Can you imagine the upheaval to the workplace?  Just wrapping your head around the number of hours co-workers would spend taking about it at the water cooler is enough to send shivers up any manager’s spine.  You can’ go anywhere these days without everyone debating whether Mel really abused Oksana.  Is she really trying to extort money?  Is he as violent and bigoted as she says?  Are those recordings real?

It’s enough to make your head spin.  Imagine he works for you.  Now what do you do?  Put him on administrative leave until the mess is cleared up?  Well, that would depend on what your policies said about off duty behavior.  And there’s no way an angry employee embroiled in an ugly bitter breakup is going to reserve antagonistic phone calls for after work hours.  I once heard a situation where a man called his estranged wife 300 times in a single day!  Think of it.  Call, hang up.  Call, hang up.  Call, hang up.  Clearly neither employee is getting any work done.  Neither are their co-workers and their managers.

There are “Mels” and “Oksanas” everywhere.  You may not hear about it.  It may not be all over the news.  It’s happening though.

Abusers often try to manipulate the legal system and discrediting their intimate partner by:

• Threatening to call Child Protective Services or the Department of Human Resources and making actual reports that his partner neglects or abuses the children.
• Changing lawyers and delaying court hearings to increase his partner’s financial hardship.
• Telling everyone (friends, family, police, etc.) that she is “crazy” and making things up.
• Using the threat of prosecution to get her to return to him.
• Telling police she hit him, too.
• Giving false information about the criminal justice system to confuse his partner or prevent her from acting on her own behalf.
• Using children as leverage to get and control his victim.

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