S2:E9 Wildfire

The song in this week's episode is "Surefire," by Wilderado.

You can access the show notes at https://okappleseed.org/wildfire

S2:E9 WILDFIRE follows the story of one of Jim's survivors as she tries to hold him accountable in the court of public opinion. She was told by the Sapulpa police that they would not pursue charges. Once she learned about all the other survivors, she created a flyer to distribute about Jim's past abuses. Can your abuser sue you for spreading the truth? Can he win?

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

 

SPEAKERS

Leslie Briggs, Colleen McCarty, Josh Kidd, Karrah

 

Leslie Briggs  00:00

This episode contains references to accounts of domestic and sexual violence, violence against women in particular, and language that is not suitable for listeners under 18 years of age. We also discuss coercive control. Please use caution when listening.

 

Karrah  00:16

Yes, he retaliated and takes my weed mugshot, which is like hysterical because I got, I got pulled over with a little bit of weed one time and the smile, I smiled in the mug shot, because I was like, I'm gonna take advantage of this mug shot. And I'm like, I'm gonna smile. And like, I didn't even I didn't have to, like, put the clothes on or anything. I didn't have to like go behind bars or anything. He takes that mugshot and makes a he tries to get it put on a billboard. But nobody would do it for him, I guess. And he bought a website, know your neighbors dot biz or something like that. And puts my mug shot on there. But you can't tell it's a mug shot because I was smiling really big. And he put my face all over town and was warning neighbors about me. I got a call. At work. I start getting calls. And they're like, carry out your faces on signs around town. He put one by my daughter's school, which was also a violation of my protective order. I but they didn't. When I reported it as a violation. They didn't count it as one. They didn't count any of his violations as any as a violation. He did. And I found this out. This was like right before, this was in 2021. Right after he beat his wife number five. His house was on Zillow. And somebody sent me a link to his house. And I could see my face on the sign and this yard next to his house. In Iowa.

 

Colleen McCarty  02:04

Everything in life has a tipping point. No matter what, at some point, the way you've been living becomes too much and something has to get for Jim lumen. The tipping point came when he met Karrah. He didn't know that was the moment and neither did she. But the end of the relationship sparked a series of events that's almost too crazy to believe.

 

Leslie Briggs  02:34

In Episode Six, you heard the survivors accounts of abuse and harrowing detail. Karrah was the survivor who Jim took to Branson on their first date. They only dated for three weeks in October of 2014. Three weeks that would change both of their lives in immeasurable ways. The thing about Karrah is that she has a very fundamental and pronounced sense of what's right and wrong. There's no compromising, and there's no excuses. So when she found out about all the other women that Jim had abused, including the women who she was told to hate when she was dating, her basic humanity transcended all of the mental manipulation. And she began to reach out to them. She and Christen really became close and they bonded over what they went through. What happens when these women begin to organize is remarkable.

 

Colleen McCarty  03:22

This is panic button. Operation Wildfire, and you're listening to Episode Nine. Wildfire. I'm Colleen McCarty.

 

Leslie Briggs  03:33

And I'm Leslie Briggs.

 

Colleen McCarty  03:35

If you're just getting started with us, we recommend you go back and start listening from episode one. Leslie, one of the most remarkable parts about this story is the companionship that emerges between so many of Jim's victims,

 

Leslie Briggs  03:51

right. I mean, they were told during their relationships with him that they were each crazy bitches obsessed with him. They're scorned lovers. They just want to get him back. And often that's happening while they're dating him simultaneously. Like he's talking about someone who's actively dating and saying she's just obsessed with me. I broke up with her already. And I guess something we should talk about Colleen is like that culturally in the United States. Women are bombarded with subconscious messaging, and I mean overt messaging as well. That push us to compete with one another for resources, men jobs, romantic attention. I mean, do you agree? Yes,

 

Colleen McCarty  04:30

I think it's often called internalized misogyny. But it's the idea that, you know, women hold up the patriarchy almost as much if not more than men do. It's the idea that what you're wearing to work is going to be scrutinized not by the men, but by the other women. What your you know, social circles think of you is more important than or what your church thinks of you was maybe sometimes more important than what your husband thinks of you? Or what what are the other women going to say or think or what's the gossip going to be? I mean, I think there's a lot of fear of women's judgment. I mean, when I hear these stories about these genuine friendships that developed between these women that were competing, for the same exact man who all slept with the same man, while had the same exact experience with the same man, it's pretty like it really bends my brain, the fact that they could just like lift up out of their pain and see past the manipulation is one thing. But then, to reach out and become friends with each other is something you just don't see very often. So we talked about this recently together, and we're bringing it onto the podcast, but in a function of their of healing their trauma and growing, becoming friends was actually a great thing for them, they could reflect with each other share stories, and Bond through what were some of the hardest moments of their lives. They needed each other to get through this. But often, they didn't have anyone else. And they didn't feel safe going to family or current people in their life, with what had happened to them. But this is something that frustrates me still, to this day, even after we've heard this story. So many times, legally, their relationships with each other are extremely problematic. And if they associate with each other about these cases, the system looks at that with suspicion. Every attorney when the time comes to go in front of a judge or a jury will hit them hard with accusations that these women are simply getting together and getting their stories straight, organizing their testimony to be consistent making sure that they all say similar things. So they sound more credible,

 

Leslie Briggs  06:47

right? I think for me, so it's like hard for me to take off the lawyer here. Because if you want to get him in a civil or criminal case, you can't, can't cannot hang with your fellow survivors, you simply can't. Because that would be we don't believe women, we just don't. Juries don't believe women. And so when you when you give the other side an opportunity to to attack your credibility. It's pretty hard to come back from

 

Colleen McCarty  07:18

Yeah, but that just plays into this perfect victim narrative that like, you have a therapist and a mom and a grandma. And that's their purpose in your life is to go to with your problems. And you don't need anybody else. And you can find you a good man. And you don't need to worry make better choices make better choices like that police told like that police officer told Ember from episode one, it's just, it's not realistic, especially in the face of the systemic indifference that these people are facing at the time,

 

Leslie Briggs  07:48

right? You have a system that has not done very much. There have been some things but not much. And we were talking about like 30 Day jail sentences, where he gets out in a week for like the abuse that he perpetrated upon Christen. And it's like, okay, well, I tried that. I tried that, that criminal process, and I got jack shit. I'm gonna try a civil process.

 

Colleen McCarty  08:15

The counterpoint to all of that is like, what is going when is it ever going to be enough for you? When is it ever? You you've got the prosecution? You've got the deferred since he got the conviction, you bought the things you want it, it wasn't enough for you? Why wasn't it enough for you? Why didn't it feel like justice to you?

 

Leslie Briggs  08:32

Because it didn't stop him. It didn't fix the problem. And like, that's what I would. That's how I think if I could channel any of those women, it didn't fix it. There were several more victims after Christen got the 30 day jail sentence. And, frankly, like, this is like the it's the big overarching criminal justice problem, like problem is that incarceration doesn't solve the root cause of violence, or like the root problems with community safety. And so and we've heard from the experts last week, and we'll move we're gonna move on from this topic here just a minute, but like, I get frustrated, because I don't know. I don't know what the answer is to this.

 

Colleen McCarty  09:20

I mean, I think a lot of people don't know. But the problem is, we haven't been allowed to study it. We haven't been allowed to try other things. Right. We've been allowed to, like, try restorative justice with these kinds of cases race are looking No,

 

Leslie Briggs  09:33

like the investment in alternative resolutions. Isn't hasn't happened in Oklahoma. And I'm just not convinced that incarceration has done anything to solve Jim's behaviors.

 

Colleen McCarty  09:47

No, and like, what are we saying though? Like he needs to go to prison for life then I just like no,

 

Leslie Briggs  09:53

I just I disagree with that as well.

 

Colleen McCarty  09:55

I mean, I think that's what that's how Jim's family feels is that these women will be up he until he's in a graver and behind bars for the rest of his life like The Green Mile. Right?

 

Leslie Briggs  10:06

Right. And I think the problem is that the trauma for them is still so visceral, the system re traumatize them. And there wasn't any healing. I'm just like, gonna say you're like Xavier. And it really is and their take on how to heal those traumas. I agree with. I think that's the only real viable solution.

