February 17 – May 5, 2022
The Prologue ended with a temporary protection order, a box of ammunition handed over at my door, and my parents booking a flight. This chapter covers the eleven weeks that followed. It’s the stretch the court would later call the time when my husband was “the primary caregiver,” so I want to tell it the way it actually went, day by day, in the words we wrote each other then.
Wednesday, February 16, 2022: “Better fix it”
That afternoon, after the protection order was signed and he was released, my phone rang. It was my mother-in-law. I could hear him in the background. My account, which I gave under oath and later wrote down for the guardian ad litem, is that the two of them yelled at me that I’d “better fix it.” One of the things he was yelling was that I’d made him sleep all night in a tiny cell in someone else’s urine, and that now he was going to be “on some list.” I was very afraid of what he might do.
He and his mother both testified in May that he hadn’t been yelling. Judge Steinhauer didn’t believe them. In her June 8 order she wrote that she found their testimony “unbelievable,” and that “he was certainly yelling in the background.”
My mother texted at 12:02 that afternoon, before any of that: “Careyann I need to know how long you want us up there for.” I told her, “Whenever and however long you want to stay,” and “Anything is appreciated.” Her answer had the whole plan in it. They’d land in Cleveland the next afternoon and fly home on Monday, February 21.
Thursday, February 17, 2022: The letter
Early the next morning I drove to Stow Municipal Court with a handwritten letter asking Judge Hoover to lift the protection order.
I know how that sounds. Asking for it to be lifted would be held against me for years. So here’s the plain truth about why I wrote it. I wrote it for my safety. I knew what he would try to do, and I had no one yet to help me protect my children and myself. I went to the courthouse twice with that letter. I talked to the clerk, and I talked to Judge Hoover, and Judge Hoover told me he wouldn’t remove the order. The only reason I handed the letter over at all was that I was afraid of what they would do if I didn’t.
At 8:20 AM I texted my mother-in-law: “I just left the courthouse - call me when you’re free.”
At 4:05 PM she wrote back that she was going “back tomorrow morning when the judge is at the courthouse to see when they will allow [him] back home.” They hadn’t been able to do it that day.
The order stayed in place. That afternoon my parents landed in Cleveland. At 2:09 PM I texted my mother: “I’ll wait in cell phone lot.”
February 18 – 21, 2022: My parents in the house
For four days my mother and father were in my house. Mostly what I remember is quiet. Nobody was watching me through a doorway.
On Friday morning, February 18, I told a friend what had happened in one breath:
“I finally got a protection order against [him] - he kicked my wine glass out of my hand, kicked my locked bedroom door down then slashed my tire so I called the cops and had him in jail for the night then got a protection order so he’s staying at his moms for now”
Milo explained what came next: “unless he pleads guilty the TPO will remain in place.”
I wrote later that it took me three days to come out of what I can only describe as withdrawal. After years of living inside his moods, my body didn’t know what to do without them. Then something else came, and it surprised me: the realization that the only real difference with him gone was that my life was peaceful and my house had become a home. It took me weeks after that to stop looking over my shoulder, waiting for someone to yell at me for doing something wrong.
My parents flew back to Florida on Monday evening, February 21.
Mondays at Grandma’s
The children had a rhythm before any of this, and it didn’t change. On Sunday, February 20, my mother-in-law asked about “the schedule for tomorrow,” and wrote: “The boys usually stay overnight on Monday. Is that still on?”
It was. Since he was now living in his mother’s house, Monday nights at Grandma’s became Monday nights with him there too. The rest of the week, the boys were home with me. I wrote it to friends over and over that spring, almost as a refrain. To one on February 21: “Grandma has the kids Monday nights overnight just fyi.” To another that same evening: “kids spend the night at grandmas with [him].” To a babysitter I was trying to line up for school mornings: “[He] is staying at his moms for now so I’m by myself.”
Some weekends his mother asked to take the boys for a Saturday overnight so he could take them swimming, roller skating, or to Adrenaline Monkey. I agreed. Those outings went on his calendar.
