PODCAST #410 – INTERVIEW WITH RACHEL JUAREZ FROM TV’S “HOT BENCH” TRANSCRIPT
? You are listening to the reality. Steve podcast with your host reality. Steve, he’s got all the latest info and behind the scenes juice on grants, upcoming season of the bachelor and interviewing some of your favorite reality stars. Now here’s reality.
What’s up everybody. Welcome to podcast number four 10. I’m your host reality. Steve. Thank you Good episode for you today. A first time guest. It is Rachel Juarez from the syndicated television show hot bench. Sure. You’ve seen it. We’ve all come across it at some point flipping through the channels because it is always on.
And she reached out to me last week. Wanted to say she appreciated the way I handled the Devin case. And I figured let’s have her on and let’s dive into it a little bit more. She knows a lot about the case. She’s seen the documents. We also dive into the Gill situation with golden bachelorette. We even talk a little bit about the Clayton situation and we’ll get to all that momentarily.
So I said last week, Friday night, actually Friday afternoon, I get an email from somebody I had never obviously seen before. Didn’t recognize the name. She said, Steve, my name is Rachel Juarez. I’m one of the judges on CBS’s hot bench, Emmy nominated court show created by Judge Judy. But instead of one judge, we have three.
My day job is running a family law firm in Los Angeles. As a result, I have a lot of experience in domestic violence cases. As you could probably guess, I’m also a longtime reader, albeit casual of yours. I wanted to say that I thought your reporting on Devin’s restraining order was excellent. When I first heard he was claiming it was dismissed, I suspected it was because the temporary order was granted and then extended, common, but the permanent order was not pursued, again, very common.
Obviously, that’s different than never being granted in the first place, so she goes on to explain that, and I was just like, immediately responded to her, got to messaging back and forth, and I said, would love to have you on to talk about this, and we do. It’s a very fun conversation, you know, Thursday podcasts ever since number 400.
Where we started, Clayton was number 400. Now we’re at four 10. These are all also on my YouTube channel, and they go up at the same time every Thursday, 9:15 AM Eastern time on Thursday. If you go there at nine 15, that’s when it starts playing and it’s technically quote unquote live. So if you’re watching it, you can actually join in the chat while it is live.
If you sign in at 9 30 a. m. Easter time, you’ll be 15 minutes into the podcast, but all you got to do is just move the cursor back 15 minutes. You can go to the beginning. That’s how it works on my YouTube channel. Reality Steve on YouTube. Go check it out. And when you go there, whether you go in right at nine 15 or anytime you’re watching it, even if it’s already over and you just go to my YouTube channel and you want to go watch it, please subscribe, please like it, leave a comment, that would be great.
It only helps improve and we want to grow the YouTube channel as big as I can. So I appreciate it if you would do that. But Rachel war is an excellent, excellent interview today. We really, obviously her being a family law arbiter that has very. Tons of experience in domestic violence cases. She obviously is very well versed in this.
We talk about the Devon situation. Does the show take fault for this? Should they have known about this? How do restraining orders work? How what is the difference between Devon’s restraining order not being seen and Gil from the bachelorette getting a restraining order not being seen? Is there a difference?
Spoiler. Yes, there is a very major one. And then we also dive into the Clayton stuff. She knew about the Clayton story because she follows me, but like she said, she’s a casual viewer on my site. She actually didn’t even know that a judge had ruled and there was a trial back in June. So I fill her in on that.
We do talk about that, but I’m going to have Rachel on probably in a few weeks. Basically, I’m going to send her. All the pertinent documents that she needs to see from the Clayton case and because I want to have her on and I want to get her opinion because she has her own family law firm in Los Angeles.
Clayton’s case was a family law case in the state of Arizona. In Maricopa County. So I definitely want to get her opinion on this, but she needs to have, you know, I want to say all the relevant facts. I mean, this is a case that went on for a year. Is it going to be impossible to have her read everything that happened?
All of Dave Neal’s coverage of this, the emails that I read from Laura? Yes, but She needs to know the basics. Hell, she could probably just read Judge Mata’s decision that she rendered on June 18th that was, whatever, 19 pages long. And kind of break it down from there. And she can even see all that stuff that went in there and probably be able to be like, wow.
You know, I did tell her that Laura has been recommended by judge Mata for criminal prosecution, which she said that is unheard of. And you heard that from Umberto the same week we had him on the live. It’s just to go from a family law case to being recommended for criminal. There’s gotta be something there for it to do that.
