There are facts that are difficult to explain to people who haven’t lived them.
One of those facts is this: when you grow up with abuse—and spend decades building a life that is finally safe—your abuser doesn’t become a “memory.” He becomes a condition. A shadow that never fully leaves the room. An alarm system inside your body that can be triggered without warning.
My estranged father was my abuser. And I lived in intense fear of him.
So when the defendants in our case chose to pull him into their campaign against our family, it didn’t feel like “hardball.” It felt like terror—purposeful, deliberate terror.
And that is why I keep coming back to the same question:
In an Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED) claim, does the possibility that the defendants were engaged in a revenge campaign—and chose to target a man’s wife by weaponizing her history of childhood abuse and fear of her abuser—meet the threshold of extreme and outrageous conduct?
Shockingly, District Court Judge Kevin M. Miller chose not to engage that question—even in passing.
Not because the evidence didn’t support it.
But because it didn’t match what appeared to be a predetermined outcome: dismissal at summary judgment.
The “Revenge” Blueprint We Couldn’t Ignore
At one point, defendant Sean Stevenson sent a text to his aunt, Lisa Stevenson-Allen, a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC). Lisa knew that I lived away from home while still in high school.
The text recommended a book:
“Revenge: How to Beat the Narcissist.”
The author, H.G. Tudor, claims to be a narcissist and describes strategies for launching a revenge campaign against the “narcissist” in your life.
And then came the part that still makes my stomach drop:
- Midway through discovery, Sean admitted to his attorney that he deleted relevant texts after the lawsuit began.
- A forensic exam was conducted on Sean’s phone; the text was deleted and unrecoverable.
- A forensic exam was also conducted on Lisa’s phone; she had deleted it too—but the forensic expert was able to recover it.
When you live through this kind of litigation, you learn to pay attention to what gets deleted. Especially when it’s evidence that points to intent.
“Devoid of Emotion”: What It Looked Like in Real Life
The book’s “Core Principle” is chilling in its simplicity:
“A revenge campaign must be administered devoid of emotion.”
It recommends strategies that, when we read them, felt less like theory and more like a description of what was happening to us in real time:
- Remove emotion.
- Turn to third parties who can wield greater power.
- If the target replies, do not engage in discussion.
- Show no empathy; do not react to pleading.
Seeing those points for the first time was incredibly enlightening to Craig and me—because from all appearances, the defendants followed that blueprint meticulously.
They showed no emotion. No compassion. No empathy. The goal seemed to be reputational and emotional carnage.
And they turned to third parties—just as the book recommends.
The Third Party They Chose Was My Abuser
Here is what that looked like on the ground—inside my body, inside my life:
- They involved our daughters, my first attorney, and then, finally, the man who abused me as a child.
- When we emailed them to say their actions were causing panic attacks, there was no response—only more actions designed to inflict pain.
- After their first letter to my estranged father triggered a panic attack, Sean printed our emails and sent them directly to him—purposely, intentionally.
- After the second contact with my estranged father, Sean sent a third letter.
- When our first attorney sent a cease-and-desist letter, the defendants engaged in extensive communications with each other—many deleted from multiple phones and unrecoverable.
- When Sean finally responded to my attorney, he doubled down: more defamatory statements about Craig, and threats of continued contact with my estranged father.
This wasn’t incidental. It wasn’t accidental. It wasn’t a misunderstanding.
It was a choice.
And if you have never lived with the fear of an abuser, you might not understand why that choice matters so much. But survivors understand immediately: the point is not just to hurt you. The point is to make you feel unsafe in your own life again.
That’s What IIED Is Supposed to Address
IIED is not meant for ordinary insults or routine conflict. It exists for something else: conduct so extreme that it crosses the line into intentional cruelty.
And the law recognizes a crucial concept: if the actor knows—or should know—that the victim is particularly susceptible to emotional distress, and proceeds anyway, that knowledge matters.
In other words: if someone understands exactly where you are vulnerable, and targets that vulnerability on purpose, the harm is not some unforeseeable side effect.
It’s the design.
The Part the Court Wouldn’t Even Say Out Loud
In our summary judgment opposition, we used the word “revenge” seventeen times.
Seventeen.
We didn’t use it casually. We used it because the evidence pointed in that direction: a revenge framework, a targeted strategy, a repeated escalation, and the deliberate weaponization of my history of abuse—specifically through contact with my estranged father.
And yet Judge Miller never mentioned this evidence.
Not once.
Not even to reject it.
Not even to acknowledge it existed.
So I’m left asking the same question again—because it is the question the court refused to answer:
In an IIED claim, does the possibility that the defendants were engaged in a revenge campaign—and chose to terrorize a woman by using her history of childhood abuse and fear—meet the threshold of extreme and outrageous conduct?
We will never know.
Because despite “revenge” appearing seventeen times in our opposition papers, Judge Kevin M. Miller never addressed it at all.
And when a court won’t even acknowledge the most disturbing part of the record—when it won’t engage the hardest facts, even in passing—that silence is not neutral.
It is deafening.
It tells you exactly what the system is willing to see.
And what it has decided, in advance, to ignore.
