Tuesday, December 11, 2012

The Jordan Miller story, part deux

In the interest of full disclosure I feel the need to draw your attention to the following. It turns out the formally anonymous poster, citizenthrowawayx, is in fact Jordan Miller's ex-husband, Dan. Apparently this whole career assassination was in fact retaliation due to losing the custody of his son. I'm going to warn you that this whole thing is a little rant-y and reads like a men's rights manifesto, in my opinion. But if you want to see it, just click past the jump.

That said, I feel like everyone who reported this should have dug a little deeper. The original posts by citizenthrowawayx had a unsettling tone that should have alerted us that these posts were just a glimpse of something much larger. For example:

I take no pleasure in this at all but I had no choice. Let's just say I don't appreciate people lying about me in court and filing false police reports. What you see here is just the tip of the iceberg.
Reading that it should be obvious that this whole outing was not part of a simple workplace dispute. That comment, in addition to others made me suspect that this may have been part of a domestic dispute. I had even planned on going to the circuit court to look for records like a real journalist, but I guess I don't have to now. Now I just feel a little dirty for having helped propagate a dirty, desperate attack against someone's character.
The fraud is not my main issue although it certainly motivated me because I don't want to lose my job for failing to report it. My identity is already known anyway and I don't care at this point. I'm her ex-husband, Dan.

My real problem is that she lied about me in court and coached our son's testimony to get my custody terminated. So I'm trying to get custody of my son back. In case you don't know how the family court system works, what happens is when a woman wants to go in and lie about you and accuse you of abuse, they will just admit all her hearsay statements as evidence without any physical evidence of abuse, and terminate your custody without granting you a jury trial.

So basically, I now have to prove to a prejudiced court that she lied about me, which can be very difficult, so I'm having to compile all documented instances of this occurring. This is one of those instances. It's not entirely related but still speaks to the overall problem of her willingness to lie to achieve her goals.

It doesn't seem fair for me to accuse her publicly and keep my own identity a secret, and I stand by my statements. So now you know my original motivation for poking my nose in her business (which is also the business of every taxpayer and student who pays her salary). Aside from the issue of lying, the fact that she's well funded by this income means she will have that much more legal ammo with which to continue her endless stream of legal actions and false accusations against me.

You ever hear the expression "you may beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride?" She's nearly bankrupted me with legal expenses, and frankly i've shot myself in the foot by doing this because my child support payments will increase since she's lost her job. But ultimately my duty is to get custody of my son back who I only see now whenever Jordan deems it appropriate.

So Jordan, if you're reading this, you know there is plenty more where this came from and I'm telling you this is just the beginning. I told you I was going to publicly humiliate you for lying about me and I meant it. I hope you learned a lesson and come clean because next time around may not be so easy. My guess is that you will start looking for ways to get revenge instead.

I've been thinking about that police report you filed against me and I realized, if they had taken your accusations seriously I could have been charged with attempted murder. Good thing you recanted your own statement.

If you do the right thing and go to the court and admit you "exaggerated" you can salvage some of your dignity, our son can have a dad again, and I will be able to drop this whole thing. I really do not want to spend my energy on this stuff but I will not stop until I have half legal and physical custody of my son again. And most importantly, my son has always said he wants things to go back to how they were before. If a kid were abused or in an overly punitive environment he would definitely not make these kind of statements. There is plenty of proof of this, some of which I've been forbidden by the court to publish.

Well there, now I've really opened a can of worms. But I'm willing to expose my life to public scrutiny for the sake of my son. I'm not perfect but sure as hell am not abusive and I do believe I will prevail in this matter eventually. It's just a matter of how much more time and money it will take to defend against her slanderous lies. I chose to make a kid with her. Jordan is a very intelligent woman, and she has great genes. Lying is learned behavior. I love our son dearly and I think she does too. As nasty as this has gotten, I am still willing to put this behind us for the sake of our son, but not until my custody is restored.

Anyway, if you would like to read the whole thing yourself, you can read it all here.

45 comments:

  1. [img]http://9thcivic.com/gallery/albums/post/Popcorn_02_Stephen_Colbert.gif[/img]

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  2. Pass the popcorn....this is gonna get GOOD.

