Appearance alert: on with Ulysses "Butch" Slaughter
Butch and I speak about the silver bullet technique and other tools for false allegations.
Earlier this week, I appeared with Ulysses “Butch” Slaughter to talk about the misuse of false allegations of abuse, particularly in custody cases.
On Butch’s website, he has a lot dedicated to stopping false allegations against men. In our discussion, both Butch and I agreed that while more women misuse false allegations, no one should think that there are no devious men out there doing the same.
“It’s not 99-1,” I mentioned of the ratio. I meant that I believe that men make a healthy minority of those who misuse false allegations.
Check out my discussion with Julia Minkowski and Ella Taran, two women who faced bogus protective orders.
This is a topic both of us have first-hand experience with. His ex-wife filed a false protective order as a means of leverage.
Check out this TikTok video he made about his experience.
Earlier this year, my ex-girlfriend also filed a protective order against me.
Fortunately, as you can see from above, the protective order was dismissed. The protective order was filed in North Carolina {Guilford County} while I lived in Illinois. This made it especially frivolous.
This sort of misuse of a protective order was used against Chris Mackney in 2010, and it started the ball rolling on persistent legal abuse until he killed himself on December 29, 2013.
Scummy divorce attorneys advise their clients to take out protective orders because it provides leverage.
In Mackney’s case, he was still living in the marital home when it was taken out. The protective order forced him out of the home. By virtue, his ex-wife, Dina Mackney, took possession of the home and kids. While technically temporary, she would possess both permanently.
In our discussion, Butch and I centered on a presentation made by Leslie Levy, an assistant prosecutor with the Williamson County, Texas District Attorney’s Office.
In the full video, Levy said in part, “Who here has handled a divorce, filed a protective order and referred it to my office? I’m going to tell you why you shouldn’t do that,”
“A protective order carries criminal consequences. Accordingly, that makes it a pretty heavy tool in negotiating a divorce. If it goes through my office, it’s a lot harder to use it to negotiate a settlement to your divorce.” Levy continued. “So, I would encourage you very strongly, if you have one of those cases, to do the protective order as part of your case. It gives you more leverage in negotiating a settlement.”
This is textbook example of what I called the silver bullet technique when I appeared on a feature by North Carolina journalist Bob Buckley about Neil Shelton’s story.
Shelton is the poster child for the silver bullet technique, which I defined to Buckley as, “during custody or divorce- usually it’s the woman though not always- uses bogus or false allegations of abuse to get a restraining order {or protective order- two terms which can be used interchangeably}, which is then used as leverage in the divorce.”
In Neil’s case, that protective order was used to keep him out of the house, away from his children, and to continually paint him as violent and dangerous. All of it played a role in his ex-wife, Kim Shelton, getting sole custody.
Kim, when she asked for the order, admitted he’d never hit her, but had intimidated her, and she claimed that the divorce would set him off.
In North Carolina, the standard for getting a protective is a “clear and present danger.”
Obviously, that meaning was stretched in Neil’s case.
Kim was helped a lot because her divorce attorney was Sarah Stevens, who doubled as a North Carolina State House Representative.
{Check out Neil’s book, Growing up Mayberry}
With Levy, it’s not merely the message but the messenger. Levy worked as an assistant prosecutor at the time this video was made.
She was making a presentation to divorce attorneys, and she was coaching them on how to use protective orders for maximum leverage.
That is not the purpose of protective orders. As I told Butch, a protective order would be appropriate if someone received numerous threatening text messages like, “I’m going to kill you.”
They are meant to protect- as the name implies- not to be weaponized.
Yet, here was Levy coaching divorce lawyers on how to weaponize them. What’s especially shocking is that it doesn’t appear as though the video of the event was surreptitious.
Levy knew she was being recorded and brazenly told divorce lawyers how to manipulate the protective order process.
I talked more about this with Butch in this video.