 

Colleen McCarty  10:27

I mean, human psychology says the only way to heal things like this is not further separation, further abuse gation further, hiding and stave, pleading the fifth and the things that the legal system is built to do. It is built to bring only the relevant evidence and relevant based on a judge's opinion. It is, you know, only built to do those things and various, it only really works in very limited circumstances, personal interpersonal relationships, interpersonal violence, the solution is probably never, you're never going to feel fully healed. Because you're just never going to feel fully healed after a criminal prosecution no matter what happens. Yeah. Because you never get to hear from that person, how it impacted them that you never get to hear from them that they had, that it had an impact on them what they did, that they recognize the impact that it had on you that they're sorry, they no one ever gets to hear what really happened because the point is to obfuscate what really happened,

 

Leslie Briggs  11:34

right? Well, I think that the point is also to protect the individual liberty of the defendant, which is like you and I both agree feel very strongly that that needs to happen is one of the most critical facets of our entire legal system. So this has been a huge sidebar. Yeah, I do. I do think that we should hear from Karrah about what she thought about banding together helped her HURT

 

Colleen McCarty  12:02

Do you feel like your friendship with the other girls in any way undermine your credibility in the courts?

 

Karrah  12:11

Absolutely, I do I feel like I feel like like me going in to I went with I had Christen with me a lot of times when I would be filling out violations of things or when I would be filing all my court filings or anything Christen would come with me sometimes Amberwood in the beginning and they basically would just look at you like you two crazy girls that are teaming up against this poor guy like it was pretty much like leave the poor guy alone at mentality and and they would ask me well, why are you even friends you and it was really where do you even therapist seem to not encourage me and Christen being friends. It was really strange like the the way that our friendship was looked down upon. It has been for a long time.

 

Colleen McCarty  13:16

So even despite the suspicion phrased and Karen knowing that this raises the hackles of of all the legal participants in this situation, it doesn't stop her from forming a plan after she realizes that her case is going to get dismissed against Jim are basically is not even gonna get investigated at all. She decides to take matters into her own hands.

 

Karrah  13:42

The minute I found out my case was dropped a day before my mom died. And when my mom died, I did not get sad like most people do when their mom dies, I felt like a big badass warrior. All of a sudden, I felt like my mom would die if she knew I was freaking rolling over to this guy if I was just not doing anything to stand up to him. And so I I didn't know that I was going to hang the flyer at the time. I made the I was going to make a flyer I just wanted to make a graphic that had at least a warning. Yeah, I was thinking about making a website honestly. And I was and I knew that if I just put it and I was having a hard time searching for him. I couldn't prove that he was any kind of criminal when I was with him. I couldn't look into his background to see that he had any kind of violent history. And so I learned that if you actually put in lumen to like when you're searching for him It pulls up a lot more stuff. But so, but people don't know that. So I wanted a way to condense some information, some public information about him, also with people. And I wanted to use women that personally told me things that he had done with them. So I made a flyer, I put his one of his mugshots on it, I made a list of some of his crimes that you could find online, including, like the casket stuff, just because it's creepy. I put that one in there just because I wanted someone to pull it up and see that he has a casket lawsuit. Yeah, I know that. I mean, I just threw that in there. Because everybody needs to know about the caskets. No. And so I, I just put a list of the allegations from the women that I had personally heard from. I I just Christen and I talked, it was it was right after my mom's funeral. It was the weekend of my mom's funeral. And we were going to do something that we were going to do something to because the police weren't doing anything, we were at least going to hang one flyer, like we were at least going to put one flyer up. And so I ended up going. We talked on the phone the night before Christen and I and we said okay, we're doing this tomorrow. And I didn't think we were actually going to do it. And she didn't think we were actually going to do it. And last thing I knew I was at the place that she was house sitting at, we were on our way to make 200 copies, color copies of the flyer after I made the flyer after we made the copies. I realized that my email address was at the on the bottom of each fucking one of them. And I had to tear off my email address off of all 200 of them before we hung them. But anyway, sorry, that was a long story. So we we didn't want our cart her car to be seen on camera. So we went to the airport and we rented a Mustang. And we named it wildfire because we were about to be spreading the truth like wildfire. And we took the Mustang to Cleveland, gems hometown, and we hung fliers pretty much everywhere that we could think of including his sister's grave. We hung one at the Hickory House Restaurant is favorite place to eat. We hung one at the police station at the library at the place that they get shakes. I can't remember what it was a really good like ice cream place but the dairy barn, we put one at the dairy barn. We put one at his sister's house. I think we threw a few out there at the school at the park where Christen was found. And then toward the end we we went up we put them up we I think Kristin put it judges house because she used to clean for him. At the end we had a few leftover and we went up to the top of this hill and we just throw them out and watch them fly up cross this golf course and over this hill it felt fucking amazing. It felt like we had finally we laughed so hard that day. I was wearing sunglasses, a black hoodie, black everything because I didn't want to be on people's cameras, because I knew Jim would be coming after me. And so I mean, it was truly like vigilante justice. And you know, neither one of us are like, you know, it was like we both have jobs and stuff. So it was like we were really felt like we were getting by with something and and we were probably well, a few days later, I started to get a lot of angry messages from the women on the flyer. I started to get angry messages from a lot of people in general, saying How dare you put this up? Basically, he had a lot of women blaming each other for he didn't know who did it. And everyone was blaming each other for it. Everyone was freaking out thinking he was going to come after them. Because he was kind of livid. And he was blaming every woman on the flyer and they kept coming to me and they're like, he's coming after me because of this flyer. And I'm like, Well, I gotta take it. I got I take full responsibility for it because I can't handle all these poor women going through more trauma because of this flyer. I did not even like think that through at all I did, I did Black their eyes, like put a bar across their eyes and like, covered their names like I mean, it was completely anonymous. Like they weren't like, I didn't think that through at least but they were he, he just has a way to make you the bad guy and him the victim. And so I really felt like I had no choice but to take full responsibility for the flyer. I believe. I think I just like posted the flyer on Facebook and said, Hey, I posted this around town. And, and Cleveland, Oklahoma. And because this is what my abuser did to me, and I know I said a women's group did I think I blamed some women's group. And then I later on said, I was the women's group. That's what happened. I blamed a women's group at first. And then I said, I'm the women's group. I also did not take everyone's advice and lock my stuff down either. I wanted him to be able, honestly, I wanted him to be able to see what I was doing. And I know that sounds really crazy. But I honestly, this whole time, everyone's like, Well, why are you why are you my my page is public. And I, I want him to be able to see what I have to say to him. He's tried so hard to silence me. So it's like I have no choice. But I don't, I won't let him.

 

Colleen McCarty  21:50

So Karrah realizes pretty quickly that Jim is going to sue her for her publication of the flyer. And by the way, you can see the flyer in the notes of our show. And also for the dissemination of the flyer around Cleveland, and also for the publication of a flyer on social media. All of those are different as essentially publications under defamation law. And here's how Karrah learned that Jim had filed suit against her.

 

Karrah  22:21

I get a process server on my porch, and I get slapped with a $300,000 civil defamation lawsuit from Jim Luman.

 

Leslie Briggs  22:38

So Karrah goes on to make a mistake that I think a lot of listeners of this podcast will identify with, but the lawyers who listen are probably going to cringe a little.

 

Karrah  22:48

My mentality was, well, it's a civil suit. I don't have to buy a lawyer. And like I tried, I looked around at some lawyers, but it was all like $5, 6, 7000 retainer immediately. And I just could not. I was like I could have gotten into my retirement. But I was really trying not to let Jim Luman eat my retirement. It was kind of my thing. And I'm like, Well, I'm well spoken. I'm not afraid of men. I can probably do this, which was totally looking back was totally naive. And I mean, I did not think that it would be allowed to go on. Honestly, I naively thought that I could just defend this with the truth because that's what the First Amendment says. It says that if you say the truth, or I can't like, quote it verbatim, but like, if you can't be sued for defamation if you're telling the truth. And so I knew I was telling the truth. And so I didn't feel the need to hire anyone to say I was telling the truth, because I knew I was.

 

Leslie Briggs  24:04

I want to be super clear that I think the law should be accessible to everybody. But some cases just can't be handled per se. They are complex, the body of law that they are based on is complex. And defamation is exactly that. I mean, I don't know what you think about accessibility to the courts. But I do think that like there's a time and place and their particular dockets that should be pro se. But this is not one of them.