That calendar matters, because it became one of his exhibits in May. He testified that he started keeping it on his attorney’s advice. By its own entries, from February 15 to May 6, 2022, the boys spent 44 nights with me, 27 with him, and 10 with his mother.
A woman who helped me that winter with cleaning and cooking kept lists. Her lists from February 28 read like the inside of a family: “Mop and vacuum the house,” “banana bread,” “Egg muffins for quick breakfast to freeze,” “PB&J to freeze?” On March 2 I wrote her: “Kids loved the waffles.”
February 28 – March 17, 2022: The calls
The protection order said he couldn’t contact me. He did anyway.
I remember the calls coming from a blocked number, sometimes several in the same minute. I didn’t learn until after May 6 that they were coming from his own phone, a line on my account, with the number hidden. The phone company’s statements show his line calling mine for the first time on February 28: three one-minute attempts at 2:16 and 2:17 PM, and then a thirteen-minute call. My lawyer counted thirty-three calls from his line to mine while the order was in effect.
In between, the requests came through his mother. On February 25: “[He] asked if you would be willing to pay for a therapist.” On February 28: “[He] requested that any building or construction to be done in the home please wait until he is back to take care of it himself.” Until he is back.
Friday, March 4, 2022: Victim Assistance
On March 4 I became a client of the Victim Assistance Program. The Prologue shows their letter. I had an advocate now, and I’d invoke her before the spring was over.
March 9 – 13, 2022: My mother comes back
My mother came back on Wednesday, March 9, and stayed until Sunday. I kept the boys home from school the first morning; my Older Son “woke up with a little temperature and was congested all night,” I told my mother-in-law, “and my mom is coming into town too.” When a friend invited me out that Friday night, I wrote: “ooooo id looove to but my mom is here till Sunday - I do have most weekends free lately though so throw out another night and I’m down!!!!”
That week I also toured a Montessori school for my Younger Son. When I took him for his visit on March 16, my mother texted from Florida: “I am so excited for [him]. I hope you also had met the teacher that is going to be teaching him that is the most very important thing to have the right person connected with the child.” Two days later she was still asking how he’d liked it.
Thursday, March 17, 2022: The plea
The pretrial in the criminal case was set for March 17. What happened there happened without me. I wasn’t told he would plead that day. As I understood it afterward, the prosecutor hadn’t known either until they were in court. I never asked for the charge to be reduced.
He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, a first-degree misdemeanor, and was placed on community control. The rules he signed that day required him to stay in Ohio, use no alcohol, take no controlled substances without a prescription, submit to random drug and alcohol tests, pay fifty dollars a month, and complete two special conditions: “VIP classes” and “Substance abuse classes.” His first probation appointment was set for Friday, March 25, at 9 AM. When he testified in May, he agreed that a guilty plea meant he admitted to all of the allegations in the complaint.
With the plea, the temporary protection order ended. At 1:29 that afternoon his line called mine for thirty-four minutes.
The next morning I told him what I understood:
“And fyi they did drop the no contact order - all they have in place is the judges “strong recommendation” for you to not contact me still - but the order was dropped”
At 10:09 AM that same morning he had written: “Please talk to me Careyann.”
A week later, on March 24, I told a friend in a single line where things stood: “he’s on six months probation.”
March 18 – 29, 2022: The texts
From the day the order ended, he wrote to me every day. Reading them now, I hear what I couldn’t name then: posturing, a man writing for a record or for a reader other than me.
On March 20 at 7:13 PM:
“If you were a fly on the wall to observe me every minute of every day you would be amazed - you would want a dna test to confirm that this man right here is the same one you remember as the bane of your existence…”
I answered, “I’m happy for you - I hope you keep getting better.”
On March 24 he told me our “biggest hurdle” was that I was “extremely angry” at him and “unable or unwilling to forgive.” I wrote back one line: “My peace is worth more to me than anything else.” His answer came nine minutes later:
“I promise you that your peace and wellbeing and outlook and weight upon you will improve 100 fold when you genuinely let go of the past and completely and eternally forgive me and absolve me of my past sins and transgressions and hit the reset button and start over with a fresh clean palate.”
