My assumption for quite a while has been that Catherine Lynne Carter is not mentally well, obsessing on me for reasons that were unclear but presumably related to her own guilt, shame, or desire for attention. In light of seeming inconsistencies in her 1999 testimony and the PDNS name record, what other sort of factually incorrect statements might have been made by Cate before the court?

Looking back at her second stalking petition from March, 2006, filed under ORS 30.866 she claimed

At least two unwanted instances of contact have occurred within the last two years which were alarming or coercive.

The basic problem with this original petition is that it is false in that (A) there were not two instances of contact with her at all, (B) the one contact with her was a letter more than three years old and, although her mental state might be such that she found my existence “alarming,” (C) neither of the incidents she cites was even vaguely coercive in any common or legal sense.

The first “contact” cited was not with her at all, but with Kevin Balmer, who had initially contacted me and made some ambiguous and potentially threatening actions.  The point of this contact was explicitly to avoid her and instead address my concern about (a) what he had been told about me, (b) my actual intentions and (c) subsequent actions of his that might create unnecessary fear or danger.

On 03/17/06 in the parking lot of CNF, NW 21st and Savier, Mr. Bowman (respondent) either followed or was waiting for my boyfriend Kevin D Balmer & attempted to confront Mr. Balmer outside his workplace with questions regarding me and my relationship with Mr. Balmer.

Notes from that meeting were introduced into court and clearly showed Carter’s assertions to be false, as later established by Kevin Balmer’s direct testimony in the matter.

Before that, on February 20, 2003, in Bar Harbor ME, Mr. Bowman sent a series of letters to me via my parents in disregard of a judge’s order. In the feb 20th letter, he used an out of state post mark and admits to ongoing mental health issues and to being off his medication. The Feb 20th letter used a return address of Elinore Friedberg, a business client of mine. the contents of the letter indicate a disturbed mental state.

There was no such “judge’s order,” and what I had done was send her a single birthday letter in 2003, more than three years prior. Before that, the only package I had sent was around the ludicrous “letter bomb” incident. Way back in 1999, I had mailed some personal items of hers in care of her parents near San Diego, as promised over a year before that, in June 1998. One letter and one package over four years three years prior was not a “series” of anything, and her assertion that I claimed to be off my medication was a fanciful reading on her part. That a judge did not question either of these assertions or note the dates still annoys and saddens me.

My assumption at the 2006 hearing was that these false assertions were indicative of her poor mental state and not malicious. Certainly no judge ever looked at them critically, and I did not think it kind to embarrass her in open court. In retrospect, I believe it was unethical for an opportunistic lawyer to have taken such a clearly baseless case, and I naively failed to contest a variety of false, irrelevant and prejudicial things he said of me in open court. She found a lawyer, who danced around the lack of facts. A pro-tem judge failed to notice the absence of facts and played to a colleague, while I was naively willing to take a legal hit in support of a former friend.

Not only had she jumped to conclusions and made false accusations, she had actively sought professional legal help to turn them into a legal attack. Given our class disparity and the law, this was morally suspect. Mental illness is an excuse to a point, but she went beyond her own fear to externalize her anxieties and willfully cause me significant harm. Her basic argument was that she did not want me to exist, so the court system should punish me to help assuage her mental state, because she said so.

The falsehood of these assertions was conclusively established as a matter of fact with a formal “request for admissions” later, so dissecting the rest of that petition isn’t worth the time. The 2006 petition shows, however, the degree of her self-centered conceit and willingness to abuse the legal system.  These false affidavits before the court were clearly wrong, morally. Her decisions around filing and pursuing that petition are clearly indicate an amoral sense of entitlement.

This mental or moral defect on her part would, combined with her irrational fear, end up costing me the better part of $20,000.