like he won.
#10 Pingback By Judge Diane E. Gibbons Confirms Herself An Enemy of Free Speech and Supporter of Abuse By Silencing The Psycho Ex Wife Website | angiEmedia On February 25, 2012 @ 6:04 am
[…] and molests the kids and passes those lies around verbally everywhere she (or he) can. She (or he) files many false police reports so she (or he) can pass them out like candy to “prove” t… who swallow up the sociopath’s lies and buy into the false victim story. Pretty soon the […]
#11 Pingback By Los Angeles DA Must Prosecute Wanetta Gibson for False Rape Allegation Against Brian Banks | angiEmedia On July 11, 2012 @ 6:31 am
[…] How Sociopathic Parents Use Police Reports for Defamation […]
#12 Pingback By What Will Happen To The Children Of Gordon And Tiffany Smith? | angiEmedia On September 17, 2012 @ 11:09 pm
[…] will no longer consider Tiffany Smith’s lies to be basis for arresting Gordon Smith. However, sociopathic parents in custody disputes often use false police reports for purposes of defamation and harassment even when their victims are not arrested. Such reports […]
#13 Comment By Me On May 8, 2015 @ 6:38 pm
I honestly believe that false convictions are rare. I am divorced from a diagnosed sociopath and I lived in terror, but whenever I called for help, the police found him to be quite charming. He knew how to change his act. Since I couldn’t “prove” what was going on, he continued to torment so many other women just like he always has. It took a long time before he slipped up enough that he could be arrested. It wasn’t his first arrest, but arrests are rare considering he assaults people regularly and has lost jobs for doing it. So, if I can’t even get a real, chronic abuser arrested because it’s hard to “prove” violence without broken bones, how in the world can people get innocents arrested with nothing? Furthermore, I know my ex sociopath goes around telling people I had him falsely arrested. (Yeah me and a few others!) but he’s so charming, people believe it and feel sorry for him. Whenever I hear someone crying they were falsely arrested, red flags start waving. After all, you’ll never hear an actual abuser claim that they were fairly arrested. Of course they all deny it! Plus sociopaths are infamous for claiming that they are the victims of the people who hold them accountable. They feel no remorse for their crimes and do consider themselves falsely accused even though healthy-minded people wouldn’t.
#14 Comment By Me On May 8, 2015 @ 6:48 pm
[18] So true. Like many victims of abusers, I was harassed by the police more than I was helped. My ex had already assaulted me once, and I found out he had done the same with several other women, so when he went crazy screaming and raging, (which was frequently–pretty much hourly,) I’d call for help when he got especially bad. He’d stand in my front yard harassing me and violating my protective order, but had charmed the cop who usually ended up in my area. The cop ended up yelling and threatening me telling me I had to stop wasting his time and telling me I was required to let my abuser in my house because we were married. (Even though I’d purchased my home over ten years earlier, he’d never lived with me, and we were only married 3 weeks before he assaulted me and I got the protective order.) The ex had shown some warning signs before we got married, but I didn’t know they were warnings signs of sociopathy until it was too late. As soon as we were married, he was a violent monster at all times except when he was asleep. The cop screamed that it was my fault for marrying him. How the heck would I know that Mr. Charming was really Jekyll and Hyde? There is far too little education on sociopathy out there and none of us know what’s going on until we are under attack. Plus, statistics show that cops have TWICE the domestic violence rate of the general public. I tell other victims that it isn’t safe to call the police. You are better off ending the relationship and going into hiding.
#15 Comment By Brianna Phillips On June 4, 2016 @ 8:35 pm
I’m currently 19. At 17 I decided to move out of parents home because i was financially stable and in college. I moved in with my childs father and two days later police surrounded our home and forced myself and my son to leave.I later found out my mother lied to police stating that i was 16 and not able to care for my son. I was labeled. A runaway and so was my son. Since then the police has been called on myself and my fiancee. An additional 2 times so now my fiancee is wanted for questioning because my mother continues to call the police telling them that my son and i are being abused and held hostage. Not exactly sure how to handle this situation so if anyone has ANY thing i could do please reply.
#16 Comment By Emilio Antuna On July 20, 2016 @ 2:51 am
I need help desperately i have a felony assault warrant for something i did not do . My ex lied . I went to prison cause she lied someone please help .
#17 Comment By Frank Riese On July 30, 2016 @ 8:05 am
[19]
Holy shit! That sounds exactly like my situation! I have even started blogging about it XD
[20]
Seriously! This has to STOP! Whoever plays the victim card better usually wins. We cannot sacrifice justice for efficiency and/or cost. Accusations that destroy and ruin lives HAVE to be investigated.
#18 Comment By Ric Og On August 25, 2016 @ 1:47 pm
[21]
Brianna, it seems like your mom is a control abuser and very self-centered. If you can prove this somehow, then you may get more leeway in the courts.