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  3. "a dirty, desperate attack against someone's character."

    I'm iffy on this.

    As long as the U wasn't lying when they told reporters they had confirmed with the school (like they should have done in the first place?... so, maybe they still haven't, who knows), then we can assume the documents weren't forged or anything. So... she's still a lying liar who lied in order to beat out other candidates (some of which, presumably, were more qualified) by cheating. I mean, it was an attack, but not a baseless one. One of the ways that we judge all people in the public eye is by how many bridges they've burned gracelessly (and thus later come back to haunt them - in the best of cases in a scenario like this one. In the worst of cases by doing something that may harm the company that hired this person). Despite the very, very harmful intent here (and not the 'taxpayer dollars' etc.), I won't ever feel bad for Ms. Miller.

    But, yeah. I guess I wouldn't want to use my own digital space in this world to help the guy. Feels icky.

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  4. Oh, and I hope the kid has a sane grandparent, uncle, or aunt whom he can find his way to. That would appear to be the real tragedy in this story.

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  5. Thank you for saying this. I practiced divorce/custody law for almost seven years and anytime someone starts accusing someone else of lying in court, filing false police reports and uses the term "pathological liar", my red flags go up. (I'm sure he has called her a "psycho" but we just haven't seen it.) This sort of retribution scares me. IF a woman did this to her ex-husband, I'm sure words like "stalker", "crazy bitch" and worse would be being thrown around. And frankly, his cries for custody just strike me as disingenuous...I realize that this is unfair of me to say but look at it this way: he could have just "outed" her on reddit. Why did he have to throw in the stuff about being a "pathological liar"? Why not just state your case, report it to the U and see what happens?

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    1. He reported it to the U and nothing happened.

      I don't know how his "cries for custody" can strike you as disingenuous.

      I believe that in court if it is proven you have lied then anything you say does not have to be believed. Well, Ms. Miller lied to get a job.

      So far that is the only substantiated lie and you're a lawyer.

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    2. While a women who outed a husband for similar offenses may get called a 'psycho' or a 'stalker' by ignorant bystanders, if they had the same proof citizenthrowawayx did, most rational people would ultimately view them as justified.

      That said, your view of the interaction on reddit confirms your ignorance about the workings of the current online world. Reddit is a dynamic interaction of people in real-time. While I'm sure his intentions have not swayed since his initial posting, I'd wager that if his initial posting hadn't gathered so much attention (reassuring his self-justification) he wouldn't had felt brazen enough to spill his full story. Sure, his further postings probably didn't help his custody case but without the external validation I doubt he would have gone off on such a tirade. While anyone could 'just' out their in-the-wrong significant other, when they feel validated by their peers, they're likely to share the details. I don't think this is unique to either genders.

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    3. I also have some experience in family court, and I agree with TeacherPatti's identification of the red flags. Obviously, I don't know the other facts of this case, but here is my interpretation of how the court will likely read this outburst.

      1. Too little, too late: this cannot be seen as anything other than an act of revenge. Ms. Miller has been working in this position since March of this year; it is likely she had the same resume to apply to every job she's had since 2004, when she left college. Until now, he's been content to kick back and reap the benefits of her alleged deception. I wonder what prompted his crisis of conscience. This reflects just as negatively on his moral compass as on hers.

      2. He's now ensured that mom, unemployed, has all this free time to provide care to their child, which will not favor father in allocating parenting time, if the allegations of abuse are unsubstantiated.

      3. And he's right on about those child support payments.

      4. Under Michigan law, there is no constitutional or statutory right to a jury trial for divorce, custody or parenting time. No one gets on, no, not even redditors.

      5. Accusations of abuse made in court are not hearsay statements. Mich. R. Evid. 801(c).

      6. I may have spent too much time in divorce court, but all I'm seeing is a controlling personality here. Public threats? Inability to work within proper channels? The judge should send everyone involved for psych evaluations. (With allegations of abuse, it's a safe bet she already has.)

