Three weeks. That’s how long I was separated from my daughter. No trial. No crime. No violence. Just a single sheet of paper — a Protection from Abuse Order, or PFA — a civil court order meant to prevent harm, often issued on little more than an accusation. It can strip someone of contact with his or her children, home, and firearms — without a criminal charge. That paper took my daughter away from me.
I was only 23.
My daughter was just a few months old. I was still learning how to be a dad — still learning the rhythms of fatherhood. Then she was gone. A sheriff handed me the order at my front door. I knew I was in for an uphill battle.
Over the next three weeks, I scrambled to find an attorney, build a defense, and dig through evidence to prove my innocence. Those weeks didn’t just take away my daughter. They took away my dignity. My voice. And for a time, my will to speak.
The State of Exception
Legal theorist Carl Schmitt once wrote: “Sovereign is he who decides the exception.” In other words, the true power of the state lies not in making laws, but in deciding when the law no longer applies. The sovereign is the one who can suspend the rules in the name of security, order, or necessity. Philosopher Giorgio Agamben built on this idea, warning that modern states increasingly rule through exceptions — moments when the law suspends itself in the name of preserving order.
Most people think of these exceptions in cinematic terms, such as Abraham Lincoln suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War, the War on Terror and Guantanamo Bay, lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic.
But a quieter kind happens in family court every day. No headlines. No outrage. Just a form, a sheriff, and silence.
That’s what a PFA is. It suspends due process, assumes guilt, and punishes before harm occurs. It creates what Agamben called a “zone of indistinction” — where someone is both inside the law and excluded from its protections. The man served a PFA becomes what Agamben called the Homo Sacer: not just punished without trial, but guilty until proven innocent.
This isn’t tyranny in jackboots. It’s softer. Bureaucratic. A form, not a trial. Control, not compassion. It’s preemptive punishment.
From Evidence to Risk
Many PFAs are issued ex parte — meaning the accused isn’t present. The legal standard is a “preponderance of evidence,” often just one person’s fear. These orders are not granted purely on legal merit but under the weight of institutional self-preservation.
As David N. Heleniak, a civil litigation attorney in New Jersey, wrote: “Just like FDA officials worrying about the headlines, judges deciding whether to enter domestic violence restraining orders have their careers to think about in addition to the merits of the particular cases before them. … Should they fail to grant (or extend) such an order and an act of overt violence follows, they will be blamed.”
It’s safer to err on the side of issuing the order, regardless of proof, than to risk career-ending blame in the rare case of tragedy. So judges are incentivized to prioritize optics over objectivity.
The Silver Bullet
In family court, PFAs are colloquially known as “silver bullets.” They instantly shift custody, restrict communication, and tilt the playing field in favor of the accuser. Even if dropped, the damage lingers. Family law attorneys openly acknowledge how they are weaponized, as evidenced in this shocking clip.
PFAs have the power to destroy families.
Take the case of Harry Stewart, a lay minister from Weymouth, Massachusetts. Stewart was arrested and jailed simply for walking to the door of his ex-wife’s apartment building and opening it. Why? He had violated a restraining order “that prohibited him from exiting his car near his ex-wife’s home.” The system treated this routine act of fatherhood as a criminal offense. Writing about the case in Salon, Cathy Young observed, “While his former wife told reporters that Stewart was dangerously unstable, her examples — that he had watched ‘prison movies’ with his 8- and 6-year-old sons and promised to send them some live caterpillars to grow into butterflies — seem shocking only in their innocuousness.”
As Stephen Baskerville noted in Taken Into Custody, “Stewart had already been jailed for six months not for committing any crime but because he refused to confess to one.” The real offense was not violence, but noncompliance with a legal fiction.
The consequences didn’t end with jail time. As Young wrote, “The client could have only supervised visitation for the next two years, until the social worker who monitored the visits finally gave him a clean bill of health.”
This is the logical culmination of judicial activism.
The Treatment Machine
After being served, you aren’t offered a defense — you’re given instructions. Comply. Cooperate. Prove your innocence.
I was ordered to complete a co-parenting class and a 12-week “Nurturing Fathers Program” — not because I harmed anyone, but because I was accused. I was ordered to attend therapy. But I work long, irregular hours as a FedEx courier. So I paid $350 a month for BetterHelp just to find flexible sessions.
This is monetized control, not rehabilitation. The court labels fathers “at-risk” and funnels them into a profit-making system. The more men labeled “potentially abusive,” the more clients for the system. The more subjective the danger, the easier to justify intervention. The more required, the more profit.
Love Suspended
Eventually, my ex and I settled on a final order with no finding of abuse. But the terms of our final order were strict. We could only communicate through a co-parenting app. I couldn’t speak about anything but our daughter.
I had to keep a set distance — except at drop-off. The PFA’s restrictions stayed active for six more months. I had to surrender my firearms — not due to conviction, but “precaution.” No trial, just control.
What Might Be
Just as abortion reduces life to a conditional right — revocable by the mother — PFAs reduce fatherhood to a conditional privilege, revoked at a judge’s discretion. In both, a child’s bond is no longer sacred but negotiable.
When my ex was pregnant, doctors said our daughter might be born with septo-optic dysplasia and could even be blind. They recommended abortion.
That logic — rooted not in reality, but in possibility — drives PFAs. Not truth, but suspicion. Both the unborn child and the accused father are treated as potential liabilities — denied protections and rights based on hypothetical scenarios. Both are sacrificed on the altar of precaution.
But my daughter was born healthy. She turned one this June. She’s walking, babbling, and full of light!
And that haunts me. I see her smile and think of all the kids who had no voice and could’ve lived.
Constitution in Disguise
The Fifth and 14th Amendments promise due process. The Second guarantees the right to bear arms. Parental rights are fundamental. Yet PFAs bypass these guarantees. You can lose your child, home, and rights without a charge.
The Supreme Court’s Bruen decision held that firearm restrictions must be historically rooted. PFAs are not. Nor do they meet the burden to suspend liberty or parenting rights. Legislatures must raise the burden of proof, set clear limits, and guarantee access to counsel. Orders should expire quickly. False accusations should carry penalties.
Decisions of such magnitude should also not rest with a single judge whose career may hang in the balance. As Heleniak argues, “Facts should be determined by several fresh, open minds, not one with a career on the line.” Jurors — impartial and insulated from political fallout — are far better suited to weigh claims than judges incentivized to avoid risk.
What’s at Stake
The exception is now the rule.
When the state of exception becomes permanent, everything becomes political, and by extension, everything becomes punishable and subject to law, even in the absence of legal clarity or substance.
The state can take your child if you refuse to affirm his or her transgender identity. They can arrest you for refusing a vaccine. They can remove your child based on false accusations.
From lockdowns to speech policing, from gender transition without parental consent to family court hearings in secret, governance now runs on fear. Safety justifies everything. Even love becomes suspect.
Forrest is an independent writer in southern Maine and a proud father. He works as a courier. His writing explores the intersection of technology, philosophy, and politics in a system that increasingly denies us our humanity.
