After enduring the time with your abusive spouse, you finally have an Order of Protection to hopefully prevent anymore incidents with your ex. Thanks to this document, your ex is not allowed to come near you or make any attempts to contact you, otherwise they will be in violation of the law.
However, it may not stop your ex from finding other means to try to reach you. Whether it is indirect or direct, you should be aware of the methods your ex may take to potentially verbally harass you and what you can do about it.
What’s this random phone number?
Even if your ex no longer can talk or text to you on their phone, they still have your number. Your ex could simply purchase a new cell phone and show up as an unidentifiable phone number.
Texts or emails are more likely given how your ex’s physical voice is not present. Since you do not know the number, your ex can trick you into believing you are talking to someone else. Regardless if it is your ex or not, you should still warrant caution towards unnamed texts or emails in case it is a scam or a virus.
Your ex uses someone else to get to you.
If you and your ex made a lot of friends when you were together, you unfortunately might have to cut contact with some of them. Some of these colleagues could be closer to your ex than you. Several friends might not even know what happened between you and your ex.
Regardless of their loyalty or knowledge, your ex can still use other people to send messages to you. Your ex may believe that as long as it comes out of someone else’s mouth, then they are not violating the protective order. If this is happening, obtain information on the third person to have as evidence when you eventually make your case.
Your ex takes the fight to social media.
With the rise of social media within the last decade, your ex has new ways to verbally abuse you. They can respond to your profile, tag you in their posts and create content that harasses you on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other platform you can think of.
Even if you blocked your ex on your site, they still might have colleagues, family members or the whole internet they can vent about you to. There has been some debate over what social media actions can count as harassment through contact, but one advantage of being able to see what they post whether directly or not is that it makes for good evidence.
Your ex’s punishment.
You emotionally suffered enough from your relationship. Any attempts your ex makes to contact you will open old wounds. Even if the contact is not physical, the pain that comes with it can feel hardly different from before.
If your ex was responsible for any of these actions, then you should take legal action against their violation of your Order of Protection. It can be classified as a misdemeanor and cause your ex to receive jail times and fees depending on whether they count it as a Class 1 or Class 2 Misdemeanor.