She said, you’ll hear her say, because we’d be doing that all the time. It’s just. Obviously there’s, you don’t want to say more important things because obviously what happened to Clayton is very important to what happened to him. But on a scale of murderers, rapists, and what Laura Owens did, she’s obviously below them, but with the pattern of behavior that she had, you know, a lot of people, including myself, including Dave, including Clayton, including Greg Gillespie, including Mike Mara, Mara, Cheney, Mara, Cheney, Mara, I always forget Mike’s last name or how to pronounce it.
That we think Laura should pay a penalty other than the money that she owes Clayton that she lost in the trial where she has to pay what is 163, 000. I believe is the total bill, which I don’t think Clayton will ever see a dime of, and neither does Rachel Juarez. So, I do think a precedent should be set for what Laura has done, but it’s not my decision.
It’s whoever decides on this in Maricopa County, the prosecutor’s office or the, the attorney general’s office. See, I’m not good with the legal stuff. That’s why I brought Rachel on, but she definitely has some thoughts on it, but we are going to have her on again once she is given all the paperwork to read, because I think her input on this would be almost like expert opinion.
You know, it’s not her case. It’s not her decision. She will give her thoughts and it might be completely different. You know, we don’t even know if Laura is going to be. Prosecuted for and be up for criminal charges. She is currently being investigated in Arizona. So they are doing an investigation, but they could do an investigation and say, you know what, we’re just not going to press charges.
It’s very possible that happens. I don’t even know what the percentage is. I don’t know if it’s a 50, 50 shot. I don’t know if it’s 75, 25 for 75, 25 against, I have no idea, but it is very possible. Nothing happens in terms of criminally to Laura, which. You know, me and Dave and others think would be a shame, but there’s nothing we can do, you know, the, they have all the information they need.
They’re gathering all the information they need. And it’s just a matter of if they decide, you know what, we have enough here where we want to go after her for what she has done. You know, you know, my thoughts, you know, Dave’s thoughts of, of what we think she had, certainly, you know, Clayton’s thoughts after what she put him through for a year, I hope something happens.
I hope she is put up on criminal charges because what she did and the amount of lying that she did It’s just completely unacceptable. The amount of taxpayer money she wasted with all of her threats and calls that she made to FBI, to the Scottsdale police department, it’s embarrassing. And I think that she should suffer the consequences, whatever a court in Arizona decides those consequences should be.
Not to mention, I think her lawyer is a turd and I hope that guy loses. I hope he gets disbarred and I just, and if he doesn’t get disbarred, that’s fine. He doesn’t need to lose his job, but I do want to see him lose this case yet again because he’s been so cocky about how everything has been happening and he thinks judge motto was biased.
And as a reality TV fan, I would love nothing more than for him to lose again because he’s been such a horse’s ass about the whole case since the very beginning. But that’s just my opinion. All right, let’s get started. Podcast number four 10. Let’s bring her in. She is one of the judges on the syndicated three judge panel show hot bench.
It is her first appearance on this podcast. I’m excited to have her on. It is judge Rachel Juarez. Rachel.
Hi. Anytime. You know, you say it’s my first appearance. It is not my first viewing of your podcast. Longtime viewer. So I’m happy to
be here. Well, And I wanted to immediately, before we start getting into the Devon stuff and what’s happening with golden Bachelorette, I immediately wanted to just get into you and your background because the television show is something that I think when people watch judge television shows, they think.
They’re watching actors play judges. And obviously I just, for people that don’t know, I mean, you’re not an actor, you’re not an actress. And I really want you to, to lay out your background of where you went to school and what you did to become where you’re at right now in the judicial system.
Sure. So sometimes when people are watching these shows, they are watching actors.
That’s pretty common in our field, but our show hot bench judge Judy, some of the more popular ones They’re completely real. These are all real litigants who have cases pending in a court somewhere in the country that have decided to come and appoint us as their arbitration panel. So instead of having a trial in court, they basically agree to arbitration and agree that our decision will be binding.
We are not actors. We are arbitrators. So there’s three of us on the panel. I read, I went to college. I grew up in Los Angeles. I went to Yale University for college. And then I went to law school. I became a lawyer. I went to Stanford Law School. And then I moved back down to L. A. to start practicing law.
And I, I’ve been practicing law for about, let’s see, 14 years. And I’m not a sitting judge in a Los Angeles Superior Court, but I have training to be a temporary judge in Los Angeles Superior Court. And arbitrators, which is what we technically are, do not need to be appointed judges. So what I did was I spent a lot of time doing business litigation, representing companies like Samsung, Google, Mattel, in big trials.