      7. Hopefully this kid will never, ever learn how to type his parents' names into Google. The Internet is forever.

      I hope his lawyer did not advise him to deal with his custody issues over this medium. I hope he didn't actually abuse his kid. I hope these people can avoid destroying each other, if only to shield their kid from the emotional and behavioral issues that often accompany messy divorces. Ugh, people are just the worst.

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    4. Have you never met an actual pathological liar?

      Come on, dude. She lied, she tried to get away with it. He's in a difficult situation certainly, and "red flags" aside, she was doing something wrong and deserved what was coming to her.

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    5. I agree that lying on her job application should go to her credibility, and that she rightfully has lost her job over it. Beyond that, I'm less certain about its effect on determining her custodial rights, and I think it's a logical leap to start from "she lied on her job application" to "she has lied about everything, ever." Lying on her job application does not make her an unfit mother.

      Statistically, every person who gets called a "pathological liar" during a divorce cannot, in fact, be a "pathological liar." (I don't think this is the term you're looking for, anyway; pathological lying is a mental illness, and I think you want to accuse this lady of being a regular old liar.) In the one lie we can verify, her husband was at least complicit. That he has made this so public is, from a custody perspective, alarming to me. It shows bad judgment, as this is the kind of information that can be admitted during a hearing to impeach her credibility.

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    6. I'm pretty sure you're wrong about the child support part (and Dan is wrong too). She's the custodial parent, and her income changed, that usually doesn't mean a change in the CS obligation of the non-custodial parent. His income is the same, I assume, so his obligation will remain the same.

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    7. @Anonymous I'd be interested to know your authority for that.

      My understanding is that child support can be modified on the basis of a change of circumstances. MCL 552.17(1). The child support formula takes into account, among other factors, the incomes of both parents, custodial or not; a change of income is a change of circumstances. Therefore, if that parent petitions the Friend of the Court for a modification of child support, the formula will spit out a new number based on the changed income.

      This is not the end of the inquiry, though. The Court may deviate from the child support formula for a variety of reasons, and it may impute a parent with income. 2008 MCSF 2.01(G)(2); 2008 MCSF 2.01(G). This change of income for mom may not affect dad's child support obligation if the Court can find that a person without a college degree, though currently un- or underemployed, has an unexercised ability to earn $100,000.00 per year. So it is possible that this may not change the child support obligation, but it is unlikely.

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    8. (Not the original anonymous)I think it depends on the circumstances of the income change. In this case her income changed because of direct action taken by the father. In my case, when the mother quit her job because she didn't want to work anymore, there was no change in my support payments.

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    9. Anonymous, you still haven't answered why he wouldn't just report it to UM and let it go at that. I'm not ignorant of the on-line world and I'm definitely not ignorant of how custody games are played. There is a lot of anger behind his posts and I have to wonder what he did to prove her lies in court. Did he persue perjury charges? Did he follow up on this alleged false police report? (Maybe he did, I don't know). My point is that I don't see the relevance of all of the additional information that he felt compelled to provide. It reminds me of an old lawyer's adage: however much you love her/him today is how much you may hate her/him tomorrow.

      And yes, his support payments will go up because previously they used her $100k salary in the formula and now it will be $0. The only thing that he can do is to impute income to her; that is, to say that she should be earning xxx amount. But given that she only has a high school diploma (right?), she likely won't be found to be a high wage earner. It really depends on the lawyers involved and how persuasive they are.

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    10. I think all we truly know is that there was a custody case, he thinks she lied about him, and she lied on the resume. Beyond that is merely speculation and possibly a rush to judgment (on either side), unless one of the case lawyers or divorce court judge is on this thread.

      And how are the insinuations of "stalker" etc. any different than the use of the word "pathological liar" beyond the fact that the ex-husband has at least the personal experience to offer such a judgment?(As to whether or not it is an honest one, I have no idea - it may be a flat out lie of opportunism. I write this not to suggest the husband is telling the truth but rather to point out that you are making a judgment based more on your own biases than any real evidence.)

      The person I feel for in this case is the kid caught in an ugly custody battle between two people who seem to despise one another. Having parents who went through an acrimonious divorce (but thankfully are on far better terms now) I know exactly how stressful and upsetting that is.

