It took a few months to get all of the evidence together to turn over to my lawyer. It seemed like a never ending task to compile everything because new emails from Keller were sent to my inbox almost daily. However, it was only a matter of time before the escalation the lawyer said would help my case occurred.
In 1 day I received 200 emails from Keller. A couple weeks later, I received 173 emails in a 13 minute period. Emails were coming to both my work and personal email addresses. It was overwhelming. I became anxious to check my email because I never knew what would be in my inbox. I finally gathered everything I had up until that point, wrote my statement, and turned it all over to my lawyer by the end of October 2019.
I had to wait for my lawyer to go through everything which took awhile because of the volume of evidence. My lawyer said in his 20+ years of practicing law, he had never seen harassment like the magnitude I was experiencing. The law clerks said they never had a case with as great a volume of evidence as mine. My lawyer was granted permission from the court to leave my address off the paperwork that would be filed on my behalf. Normally, restraining orders contain the address and other identifiable information of the person asking for the restraining order. Keller didn’t know where I was currently, and my lawyer wanted to make sure it stayed that way.
My lawyer wanted to make sure we were successful in court and that meant playing all of our cards at the right time. My lawyer came up with a strategy and a timeline for how we should proceed. The tricky part was, it was extremely difficult to try to predict what Keller would do. Would he come to California? Would he show up for the court date? Would things escalate even more after he was served the papers? The paperwork would still show the county the court was located in. Once Keller had that information, it wouldn’t be difficult to google my last name and find out where my family lived. My lawyer decided to wait to file the paperwork with the court until after Thanksgiving. Both my lawyer and I were going to be out of town for Thanksgiving and we didn’t want my court date to get scheduled while we were gone. During this waiting period, I kept sending my lawyer the new emails Keller would send me so my file would get updated with the new information.
In November 2019, I received a particularly troubling email from Keller. He wrote that he didn’t believe I had actually moved out of Washington, DC (at this point I had moved to California and was working remotely). He told me he was planning to show up at my office in order to speak to me in person. My office in DC was located in a federal building that had its own police force. As soon as I got the email from Keller, I forwarded it to my boss and to the police assigned to my building. I sent along a picture of Keller and let them know that he was threatening to show up the next day. Things quickly escalated from there. The police reached out to me and told me they were going to pay Keller a visit. They asked me for some information about him and I told them what I could.
It was extremely embarrassing to have to tell the police everything that was happening with Keller. I knew having my messy personal life on display in front of people I worked with made me look bad. It didn’t matter that they were officers, at some point other people would hear about what was going on in my personal life because Keller was threatening to show up. My boss had to be notified. My coworkers needed to be notified. My DC roommates needed to be notified in case he showed up at my old apartment which was located a couple blocks from my office. I was not convinced Keller would actually come to my office, but I wanted to let the police, my coworkers, and my former roommates know to be on the lookout for him just to be safe.
The next morning, the police spoke to Keller at his place of employment. He told the police he never actually planned to come to my building. He told the police everything was my fault and that I was withholding his child from him for no reason. He told the police he never actually wanted to kill himself and that those attempts were staged to get a reaction out of me. Keller’s true colors were revealed. The police had Keller sign a document acknowledging that he was banned from coming to my office building for the next year. Seems like a happy ending, right? Wrong.
What happened next hurt me more deeply than anything Keller ever said to me.
It was revealed that people didn’t believe I was handling the situation with Keller properly. I was mortified. While the following things were never said, these were my takeaways:
- I was a disappointment.
- I was a burden.
- I was selfish.
- I didn’t care about what happened to other people.
- I was a bad friend.
- I was a bad mom.
- I was willfully putting my child in danger.
- I didn’t have good judgment.
- I didn’t make good choices.
- I was a failure.
I was completely devastated. I think it hurt so much because these were people I had trusted and confided in. This felt like betrayal. I shut down and I shut almost everyone out. I had no idea who knew what when it came to what had happened with Keller. I had no idea what was being said about me. I had no idea who I could trust. I had no idea who was on my team. I felt like my character and integrity were called into question and I didn’t have the opportunity to defend myself.
I was angry and hurt. My mind began to only focus on those takeaways. Those takeaways started to dictate all of my thoughts. If someone were to say for example that I was smart – my mind would think of multiple different times when I got the answer wrong. Each compliment instead turned into me telling myself over and over again how inaccurate that compliment was. It was like being a black hole I couldn’t get out of. I couldn’t stop my thoughts from going negative and with each negative thought I was pushed further down into the black hole.
I wish I could say I don’t have those thoughts anymore. The truth is though, those takeaways are still having an impact on me. I have little confidence that I can make a decision or complete a task. I don’t feel qualified or capable. I question my ability to raise my son to be a good man. I feel like I can’t contribute anything of substance in a job. I hate that my entire identity could be dictated by what a few people thought about me. I know it shouldn’t matter what other people think. However, I can’t make those thoughts stop. Those takeaways have made deep roots in my brain and I’ve been working with my therapist to break those thought patterns because simply telling myself not to believe them isn’t working.
I know that I need to replace those negative thoughts with the truth about what God says about my identity. I read Ephesians 2 and wrote down everything God says I am. It’s been helpful to have that list so I can refer back to it when I have negative thoughts. I also listened to an episode of The Girls Night podcast featuring Priscilla Shirer that discussed finding your identity in Christ. I love the practical suggestions she recommends. I can’t let the negative thoughts continue to dictate my life. The Bible says:
“Demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
2 Corinthians 10:5
As far as how I handled the Keller situation, I realize now that I could have gone to the police assigned to my building when the harassing emails started. Maybe they could have talked to Keller way back then and things never would have escalated like they did. But the thing is, being repeatedly told what was happening to me wasn’t a big deal made me believe I had to handle it on my own. I had reached out to the authorities and I was ignored. So why even try to get anyone else to help?
The officers that went to speak to Keller that day volunteered to serve him the court papers after my lawyer filed them. That was a huge help and saved me a lot of money. Those same officers assured me that I was not a burden to them. They were happy to assist me and wanted to do everything they could to make sure that Gideon and I were safe.
I know things escalated beyond what they may have needed to. However, looking back, things seemed to have occurred exactly when they needed to.
To be continued . . .
Love,
Redeemed Mama