And then when I had my children, I decided that that was a little much for me. And so I went into family law and I started doing basically high net worth divorces in Los Angeles. And a lot of those divorces involved people in Hollywood. And I got a call about three years ago from a producer asking if I was interested in trying out for a judge show, because I had clients who said, you know, my divorce lawyer would be great for this when they were looking for a judge.
So I tried out. And the rest is kind of history. There are three judges on our panel. Two of us are lawyers. who are appointed arbitrators with some type of judicial esque training. And then our third judge was a sitting judge for over 20 years in New York. And he retired and then became a judge on Earth.
So it’s all real. Everything you’re seeing is real. None of it’s scripted. And the best proof of that is we never stopped filming during COVID. And we never stopped filming during the writer’s strike because we don’t have writers. So, you know, we write things down, we write notes, but it’s all real. No actors, no actresses, and we’re trained lawyers.
So this may seem like a stupid question, but since you said you’re an arbitrator and you’re not a sitting judge, is it wrong of me to call you Judge Rachel Juarez?
I usually tell people don’t call me judge when I’m not on the show. But no, it’s not wrong. I mean, people, you know, when we’re doing press for the show, everybody refers to us as judges and we are judges on the show, but off that’s why you see my name is Rachel Juarez.
So when I’m not sitting on the bench on the show, it’s just Rachel. It’s good.
Had you watched hot bench before they came to you?
I had, of course I had been sort of a casual viewer, but what’s funny, my sister was a huge fan of the show. So when I called her and told her I got this strange phone call, she couldn’t believe it.
She, she said, I watch that show every day. She’s a doctor and we’re big in hospitals and waiting rooms because we’re on channels like channel two in Los Angeles, where, you know, the places that are just running basic broadcast television, have us on all day long. So it’s fun. It’s really great. Thank you.
When it came along, did you have any trepidations about getting into TV? Did you think,
I don’t know if I want
to go this route or you were just like, absolutely, I want to do this.
So absolutely. I was not convinced I wanted to do it. At first I wasn’t, it didn’t seem real. I was kind of wondering, is this a joke?
Good. Yeah. What’s going on. And I had just had my third baby. So I was kind of relaxing from a C section. And, you know, I still looked like I was pregnant. I was four weeks postpartum. And I thought, God, I really don’t want to be on TV. It’s really not for me. But when I tried out with the judges that are now on the show with us, it was so much fun.
We had so much fun during the auditions. And I realized I had kind of lost a little bit of the joy in practicing law over the years. And this was something that, like, was fun again. So I said, you know what, I’ll deal with the fact that it’s on TV so that I get to do this. And I always tell people I would probably like my job a tiny bit more if we just went and did it and it didn’t air on television, but there probably wouldn’t be a market for that.
So I kind of take the TV with it as a, as an, as an okay side effect of doing something I love.
So the really cool thing is. You reached out to me last week to just say you appreciated my coverage of the Devon story and I, I did as well as I could be not knowing a ton about the legal side of everything, but I knew once it was, once I was tipped off to You know, I, as I had mentioned when I did my video back in May, I was originally told this guy had a restraining order against him back in college.
And I’m like, okay, but I can’t just, I didn’t not believe the person who told me, but in the position that I’m in, I can’t just start accusing people of things that I don’t have proof of anymore. I used to do that and now I don’t. So I said back in May, is there anything you can get me? Is it still out there?
You know, come to find out it was actually burned, but you know, I, I didn’t, I was like, could I, can I access this somewhere online? And I, I went to one of those 25 sites and all that came up was a public drunkenness and back in 2013 and it didn’t pop up. So I just left it alone. And then a couple of weekends ago was when I was tipped off.
Like I, basically somebody was really bothered by the way he handled himself on the, after the final rose. And said, you should really look into this. Here’s a way to go get the documents. It is, there are certain things about this case that are public documents. So, you emailed me last week and, and you gave me your thoughts and I was just like, Oh, this is exactly what I need.
Like somebody who knows what they’re, what they’re talking about in regards to this. So there’s so many questions to dive into with the Devin situation. But the one thing I want to ask right off the bat is when, when you read the documents of this case, Is there any way that this show shouldn’t have known that Devin had a restraining order taken out against him seven years ago?
So obviously the ideal answer is no, there’s no way they shouldn’t have known. This is really tough though, because there are a million small state court jurisdictions across the country that do not keep their records. in a single comprehensive way. So I don’t know enough about the Eastern Parish, you know, in Louisiana that we’re talking about to know if these documents really should have been caught on a background check.
But I’ve also got to believe that an entity with this, with this many resources should have the ability to search for criminal records in places they know these folks have lived, right? It was no secret that Devin lived there. They’re doing, they’re doing You know, a show where there’s really a lot of potential for problems if they’re putting the wrong people on the show.