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  6. Personally, I couldn't care less about about his intentions. What's most important and disconcerting here is that Ms. Miller lied her way into a high-salaried position, at the expense of honest job seekers who applied for that position. To lie about having a degree is a slap in the face to the people that put in the hard work of actually obtaining one, and I think the university needs to send a clear message that this is unacceptable. She should be sued for defrauding the University, and there should be a audit to verify degree claims for every staff member.

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    1. Do you know how much that would cost? The University does not verify employment for non-academic positions UNLESS something looks sketchy. It's just not cost effective.

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    2. This guy probably paid 15 bucks for an FOIA filing and got it all done fast enough to post to reddit. Can't be that expensive...

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    3. If we include the Health System, U of M has 45,000 employees (if I'm adding #'s from the wiki articles correctly). Checking all the employees and paying people to oversee the process would cost a ton.

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    4. Most schools require you to send a transcript with your application for even non-academic professional jobs.

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    5. Michigan absolutely does not.

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    7. I work at the U and submitted both a copy of my transcript and a copy of my diploma when I applied, as did my coworkers.

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    8. Perhaps that is the policy in your department, but in the IT area, we rarely request transcripts or check with the degree-granting institution. The hiring process is cumbersome enough as it is. Adding another time-consuming step would make timely hiring just about impossible.

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    9. Have you folks ever heard the expression
      "If you can't Dazzle em with Brilliance, Baffle em with Bulls**t"?
      I'm guessing that there's more then a little b.s. flying here..
      Poor, Poor, Baby. As far as being an innocent guy being slandered by a conniving B**ch... I highly..highly..doubt it.
      I remember starting a job..The very first day this very good looking guy was running off at the mouth about his horrible wife..who got the kids and the house and he had to pay child care and alimony...Blah, blah. My friend walked up to him and sympathetically placed her hand on his arm..
      Looking into his eyes..she said as sincerely as she could muster "Not all women are like that". I was dumbfounded!!
      I smirked at him! "Some of us are!" and walked away!
      I said to her later...He could be an alcoholic, He could have been abusive to her and the kids. We don't know him from Adam. It's a hell of a leap to imagine we know what went on in their lives! and I stand by it!

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  7. I agree with Ben about feeling dirty about this whole situation. It is sad to see something like this happen in a public sphere, especially in a smaller community like Ann Arbor.

    I would just like to make one point about Dan's argument that really bothered me.

    "And most importantly, my son has always said he wants things to go back to how they were before. If a kid were abused or in an overly punitive environment he would definitely not make these kind of statements."

    I work with abused and neglected children and this is a fairly common outcome. Children, especially younger children, do not have a world view like adults. They rationalize and compartmentalize everything that happens to them in an abusive home. They don't understand the abuse they experience as being any different from any other kid's life. In some cases, they associate love with abuse. A majority of the time when a child is taken from an abusive home, they want to go right back to be with their parents.

    As an outsider I don't know the extent of this very personal dispute. However, just because a child wants things to go back to normal (parents getting back together, spending time with a parent, etc.) it doesn't mean that there wasn't abuse. Hopefully the courts and the psychiatrists will make the appropriate decision that is in the best interest for the child.

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    1. In total agreement. When parents say the kid really wants to be with them and therefore there was no abuse...well, so what? One does not prove the other for all of the reasons that you say.

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  8. Not matter what the provocation, this dude has washed his dirty laundry in front of the world and put the University, also his employed, in a difficult spot. I hope he hasn't done any of this from his work computer, because that kid will have TWO unemployed parents as soon as someone can find a single clause of the SPG that he has violated. He must be a joy to work with anyhow (he wears a "flouride in the water" tinfoil hat, apparently), so I'm guessing they'll be happy to find a pretext to dismiss him. And thanks to Gov. Snyder, you might not even need a pretext nowadays!

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    1. I'm the opposite, I can understand legalistic revenge and public airing of laundry over lying. Personal quirks I guess.

      Lying perverts one's own, and others, ability to know the world. The possibility of revenge, and the knowledge of cases in which it has been carried out, is a thing which keeps people considerate and society functioning. Granted, it can definitely go overboard (Hatfields and McCoys), but so can the repercussions of lying.

