When the Justice System Becomes the Weapon

I don’t think people understand how broken the justice system is until they’re forced to live inside it.

I’ve been in court with my ex for over two years.

Not because we’re divorcing — we’ve been divorced since 2022.
Not because our children are minors — they are 22 and 19 (almost 20).

And yet, here we are.

I am being accused of parental alienation, of not getting bills switched into my name within 30 days, and of being ordered to repay a $20,000 lump sum I was awarded in the divorce.

Parental alienation of adult children.

That alone should have stopped this at the door.

Instead, the court has allowed it to continue — as if grown adults don’t have autonomy, memory, or the ability to decide for themselves what kind of relationship they want with either parent.

What’s more disturbing is how far this has gone beyond the actual issue at hand.

This is not a divorce hearing.
This is not a custody case involving young children.

And yet my past has been dragged into the courtroom repeatedly — not because it was legally relevant, but because it could be used.

I was kept on the stand for five full days.

Not because new information was being uncovered — but because the goal was pressure. The questioning circled the same territory again and again. Timelines were revisited. Facts were reframed. The intent was clear: stay on me long enough, push hard enough, and eventually I would crack.

This wasn’t about testimony.
It was about endurance.

And when it became clear that I wasn’t breaking — when the answers stayed consistent, when the facts didn’t change, when the narrative they were trying to create wouldn’t stick — they had no choice but to relent.

Five days.

That is how long the system allowed it to go on.

During that time, I was repeatedly questioned about being with someone after we separated in 2015. Something that lasted two to three months was repeatedly reframed as a “marriage-long affair.”

The insanity of that claim speaks for itself.

Despite the reality that my ex was involved in an affair from 2012–2016, followed by multiple affairs after that, and then another long-term affair beginning in 2018 — the woman he is now married to — the narrative being pushed was that I had a long-term affair during the marriage.

That is a lie.

But the justice system allowed it to be presented anyway.

Those five days on the stand were not about uncovering the truth. They were about creating doubt. Blurring timelines. Suggesting moral failure. Trying to make me look like a bad person — because discrediting me was the only strategy left.

All while ignoring the actual history.

This man abused me daily for 23 years — emotionally and psychologically — and yet somehow, in a courtroom meant to deliver justice, I am the one on trial.

Not the years of manipulation.
Not the infidelity.
Not the control.

Me.

And here is what needs to be said plainly:

Victims of domestic violence should not have to endure this.

Survivors should not be forced to relive their trauma publicly in order to defend their credibility. They should not be kept on the stand for days as a pressure tactic. They should not have their past distorted, reframed, and weaponized under the guise of fairness. And they should not be re-traumatized by the very systems meant to protect them.

What the system has permitted is not fairness — it is continuation. It has allowed an abuser to keep doing what he has always done: rewrite reality, reverse roles, and weaponize narrative. Only this time, it has been done with legal backing.

There has been no meaningful acknowledgment of how inappropriate it is to treat adult children as pawns. No recognition that dredging up distorted versions of the past serves no legal purpose beyond character assassination. No concern for the damage caused when someone is forced to publicly defend their integrity while the person who caused the harm benefits from the process.

This isn’t justice.

It’s litigation used as a tool of control.

And the most unsettling part is how normalized it all is — how often people shrug and say, “That’s just how the system works,” as if that makes it acceptable.

It doesn’t.

If you’ve ever felt like the justice system protects process over people, you’re not imagining it. If you’ve ever felt like truth matters less than who can apply pressure the longest, you’re not wrong.

This is what the justice system allows.

And surviving it — years of it — doesn’t mean you’re weak.
It means you refused to break when the system allowed someone to try.