The Aftermath
This is where Treva’s story starts to fall apart.
Treva claims that the physician recorded her injuries and sent her to a counselor, but a few seconds later, she claims that she was not referred to an advocate who could help her navigate the trauma she endured. Which is it? Did she have help or not?
Roughly three weeks later, she informed me that “as a faculty member at the university,” she had access to the “law clinic”. She had a lawyer (I did not). Treva and her lawyer dictated the content of the divorce papers, with little to no input from me. Nowhere in these papers did she claim that she was the victim of an abusive marriage. She made no attempt to get custody of the children from a man she now claims was violent and abusive, either in the initial divorce or either subsequent court action.
Why is that odd?
According to a 2012 snapshot of the University of Alabama’s webpage, the law clinic “takes a holistic approach to a victim’s civil legal needs, with the clinic student first representing the victim in obtaining a protection from abuse order and then, in order to meet the victim’s other legal needs, providing legal assistance in matters relating to divorce, custody and support, employment and debt issues, housing, property recovery, and public benefits.”
Treva claims that the “few resources” she was able to find on her own weren’t integrated enough to offer her good, sound advice about her rights. She claims she tried to file a police report but the officer refused to take it. No lawyer worth their degree would allow that to take place! Treva did file a police report, but it wasn’t “weeks” after like she claims in her video. She waited six years, and only did so after I took her to court over unpaid child support. Did they take her seriously six years later? They took her seriously enough to call me in for an interview. I complied fully with the investigation. I consulted emails and my journals when I got home and reached back out to offer more context for my accounting of events in the areas where my memory was incomplete.
They dropped the investigation a couple of months later.
I don’t know why they dropped their investigation. I’m sure the suspicious timing of the report didn’t help her case. Treva agreed fairly early in the process that her support payment was probably too low, but she didn’t agree that the support should be back-dated to the court filing date. She seemed to believe that any delay in the case would reduce the amount she would ultimately have to pay. Why not roll the dice and see what the judge says?
The Apology
I never thought I would have to deal with any of this. The year after she left, Treva sent me the following email:
By this point, she had not lived in my home for a full year. She was living in North Carolina and had already started a relationship with a man that she told me was about 20 years her senior and, as she phrased it, a “pagan”. I never expected an apology, regardless of how warranted it was. (She also sent a similar message apologizing to my family members for the lies she told about me.)