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    2. (*&^(^ refreshing of the page for the captcha.

      This response belonged elsewhere.

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  9. "That said, I feel like everyone who reported this should have dug a little deeper. "

    Well said and worth thinking about.

    The current mashup of media and social media places an emphasis on superficial identification of interesting issues and conflicts, but places very little value on a deliberative reporting to give a fuller picture.

    The first wave of "reporting" on this was almost gleeful "gotcha" about reddit "catching" someone in the wrong. There really hasn't been much second wave - much recognition that this is a more complex and troubling story than it seemed at first impression, so I give damnarbor credit for being among the few that identify the complicated aspect of things.

    Yeah, Jordan Miller made a mistake. That much appears clear.

    But I'll tell you this, I can understand Jordan Miller's mistake a lot more than I can understand the guy who exposed that mistake and everything he's done subsequently.

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    1. Thanks Jim,

      That was my hope with this second article on the subject. Honestly I was feeling a little guilty for how quickly I rushed the first one out and I wanted to at least give people the tools they needed to dig a little deeper themselves.

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    2. @Ben, mission accomplished IMO.

      @Erika, thanks! I've been lurking about in the past. I just don't usually post because I'm a little post-averse in the current gig. ;-)

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    3. I'm the opposite, I can understand legalistic revenge and public airing of laundry over lying. Personal quirks I guess.

      Lying perverts one's own, and others, ability to know the world. The possibility of revenge, and the knowledge of cases in which it has been carried out, is a thing which keeps people considerate and society functioning. Granted, it can definitely go overboard (Hatfields and McCoys), but so can the repercussions of lying.

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  10. Doesn't matter why she was outed.

    She lied to her employer on a job application. She got caught. She had to go. Period.

    For any job, there are many people who can do it and do it well. In a lot of cases, getting the job is about being the right fit. Part of being the right fit is being a person who can be trusted and can represent the university. She obviously is not that person.

    You think U-M couldn't find somebody as qualified as her -- or more qualified, given her flimsy resume -- as social media director? Of course it can.

    And by the way, her explanation of the lie also lacks credibility. Nobody makes an "honest mistake" in forgetting whether they really graduated from college and makes an error like that on their resume by accident.

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    1. It does matter why she was outed. It seems to me that getting the University and the local media to take part in your petty, and seemingly crazy, vengeance is an important part of the story. This was never really about the University or doing the "right" thing -- it was an unhinged guy who had lost control of his life and is using any weapons he has to get back at the person he blames for it. As an institution, do you want to be complicit in that? And would you want this guy working on computers in your department?

      I don't know a thing about these people aside from what he's put out there and what a couple quick searches tells me (a lot, actually) but it's pretty easy to understand someone who makes a resume saying "degree expected May whenever" as they go out looking for a first job, getting the job, failing a class and then being stuck with that and after a few years moving up the job ladder deciding that it doesn't really matter. Someone seizing on that fact with outsized righteousness and publicizing and defending their own "good deed" is much harder to understand.

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    4. Really? You've got someone who was a solid employee for five years with no problems in a complex job that really shockingly difficult and you'd just say "bye" over misrepresenting themselves on a resume?

      She quit, I expect she would've been disciplined not fired had she not.

      Added to which her education not her degree is the important part of this situation and she and the hiring manager may have even discussed this. Not everything is always black and white (and this case certainly isn't.)

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    5. And what about innocent victims, like Jordan and Dan Miller's SON, who have to live with the consequences of how this played out?

      Have some compassion for him. He does not benefit from this going viral in the press and online.

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  11. So, we don't really have comment guidelines on Damn Arbor, and I really don't want to make them. Still, there have been some unnecessarily hurtful things said here, which I'm not cool with. And since it's my website, I can do what I want. So for now I'm just disabling anonymous commenting. Hopefully this is just temporary.

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  12. Also, were going to delete the comments that really don't say anything beyond personal insults; they don't add to the discussion.

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  13. Neither party deserves to have been so blessed with this child.

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