 

Colleen McCarty  24:29

This is the thing that I really struggle with. I mean, I believe very strongly in access to justice. And the reason that Karrah couldn't hire a lawyer is because a defamation lawyer, a first or a First Amendment lawyer, as she calls them would run you probably 15 grand to defend this kind of case. minimum, minimum. Yeah, that's for a capable, qualified attorney, you know, to even just respond to all these crazy pleadings, right amount of time that it would take to just respond to all of this is crazy. But also to do a good job like to, you know, lay out the facts, make sure the court understands what's actually happened here, like, introduce all the POs introduce all the rest. Like we've spent hours and hours going through all these documents. I can't imagine, you know what it would take an attorney to defend this case from the beginning of it. If I'm

 

Leslie Briggs  25:22

just it would maybe be a little cheaper. Honestly, I mean, I don't know for that for a fact. I don't know what the final cost was for Karrah. But I do think like, by the time her attorney enters the case, so much had happened, that it was like he had to read the same amount of hours that we spent reading all the pleadings to figure out what went down before he could even get a plan together.

 

Colleen McCarty  25:42

Yeah, yeah. So I want you just really quickly Leslie to like do a basic overview of what is defamation even.

 

Leslie Briggs  25:50

Defamation is this. It's actually there are two categories of defamation. There's slander and libel. Libel is the written word slander is the spoken word. And these are torts. These are these are intentional torts. Yeah. intentional torts, intentional torts, intentional wrongs. And, you know, beneath those two that I won't talk about slander and libel individually, I was gonna talk about defamation, but there's two types of defamation. There's defamation per se and per quad. So per se is like on its face, on its face. This is defamatory statement. Usually the best example of that is like Joe killed his mother. But it's not true. Right. So that's, that's a false if it were a false statement. That'd be defamatory because you're accusing him of a crime. Paraquad is a little more complicated. It's you got to use extrinsic evidence you have to the statement itself is not necessarily. It's not on its face defamatory. The standard paraquat example of like an insurance company accusing you of having been injured in an accident, but you weren't the party that was involved, right? Like that's like a mistaken identity. That's, that's a per se, that's a sorry, not per se, that's per quad defamation, you have to have more information other than just the statement and on its face, it's not enough. And so in some cases, you have to plead and prove special damages. So in Paraquad cases, you're gonna have to show special damage. The same is not true for per se defamation. So special damages are like the economic harm that you have suffered with relative certainty. That's what you got to prove. In a per se case, you could do things like mental anguish and recover, right? Again, you have to prove your damages up, but you don't have to plead and prove special damages for per se, defamation.

 

Colleen McCarty  27:35

What about malice? Do you have to have like, do you have to prove that the person did it meanly?

 

Leslie Briggs  27:41

Yeah, so the elements of a, of a defamation claim. And the state of Oklahoma really that it's like an unprivileged communication? It's false. It's the standard normally is negligence. So it's a negligence standard for private parties, like for private individuals. It's a negligence standard. If you're talking about a public figure or public entity, it's a actual malice standard. So negligence being like you were just not careful about checking that it was true. Public for that's for private parties. But if you're talking about a public person like me, and I don't know if everybody knows this, but school teachers are considered public figures. Really? Yeah. It's the kid. What is the case? I forget the case. It was the high school like basketball coach, that was misidentified by a news story is like having committed a sexual assault or something? No, it was bananas. It's bananas case. I've defined it. But

 

Colleen McCarty  28:35

there's a whole body of law on whether or not you're a public figure. Yeah, there you and I are probably,

 

Leslie Briggs  28:38

we might be it might be at this point. Tom always

 

Colleen McCarty  28:43

says to me, it's like you're probably a public figure right now.

 

Leslie Briggs  28:46

Probably yeah. Right. And so there's a there's probably a test out there that I don't know off the top of my head to figure out who's a public figure. But so if you are a public figure, if somebody is going to defame you, they have to do it with actual malice with an intent to hurt you. And then again, you have to prove plead and prove damages. So it's either special damages or just your emotional distress damages. So there are several defenses to defamation right, you have absolute privilege, which is the truth. You can get like qualified privilege and play things like fair comment. So if you're commenting and reporting on what's gone on and an official proceeding fair report is another privilege. That is a defense to defamation. That's something like the news making a fair report on something that's gone on. Of course, there are you know, there's things you have to prove relating to that. But fair comment, that's your opinion, your opinion is not defamation, but you have to be careful about catching a fact as opinion. Right. And then legislative or court or official other official proceedings, generally you are you are protected from defamation, for the things you say during those proceedings. So that's defamation in a nutshell.

 

Colleen McCarty  29:59

I have a question about that. Yeah. So like when you say the truth is not defamation, because that's an a complete defense. What do you have to do to show that it's the truth?

 

Leslie Briggs  30:15

Yeah. I mean, if you're being sued for defamation, like Karrah was to prove the truth, you would need, it would depend on what the exact claims were that were on the flyer, right. And on the flyer, she lists the cases and the police reports that she was aware of, at the time that were out against Jim. And she's, it's a, it's a statement of, beware, was there a serial abuser, in your community? And then she lists the cases, right. So to prove the truth, I mean, it's like, here's all the cases, and here's all the file paperwork on those cases. And here's the police reports. And also, if you can get any of those women to testify, it's and then you prove it. That's I mean, you prove it substantially true.

 

Colleen McCarty  31:02

So, okay, let's look at this a little more closely with Jim and Karrah's case. What what it is he's trying to say happened?

 

Leslie Briggs  31:09

Yeah, what I find interesting about this, and this is something we touched on in the legal abuse episode. So what's interesting about Jim's petition, is the way he's trying to counteract that these statements are not true, despite there being court cases about it. So for example, he says in his petition, that and who was his lawyer, his lawyer this time was Josh Kidd.

 

Colleen McCarty  31:32

We heard from Josh in episode two,

 

Leslie Briggs  31:33

we did hear from Josh in episode two, but the his current attorney has actually gotten Jon Nation who was also heavily affiliated with PI associates currently, that's who has the last entered appearance in the case. So Jim alleges that he doesn't know or recognize the woman listed as victim 8 on the flyer and if you go look at the flyer, you'll know what I mean. He alleges that another one of the victims her name's Brandy. He spoke to her and she's like no, that never happened was that's what he's alleging in the petition

 

Colleen McCarty  32:05

that's just so fucking funny to me. I talked to her and she said that didn't happen. and she said you're right

 

Leslie Briggs  32:11

tshe said I did not hit her.  

 

Colleen McCarty  32:12

listen, in case you want to know the truth. She told me I didn't do that. So

 

Leslie Briggs  32:18

I except also by the way, you met Forrest Smith corroborated that she came to

 

Colleen McCarty  32:24

listen to the bonus episode here. Forest Smith corroborate Brandy's assault. Yeah.

 

Leslie Briggs  32:28

All right. I'm sorry, but like, but anyway, so that's Brandy, he speaks with Misty, his ex wife. And it doesn't actually say that Misty, says that it's untrue. But she says that the flyer is ridiculous, and she's not happy about it and then there's another victim, Lindsey, Lindsey, someone we tried to find, but we we just could not track her down. That is again, has nothing to do with truth or falsehood. But that Lindsay was disturbed and distraught and humiliated that her information was out there on that flyer, because apparently she had one of the cases against him.

 

Colleen McCarty  33:02

So none of them are actually saying he didn't do it. They're mad about the flyer.

 

Leslie Briggs  33:08

Yeah, they're like they're like not happy that the flyer is out there, which I don't blame them if they didn't if they weren't consulted, and they were you know, I don't blame them for having their stuff blasted, but that none of them are saying other than he's saying the Brandy's recanting, but that's the only one He's saying is recounting. He also says he's not aware of an Arkansas victim. Well you're gonna you're gonna meet the Arkansas victim next week. So you just like it. That's what he's alleging in this petition when he files this suit. None of it, sir. None of that is evidence of untruth. Except for Brandy who may be recanted. If she did. I don't know

 

Colleen McCarty  33:51

But she recanted to the abuser.