And even if a single one click background check doesn’t find it, they should be doing more, in my opinion. They should be looking to places where these folks have lived, and at least trying to run a basic check. And if you were able to find enough public records, you
And, you know, we find out after the story breaks deadline was the only one that reported it from all the people from Hollywood reporter and variety.
They said that from their sources, they were told that on the basic search that I did pop up, there was something that showed, I can’t remember what website it was, but it showed a burglary didn’t have a date next to it. But that’s essentially what this was considered the break in to her place when she wasn’t there and the burglary.
They asked him about it. And then he gave them an answer that was different from what we ended up finding out what it was. And it was almost like, seemingly, they took his word for it. Like, he probably downplayed it, like, Oh, that was nothing, that was from back in college. And they just seemed to be like, Okay, let’s move on.
Where maybe they should have dug in a little bit more at that point. Because, I mean, even burglary, I mean, that’s kind of a big deal.
Absolutely. And this is something that on its face wouldn’t have even necessarily been a domestic incident. I mean, a burglary is pretty serious. It’s something that can be a felony, depending on what jurisdiction you’re in.
And had they done even the most basic research, the burglary complaint itself would have been easy to obtain. And that is what led to knowing that there was a domestic violence restraining order history out there. And at that point, these documents were not ungettable. So at that point, they should have been able to get it.
And it doesn’t really make sense to do much of a background check. If you then approach the subject and say, Hey, can you explain this away? And they say, Yeah, it was nothing. And you say, All right, cool. I mean, it kind of defeats the purpose of the background check.
Exactly. And I think one of the biggest things that people are discussing And I know it’s come up a few times and I’ve got a lot of people in the legal world messaging me after I said, you know, look, when Devin gave his statement saying that restraining order was dismissed and it was never granted now that the wording.
I’d like you to kind of dive into it because you’ve seen all the documents and you’ve read all the documents. Obviously, you’re an arbitrator, like you said, in family law, I want you to explain to me. It seemed like verbal gymnastics that he was playing because The restraining order that she did file against him was granted because she had to, I believe, I believe it was maybe, maybe I’m off on this, but I believe it was granted the first one that she, yeah, the initial one was granted, but what his answer was saying that a permanent one was never granted and it was dismissed, which he’s not wrong about.
Explain to the average person who doesn’t understand this stuff exactly from everything you read in the documents, what happened here?
Sure. And this was the reason, as you know, that I emailed you, because I think a lot of different places really botched what was going on. And you, you got it, you got it right.
And basically what the procedure is, is in most jurisdictions, including Louisiana, you can go in and request what’s called a temporary restraining order. And that is usually done without any notice to the person that you want a restraining order. And it’s kind of an emergency band aid procedure. So what you do is you file a request for a restraining order and two things happen.
Number one, The judge decides, do I grant it or deny it today? Right? You’re here today. Do I grant it today or deny it today? And that’s only going to be temporary. That’s only going to be for 20 days, 21 days, 25 days. And then I set a hearing for a permanent restraining order. And the reason that they do it that way is because the temporary order is almost always issued without the other party having any idea it’s happening.
So the decision the judge makes is effectively, if I assume that everything in this Complaint everything in this application is true and give this person the benefit of the doubt because usually they just file paperwork They don’t even see a judge if I assume that everything they’ve claimed is true Would I issue a permanent restraining order and if the answer to that is yes Then they go ahead and issue a temporary restraining order So that then the restrained person can be informed that there’s a temporary restraining order, be informed that there’s an application for a permanent restraining order, and have an opportunity to defend themselves.
So, Devin is just wrong that a restraining order was never granted. A temporary restraining order was absolutely granted. He’s not necessarily wrong that there was no hearing or opportunity to defend himself against those allegations at the time. There almost certainly wasn’t. I didn’t see any proof.
that he was given notice that he was that a temporary order was being sought so that he could have showed up and defended himself. So he’s just wrong about that. With that said, what ultimately ended up happening was a permanent order didn’t issue, and it appears that that’s because One was not fully pursued by the complaining witness.
Yeah.
Complaining victim. So it’s not entirely clear why she didn’t pursue it. I know one of the explanations was she didn’t want him to have a felony on his record. That doesn’t seem to be true based on my review of the documents. But what we know happened is that they agreed to a stay away order that was mutual that gave her something in hand that he had to stay away from her.
And in California, that would be sort of less effective than an actual restraining order. Because it would not be the type of thing that police could enforce, but it’s still a very commonly, it’s very common thing to do when you’re kind of pursuing a restraining order, but you’re not sure you want to poke the bear and the other side says, I promise.