On March 29 I tried again, as plainly as I could:
“All I want is peace”
“You rob me of my peace”
Six minutes later he wrote: “You would be happy if I died.”
Running underneath all of it was money. On March 19 he asked me to confirm that I was “cutting me off from our family’s financial resources as the breadwinner.” I answered: “I can put money in - I just wasn’t going to be paying for your court fees” and “I’m happy to pay for whatever you need for the kids.” On March 28: “Can you please transfer some money over Careyann?” On March 30: “I just got gas and have $3 left in the account. Can you please put some money in?”
That’s the same month he would file papers asking a court to order me to pay him spousal support.
Monday, March 21, 2022: What Lisa Dean filed
On Monday, March 21, at 11:08 AM, his attorney, Lisa Carey Dean of Roderick Linton Belfance in Akron, filed a complaint for divorce against me in Summit County Domestic Relations Court, case DR-2022-03-0667. The case was assigned to Judge Susan K. Steinhauer.
Four days after he’d pleaded guilty in the criminal case, the complaint Lisa Dean signed asked that he be named “temporary and permanent primary residential parent of the minor children,” and that he be “granted a reasonable sum for spousal support, both temporary and permanent.”
The same morning she filed his motion for temporary orders. It asked that he be designated “primary residential parent and legal custodian,” and that the court grant him child support, “spousal support for himself,” temporary attorney’s fees, and “exclusive use and occupancy of the marital residence.” Item six asked the court to restrain me “from harassing or abusing Plaintiff in any manner.”
Four days after he had stood in a courtroom and admitted the allegations of the night he kicked down my bedroom door, his lawyer asked a court to protect him from me.
None of this was served on me. Not that week, and not for five more weeks. On March 23 the court issued its standard mutual restraining order and sent out hearing notices, and I knew nothing about any of it.
That evening at 9:11, in the middle of a conversation about which school our Younger Son should go to, my husband texted: “If you don’t think it’s affecting the boys - well, it is…”
On March 24 at 9:12 PM he sent me this:
“For everything. But I was specifically thinking about how you’ve changed our house into a home and been a homemaker making everything nice. Also how you do that while making fat guap like a super boss.”
He wrote it three days after his lawyer filed papers calling him the parent at home.
April 6 – 12, 2022: Utah
On Wednesday, April 6, I flew to Salt Lake City for a work convention. At 2:55 PM I texted Milo, “On a flight to utah.” The boys stayed with their father.
What I didn’t know until his testimony in May was that the process server had tried to serve me at Cleveland Hopkins Airport that morning, and that my husband had been with him. The process server told the court he’d brought my husband along so he could point me out, and that in this case he didn’t attempt service unless my husband was there. I’d gotten up early and gone through before they found me.
My husband testified that he’d filed on March 21 but waited until April 6 on purpose. Judge Steinhauer’s order recorded it:
“Husband wished to serve Wife as she was leaving town.” “Husband admitted service on Wife was intentionally delayed.”
While I was in Utah, on Saturday, April 9, he sent me photos of the boys at an indoor water park.
At 4:32 PM I hearted one of the pictures and wrote back, “Awwwwhhhhh.”
Two and a half weeks later, on April 27, in the middle of an argument, I put it to him plainly. At 2:30 PM I wrote: “the best part of you not living with me is that they finally have an involved father.” And then: “best thing that ever happened to them is you moving in with your mother.”
On the way home my first flight was late and I missed my connection in Charlotte. At 8:52 PM on April 11 I wrote him, “My flight was delayed till tomorrow morning,” and sent the new itinerary: Charlotte to Cleveland, nonstop, 8:40 the next morning. “Ridiculous,” I added. “now I have to find a hotel.”
April 13 – 25, 2022: “Put some money in please”
The money requests picked up after I got home. On April 13 at 6:00 PM he asked me to “put some money in please.” He was “standing in line getting declined at Giant Eagle.” On April 14: “Can’t start personal training without a personal training certification.” On April 18: “Could you please transfer some money?” On April 25: “Can you please put $ in? I am completely out of gas,” and then, “You think I can survive on your $300 a week?!?”