 

Leslie Briggs  33:54

But he's nice. Seems like saying that she recanted to him. He calls her up,

 

Colleen McCarty  33:59

like as if that wouldn't be threatening in itself. Right.

 

Leslie Briggs  34:03

So that's the petition for defamation. It's just, you know, I think it's flimsy. I think it's very flimsy at best to begin with. But let's talk

 

Colleen McCarty  34:13

about what happens next. Because this is the most shocking part maybe, is that it moves forward. It

 

Leslie Briggs  34:22

moves forward. Yeah, she she files a motion to dismiss. At some point that is not granted. She files counterclaims as well, and they get her counterclaims dismissed, you know, but she's given a chance to refile she does. So there's just like a lot of procedural things that are going on in this case. And again, she's representing herself. And so and that's, that's tough because you have not only do you have like local court rules with your local county courts, you have the district court rules that are statutory. And then you have the rules of civil procedure, which are also statutory, you have to be able to navigate all three sets of rules effectively. To do this,

 

Colleen McCarty  34:58

plus you have to be making determinations about what's relevant. What do you want to share what actually proves the truth here without showing yourself in a bad light, there are a lot of information sharing decisions that need to be strategically made. And plus, when you're also trying to learn the rules and trying to learn how to respond to something. What is legal pleading look like. It's just gonna be a mess. It's

 

Leslie Briggs  35:27

it is it is a mess. And like, it's interesting, like my theory on this is that Karrah probably could have done this if she'd had like some, like ad hoc legal help, like some limited scope, legal help, if there was somebody that she was paying some amount of money to do strategic decision making and give her guidance on the rules, versus like paying for their hourly appearances, right in court or, like, Yeah, but I do think with like a little bit of support, like she could have navigated this better, it's still the gold standard is to have representation, I just want to say that this is a very complex body of law, like you, you should be represented, it sucks that it costs a bunch of money. I'll leave it at that. But actually, what's what's probably there's two extremely fucked up things we have to talk about this case, before we move on to the next thing. It's the default judgment that gets entered. Yep. But before we get to the default judgment, I want to talk about the restraining order that gets entered. Because Josh kid files for a temporary restraining order, preventing her from speaking out about any of this stuff relating to gym, and its Yarrow is an equitable remedy, right, that would essentially a gag serve you speaking, stop her from talking about it stops her from being able to talk about it. And there's actually and it gets granted, and it gets granted. And this is the big kind of this is the conundrum I have, because like that decision was a bad decision. It was made on on an erroneous conclusion of law. Because there's lots of good case law that says that, like, what's at stake here is somebody's first amendment right? And somebody else hasn't, has an adequate remedy at law, which is money damage, you sue somebody for defamation to get money, because it's hurt you. And on the opposite side of that you have somebody's first amendment rights. And those are competing interests in every defamation case, and so to to allow equity, what's called equitable relief, you have money damage, and then you have, like courts of law and Courts of Equity. That's courts of law or money, Courts of Equity or things like injunction and restraining orders. And so here, things have gotten criss crossed. And the judge has entered an equitable relief when he had the ability to enter a money damage relief. And that gags Karrah, I mean, Karrah can't talk about what she's experienced now, as a result of that ruler that she

 

Colleen McCarty  37:49

couldn't talk about it. She could not talk about it on social media, she could not speak to anyone about it. And this was in place for 441 days. So over a year,

 

Leslie Briggs  37:59

over a year. Yeah. of her being silenced. And I think that's had a really lasting impact where because it compounds her trauma of like the experiences that she had. And then like her effort to assert some kind of independence or control over the circumstance is met with a full on court order silencing her, which is based on bad law, just it's just a bad I mean, and to the judges credit, and it's actually judge pickerel he undos his own ruling, but not till after a lot of other things go down, including the default judgment. Do you want to talk about that?

 

Colleen McCarty  38:34

Yeah. So quickly, though, I think before that, we have to just let Karrah discuss, like we asked her when we talked with her what her favorite part of doing the lawsuit was of defending the lawsuit herself was, and she said that it was actually being able to cross examine Jim herself, because she was the lawyer. So when you're the lawyer, you do the cross examining. So this is what she said,

 

Karrah  39:01

I got to cross examine him for one thing. I cross examined him for a long time, in fact, to the point I asked him if he had ever beat a woman, and he said, No, I asked him if he had ever laid his hands on a woman. He said, No, I asked him if he had ever flown an airplane. And I asked him if he had a baby with Sarah Evans. I asked him all of the things that would get under his skin. But he couldn't hurt me because he was in a court.

 

Leslie Briggs  39:38

We actually pulled the transcript of that. And so here's some of the highlights. I guess.

 

Colleen McCarty  39:42

I wanted to also say like it seems like Jim is trying to limit the claims of defamation to only certain things on the flyer like he's conceding

 

Leslie Briggs  39:53

sure he has to concede like the Christian assault because he pled guilty.

 

Colleen McCarty  39:59

Yeah, and He is like saying, the parts that defamed me are these specific parts of the flyer like, Okay, I'll give you these things give you

 

Leslie Briggs  40:10

the domestic A&B. I'm gonna not tell the truth or I don't or I'm gonna have selective memory about the Arkansas victim and say that I've never I don't know what that's about.

 

Colleen McCarty  40:21

I don't know what that is. I'm not aware of it as Arkansas

 

Leslie Briggs  40:26

full police report. You know? Yeah. And I and like, he also it's also just like, so silly to read how he's saying that, like some of the some of the women who are on the flyer are like mad that they're on there as if that this proves that what happened,

 

Colleen McCarty  40:44

they don't like that their

 

Leslie Briggs  40:46

pictures on this flyer, I don't know. And I don't begrudge anybody that if that's like, if that has how they felt like I don't, I don't begrudge them that. But I'm sorry to say to Jim and, Josh, that that is not how you defeat a claim of defamation that somebody's mad that the truth was told is not the same as saying that like it's defamatory. That's just, but that is like, that's like a refrain that he kind of goes to,

 

Colleen McCarty  41:12

well, they're in a really weak legal position when you're reading, like, they're already in a very weak legal position, because we're coming into the situation saying, I'm not a serial abuser, because two of the things on this serial abuser flyer are false. Right, the other eight things I'll talk to you about those later. One of them is just a bloody nose, blah, blah,

 

Leslie Briggs  41:32

right? He really dismisses what he did to Christen, which you guys heard in Episode Six, like the bulk of like what she experienced, he dismisses it as a bloody nose.

 

Colleen McCarty  41:42

Yeah, and so it's a very weak position to come in here and be like, I'm gonna go ahead and concede many of these points. I clearly do have a violent history. However, these other two things are defamatory, and I deserve $300,000. Oh, he's saying he never raped anyone.

 

Leslie Briggs  42:01

No rapes.

 

Colleen McCarty  42:05

That was one of them. He says he never fish hooked anyone. He never choked anyone. He never held anyone hostage at gunpoint. He never threatened the lives of anyone's children. And he never stalked anyone.

 

Leslie Briggs  42:18

I mean, there's a lot of evidence that those things happened. Yes, the problem is that like what's happening in this hearing in 2016, is you have pro se, you have pro se Karrah, who's doesn't have a lawyer, who doesn't practice who's not like in that courtroom and doesn't know how that operates like the niceties of having a hearing like this. But you also have like, this hearing goes off the fucking rails almost immediately they go to this. So let me just situate us really quickly because this is a hearing in the defamation proceeding on whether or not Jim is entitled to an injunction against Karrah, an injunction is equitable relief. It's an order from the court to prevent you from doing something. So that's what they're there to get. Because the court had previously entered a restraining order against Karrah to not speak about the things that were on the flyer to not publicly discuss them while this litigation was pending, but like the hearing itself should have been limited to whether or not an injunction was warranted. And somehow they end up litigating the whole case, but it's just off the rails and it should, it just shouldn't have played out that way.

 

Colleen McCarty  43:25

I'm trying to remember how it even came to be that they were introducing evidence or that they were calling witnesses in the first place, because it's like, there shouldn't be any witnesses. There shouldn't be any evidence presented? Well, like they're doing

 

Leslie Briggs  43:39

it because like the issue of evidence, the issue of taking evidence should have been about the singular question of whether an injunction was necessary to stop Karrah from from discussing the flyer or the things on the flyer further. So they do that a little bit. They're like the her post is still up and cares, like, Well, I haven't reshard it, it's way down on my Facebook. And it's like, that should have been the limitation on this. But they start introducing emails from people who are not present in the courtroom. I mean, so many layers of hearsay. It's an email from somebody who's not there. It just is like, why are we putting this stuff into evidence?