I’ll stay away from you. And at the end of the day, any restraining order is only a piece of paper, no matter what kind it is. So it’s not uncommon for someone to say, you know what? Yeah. I’ll go ahead and go with a mutual stay away order, save myself the cost and stress of a trial, and see how it goes. So that’s what appears to have happened here.
I don’t think it calls into doubt the veracity of her statements. I don’t think it means we should disbelieve her about what happened. But, You know, it’s very obvious that a restraining order was granted and to suggest that one wasn’t and to suggest that they got back together afterwards. And so that disproves her allegations.
I mean, it’s silly. It’s silly.
So, I mean, when it comes to TROs, I think a lot what you were saying was that and again, not to dismiss it, diminish the victim’s statement, but most of them have a very low burden of proof. TROs, you were And it’s just most of them are granted right away,
right? Absolutely. It’s what you it’s a standard is supposed to be.
If what you’re saying is true, you’re entitled to a restraining order. So it’s really hard to not meet that standard. Although people fail to meet that standard every day. But no, it’s a very low burden and it’s unverified allegations.
So when I was able to pull the warrant for the affidavit for his arrest, and we had the statement from the cop that described he went through and what he saw and is that just coming from the victim?
Did he, when you read that, what did you make of that?
So basically his statement is also based on the statement of the victim, but it’s also based on some of his analysis, which I thought was made a lot of sense in this particular case, more than just what she claimed. It was an investigating officer saying, I believed her to a certain extent, which is clearly relevant, but also, you know, it really doesn’t make sense that somebody else might’ve done this.
Because the only items missing were items he gave her. Other items were, they attempted to clean them up. And the timing of this, it just really doesn’t make sense that someone else burglarized her. So that’s kind of the conclusions of an investigation. It’s not definitive, but it’s certainly more than just, she said it happened.
Therefore I say it, he did an investigation.
And then we saw the paperwork of her, which was, he has violated this four times and she wrote out the four instances and dated them again. That was like, or initially, because I didn’t have the original restraining order paperwork, other outlets found that after the fact, but she laid out He’s in violation of this restraining order.
Like you said, restraining order. It’s basically just a piece of paper. So when she wrote down those four instances where he violated that restraining order, and it’s not good, but what is the, if she wrote 10 things down, I mean, if she only wrote one thing down, does it matter how many times it’s violated?
Like, I guess what I’m getting at is like, what should have been the punishment here? Did you agree with the punishment he was given? Is that fairly standard? Did it matter how many times he violated? Like I said, once. She said four times if she had written 10 things down, what is the thought process on that?
So basically these are two completely separate issues. So far as I can tell, it seemed to me that the burglary happened as a re happened and then the restraining order. It doesn’t seem from my review of the timeline, like the burglary was a violation of the restraining order. You tell me if I’m getting my timeline wrong and maybe I’ll just pull up the documents.
Yeah, I, I think the restraining order was out there because there was a box that was checked was, and she said it in her writing. I already have a restraining order against him and this is what he has done since I can’t have him keep doing this when I already have a restraining order out against him.
That was in point number four she made. So yes, yeah. Because
I am pretty sure. So the burglary happened. Or the alleged burglary happens because, you know, he pled guilty. So we can pretty much say the burglary happened, but
I like
to add the alleged in because I’m a lawyer. So the alleged burkler burglary happened on March 19th, 2017.
Let’s
see. Well, I see is
I guess we have to pull up the the
I’m sorry to do this while we’re, while the entertainment,
the entertainment sites that found the initial TRO, they should have a date on when it was, but I’ve always been on the impression because of what she wrote on that statement that she fit, that she filed on May 1st here, or yeah, it was May 1st or filed on May 2nd.
The fourth point she made, the last thing she says in there is like, I’ve already taken out a restraining order against this guy. Here’s his four violations of it. Or here’s
clearly a different document, right? So the police investigation is, is of a burglary. It’s not of a restraining order violation. It’s of a burglary of her home.
It’s a simple burglary of an inhabited dwelling. It looks like in the affidavit for the arrest warrant that the officer subsequently learned that he did not have permission to be at her home. But I don’t believe that the burglary itself was a violation of any restraining order. I think that is what prompted her.
to go and seek a restraining order. Either
way,
she alleged four violations of a violation of a temporary restraining order. That would be a really good basis to get a permanent restraining order, right? It’s one of your best arguments. There was an order in place that he had to stay away from me for two weeks and he couldn’t even follow that.