That three hundred dollars a week wasn’t me paying him. It came out of our shared marital account. It was the family’s money. The papers his lawyer had filed, the ones I still hadn’t seen, asked a court to order me to pay him spousal support on top of it.
What he didn’t seem to know was where a good part of the money in that account had come from. On March 20, 2021, I’d texted him a link to BlackOxygen Organics, one of the MLMs I worked, and written, “Sign up for a distributor account and get the Fulvic powder or coffee.” He became a brand partner, with a position called Elixir of Life. By my account, through 2021 I was moving the income his own position earned into our marital account, and he was spending his own money, money he’d made from that MLM, on drugs.
On September 4, 2021, he texted me: “Need more money in PNC please. I don’t understand - $12k put into Black Oxygen today alone and you can only put $500 in PNC at a time?”
By then the position wasn’t his anymore. On July 13, 2021, at 12:48 PM, I texted him BlackOxygen’s Sale/Transfer Request form and asked, “Can you print.” That day we both signed it. In his own hand he filled in the name of his position, “Elixiroflife,” and signed that he understood the transfer would “forever relieve me of all ownership rights to the above referenced position.” The new owner was me.
Later, in a letter signed by its CEO, BlackOxygen confirmed that he had been a brand partner “active until July 13, 2021,” and that “the total amount of commission paid to [him] was $72,508.29.”
Thursday, April 21, 2022: “It’s my ducking house”
That evening I was on work calls in the house when I realized he’d been there, unannounced, and was now texting me about a trailer parked out front. How did he know there was a trailer at the house?
At 8:12 PM I asked him: “You have some kind of video camera on the house?” Then I told him, in capital letters, not to show up unannounced again.
HIM: “It’s my ducking house”
HIM: “I will show up there whenever I ducking want”
I wrote, “ok I’ll be calling my victims advocate to see what they think about that.” He wrote back: “Go for it.”
ME: “You don’t just show up unannounced whenever … you feel like it”
HIM: “Yes I can my love”
At 8:24 PM: “I DON’T HAVE TO NOTIFY YOU.” At 8:26 PM: “I will come over whenever I please.” Then, at 8:42 PM, the tone flipped: “I will let you know prior to coming over in the future Careyann. I agree that would be respectful and I want to always do the right thing.” By 8:44 he was asking whether I’d liked the bottle of mead he’d given me.
That was the pattern. A threat, then a gift. “I don’t want to fight,” he wrote. “Seriously I don’t want to.”
Tuesday, April 26, 2022: The driveway
I was flying to London the next morning for a week of work. At 7:48 AM I texted him to ask a favor while I was gone: “Do you want to cut the grass while I’m gone and get the gas line installed please?”
At 7:59 AM he answered: “Sure!”
At 8:26 AM a process server named Gregory Petrasik handed me divorce papers in my own driveway. He testified later that my husband had driven him there and was present.
At 8:26 AM I texted my husband: “Thanks for doing me a favor 🙏🏻.”
At 8:56 AM: “Now I can go celebrate my freedom from abuse in London.”
At 10:26 AM, two hours after he’d watched me get served, he wrote: “Did you like the egg bites?” He’d made them for me. “Just looking for feedback - next time I think I’m going to try to make spinach and artichoke.”
At 11:28 AM I texted my mother:
“[He] just gave me divorce papers - the day before I’m supposed to leave for london - what a winner”
She wrote back: “Wow.” At 4:25 that afternoon: “I am so sorry to hear this. I will be praying for everything and I’m here for you.” At 11:43 AM I told Milo, “He just served me divorce papers.”
At 1:31 PM my husband had his own worry. He’d be “screwed,” he wrote, if he lost phone service, “because my probation app has to be connected on a continual basis and the app checks connectivity every 30 minutes throughout the day.” At 1:43 PM he sent a screenshot: “Reconnect Community is my probation app.”