 

Colleen McCarty  44:16

Authentication? Can I just say authentication like 500 more times, please. Authentication and the rule of completeness,

 

Leslie Briggs  44:21

if there is reasons Karrah is raising these issues, she's not doing it again, because she's pro se. She's not doing it with like all the niceties of like objection, relevance, Objection, rule of completeness. And the court gives her some leeway and like kind of reads between the lines of her speaking objection to get at what the rule underlying rule would be. And on some occasions, you know, he's granting those objections but it's just like, utter chaos. Yeah, it is. And it ends it culminates it actually, when he read this transcript, and you get to the end of it, and the judge issued his ruling, I can see exactly what happened. So there is a point when Christen gets called to testify, and Christen wasn't prepared to testify, she had not expected to testify that day. Christen, who gets called to testify by Karrah, regarding the underlying defamation, they because they've started litigating the issue of what's true in the fire, what's not which they never should have been doing the question of real. I mean, in my opinion, the court should have put a stop to that. And like, very clearly put parameters on what we're here to decide today. Because like we said, it goes off the rails, we're talking about hearsay, within hearsay in these emails, authentication, all that stuff we were just talking about. But there's this moment where Karrah is questioning, Christen. And I want to read that, and then I want to talk about the court's decision. Yeah. So question by Karrah, would you say that this is a streamlined version of everything? That's public record that you've seen? Yes. That's Christen. Answering. Yes. Karrah says would you have when you met him in a dating capacity? Would you have liked to have something like this to look at before he injured you? And then we get an objection from Jim's lawyer on on relevance. And care says, Well, how is that irrelevant? The court says, overruled, you may answer if you know, and then Christen answers.

 

Colleen McCarty  46:14

Had I had this information in front of me whenever I made the decision to see Mr. Lumen, I would have not continued a relationship with him or ever found myself alone with him in his grasp.

 

Leslie Briggs  46:26

Okay. And so that testimony, I think, actually becomes the thing the court makes this decision on. So the court itself begins to, to examine Christen. And then what that what I mean by examined is like the court begins asking fact finding questions, which usually the court will not be doing, like we mentioned earlier, that's not their role. And so the court questions Christian and says, I have one question that I want to ask that I want you to clarify some of your testimony to me. I understand. You tell me that, that you knew of Mr. Lumen as another person in the community. Since I think you said you were four?

 

Colleen McCarty  47:07

Yes, I have known of him since I was four.

 

Leslie Briggs  47:09

And the court says you attended the same school, things like that. Yes. But you didn't know him? Well, until you became involved with him romantically? Is that what you're saying? That's true. Did I understand your testimony that if you had seen this document, this flyer that would have changed? It would color your opinion about Mr. Lumen and you would never have dated him? Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. That's what I wanted to clarify. You may step down. Yeah. And so then the court, the court issues its ruling from the bench. The court

 

Colleen McCarty  47:39

is always cognizant of the constitutional first amendment right to freedom of speech and expression. However, the First Amendment just like the second amendment that allows you to bear arms comes with responsibilities and consequences. The determination to date as to the purpose, I heard a lot of testimony of why whether or not this was done to damage purposefully Mr. Lumen or whether it was done in a purely altruistic manner to warn other people so that they would not be victims is not before me today. What I have is the determination of whether or not plaintiff is entitled to an injunction. Based upon the criteria set forth under Oklahoma law and injunctions. I have been able to find continuing harm as a result of the actions of Karrah posting this in Pawnee County and online based partially on testimony that was someone who only vaguely familiar with Mr. Lumen would have their opinion of him changed for the worst if they had encountered that flyer. But I find the continuing harm and it does exist, I find that the potential harm suffered by the defendant is less than the harm suffered by the plaintiff. If the injunction were to issue, I find that the plaintiff has barely established that he's likely to prevail, at least having established a prima fascia case regarding defamation only. And I haven't heard any argument regarding public policy other than Karrah's statement that she is doing this to protect the public. And I don't see that the actions taken here specifically fit that particular method. There could have been other methods to protect the public and the court is a little concerned that if in fact the woman on the flyer whose pictures are there, other than Karrah are in fact victims, then some of them may not have wanted to be identified as such. And the photographs although I don't personally know any of these women, apparently are such that people can make out who that is. I had people identify them on the stand as to who these people are.

 

Leslie Briggs  49:41

So I wouldn't interrupt to just say like all that's predicated on hearsay, that was presented by Jim during the proceedings, he just starts telling me he starts testifying as to what these women told him about how they feel about the flyer. And it's like, that's not that's and he's

 

Colleen McCarty  49:53

the one identifying them. He's the one identifying his own victims. Yeah, of course he can.

 

Leslie Briggs  49:58

Well, it's just like It's yeah, right. I just the whole thing is based on a bad decision by the court and he to the judges credit, he reverses himself again only after like there's briefing on this issue of whether an injunction injunction is not an appropriate remedy for defamation. You have you have money damages, Jim would have been entitled to money damages. How do you prove the defamation, but the hearing just It's so chaotic. It's just it's so difficult to read, because you're just watching. Frankly, you're watching in my opinion, this may sound harsh, but like a bad lawyer doing a victory lap over a pro se, defendant. And you're just like, this is like, bullshit.

 

Colleen McCarty  50:47

Trash, it's trash. Also, like I think it's worth just mentioning briefly that what the court is trying to place on Karrah is called a prior restraint, which means we are not only restraining you from saying something that you've already said, we want you to eliminate those statements from the public. We're also going to restrain you from saying things that you haven't said yet, which the forefathers of our Constitution frowned greatly on prior restraint is one of the reasons they left England and came to this new land and created the constitution to begin with. And so it's pretty fundamental in First Amendment law, that it's, it's really inappropriate to try to prevent someone from saying something. Yeah, the government

 

Leslie Briggs  51:35

has to meet the strictest standards to put a prior restraint on you. So yeah, it's it's a bad decision by the court. And again, it doesn't get undone until you have legal intervention by another lawyer representing Karrah. You know, but something we have to do, we do have to talk about that comes out in these transcripts are some of the bad facts right, Colleen. And after they break up, or after the, you know, this, this final weekend happens, there's, in the hearing, it's suggested? Well, it's basically testified to that by Jim that he broke up with Karrah after three dates. And I just wanna say, like we've seen, we have seen how quickly he can move in three weeks with somebody. I mean, he has moved from meeting someone for a first date to a marriage proposal within six weeks. And Karrah has told us that they were already discussing marriage and moving in together. And so the idea of like, again, I think this is part of his gaslighting tactic of like, up the stakes really quickly with a with a bunch of love bombing. And then if it falls apart, and any like in this exact scenario, when you're trying to like hold me accountable, what I'm going to say is there was three dates. So she's crazy. She's crazy. It was three days. And instead, what is that, but what he's actually done is really intensely up the ante with with love bombing and discussions of marriage vulnerability. I don't know. Do you have thoughts on that?

 

Colleen McCarty  53:04

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of the time we spend talking about these issues, we talk about survivors, and how oftentimes their behavior to someone outside of these situations, it doesn't really makes sense. It's not a logical. And it's not something that can be easily explained in a court testimony. And oftentimes, a defense attorney will try to tear a victim apart because of things that they did, you know, during the relationship or afterwards. And these are the kinds of conversations like that happen between people who are having an emotional breakup, like they sometimes Express fondness for each other, they sometimes express that they miss each other, right?

 

Leslie Briggs  53:50

And it becomes if you don't immediately hate him, and express that every time you're talking to him then

 

Colleen McCarty  53:56

and go to the police immediately. If you don't go to the police immediately with the harm. That didn't happen,

 

Leslie Briggs  54:01

right that it didn't happen. Never mind that like that's just not how humans operate when you when you're getting in a relationship, especially an emotionally manipulative one with also, you know, sexual violence. Like the emotional work that has to be done to actually separate yourself isn't happening, the night of the breakup, when you're sending emails back and forth to each other about how you felt at particular moments in that relationship.

