Loneliness has long been a marked facet of Yifen Chen’s life.
Chen, a 26-year-old with a certain quiet and polite self-assurance, grew up in Taipei, Taiwan, caring for her mother, who had lupus. When she was a little girl, she would cook her own meals and go to school unaccompanied.
“I did not have a family that I could totally rely on in my childhood,” she told me. “I had to make sure I was able to survive by myself.”
Chen’s father, a physical therapist, sent them money, but her mother rarely allowed her to speak with him. It wasn’t until she was 17, when her mom passed away, that a closer relationship with her dad formed.
Chen started working as a content creator in her early 20s, broadcasting her favorite music and livestreaming her day-to-day life. Soon, her face was posted in metro stations on massive ads for streaming apps. She was successful, but that wasn’t the life she wanted. She’d always imagined going to the US, where she wished to attend school and find a job.
She moved to San Francisco in late 2019 to study graphic design at the Academy of Art University. She was 22, studious, and prone to overwork despite feeling unwell at the time with occasional chest pain and dizziness. In spring 2020, amid early Covid shutdowns, she considered taking time off from school to rest. Since she was on a student visa, she was concerned a break might affect her ability to stay in the US, so she consulted a lawyer with experience in China-US immigration.
His name was Zheng Liu.
The lawyer had also immigrated to the US as an international student 20 years ago, starting a career in computer science before going to law school at UC Davis. He had “sympathized” with her, he later wrote in court documents, and “offered to help”. According to Chen, he suggested she transfer to a new school, the College of San Mateo, which would give her some time off before the next semester began.
He also expressed a romantic interest in her, and soon the two were dating. “He told me he liked me,” Chen said. “I felt he was a nice person. And he was really gentle and kind to me at first.”
There was a significant age difference – at 39, Liu was 17 years her senior – but Chen didn’t think much of it. Since she was living in a new country with unfamiliar customs, no relatives and few friends, she felt Liu could provide her with the sense of family she longed for.
The dream of a perfect relationship didn’t last. She’d soon report that Liu abused her, and that one day, he became especially enraged during an argument and raped her. When she tried to seek help, he pushed her straight into a Machiavellian maze from which there was no way out.
•••
At the start of their relationship, Chen had been renting an apartment with a roommate in San Mateo. Liu soon invited her to move into his house in adjacent Foster City, a wealthy planned community jutting into the San Francisco Bay, where large waterfront homes built on little islands overlook tranquil lagoons. Billed as an escape from the frenetic energy of the Bay Area conurbation, it ranks among the safest cities in the country; the average home price is over $1.5m.
She moved in that May, about a month after they met, but Liu’s house didn’t turn out to be the oasis Chen had hoped it would be. Chen was surprised by how dusty and uncared for the multimillion-dollar home seemed. There was a rodent problem, and she found fleas in the carpets and on the dogs. She started to worry about the young children whose custody Liu shared with his ex-wife, a son and daughter who were four and five.
About a month in, Liu became aggressive and spiteful. Chen recalls a day when she was upset about something and sat on the floor crying. Liu thought she was going to leave him, so he yelled at her: “Fuck you, and fuck your mother!” The curse cut deep into her grief from her mother’s passing five years earlier.
In June, her dad died from cancer only a couple of weeks after his diagnosis. She had wanted to be by his bedside, but she needed a new travel endorsement from her school to accompany her student visa, which was complicated by the fact that she was mid-transfer. She also would have had to quarantine for 14 days upon her return to Taiwan. She was still trying to figure out the travel logistics when she got the dreaded call from one of his friends.
As she mourned her father, she later recalled, Liu showed little compassion: “He laughed at me that I am lonely in this world,” she said. Chen began to think his earlier kindness was an act, but she had just moved in and had feelings for him; she wasn’t ready to leave so soon.
Looking back, she said, she didn’t realize she was in such a dangerous situation. In the months to come, Liu became violent and once became so angry that he put both of his hands around her neck and squeezed, Chen wrote in court documents.
Eventually, she told him she wanted to break up. She made plans to move out but about a week later, on the evening of 25 October 2020, Liu confronted her about a new man she was dating. By her account, which is documented in a police report, Liu pushed her into a door, grabbed her phone, and smashed it with a hammer.
Chen said she was so terrified that she complied without hesitation when Liu told her to slap herself across the face and call herself a bitch; then – insisting on helping – he slapped her too.