All afternoon he kept telling me he wasn’t my enemy. At 1:30 PM: “It had to happen Careyann / You gave me no choice / Just relax and have a nice trip and we can talk when you get back / I’m not out to get you.” At 2:15 PM: “This is now a legal matter and I’m following my attorney’s legal consul, but I’m not out to get you or hurt you.” At 4:40 PM: “The papers you got are a starting point and EVERYTHING is negotiable.”
At 8:25 PM I wrote him the simplest version of it: “You handed me divorce papers the day before I leave on a work trip.”
At 9:58 PM he sent me ten screenshots of a magazine article titled “Signs You Are Dating a Narcissist.” At 10:00 PM he added: “I’m sorry Careyann, but you are in denial if you don’t see that this is describing you to a T 🤷♂️.”
Wednesday, April 27, 2022: Over the Atlantic
On the day I flew to London, Lisa Carey Dean signed a letter to my employer’s payroll company enclosing a subpoena for my records. A copy was waiting in my mailbox when I got home.
He texted me most of that day while I traveled. At 8:00 AM: “Let’s have a truce Careyann.” At 8:09 AM: “Thank you for keeping PNC positive.” By early afternoon he was telling me I didn’t take care of our children, and then:
“You are NO mother”
“Just like your mom is no mother”
“And her mom was no mother”
At 1:57 PM: “Just wait until we get to court.”
At 3:16 PM:
“I HAD to file - you gave me no choice”
“I followed my attorneys advice”
“The papers are a starting point”
“But I’m in control of what happens with everything”
“I can drop all of it if I want”
At 3:22 PM, when he wrote that I’d “beat [him] up so bad everyday,” I answered: “I beat you up? Please.” And then, at 3:23 PM, I said the thing I’d been carrying:
“you physically abused me in front of our kids and had [my Younger Son] crying asking if I was going to die”
“Stop harassing me,” I added. At 3:25 PM: “I’m about to land and would like to be able to focus on work this trip so please leave me alone.”
At 3:31 PM: “Just forget about the papers - it’s all just a fucking bullshit formality anyways.” At 3:35 PM: “You are in the position of power with the $. I’m completely fucked with no income and a mountain range of debt.”
He wrote that the same week his lawyer’s subpoena went out to my employer.
April 28 – May 3, 2022: London
My mother texted on the morning of April 28: “Good morning. I am thinking you were in London already. I just sent you something to messenger that I want you to read. Love you so much be blessed.”
For six days I worked. The boys were with their father. He testified later that there was no contact between me and the children until the day before I came home, when he set up a FaceTime with them.
On Monday, May 2, while I was still in London, I texted Milo’s daughter, Kimberly Valenti, for the first time: “Hi it’s careyann - Milo gave me your number - what do you need from me to get this going?” She became my lawyer.
On Tuesday, May 3, at 6:52 AM, I wrote him: “7.5 hr flight to Newark with a 2.5 hr layover - taking off now.” At 6:41 PM he texted that he was dropping off “a huge pot of chicken soup with noodles on the side and a thing of taco meat, rice and beans” for me, and pancakes the next day. I thanked him. At 7:04 PM I wrote, “I just landed.”
Then I opened my mail and found the subpoena.
At 8:19 PM I wrote: “You could have used a mediator instead of serving me papers the day before I left.” He said I was being abusive, that I should answer the phone, that he wished he could hug me. At 8:23 PM: “My lawyer did all this Careyann.” At 8:24 PM: “I hired one of the best divorce attorneys in northeast Ohio and she has done all the paperwork and filing.” In the same minute: “I am in control of what happens from here on out though.” At 8:26 PM: “I suggest you hire an attorney though, because you’ve already broken several portions of the restraining order in the papers you were served.”
At 8:36 PM: “You can talk to my lawyer from now on.”
Wednesday, May 4, 2022: “Where is the camera”
I hadn’t seen my Younger Son in a week. At 11:35 that morning I told his father: “I’ll be picking up [my Younger Son] from now on every day just FYI.”
