On October 7th, there were two civil orders in my divorce case. The August 2010 divorce property settlement order, ordered that I vacate the marital home by October 7th. The second August 2010 order in the case, ordered that my ex was to immediately pay me my settlement of approximately $110,000.
There was also a Personal Protective Order in effect against my ex, that prevented him from having any contact with me AND which also prevented him from being at the marital home [where I resided]. My ex had a previous conviction [September 2009] for violating this PPO / threatening to kill me.
On this date, Porter County Magistrate James Johnson [who my divorce had been before] was under investigation by the Indiana Judiciary Commission, because I had blown the whistle on his failure to issue a final ruling in my divorce case. The Commission's investigation of my complaint disclosed that Johnson had failed to issue rulings in more than 100 divorce cases.
I had also filed complaints against Magistrate Johnson with the Commission in regards to Johnson's apparent retailiation against me after I had blown the whistle on non-adherance to Porter County Local Court Rule 2100 [disclosure of marital assets / Financial Declaration Forms], in September 2008. The complaints ranged over a two year period of time: failure to uphold the PPO and Indiana criminal laws; failure to uphold an arrest warrant against my ex; failure to protect me; repeated failure to issue rulings; repeated failure to hold my ex in contempt; repeated failure to uphold provisional orders; etc.
The Indiana Judiciary Commission had been reviewing my complaints against Magistrate Johnson since August 2010.
City and County officials were aware that I was the one who had blown the whistle against Magistrate Johnson. They did nothing to protect me from Magistrate's Johnson's apparent increased retaliation against me. The atmosphere in Porter County appeared to be: Protect Magistrate Johnson.
On October 7th, it was reported in the local newspaper that Magistrate Johnson had failed to issue final rulings in all his divorce cases before his deadline of October 1st [per the Indiana Judiciary Commission]. Johnson's deadline was extended to November 1st. In November, the fate of Johnson would be decided by the Porter County judges.
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On October 7th, my ex was in contempt of the August order to immediately pay me my settlement. Because of my ex's contempt of the order to pay me, I was in contempt of the August order to vacate the marital home. Without the settlement I did not have the funds to move out of the home. I was penniless, not only for failure of my ex to abide by the August order, but also due to his failure to pay me my court ordered maintence during the past four years. I was so financially destitute, that I had been living without gas / electricity for the past month. Vacating the marital home would mean I would be homeless.
My ex was in contempt of the August civil divorce order...AND I was in contempt of the August civil divorce order. As it was a civil order, it meant that both my ex and I would have to file contempt charges against the other, before Magistrate Johnson = it would have to be settled in divorce court.
During the four year ongoing divorce case, my ex was practically always in contempt of at least one court order....But, Johnson had failed to issue rulings on the contempt charges or simply refused to hold my ex in contempt...time after time. How he handled this one, would be interesting, to say the least.
How could Johnson justify holding me in contempt this one time...When there was a history of him never holding my ex in contempt [who had a history of being in contempt of court orders]...Especially since my contempt of the order to vacate was due entirely to my ex's contempt of the order to pay me my settlement?
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THE ILLEGAL POLICE ENTRY INTO MY HOME ON OCTOBER 7th, 2010:
On the morning of October 7, 2010, I left the marital home to run errands with my friends. Before leaving the home, I placed Abbi and Bailey in the lower family room and closed the door. I locked up the house and garage. I accidently left the second story kitchen window open.
What happened next was relayed to me by my former divorce attorney / former City Attorney John Rhame [who spoke with Portage police officers at the scene]. According to the Portage police officers, my ex-husband came to the police department with the civil divorce papers. He asked them to execute the civil order [that I was to vacate the marital home]. The Portage PD decided to criminally enforce the civil divorce order [but only the part of the order that ordered me to vacate the marital home. They decided that they would not criminally enforce the part of the order that ordered my ex to pay me my settlement].
The officers informed Attorney Rhame that because there was a personal protective order against my ex [that prevented him from being at the marital home] and due to my ex's previous criminal conviction, they escorted my ex to the marital home.
As I was not home at the time of the first illegal police entry, my ex [and the Portage Police] gained entry into the home through the second story kitchen window [which I had accidently left open].
