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The woman originally filed a domestic violence complaint in Hackensack, claiming false imprisonment and harassment after an incident on Feb. 19, 2009.
Their oldest daughter, who lives in British Columbia, was pregnant, and the mother of seven wanted to be there for the birth of their first grandchild.
But her husband was against it, saying they didn’t have the money. If she tried to go, he said, he would “have no recourse but to sell the family’s van to raise the necessary funds…to ward off the possibility of eviction” from their rented house in northern Bergen County.
Then he went into her purse and snatched the van’s keys, her wallet and passport, court papers show.
When she demanded their return, he ignored her, she said. The woman, in turn, went to police and filed a false imprisonment complaint. She got her things back after cops went to the house.
During their trial in Family Court, the woman said struggles with her weight destroyed her self-esteem. Her husband, a construction contractor, made matters worse, “making comments about her weight, even in the presence of others,” she said.
Although their religious beliefs required them to follow the view that “a wife is to be submissive to her husband,” he’d gone too far, she said.
Eventually, the intimacy ended and they began sleeping in separate rooms — although she conceded that he did bring her tea every morning.
The woman, who home-schooled their younger children, claimed she was afraid he’d try to sneak in and smother her during the night. However, the appeals judges said “she provided no factual basis for such a fear.”
She also said she was afraid of a knife collection her son kept. Then again, she admitted introducing the family to “the skill of knife throwing.”
The Family Court judge in Hackensack rejected the false imprisonment charge but granted the request for a restraining order based on a “history of harassment” about the women’s weight.
The husband appealed, however, and this week the higher court threw out the order.
A person is guilty of harassment, the panel noted, when he or she:
a. Makes, or causes to be made a
communication or communications anonymously
or at extremely inconvenient hours, or in
offensively coarse language, or any other
manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm;
b. Subjects another to striking,
kicking, shoving, or other offensive
touching, or threatens to do so; or
c. Engages in any other course of
alarming conduct or of repeatedly committed
acts with purpose to alarm or seriously
annoy such other person.
“While the finding that [he] attempted to dominate and control plaintiff is clearly supported by the record, we are unable to agree that in the context of this matter, that behavior constitutes domestic violence,” the appeals court wrote.
The judges cited a state Supreme Court ruling that said such decisions should be “aimed not at the content of the offending statements but rather at the manner in which they were communicated.“
In this case, the local judge “focused on the content of the communications, not on the manner in which they were delivered,” the appellate judges said.
“While we can understand why the trial court found defendant’s conduct toward his wife, belittling her appearance and refusing to communicate with her on an equal basis, to be unacceptable, we are unable to equate it with the offense of harassment.”
“By reversing the final restraining order, we by no means imply that plaintiff is without recourse and must resign herself to continued submission to defendant’s will,” the appeals judges said.
“Her recourse, however, lies in an action for divorce….”
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