Right. That’s pretty much a slam dunk for a permanent order, but she didn’t pursue the permanent order. So this is why it, this is in part why the argument that I didn’t want him to have a felony on his record doesn’t make sense to me in terms of why she didn’t pursue a permanent order. But with that said, there are plenty of very legitimate victims.
who are involved in a cycle of abuse who do not pursue a permanent order. And in many cases, you know, a permanent order is a piece of paper. It’s not going to stop someone from entering your home. The only benefit that a permanent restraining order for her would really have over the stay away she agreed to is that if she saw him a hundred feet away from her, she could immediately call the police and have him arrested.
If he was stupid enough to hang around the stay away order, she agreed to is a court order. But it doesn’t, at least in California, and it appears in Louisiana, give the police an immediate right of arrest because it’s not a document that leads to criminal violations on site. So this is, to me, a little murkier than it may have appeared initially.
But, you know, it’s, it’s really hard to know. I think that the arguments that have come out so far, particularly from him, about why this should be disbelieved are nonsense. Her story was very consistent in terms of kind of a pattern of abuse. And this is a lot of very specific stuff to make up, not that it doesn’t happen, but he also, I think, didn’t really deny that these specific things happened.
He issued a blanket denial that it’s all false. But it was a really tough relationship and a difficult period in my life. Never
went into details about anything. Never specifically disputed. She said, I went into her house when she wasn’t there with a putty knife. No, I didn’t. And you know, it’s like he never disputed any of that.
He just kind of gave a generic rough time in my life, like you said, and it just wasn’t believable at all.
No, so look, I don’t, I don’t have any reason to disbelieve what she’s saying, but it is a little murkier. And honestly, these things always are. The restraining order process is really flawed in many ways.
It’s an important process to have, but it’s a, it’s a tough process because of the need to have Immediate temporary orders, but the inability to really give justice before temporary orders are issued It leads to kind of a lot of mess in a lot of situations and I think this was one of them
Yeah, and we talk about it when it comes to this show I mean it says on the application you could you can never you cannot be a contestant on our show If you’ve ever had a restraining order taken out against you so whether or not they found it Devin should have been you know, look, maybe he doesn’t read his You Contestant application.
Most of them don’t, they just want to be on TV. They just want to get on the show. But I also do know they sit you down during these numerous interviews. You have to go to before you put it on the show as a contestant. And they ask you, is there anything out there that could get out? That would make you look bad us, look bad that we don’t know about.
And clearly he never told them because I, you know what I say? Clearly he never told them, but you know what? There’s a part of me that’s like, maybe they did know and just didn’t care. You know, I don’t know. I can’t answer for them. I would hope. That he said, yeah, I had a restraining order out against me in college from an ex and oh, she’s crazy or whatever.
But the second he said restraining order, they should have said, I’m sorry, we can’t let you on the show. But I don’t know. I don’t know what happened in those conversations, you know.
There’s no need to go there when you’re on a show like this. And, you know, it’s very common for people to think, you know, when applications say, have you ever been arrested?
Right. They don’t say, you know, have you ever been arrested? But if your arrest was purportedly expunged, you don’t have to answer this question properly. And there are a lot of people that think, oh, if the temporary order was denied, I can just say I never had a restraining order. If, you know, he should have told them that’s the purpose of the application.
It’s to alert them to anything that they need to look into. And he was clearly deceptive. I got to imagine. Including based on what you’re telling me on the application. I mean, I don’t see a universe in which they would want to risk Oh, you had a temporary restraining order taken out against you, but not a permanent restraining order.
No problem Let’s put you on the show and risk that this could happen because it makes them look terrible It makes them look like they’re asleep at the wheel
and they certainly did seem to be asleep at the wheel for for this When you look at the punishment that he got out of this, obviously you’ve probably seen a lot of punishments doled out where it was just, Hey, pay your court fees, do some, I think it was 30 hours, maybe it was a hundred hours of community service, don’t get in trouble again, you know, get a job, stay employed and stay away from her.
Is that standard in something like this?
This guy’s not a, a, I mean, I guess he had the one arrest maybe for a, I don’t know if that was before or after for something That you found a drunken disorderly something or other. I don’t know, but this is not a habitual repeat offender. Right? This is not somebody who, you know, has a history of criminal charges.
He’s for all intents and purposes, the first time offender. It’s very possible if they did reconcile that the prosecutor lost their witness. Right? So then they really don’t have even a complaining witness who wants to testify. So I am not at all surprised that in a, in a burglary of an uninhabited dwelling, which makes a big difference.