More details surrounding the illegal police entry into my home were later supplied by a sheriff deputy. The deputy [a personal friend] was driving past my home at the time of the entry. He picked up radio communication between the Portage officers who were at my home. The officers were discussing a large sum of funds that my ex had / had disclosed to them [apparently hidden marital funds that my ex had not disclosed in the divorce]. The officers referred to this money in their radio communications as, "...More money than I have ever seen....I can't believe he has that much money..."
More information concerning that large sum of funds my ex had on him the day of the illegal entry that the police were aware of : A Portage Police Officer confirmed what the Sheriff Deputy had overheard in regards to the money my ex had: "He had more than enough money to pay you your settlement. The officers thought he was an asshole for not giving you the money..."
The question now was: The Portage PD knew my ex was in contempt of the order to pay me my settlement....AND, they knew he had the funds on him to pay me my entire settlement. However, they were not going to enforce that part of the order. Instead, they chose only to criminally enforce the part of that same civil order that I had to vacate the marital home.
My friend and I arrived back at my house in the early afternoon [I had no knowledge of the illegal police entry]. When we pulled into the driveway, I was terrified to find that my front and garage doors were open. Looking into the garage, I could see that the jet ski had been removed. I figured that my ex had broken into the house.
Using my friend's cell phone, I called 911. I was frantic. I was terrified. As I was talking on the phone with the 911 dispatcher, I began looking around the house. I discovered that several of my items were missing...That the screen to the kitchen window had been popped out and entry had been gained through that window...AND then, I discovered that my dogs [Abbi and Bailey] were missing. At that point, I lost it.
I was crying and begging the dispatcher to send the police ASAP, because I was terrified that my ex had my dogs and would do something to them. I was terrified that my ex would come back and harm me.
The dispatcher on the other hand knew that the police had entered my home with my ex, earlier in the day. I didn't know this. But the dispatcher was not sharing this information with me.
As I was talking to the dispatcher [and waiting forever for the police to arrive], my ex showed up with his girlfriend. They parked their truck in the street, at the end of the driveway...And then they got out of the truck. Both the ex and his girlfriend began yelling obsentities to me.
I was relaying this information to the dispatcher....I was begging her to get the police to my house...I was terrified for my life...and I was yelling at my ex and his girlfriend to get the hell away from me. Then my ex began advancing towards me with his fists balled up [I was standing inside the garage]...and now I was really terrified that my ex was going to beat the crap out of me...and I began screaming at the dispatcher, "get the police here now! He's going to hurt me!"
The 911 dispatcher said, "You sound like a crazy person". Then she tells me to go into the house. Now what kind of safety move is that? Why would you want to enclose a domestic violence victim with their abuser in a house, with no means to escape?
My ex was only a few feet away from me when the Portage PD finally showed up: three squad cars and the Portage Animal Control. The officers informed me that they were criminally enforcing the civil order that I was to vacate the marital home. The officers did not have a warrant / show me a warrant. I told the officers that my ex was in contempt of the same order, in that he had failed to pay me my settlement. The officers told me: "We're not here to enforce that".
I maintened to the police that they had no right to be at my home...especially with my ex who had a PPO against him and a previous domestic violence conviction. The police refused to retreat.
While standing next to the non-retreating police officers in my driveway, I called my former divorce attorney/ former Portage City Attorney, John Rhame. I explained to Attorney Rhame about the illegal police entry. Rhame requested to talk with one of the officers at the scene. I went to hand the phone to one of the officers, he remarked, "I'm not talking to any divorce attorney".
I replied to the officer, "You'll want to talk to this attorney....It's former city attorney Rhame."
The officer took the cell phone from me and walked away to talk to Rhame. Several minutes later, the officer returned with my phone. The officer told me that if I did not leave the property within thirty minutes, I would be criminally charged.
Attorney John Rhame later told me that during that phone conversation he had told the officers that they did not have a right to criminally enforce the civil order or to be at my house. He reminded them that with the PPO and conviction, my ex was not to be at the house. The officers refused to retreat / take Rhame's legal advice. They told Rhame that they had been told to criminally enforce the order.
After the phone call, I walked down to the end of the driveway, where police officers were assisting my ex in putting his motorcyle [that he had taken out of the garage] into the back of my ex's pickup truck. The officers were talking and laughing with my ex about putting me out on the street. I asked my ex where Abbi and Bailey were. He got within inches of my face and yelled, "You took my family, so now I took your family."
