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06/09/2021 09:30 AMIt seemed like an open-and-shut case. Back in March, a male student at Daniel Hand High School (DHHS) texted a female classmate in explicit detail over the course of hours that he would shoot and kill her. When the text messages were discovered, the boy was arrested (though not detained), and shortly after expelled from school. Several guns were also voluntarily removed from his home, according to police.
But late last month, Judge Robin Wilson of the New Haven Superior Court ruled in a civil case filed by the female student’s family that the text messages were a joke and that she did not believe the female student was ever in fear for her safety, denying a one-year protective order that would have prevented any contact between the two students.
The identities of both students are being withheld by The Source because they are minors.
While a criminal case proceeds against the male student based on the same messages, many in the community were surprised at this ruling. After the family of the female student spread the messages and other context on social media, people saw the grossly violent and misogynistic content of what the male student texted, and the reaction was mostly outrage and disgust.
But right at the beginning of her ruling, Wilson stated that “context is important.” She cited both the female student’s responses—sometimes joking or mocking, sometimes sincere—to the text messages, as well as her behavior following the conversation in ruling that her testimony and behavior was not credible in regard to being in fear for her safety.
Austin McGuigan, an attorney representing the male student, celebrated the ruling as a vindication of his client, saying that the entire incident had been misconstrued and twisted from the start. The female student’s mother—a lawyer herself, who has represented her daughter in court—argued that key evidence and context was omitted and that her daughter was treated differently because of her demeanor and her gender.
The female student’s family is currently in the process of appealing the ruling, the mother said.
Court Context
Kieran Costello is a Fairfield-based lawyer who works with the Connecticut Women’s Legal and Education Fund (CWEALF), a non-profit that connects women with legal aid and lobbies for gender equality, as well as advocating in domestic violence cases.
While making it clear that he was not familiar with the facts of this case and couldn’t comment on specifics, Costello said that the legal underpinnings of the civil protective statutes were important when discussing these issues, and that judges also have significant subjective discretion when ruling on these types of protective orders.
The civil protective order for which the female student petitioned is different from a family restraining order or a criminal protective order, all of which are judged by different standards and by different courts, he said.
“There’s a determination as to whether or not the person who has been charged with a crime is likely to harass, be violent with the victim again,” Costello said. “It’s not a means for punishment as much as it is to protect the victim.”
The male student has not tried to contact, harass, or threaten the female student since the initial incident back in March, according to both parties.
Costello said that in his experience, judges have a “heightened awareness to threats of physical violence” following a handful of high-profile cases in including the murder of Jennifer Dulos in New Canaan in 2019. Those threats are taken “very seriously,” he said.
“Are there abuses in our legal system? Absolutely,” said Costello. “Fortunately for the real victims of domestic violence, the abuses don’t happen that often and the vast majority of people who complain about being victims of domestic violence are in fact, victims of domestic violence.”
The Evidence
The mother of the female student told The Source that there were some very important contextual pieces of evidence, including that the male student had solicited her daughter for nude photos, that were either not considered or not given much weight by the judge. Courts are also required to consider the background of a case when determining if there is a continuing threat, she added.
She also contrasted the disposition of her daughter during testimony in court, which was stoic and even-keeled, with the male student’s demeanor, which she described as much more emotional.
“[My daughter] was articulate and I think very clear, and the unfortunate thing I think that happened is, when a woman [or girl]...does not fit into what the physical stereotyped role is for a woman,” she said, “you run the risk of not being believed, or even sometimes being seen as aggressive when you’re really just being assertive. And I do feel that that is what happened.”
At one point in court, the mother was reprimanded by Wilson after Wilson directed the daughter not to look at her mother during testimony, and the mother spoke out.
Notably, McGuigan sought to shield the male student from having to testify, and the male student’s testimony only came after Wilson informed him that she would draw an “adverse inference” from his decision to invoke 5th Amendment rights in the civil case.
Wilson wrote in her ruling explicitly that she found the testimony of the male student and his sister—also a friend of the female student—more credible based on all the evidence. The sister testified that she and the female student were “teasing” the male student before he began sending the text messages, and he testified further that his many threats to kill her were “a bad joke,” which Wilson also said she found credible.
The mother of the female student pushed back against this characterization, saying that evidence introduced in the case, including interviews with police and the male student’s own testimony, contradicted this claim.
