Mescanti v. Mescanti

William and Elizabeth Mecanti were married with children. William subjected Elizabeth to a pattern of harassment that lasted months. The couple had been experiencing marital difficulties and Elizabeth had been sleeping on the couch. She slept during the daytime because she worked the night shift. William would come home from work and wake her up to argue and instigate fights. He hacked into Elizabeth’s emails and looked through her pockets, cell phone logs, purses, and car. He would follow her when she was out with friends. He wrote her pages expressing his love, his fear of losing her, and his wish to stay together forever. On one occasion William hid her house and car keys and locked her out of the house; when she was finally able to reenter the house, Elizabeth discovered that he had disconnected the telephone lines. Elizabeth sought a protection from abuse (“PFA”) order after an incident when William wanted her to sleep with him in their bedroom, even though she had told him she wanted a divorce and they had been sleeping apart for three years. When she refused to follow him to the bedroom, William told her “this is going to get ugly” and “this is just the tip of the iceberg.” Then he left the house. Elizabeth went to sleep on the couch and woke up when William returned home and turned on the television. She asked him to turn it off but he refused; after some argument he stormed out of the room after saying “you better not go to sleep. You better not even close your eyes.” Elizabeth heard a noise like the cocking of a gun (William kept guns in the house) so she called the police. After this incident she sought the order of protection, which was granted. She had not filed for divorce because she was afraid of what William might do. On appeal, William argued that the PFA should not have issued because his threats were indirect and Elizabeth never testified to a past occasion when he threatened her as he did the night of the incident. The court considered the pattern of harassment as a whole, including Elizabeth’s testimony that she had heard William cock guns in the past, and concluded that that his behavior established “abuse” under the statute.