 

Colleen McCarty  54:30

Hasn't everybody gotten drunk and texted an ex or texted somebody? So they broke up with that you like, just want to like razz a little bit sometimes. Well, in

 

Leslie Briggs  54:41

the idea that like, again, to what you're saying, is that like, okay, you don't get to act like a regular person. Because there was sexual violence in the case in this situation. You have to act in a very specific way otherwise, we won't believe you. It's like, you don't stop being you don't stop having your normal breakup among shins that are also just elevated and complicated by the abuse. So it's like there's a very chaotic exchange of emails that gets introduced during that hearing of, you know, are we gonna get back together? Are we not going to get back together? You know, let's do some business together, him reaching out to her for hookups, her reaching out to him for hookups and like, just, it goes on for a period of six months. So there's really I mean, there's, as far as I can tell from the transcript, there's about three times that he reaches out to her and initiates contact post breakup, and three times from her back at him. So we're like, okay, numerically were pretty even here. Like if the numbers matter, it was

 

Colleen McCarty  55:41

but at the same time, like what you keep seeing during Jim's testimony, and this is Josh, attempting to only introduce the pieces that are favorable to him. And I mean, that's something that narcissistic abusers and coercive controllers do all the time. And a verbal argument is they just say the things take the thing out of the context. Yeah. And supports their proposition. Yes. And he's, and he's the worst part about this. And I'm sorry, Josh, if you're listening. The worst part about this is that he's an attorney, and he knows better.

 

Leslie Briggs  56:12

Yeah. And he's, he's definitely like taking advantage of a pro se.

 

Colleen McCarty  56:16

He's putting somebody who has no reason to know. Right? And it's like, she even she actually does do a good job of saying, oh, yeah, that's not all of it. That's not all of it. And also, mine doesn't match that. Yeah. Why are the words different on this one? She's

 

Leslie Briggs  56:32

just not letting him get away with it without a fight. Yeah,

 

Colleen McCarty  56:36

and it's good. I'm glad that she did that. But at the same time, it's like, when you're up against somebody that's pro se, you should be double on your game. Like, you shouldn't be trying to sneak things past.

 

Leslie Briggs  56:48

Like, are you kidding me? Yeah, I was dying. When she's cross examining Jim, on his finances, and undercutting his claim of damages, just like you can't have it both ways. You can't be online, claiming to bid on an airplane, and then act like you've been losing tons of money and sleep over this. I don't, it just is like, and she gets him to admit that he doesn't file his taxes, which I thought was

 

Colleen McCarty  57:17

pretty bizarre. He just fill out says, I haven't filed taxes in seven years. Yeah,

 

Leslie Briggs  57:21

it just I don't do my taxes. You're running? No, you are running a legal consulting business and not filing your taxes.

 

Colleen McCarty  57:28

And hi lawyers, people who pretend to be lawyers, there's this thing called the Fifth Amendment that I really recommend you avail yourselves of.

 

Leslie Briggs  57:36

So I don't know dude, I like I it just is the whole, the whole thing is so scattered and difficult to make sense of, and it just it for me, the culminating thing of all of this is that, like, Karrah holds her own, like, really fucking holds her own in that hearing. But you can't you just been a case that's complicated like this. We're talking about injunctions and equitable relief, and we're talking about first amendment rights, or we're talking about defamation. And all of these are like extremely complex bodies of law. It's just like there was going to be a tough hill to climb for her, I think,

 

Colleen McCarty  58:10

yeah, and what I hate the most, and this will be the last thing I say. But definitely what I hate the most, is that she brought her friend there as a support, who is also a victim of the same man. And it's used against her not by Jim, but by the court itself, right. Like, talk about systemic gaslighting. Right. Wow.

 

Leslie Briggs  58:42

Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, it just like that whole candidates bad decision by the court. And Christen hadn't been prepped to testify. She didn't know she was going to testify. And it was really an off the cuff decision to put her on the stand because they wound up litigating the underlying truth of the claims, which they never should have been doing in the first place. That hearing should have been limited to the issue of injunction. And the court really should have done a better job boxing in what was going to be heard and what wasn't. But Karrah makes this decision to put Christen on the stand with no prep, and no legal advice. And it winds up being the thing that the court uses to make its decision.

 

Colleen McCarty  59:18

Well, then also, like she's just answering honestly, yes. If I saw this flyer about a serial abuser in my community, it would change my opinion of him. Yes, of course it would. And then he takes that as evidence of reputational damage.

 

Leslie Briggs  59:34

Yeah, and that the harm is going to continue to Jim if the if Karrah is allowed to continue to discuss what's in the public record. So you know, I think I just like I have to say I appreciate that care out, really put up a solid fight. And I wish the system was better designed so that it wasn't like it wasn't always necessary to have a lawyer there with you. But this kind of a case just really required it. It really did. So the fact that there was a restraining order entered is like what blows my mind? Because it's just it's an equitable relief, and it wasn't necessary.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:00:08

And that was the truth of the law is that that should have never been entered, because that wasn't the right kind of relief for this type of tort. Right, exactly. And so she was, she was silenced for 441 days, but it was wrong.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:00:29

Right. And it also just speaks to another problem with the legal system is that like, lawyers get the benefit of the doubt. Like Josh kid is in that courtroom very regularly. And so when he's making his legal argument in favor of this TR o this restraining order, and Karrah's in there going, This isn't right. I can feel it in my bones. This isn't right. But maybe I don't have all the legal authority to explain that to this judge. They're just gonna go well, I've got legal authority on one side, and I've got somebody just saying, I don't like this on the other side. Guess I'm gonna go with a legal authority, except that like an independent evaluation could have maybe prevented that.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:01:08

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know cod or mass. And like the whole the other part like you said it competitor trauma, because the whole time that this is happening, she's thinking, the state of Oklahoma, not only have the cops walked away from my case, refused to investigate. But now I've got a judge in the state of Oklahoma taking his side.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:01:34

Yeah. And saying, I can't talk about this,

 

Colleen McCarty  1:01:37

that he's right. And I'm wrong. And I can't even tell anyone that it happened.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:01:43

Yeah, it compounds it for sure.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:01:46

It's just like, I mean,

 

Leslie Briggs  1:01:50

and then like, then it gets, I mean, it gets worse. It gets worse, it does get worse

 

Colleen McCarty  1:01:55

because they entered they ultimately, through a series of very chaotic events, but the court enters what's called a default judgment on Karrahf. In on behalf of Jim So Jim, essentially, like from my perspective, reading, the transcript wins, right? Like he beats her, he gets a judgment against her for defamation, essentially saying she has defamed him. And they enter the default judgment. And she gets notice that she's lost. She had to like notice in the mail, you've lost, there's been a judgment entered against, there's gonna be a hearing on the damage and on the damages. And so the reason that that happened, and it's kind of suspicious, but I don't know.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:02:35

It's super like is like super in the details. But basically, there were two separate hearings, one on November 2, one on November 9, and she gets notice of them separately, I think even a lawyer could have made this mistake, like because the whole thing is playing out in a very chaotic way. But she gets noticed of them separately, and one of them is has got the ninth. It's one of them, has the date scratched out and the other date written in. Right. And so she's like, okay, and she calls the court to confirm the date of the hearing. And like a court clerk said it's the ninth it's the night. Well, on November 2, a hearing occurs.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:03:14

And one of the things that happens at a default judgment hearing is if the other person doesn't show up, it's almost like an automatic default judgment on them because they're not present.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:03:25

Yeah, I mean, that's like one of the main ways you would wind up getting default, is it takes honestly, it should take a few. It should take more than one non appearance. But I think that the judge was probably pretty frustrated at this point with the case because, I mean, like, lawyers, lawyers in general, dealing with pro se parties is like notoriously just it's like some within the profession. It's something that we all kind of complain and, and just you know, like, if you're dealing with a pro se party on the other side, everybody's like, Oh, God, good luck, you know, even worse when they're a sovereign citizen,

 

Colleen McCarty  1:04:04

sovereign citizen,

 

Leslie Briggs  1:04:06

you they're an aviator, where they're claiming to be a sovereign citizen. So it's like, the judge probably on some level was like, Enough Enough. She's not here today. It's defaulted. It's defaulted.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:04:16

Yeah. And there was like 100 Contempt citations and 100 because she kept pushing.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:04:21

She didn't she refused to abide by the tiara and a lot of ways as far as I understand it, she continued to discuss. And so they were continuing to file contempt citations to try to get money from her for violating the CRO.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:04:35

And so yeah, so at this point, she realizes she has a default judgment against her. It's a very dark day, and she finally breaks down and decides to ask a friend for money to pay for a lawyer.