He wrote back that he wanted to keep “everything the same as it has been for the past two months.” He said we’d agreed on a FaceTime while I was in England that he’d drop the boys off after track practice. I answered: “I said while I’m gone that was fine - I’m home now.” He was taking our Younger Son to track practice with him and our Older Son that night, he said. I wrote back: “he’s spending time with me - I haven’t seen him in a week.” When he asked whether I was trying to keep him from his son, I reminded him how the weeks had actually gone: “You see him Mondays when he spends the night / With your mother.”
At 2:02 PM, when I asked why he’d waited so long to have me served, he answered in capitals:
“BECAUSE I DIDN’T WANT TO DO IT CAREYANN - I was hoping we could work things out and NOT break our family apart. I was putting it off. That’s why. My lawyer was starting to get a little upset that I kept waiting”
That afternoon I picked up my Younger Son, and that evening I went to watch my Older Son’s track practice and brought him home myself.
At 6:05 PM my phone lit up:
HIM: “Keep on breaking the restraining order Careyann”
HIM: “Go ahead”
HIM: “What are you doing, putting in a gas line?”
HIM: “Can’t do that”
HIM: “What’s the red truck?”
He hadn’t lived in the house in eleven weeks. He knew, in real time, that a truck was in my driveway. I asked the only question that mattered:
ME: “where is the camera [husband]”
ME: “stalker”
HIM: “There is no camera”
HIM: “So who was in the red truck?”
HIM: “And black Cadillac?”
The gas line was the job I’d asked him on April 26 to have installed while I was gone.
That same day I started over with a new phone and a new number. At 12:02 PM, when a friend asked why, I told her: “[he] is psycho [and] tracks everything I do.”
Thursday, May 5, 2022: The eve
At 8:38 the next morning he wrote that he’d be picking the boys up from school “as I have been for the past two months plus.” I answered at 8:40 AM: “Your legal documentation would prove otherwise - you can speak to my lawyer from now on.” At 1:08 PM: “No need to pick up the boys I’m picking them up today.”
I picked them up. My mother was flying in again that day, to stay through the weekend.
Count them. In his texts to me over those two days, he leaned on “the past two months,” or words close to it, five times. On May 4 at 11:47 AM: “I would like to keep everything the same as it has been for the past two months.” At 1:03 PM he sent the same sentence again, word for word. At 1:23 PM: “I’ve been picking [my Younger Son] up for 2 months.” Then on May 5, in the single 8:38 AM message, twice: “as I have been for the past two months plus,” and, a few lines down, “I will have them home before dinner as I have been for the past two plus months.”
Two months. Before those two months, I was the one who dropped off and picked up both boys. When I had to work, it was mostly his parents who did it, not him. In January 2021, two months after he broke his elbow, he’d texted me on January 11 at 11:44 AM that our Younger Son would “have to ride home unbuckled in his seat as I’m not physically able to buckle his belt with one hand,” and at 12:01 PM, “I just talked to my dad and he offered to get [my Younger Son] for me.”
None of that stopped what came next in court. On May 13, 2022, Lisa Carey Dean filed his sworn affidavit: “During my marriage, I was a stay-at-home father while Defendant was the primary income-earner for our family.” On May 20, answering her questions on the stand, he described the years before February 15: “Well, essentially, I was the stay-at-home mom. I took care of the children. I – I woke up with them, made them their breakfast, made them their lunches, drove them to school. I would pick them up from school.” Earlier in that same testimony, he told her the calendar he was relying on was one he had “started keeping, actually, at your advice.” On June 8, the court found that until May 6, 2022, he had been “the primary caregiver for the children.”
I believe the “past two months” story, stretched into a lifetime of caregiving, was a fraud upon the court. I believe it was built in collusion with Lisa Dean, and on her advice, to deceive the court about who had raised my sons. No court has ever made that finding. It is what I believe, having lived every one of those years.
The next morning, Friday, May 6, 2022, I would walk into Summit County Domestic Relations Court and ask for protection for myself and my sons.