I then begged the police officers and the animal control officers [who were standing around my ex's pickup truck] to tell me where my dogs were so I could get them back. The officers refused to tell me where Abbi and Bailey were. When the animal control officer attempted to tell me where my fur babies were, the officers cut him off. At this point, I was crying and pleading with the officers....and they seemed to make a game out of making sure I did not know what happened to Abbi and Bailey.
One of the officers joked about me not being able to get my dogs back because I was going to be homeless. When I told the officers that my ex had previously abused Abbi and Bailey and had also threatened to kill them, they laughed at me. One officer told another officer, "He's not going to kill those dogs." The officer then told me me, "Only call us if they end up dead," and both the officers laughed about his comment.
I then proceeded to go into the house to get some of my belongings. One of the officers stopped me at the door and I handed him the August order and asked him why the section ordering my ex to immediately pay me my settlement was not being enforced. The officer looked at the order and remarked, "We're not doing that order today."
My ex was approaching the house and I asked him to please pay me my settlement. He remarked that he wasn't going to pay me anything. "It's done and over. I don't have any money."
I went inside the house and began packing up some of my clothes, while I talked on the phone with Attorney Rhame. He told me could not understand why the officers were criminally enforcing the order.
As I was packing and talking on the phone, an officer came into the bedroom where I was at. I set phone down on the bed, with the line open so Rhame could hear the conversation. I talked with the officer as I turned my back to him and the bed [where the phone was] as I pulled clothing out of the closet. I asked the officer why he was doing this to me and why he was putting me out on the street. I asked him what I was supposed to do about being homeless. The officer did not answer my questions. He told me I was wrong for not having been out of the house before October 7th. I explained again that my ex was in contempt of the order to pay me my settlement and I could not move without that money. He told me to be thankful that they had given me thirty minutes to get my belongings outof the house.
When the officer left the bedroom, I picked up the cell phone off the bed. The officer had apparently realized the phone line was open and had disconnected the line / hung up on Attorney Rhame while I had my back to him.
Over the course of the next half-hour the police officers kept ordering my friends and me to hurry up and get out of the house.
During this illegal entry, the police never showed me a warrant or an eviction letter. The police didn't even show me a copy of the court order and explain why they were enforcing the civil order as a criminal order.
After I was kicked out of my house [and put out on the street with nothing], one of my friends and I went to Attorney Rhame's office. Rhame said he told the officers they had no right to be at the house or to criminally enforce a civil order. He could not understand why the police had done that to me. Apparently, Rhame [who had previously been a police officer, deputy prosecutor, and city attorney] had never witnessed the police do what they had done to me that day.
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WHAT WAS DONE ABOUT THE ILLEGAL POLICE ENTRY INTO MY HOME; FAILURE OF THE POLICE TO UPHOLD A PERSONAL PROTECTIVE ORDER; AND MY EX TAKING ABBI AND BAILEY? NOTHING.
Although former Portage City Attorney John Rhame questioned the actions of the illegal police entry into my home and he was under an ethical obligation to report those actions to the proper authority, to the best of my knowledge, Rhame never reported the illegal police entry.
I reported the illegal police entry / criminal enforcement of a civil court order to Porter County Judge Alexa; Judge Bradford; Judge Harper; Judge Jent; and Judge Thode. They took no action on the matter.
I reported the incident to Portage Mayor Velazquez. She took no action on the matter.
I contacted Portage Police Chief Becker and questioned his officers' illegal entry into my home. I was denied a formal police complaint form. Becker told me that as far as he was concerned, "The matter is closed". In turn for questioning the illegal entry, I was harassed, intimidated, and followed by the police for months.
I contacted Senator Lugar. He has never contacted me or talked with me about this issue. He did not have the illegal entry investigated.
I contacted Congressman Visclosky. He has never contacted me or talked with me about this issue. He did not have the illegal entry investigated.
I contacted Attorney General Zoeller. He has never contacted me or talked with me about this issue. He did not have the illegal entry investigated.
In the past two years since the illegal entry into my home and the taking of Abbi and Bailey, not one city, county, or state official in Indiana has interviewed me or the two witnesses who were at my home during the illegal entry.
It appears that city, county and state officials are allowing those responsible with the illegal entry and the deaths of Abbi and Bailey to get away with thier actions. There is no accountability. I am expected to accept that nothing will ever be done about what I, Abbi, and Bailey were subjected to.
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