“He admits he was doing this to annoy or threaten her, and at times he had said something akin to that on the stand,” she said. “It’s puzzling, it’s confusing, it’s at odds with the evidence.”
For part of the time the female student was receiving the threatening text messages, she was on a video call with the sister of the male student and Wilson noted that the female student never expressed fear of discomfort to the sister during this time.
McGuigan described the case to The Source as being much more straightforward than all this, saying that any “reasonable person” would have viewed the incident as a joke from the beginning.
Asked if he or his client had reached out to the female student or her family to explain this or attempt to come to an understanding outside of court, McGuigan did not answer directly.
“I know what they [the family] would like. They would like attention—that’s what they would like. They would like more attention. This is just childish, is what this is,” he said.
Asked why the female student and her family did not see the incident as a joke, McGuigan was equally curt.
“That might be because you’re assuming they are reasonable people, buddy,” he said.
McGuigan said his own emotions and frustration came from the fact that his client had been unable to speak publicly on the case due to the pending criminal proceedings and has not been treated fairly by media or by other commentators in the community.
The mother of the female student said that neither McGuigan nor the family had ever made any attempt to resolve the issue or reach out to try and explain the text messages. The mother claimed (and her daughter later testified under oath) that the family had made a phone call to the male student’s house shortly after the text messages were discovered, and that the male student’s father hung up on them.
As far as a “reasonable person” seeing the messages as a joke, the mother of the female student said she found that argument very unconvincing.
“Look at all the shootings that have happened,” the mother said. “Furthermore, I would question who these people are hanging around with if they think this is a joke. I almost have no words for this...who jokes around when they say, ‘I’m going to kill you?’”
Next Steps
Costello said that in his opinion and experience women are “generally” believed by judges in the state. Though the legal system can be sometimes difficult to navigate and is sometimes “intimidating,” the barriers aren’t necessarily a matter of judges being biased against female victims, though he again said that in this kind of case there was a significant subjective aspect.
It is very normal for a judge to explicitly say they find one witness credible or more credible than another, Costello added, and that is not something he would characterize as any sign of bias.
“Clearly the court made a call that there wasn’t a legitimate threat [going forward],” he said.
The mother pushed back against this characterization, saying that as a lawyer herself she often sees attorneys counsel their female clients to dress or act more feminine to get a favorable hearing from a judge.
“I do not do that, but there must be a reason they’re all doing that,” she said.
McGuigan said that his client has the legal right to seek damages based on the case, though he declined to say whether he felt these damages “went down the road” of defamation or other similar charges. He added that the male student would be working with the school board to return to DHHS in the fall.
The mother again said that her daughter’s testimony and appearance, which remained extremely controlled and self-possessed even under emotional cross-examination from McGuigan, was something that ended up making her less credible in the eyes of the court.
“I just think that my [daughter’s] ability to not break down on the stand was to her disadvantage,” the mother said.
Wilson appeared sympathetic to arguments made by McGuigan that how the female student responded to some of the text messages—saying “love you too” and calling him “2013 JUSTIN [B]IEBER LOOKING ***” and an “eboy-” were part of an inside joke between the two.
At other times, however, the female student responded to say certain messages were “scary,” and that the male student was bullying her. She testified in court that she had never encountered this kind of behavior, and was trying to “de-escalate” and understand what was happening, including appealing to the male student to say that she was “always there for [him].”
The mother of the female student said she felt it was reasonable or even expected that a young person might respond with confusion, humor, or any number of emotions when encountering something like this.
“I wouldn’t know how to respond to death threats like that. My life hasn’t been threatened,” she said.
She added it was a comfort that there would be at least some kind of no-contact order as long as the male student’s criminal case is ongoing. That case that was delayed by the pandemic, but is now proceeding in juvenile criminal court.
The mother of the female student added she will continue to pursue all avenues, and that her purpose is simply to keep her daughter safe. She said that the male student’s continued “emotionality” over her daughter, alongside the threats and what she characterized as “unclear” answers on certain issues makes these steps necessary.
“I have seen other instances where judges have not erred on the side of caution, and it’s scary more so now than ever because of the number of mass shootings [in the country],” she said. “I don’t know how you draw the conclusion that it was a joke, and that someone shouldn’t have been or wasn’t fearful.”