 

Karrah  1:04:49

I lost temporarily because he got to default. I was at work one day, and I actually called the they changed the court date from the second to the ninth. I called and spoke with a court clerk. And who told me that court was going to be on the ninth, not the second. And everything I had said it was in even OSC and said it was on the ninth and not the second. So I'm at work on the second, I get a call saying, Hey, you just lost. A friend of mine started a GoFundMe for me. Because I was the, that I needed a lawyer because I was I had lost my ability to speak and I was supposed to pay him $300,000 My, I had one have one really rich friend, that, that he's awesome. He's, uh, he's been one of my buddies throughout this whole thing. And I've had like a small group of people that have been a support system. And one of them happens to be my rich friend RJ. And so my rich friend RJ decides to give me the money for my First Amendment lawyer. Thank you, RJ. So when I first met him, I was just like, it was the best feeling you know, I by then I had stopped opening my mail from Josh kid, Josh kid was sending me I was getting injunction after injunction. I kept getting these I'm sorry, I kept getting these most of these contempt charges for because I was trying to have a front a GoFundMe for a lawyer. Like they were they were filing contempt charges for me like saying that I was abused on Facebook and there was just I stopped opening them and then I when I finally got my attorney Taylor and did everything and then I was allowed to talk again

 

Colleen McCarty  1:06:51

that can feed it in the future see it in the call see the moon as a song see the stars the mining like Ben Farr's like the heat in the car to the cheese cake now.

 

1:07:48

Setting me

 

Colleen McCarty  1:08:14

so this is like, let me just think about it in purely Oklahoma in terms. It's the last five minutes of the football game. You are, it's your seventh and the other side is 14. And they're on the fifth yard line, about to score a touchdown, like you are about to have your ass handed to you. And there's nothing you can do about it. There's not enough time you've lost essentially, like everyone in the stands is packing up their shit and ready to go home. Right. And she finally find somebody who's willing to help her because she does not have the money that they are trying to get out of her. She has what we call judgment proof. And like I don't know what they would have done probably would have just tried to bankrupt her and take everything she has. But she goes and hires a lawyer in town new Taylor Burke, who's very good on these issues. And in order it's also extremely difficult to undo a default judgment. I mean, you you it doesn't it does actually help her that she wasn't there because it's like she didn't get notice. And you can't just enter a default judgment on someone who doesn't know what's happening.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:09:22

Yeah, it's better. I honestly think it's it's easier to get a default than it is to get to get a default vacated than it is to get had she shown up and argued and lost. That would have been harder. It would have been a bit harder to get that undone. Yeah, so I don't know I guess I'm like so bad of a football references, but

 

Colleen McCarty  1:09:40

I'm gonna be like, like, like Dan Marino shows up. A lot, but no, I don't think

 

Leslie Briggs  1:09:49

the person guy I,

 

Colleen McCarty  1:09:52

personally would say like, shows up at the end of the game and fixes everything.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:09:55

What's the guy I can't stand him. The Patriots guy. Oh, Tom Brady.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:09:59

Tom Brady, Tom Brady shows up, and somebody kicks like 105 yard field goal and you win. Okay? Like that's literally was four,

 

Leslie Briggs  1:10:10

I don't think the score on that was working out no whatever. Basically, you're down to the wire, and like, Hail Mary row enters the scene. And that hero in this story is Taylor Burke. And I'm going to fangirl on Taylor for just a minute, because I've seen him in action in court before. On one case, where I was represented, it was an, it was a probate matter, and I was representing a potential creditor, like I hadn't got my judgment yet. But there was a lot of crazy shit. But Taylor in this very chaotic probate where there were a ton of creditors, and like, lots and lots of issues. I just saw him speak so matter of factly to the court and what was otherwise a very contentious and like emotional hearing, and he was just like, This is what has gone on. And this is what must happen now as a result, and it was like a he carried the day, you know, he wins everybody in the crowd, like, so I've just I've seen him do something kind of like, I mean, this was like a very chaotic situation. And out of that chaos, he like Drew order, very deftly. And it's the same thing here.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:11:13

And he writes the motion that you were just talking about. So he comes in, and he and he writes the motion to the court with all the case law saying an equitable remedy, like a gag order, or tiara is inappropriate here under the law, and she should have never had that entered. All of this has to be undone and have to start over. We have to start over. And and the courts like oops, oops, you're right. You know what, you're right.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:11:41

Oopsies that's our bad. That's our bad, but you love it. You love it when a court can correct itself and does

 

Colleen McCarty  1:11:48

and yeah, she can't get that 441 days back, unfortunately.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:11:53

Well, right. And so like he wins on that issue and gets the restraining order taken off. Yeah, taken out. And that kid eventually left the case and left the practice of law left the state of Oklahoma. And a new guy entered. The last thing that ever happened in that case was that John nation entered the case on behalf of Jim.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:12:12

And I think that really, ultimately after going through this, like, year and a half are longer than that of hell. We asked Karrah like that she regret making the flyer that she regret Operation Wildfire, like what is the ultimate conclusion for you? And here's what she said.

 

Karrah  1:12:31

Absolutely not, I don't. I feel like the defamation lawsuit made me such a better, stronger person ever. Because I don't know. When you walk into a courtroom and Pawnee County alone, and there's a your abuser, his attorney and the judge that has also been in trouble with them before. It is definitely a bears den you're walking into. It is definitely an intimidating situation. There were many days where I cried on the way to court and I had to really just suck it up and walk in there was actually one of the one day I saw looming in the hallway. And I looked at him and I said fuck you. And he didn't know what to say back and he was like, fuck you like and, you know, that kind of that little that area that little time in my life. Sure did make me where I don't get intimidated, that easy by anybody else. And it really gave me a backbone. And I don't know, he tried to take me down and I went from being a piano teacher and now I'm a vice president of creative operations. So I mean, he's hasn't been able to like run me like he's tried so hard. He's trying to take my kid away. He's trying to make me lose several jobs.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:13:59

So heavy with your heavy with your thoughts on just this whole this whole this defamation case is chaotic.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:14:05

Let me say what my thoughts are. And it is that man, the fucking balls on the sky,

 

Leslie Briggs  1:14:14

the fucking balls on this guy.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:14:16

The mother fucking balls on the sky. Okay. Every single one of these things that she put on the flyer is documented in a fucking government agency somewhere. Right? That is one of the exclusions to, to defamation. That and the truth. So you have to have the exclusions. Yeah, you have wrote offenses.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:14:41

Yeah, there's a great there's great defenses here to the defamation case.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:14:45

I think the fact that the thing that I will give the gym and I know he's listening is

 

Leslie Briggs  1:14:52

Jim call me babe.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:14:53

What you did, was that you? You did what every lawyer is told to do in law school which is Don't read the law, read your opponent. And you knew she didn't have money. You knew she was ballsy enough to try to do it herself. And you knew that that would work to your advantage, you knew that she wouldn't be able to prove up these things because she doesn't know the procedure. You played your opponent. And he almost won.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:15:29

For a period of time you did win. But you won the battle, not the war, the arrogance, the arrogance,

 

Colleen McCarty  1:15:37

going forward with a suit like this. Knowing what he's done, right, knowing how easy it is to prove all of it. Right. Right. Like mind blown.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:15:53

I know. And then you have, then you really do have a court system that American courts are not like, you know, like a European court where they would maybe act as somewhat of an independent investigator and do some research on their own. American courts don't operate like that. Very courts are very much like a horse with blinders. Like they can act sua sponte, they can act on their own. It's very rare that they would. And so like you got that's like a horse with blinders. It's like, I can only see what's in front of me. One, I got one side, that's representative one side, that's pro se. The guy that's the guy that's represented, has got somebody who understands the rules of procedure understands, like judicial economy and how my dockets operate. You know, Karrah talks about the judge kind of getting annoyed with her because of how long she was taking on cross examination,

