Oates v. Oates

377 S.W.3d 394, 2010 Ark. App. 345, 2010 Ark. App. LEXIS 352
CourtCourt of Appeals of Arkansas
DecidedApril 21, 2010
DocketNo. CA 09-496
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 377 S.W.3d 394 (Oates v. Oates) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Oates v. Oates, 377 S.W.3d 394, 2010 Ark. App. 345, 2010 Ark. App. LEXIS 352 (Ark. Ct. App. 2010).

Opinion

RITA W. GRUBER, Judge.

|)The parties in this case, Martine Oates and Michael Oates, have a long history of marital strife. They have been in intermittent litigation in the Pulaski County Circuit Court since January 2004. They were finally divorced by a decree entered March 16, 2009, which was appealed and decided as a companion case to this one. Oates v. Oates, 2010 Ark. App. 346, 2010 WL 1609411. In this appeal, Ms. Oates seeks reversal of the circuit court’s order denying her petition for a protective order against Mr. Oates. We find no error, and we affirm the circuit court’s order.

On March 10, 2008, Ms. Oates filed a petition for an order of protection on behalf of herself and her three children: N.O., who was eleven; G.O., who was eight; and A.O., who was five. She contended that Mr. Oates had committed domestic abuse on March 7,122OO8.1 In her petition, she alleged that Mr. Oates became angry with her in front of their three children and a neighbor’s child; swore at her; and made “horrid remarks” about her, her family, and her religious beliefs. She said that she became concerned for the children’s safety and asked them to leave. To prevent her from using the telephone, she said Mr. Oates “cornered” her in the kitchen and ripped the phone out of the wall, telling her not to call the police. She alleged that her son, G.O., went upstairs to look for his shoes and came down crying and unable to speak at first, eventually saying, “Daddy said horrible things about you, please don’t tell him I said anything.” Ms. Oates and the children went to a neighbor’s house. When Ms. Oates returned, she discovered that Mr. Oates had shoved her personal items down the toilet and ransacked her closet while she was gone.

Ms. Oates’s petition also alleged that Mr. Oates had committed acts of domestic violence before the incident complained of: (1) In March 2005, Mr. Oates hit her across her arms, kicked her in the stomach, and pulled the phone from the wall. This was witnessed by their son, N.O., who was eight years' old at the time. (2) In July 2002, Mr. Oates strangled her when she was pregnant. (3) Mr. Oates threw the family puppy down the stairs in front of N.O.

Before the case was transferred to the Thirteenth Division, the Seventeenth Division awarded an ex parte temporary order of protection on March 10, 2008, and set a hearing for 1 (¡March 26, 2008. The case was transferred to the Thirteenth Division on March 18, 2008, and the Thirteenth Division set a hearing on April 8, 2008. At the conclusion of this hearing, the court offered Ms. Oates additional time on a later date to conclude her case. The court refused, however, to extend the ex parte temporary order of protection, which expired on April 8, 2008. Additional testimony was taken on May 6, 2008.2

Ms. Oates testified that on March 7, 2008, a snow day on which the kids were out of school, she and Mr. Oates argued and he called her a “F’ing b-.” She told the boys to leave, at which point G.O. went upstairs. Mr. Oates then closed the living room blinds, which she testified made her afraid. Ms. Oates said that when she went into the kitchen Mr. Oates cornered her behind the kitchen table. She said that when she attempted to get the phone, Mr. Oates ripped it away from the wall. Mr. Oates then went upstairs, and G.O. came down the stairs crying. She and the children left the house. She said that when she returned, Mr. Oates had ransacked her closet and put some of her personal items in the toilet. Ms. Oates testified that she felt threatened and fearful for her safety.

The parties’ neighbor, Cheryl Starry, testified that when Ms. Oates and the children came to the house after the incident on March 7, 2008, Ms. Oates, N.O., and G.O. were crying and G.O. got in the fetal position and would not speak. She said that N.O. told her that Mr. Oates slapped G.O. Ms. Starry testified that she did not inform Ms. Oates of this. |4She also admitted that she did not include this information about G.O. being slapped in a statement she gave about the events on March 7th.

Angela McGraw, a violence prevention coordinator for Safe Places, testified that, while she had never spoken to Mr. Oates, she believed Ms. Oates’s version of the events. She thought that Ms. Oates was a prime example of one who is suffering emotional abuse from domestic violence. Dr. Dawn Doray, a child psychologist, testified that she had counseled the Oateses’ children beginning on March 20, 2008. She testified that G.O. told her that on March 7 his father pulled him into a room, yelled obscenities about his mother, asked him a lot of questions, and slapped him in the face two times. She said that both G.O. and N.O. were afraid of violence from their father. Although she had never spoken with Mr. Oates or read an evaluation by the court-appointed expert, Dr. Paul Deyoub, she testified that she believed Ms. Oates and the children. Her opinion was that the children were victims of domestic violence.

Mr. Oates disagreed with Ms. Oates’s account of the events on March 7, 2008. He admitted that he drank alcohol that day while in the garage watching television. He said that when he came inside, he and Ms. Oates started arguing. He testified that he closed the blinds not to intimidate her but because he likes the blinds closed. He also admitted that he unintentionally cornered her so he could get to the phone to keep her from calling the police. He grabbed the phone and it came off the wall. He said that Ms. Oates was yelling at him, but he testified that he did not threaten her, hit her, or hit or threaten his son.

| BPr. Paul Deyoub is a forensic psychologist who was court-appointed in 2006 to perform an evaluation for purposes of aiding the court in determining custody of the children after Ms. Oates took the children to Ireland for two months and returned when Mr. Oates filed for divorce. He testified at the May 6, 2008, combined hearing regarding custody in the divorce case. His opinion in his twenty-six page report from 2006 stated that Ms. Oates was “shamelessly alienating the children from their father, but so far the targeted child has been N.O. and he is the only one of the three children who is actually alienated from his dad.” He opined that it could become much worse if Ms. Oates continued to influence the children to reject their father. His testimony in the May 6, 2008, hearing was that his opinion had not changed. While he admitted that he had not interviewed the parties or the children since his report in 2006 and that he did not condone Mr. Oates’s behavior as explained to him, he testified that the allegations surrounding the March 7, 2008, events were consistent with his previous findings and that it did not appear to constitute domestic abuse. He testified that the children were not in danger when in Mr. Oates’s care, that the incident was more of the same in terms of the parties’ “hysterical relationship,” that both parties were responsible during these arguments, and that Mr. Oates was not physically abusive to the children.

On October 15, 2008, the court entered an order denying Ms. Oates’s petition for an order of protection because she failed to prove her allegations of domestic abuse by a preponderance of the evidence. In its very detailed order, the court found that the credibility of the witnesses was “of utmost importance” in the case. It then found the testimony of the RStarrys not helpful because they had no personal knowledge of the events but knew only what Ms. Oates had told them. With regard to Ms.

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Bluebook (online)
377 S.W.3d 394, 2010 Ark. App. 345, 2010 Ark. App. LEXIS 352, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/oates-v-oates-arkctapp-2010.