She wasn’t home. It’s a huge violation. Don’t get me wrong. It’s terrifying. It’s scary. It’s abusive, but she wasn’t home. Nobody got hurt. It doesn’t surprise me to see that it would have been pled out to something like stay out of trouble for a little while. And this goes away.
And You know, we talk about her and you said you’ve dealt with a lot of cases like this where, you know, there isn’t a permanent pursued for whatever reason, getting back together, not wanting it on somebody’s record, them just being scared about going through the process and having it play out in a trial.
So you said this, this is common for to get a TRO, but then not pursue anything further.
Absolutely. And the process of going to a hearing and sitting there and being cross examined is very scary. And you’re being cross examined by someone, you know, assuming you’re telling the truth, that you’re being cross examined by someone on behalf of the person you claim has abused you.
It’s a really scary process. And, you know, we also often tell people, you know, going and getting a restraining order against somebody who’s really deranged and scary can sometimes make it worse. You know, I mean, we never discourage people from pursuing a restraining order when they feel they’re in need of protection, but it doesn’t surprise me at all that someone that’s a legitimate victim would say, you know what, I’m going to go ahead and agree to a mutual stay away order.
I think that will do it for right now and kind of take my chances. It also doesn’t surprise me. She might’ve gotten back together with him. You know, there are all sorts of statistics out there about the cycle of abuse and domestic violence and how many times it takes a person to leave. An abusive relationship.
So, you know, the argument, Oh, but we got back together after that is, is pretty much the worst one.
Yeah. And it seemed like, you know, he didn’t say like, we got back together. He just said the wording that he used was We reconciled, you know, and it’s just like, again, he didn’t go into details. What, what is reconciled mean?
Because everything that I heard behind the scenes was there was absolutely no reconciliation there. They’re not friends. It’s not like they ever really spoke as friends after this incident. So that’s where. He loses me with that, but yeah, it just a, what a wild and, and wacky story. And it was, it was crazy that I was able to get the documents that I was, because, you know, like I said, I kind of had forgotten that that person had emailed me back in May, couple of weeks before the finale.
And I just totally had forgotten. But that person even said at the time, the whole thing about, he lit the restraining order on fire in her driveway. And that was mentioned to me back in May. And I was like, Oh wow. And then it did show up. She wrote that as one of her, you know, things in her statement that she had to make in her handwritten statement.
Yeah, I, you know, and there’s a part of me that’s like, I wish someday it doesn’t have to be with me, but I wish this woman would come forward. But I understand if she doesn’t, you know, one of these things, you know, totally understand if she doesn’t
look at us, we’re, I think we’re both pretty sympathetic, empathetic people, and even more kind of sitting here tossing around like, well, she said this, but she didn’t say this.
I completely understand why she doesn’t want to come forward. I think it would be incredibly brave. And I would commend her if she did, but I, I certainly can’t fault her for not wanting to.
Yeah, because then, I mean, just the fact that it is out there again, she’s having to relive it because she’s very well aware of what people are saying and she’s very well aware that Devin, you know, was just on a show.
But again, none, none of this really is about her and that’s not to diminish anything to happen to her, but this is about Devin and his behavior. I mean, him just agreeing to go on the show is a slap in the face to her. You Because the second this guy’s on the show and became a relevant character ended up winning the season again, like you said, he had to have known that there was, even if there was a 1 percent chance of this getting out, there was still a chance and that was going to drag all this up for her, you know,
it didn’t really seem to me like he’s the kind of guy that would worry about
that,
but you know, and what’s really interesting is, you know, You know, I know that the, the time that they’re portrayed to have together on the show, I obviously have no experience in reality television.
Although we say that courtroom, courtroom shows are the most real of reality television. The time they spend together is not that much. But if the, if he was doing the type of things that she was claiming, you would expect to see red flags. And my guess is a lot of the early stuff that we saw even on the show with his sort of overly effusive.
professions of love and his, it kind of fits a pattern that we see in domestic violence called love bombing, which is a very common sort of kickoff to a, to an abusive relationship where you have someone who is going over the top to profess their love and you know, who knows, right? I’m sure there’s a lot we didn’t see, but it’d be really interesting to kind of have a birdie behind the scenes, tell us whether there were any red flags and.
You know, if, if this kind of pattern of his is something that really is continuing now, or if this maybe was just, you know, something that happened when he was very young and you just don’t tend to see that very often.
And even in the victim’s notes, she had said, he came by my place, left a letter in my inbox, professing his love.
And it just like, it seems to be what he, it seems to be almost his pattern, his M O this is how he just rolls with women that he wants to be with. Like he would just seems to be. Love bombing them and she wrote it in her own notes that we read. It’s just like yeah This is what he would do come over to my house banging on my door at 4 30 in the morning wherever it was the time just Yeah, it seemed to be, this is, this seems to be his game, so to speak.