 

Colleen McCarty  1:16:39

how many objections she's drawing, because also, she's asking a bunch of irrelevant questions, things that are irrelevant, talking about his sister, talking about random as shit that has nothing to do with any of this. That doesn't make him look bad. Yeah, if you're having a basic conversation with somebody at a coffee shop, but in a courtroom, it can't come in, can't come in here. It can't come in, and the judge will get annoyed. And he's getting pissed because you continue to try to disparage the other side in ways that are not really in this room.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:17:08

Yeah. And yeah, so it just like, and to your point, like he knew that she would do those things, or that she would at least try to go it alone. And he was right. I don't know. Like it just as another version of the legal abuse. In my opinion. That's another version of like, Karrah, in particular being so outspoken and so adamant about right and wrong, and so unwilling to back down,

 

Colleen McCarty  1:17:35

he read that about her, he read that viewer for three weeks.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:17:39

Right, that's a special skill set to be able to do that. And we've heard from a lot of people, he's extremely arrogant

 

Colleen McCarty  1:17:46

arrogance, but it's it's also very frood. It's like very, he took a huge risk. That was a huge risk. Because anybody could have proven all those things on the flyer. He knows he did the things on the flyer. He pled in his petition that he doesn't know anything about Arkansas,

 

Leslie Briggs  1:18:08

where he was arrested,

 

Colleen McCarty  1:18:10

held overnight in jail in Eureka Springs, right.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:18:14

And like that shit is sanctionable. Like That shit is like so anyway, the long and the short of it are this defamation case. And that wasn't necessarily a victory for Karrah at the beginning. And it is extremely deft way of continuing to manipulate systems to your advantage as an abuser.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:18:36

Shocking,

 

Leslie Briggs  1:18:37

shocking. And I wouldn't like I mean, what you have a little bit to say on that chilling effect, right? Like,

 

Colleen McCarty  1:18:43

yes, God bless. The thing about suing someone is that in America, like you were just saying is that your claims don't have to be right or virtuous. You just have to bring them and you have to be willing to keep showing up at court. And I mean, the fact that this goes on for so long, and that there's so many emotions in so many hearings, that that's enough to wear anyone down. And that's despicable, especially considering that you're dealing with somebody who's a survivor of abuse. And what's so frustrating about this, too, is that and we hear this from victims advocates that, you know, part of the reason that a lot of victims and survivors don't speak out is because they're afraid of things like this happening. This is the fear. Like it's not just that he's gonna come after you physically which is a real life here. Right? But that he's going to take everything you have, he'll take your kids will take your housing, he'll take your car, he'll take and then he'll come after you for talking about it. Right? Like

 

Leslie Briggs  1:19:46

not only will he punish you physically, but he will he will eviscerate you for telling anyone.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:19:52

And so, I mean, I hate that these cases like this are allowed to go on like this. This one was because it shows, however many other survivors out there that I can never talk about this.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:20:08

Yeah, but the thing is, and I just want to say this, though, but we have very, very strong anti slap protections in this state, you can, at the outset of this case, had I been defending this, I would have filed a motion under the Oklahoma citizens participation act. To get it dismissed under the anti slap statute, you can't silence me because you don't like what I'm saying. And you're doing this too. It's the slap stand for. So anti slap slap stands for a strategic lawsuit against public participation. Like you have to do this early in the case or you lose the right to do it. So it should have happened early in this case of like filing for this motion and trying to have a hearing on whether or not this was just a strategic effort to prevent her from participating in a public discussion about issues of public concern. And I think, if she had representation at that, she probably would have won. And that would have been the end of that. At that point. Least I like to hope, I would like to hope that too. So like, for anyone listening out there who is afraid of talking or speaking out about things that have happened to them, that have really happened to them that they have evidence of, or the bet or the truth, there are legal protections for you. And you shouldn't be afraid. And you can get you get, you should talk to a lawyer, a lot of them will do a free consultation. And you can just explain the circumstances and talk about I mean, bring this issue up, if you're dealing with a defamation issue, it's like ask them about the possibility of an anti slap motion, and getting the fees recovered that way, rather than you paying up front, see if they'll do it on a contingency, I mean, negotiate that thing with the attorney because that exists. And that's that's a beautiful mechanism for having your abuser pay for the privilege of having tried to harass you.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:21:51

Yeah. And we have a really high profile case in Tulsa, Oklahoma right now, where the abuser sued on Dr. Didn't actually sue for defamation. He sued for

 

Leslie Briggs  1:22:00

legal negligence, which was a bad theory. I mean, it was just nonsense theory. And he lost, he got that kicked out, he lost,

 

Colleen McCarty  1:22:07

but they also got their fees, they just rolled into my house to pay $15,000 to the women that were speaking out again, against what he was doing.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:22:15

That's right. We're talking about Scott Taylor, by the way. I'll say it

 

Colleen McCarty  1:22:21

is in the public record. Yeah. So all is not lost. You do need a lawyer though. Hire somebody. Just Just do it. Just do it just do at the beginning. Yeah. But the beginning at the

 

Leslie Briggs  1:22:36

beginning. So something I've

 

Colleen McCarty  1:22:39

been saying a lot. And that's ringing true to me about these kinds of situations is that in a dysfunctional family, the person who tells the truth is the one who gets punished. And the ones who keep the secrets are the ones who get rewarded. And what we have right now is a system that rewards the abusers and punishes the victims for telling the truth.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:23:03

You know, all that to say, though, like, I would like to end this episode with a couple of clips, because I did have a conversation with Josh, who was representing Jim, in that hearing about how he felt about Karrah today. And how he felt about Jim today. And I wanted to just kind of play that for you guys to consider. I

 

Josh Kidd  1:23:20

think everything you need to know about Jim can talk to Carrie Youngblood and, and his the alleged victims, I mean, seriously, I mean, I have a lot of respect for even though she probably doesn't respect me at all. But I have a lot of respect for Karrah. And yeah, especially now that Jim, we know that Jim is an abuser, like he's admitted it right in court.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:23:45

So now our listeners can understand why the cover image of the podcast is an old car, and the podcast is called Operation Wildfire. The idea is it the flyer was intended to spread the truth like wildfire. The problem with that is that these survivors and victims should not have to be the ones to take on that burden in that risk. We rely on the system of criminal courts to bear the weight of prosecuting and informing the public about dangerous people. And that system has really failed in these cases.

 

Colleen McCarty  1:24:13

I think one of the reasons these women struggled to find a willing ear in prosecuting these cases is because they worked together. Any DEA or district attorney, as we say, who's looking at these cases is going to see a mess that they don't want to deal with. These women have been damaged. They have damaged their cases and their credibility to the point that it would be difficult to get a conviction on any of their cases. But wait, wait. Lesley  Remember Ember from episode one, right? She was approached to join this merry band of survivors and for a multitude of personal and professional reasons she did not engage at the level the other girls did because she had been warned so early on by her attorney She had been expecting the call, but she kept a healthy distance. I wonder if there are other victims out there like her. That would also corroborate Jim's violent behavior.

 

Leslie Briggs  1:25:13

Well, as it turns out, Colleen, there's a woman out there who's gotten nearly three decades without sharing her story with anyone but her family and the Eureka Springs police. And for any geography students out there, that's Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Next week on panic button, we talked to a victim who has never spoken out about Jim's abuse before a victim whose abuse happened in a totally different state in 1997, we hope you'll join us

 

Colleen McCarty  1:25:48

you can find links to pictures, documents and all our sources in the show notes of this episode. These cases serve as a reminder of the devastating consequences of domestic violence and the importance of seeking help if you or someone you know, is a victim. If you are in immediate danger, please call 911 or your local emergency number. For confidential support and resources you can reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. Thank you for listening to panic button Operation Wildfire, and for joining us and shedding light on the importance of ending domestic violence for good. I'm Colleen McCarty, and I'm Leslie Briggs. Panic Button is a production of Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. were recorded at Bison and Bean studios in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Our theme music is by GYOM additional editing is provided by The Wave Podcasting. Our music supervisor is Rusty Rowe. Special thanks to our interns Kat and Alison to learn more about Oklahoma Appleseed or donate to keep our mission of fighting for the rights and opportunities of every Oklahoman reality. Go to OkAppleseed.org