It’s a common pattern, because as you can imagine, abusive relationships would not be as much of a thing, right? They wouldn’t, it wouldn’t happen as much if the abuser was just mean all the time, right? I mean, that’s the reason they call it a cycle, is because it goes down and it goes up. And oftentimes in these relationships, when it’s up, it’s really up, and it’s over the top up.
And then when it’s down, it’s really down.
Yeah, yeah. It’s, it was obviously a case that drew a lot of attention. The show took a lot of heat for it. You know, we are a week and a half since this story broke. I want to say that I’m shocked that nobody from the network or nobody from the show, any executive producer has released a statement attaching their name to it, specifically addressing.
The fact that they had a contestant who had a TRO filed against him in college. I, you know, I say like, I, I, I am surprised, but a part of me isn’t. But like I said, here we are a week and a half later, still nothing. The only quote we got was when the entertainment sites contacted and they said, sources close to the show.
It’s like, no, let’s hear from the EP that runs the show and that specifically address, did you miss it? Should you have dug further? What did Devin tell you? Did he ever, did you ever question him about this burglary? And he said, yeah, it wasn’t a big deal. I. I think they have to, but considering we’re 10 days out now, my guess is we’re not going to get it.
If they haven’t addressed it by now, why would they address it in a week or two weeks or three weeks? I understand that Jones season is airing and they’re underway for filming of, of grant season, but still, this is one of the biggest stories in the franchise ever. And nobody is attaching their name. To it.
No EP come out and say, you know what? We screwed up again, but we vow to do better. Even if it’s just something basic, we got to do better, you know? And they haven’t even said that.
Yeah. Maybe we’ve got to do better, but I can’t really imagine what statement they would give that would help. Because either it’s a, we screwed up or our processes were flawed to begin with.
Or it’s something like, well, we asked Devin, but he assured us it wasn’t a big deal. That’s almost worse. I don’t think there’s any way to clean this up. So what about,
what about just saying, cause I know for a fact that they hire a third party that does the background checks, it’s not NZK, which is the production team behind the show.
They hire a, they farm it out to a third party. What about just saying. We missed the boat, you know, some paraphrasing here, but we missed the boat on this, the company that we have farmed it out to that does our background checks. They have since been replaced after this incident, vowed to do better going forward.
I don’t know, something like that. Just tell us you’ve done, because just saying we’re, we’re going to do better in the future is so generic. It’s like generic. It’s like Devin’s generic answer. It’s like, it’s so generic. What are you doing to do better? You know, you
should do their crisis comms. I mean, that, that is probably the best thing they could say, right.
Is, is shifted off on a third party, keep it generic enough, right. But then say they’re replaced, throw somebody else under the bus. I mean, that’s, you know, probably the best thing they could do. My guess is they’re not going to replace background check company. I, you know, I, it’s, I don’t know. I don’t know what the calculus is over there.
Maybe this brings more attention to the show.
Yeah,
that’s the other kind of cynical view of it, right? This draws attention and I don’t think it’s going to lose viewers. I don’t think people are going to say, you know, I’m boycotting the show because they let this guy on. It’s going to draw more eyeballs.
So, I mean, I guess that’s the, you know, the cynical view of it.
At least in droves, there’ll be the occasional spotty person here and there that says, I’m not going to watch. I’m talking about like, are you going to lose 50 percent of your audience from this? And the answer is no. I hear this every season about, oh, I mean, just before we found out about the Devon stuff, people infuriated about how they treated their lead on the, after the final rose, making her watch a proposal after she sat on the couch for two segments, bawling her eyes out.
And then let’s go back to that day. This is a very empowering moment because you proposed to Dev. No, we didn’t need to see that. She didn’t need to see that. And everyone was upset at that. And that was before this came out. And people are saying, I can’t believe they don’t protect their leads like that.
How they could hang her out to dry like that. And it’s just like, but you’re watching next season. Let’s be honest.
Right. And what it does, I mean, I’m kind of a perfect example. I, I am a fan. I do not watch every episode of every season by any means. I kind of, it comes into my feed because of whatever algorithms there are.
But when all this stuff about the finale and this stuff, I, I saw it all. And I would not have necessarily been following a season where all of this stuff didn’t come out towards the end. So I think there are a lot of people, it does draw eyeballs when you have a big story like this. And it, it drums up interest.
And I think you’re right. The, the small number of people, God bless them, who would say I’m boycotting the show because they shouldn’t treat their leads like this is not going to have a material impact.