Chen ran to an upstairs bedroom, where Liu’s kids were sleeping. She felt safer there: she thought he’d think twice about hurting her in front of the children. Without a car or working phone and unsure what to do, she took out her laptop and sent a frantic message to one of her friends, explaining that her boyfriend was hurting her and she needed help.
Early that morning, the friend tracked down Chen’s former roommate in San Mateo. Chen activated her old phone with the sim card from the broken one, and the roommate was able to call her for a moment that afternoon. She heard Liu in the background, then she heard Chen scream, “Please don’t hurt me!” The line disconnected, and the roommate called the police. (The roommate, who corroborated this account, asked me not to publish her name, fearing retaliation from Liu.)
As Chen tried to gather her belongings to leave, Liu came in and unpacked her luggage. Then, Chen said, Liu raped her. “I repeatedly told him to stop, but he was too intoxicated and angry to listen,” she recalled.
When officers from the Foster City police department arrived at Liu’s house, Chen detailed the series of events from the night before, as well as her rape. Liu was taken into custody, then released with an emergency protective order prohibiting him from coming within 100 yards of Chen for one week. The police brought Chen to the station for further questioning, then to the San Mateo medical center for a forensic exam. She made it back to her apartment in San Mateo late that night, still in shock, nervous about what might come next.
“I hid in my apartment for a few days,” she said. “But after that, Zheng Liu called me and threatened me.”
Chen said Liu had told her to sign a statement rescinding her rape allegation. If she didn’t, he would sue her and get her deported. “I really wanted to stay in this country because this is my dream. I didn’t want to leave,” Chen said. Scared for her future, she signed the statement.
Time passed without her hearing anything from investigators, and Chen assumed the case had been dropped because of her retraction. But sexual assault guidelines for police departments account for the fact that victims recant for various reasons, including fearing their abusers.
Chen’s abjuration, on its own, did not stall law enforcement’s response. Something else was going on.
•••
The Foster City police department was already familiar with Zheng Liu. In December 2019, officers were dispatched to his house for a welfare check after, according to Liu’s account in court documents, he accidentally dialed 911 while trying to turn off his smartphone alarm. He claimed it was another 911 misdial when the police were called again in February 2020.
In March, officers returned to Liu’s house for a third time after his ex-wife called 911 during a custody swap. He’d reportedly pushed her to the ground and elbowed her in the chest, according to an emergency protective order included in court documents. (Liu’s ex-wife could not be reached for comment.)
On 20 November, almost four weeks after Liu was arrested on suspicion of raping Chen, he sent an email to Foster City police requesting a certificate of detention – a document issued after someone has been arrested but not charged with a crime. This reclassifies the arrest as a mere “detention” in public records. Liu threatened to sue if the department did not comply. The police declined because the investigation was still in progress.
Following through on his ultimatum, on 1 December, Liu filed his first lawsuit against the police department. In court documents, Liu claimed that Chen had clarified that the encounter was “consensual”. Thus, Liu believed he was entitled to a certificate of detention.
Kai Ruess, the city attorney representing the police department, received an unusual email from Liu a week later. In it, Liu made an astounding claim: he was now representing Chen.
“Yifen Chen has retained our office as her counsel for FCPD’s threatened charge against her for filing a false police report,” the email read. “These charges are bogus and FCPD knows it.”
Liu went on to say that all communications to Chen should be directed to him.
“If FCPD officers do not refrain from harassing Ms Yifen Chen, we will file suit against FCPD for malicious prosecution and witness intimidation.”
None of this made any sense to Ruess: he didn’t know of any charges being considered against Chen for filing a false police report. But what gave him the most concern was why Chen would seek representation from Liu for anything, especially the case in which he was suspected of attacking her.
After discussing it with the department, he replied to Liu: “While I personally believe this presents an incredible ethical issue, we will respect your direction to communicate with Ms Chen through your office.” (Police are allowed to verify that someone hired a lawyer. It’s unclear if FCPD attempted to do so, and they did not respond to questions sent by the Guardian.)
Ruess continued: “You should receive contact from officers shortly to set up a time for a follow‐up interview with your client. Because you are the suspect in the case, you will not be able to sit with Ms Chen during that interview.”
Liu replied by doing his best to cut off all contact between Chen and police. He responded: “Ms Chen respectfully declines any interview requests by FCPD.” Sixteen minutes later, Liu sent another email to the thread: “Ms Chen has specifically invoked and continues to maintain her right to remain silent and right to counsel.”
In court documents, Ruess explained that even though Liu had not yet been charged, the DA was still reviewing the case, and their decision had been prolonged by Liu refusing to make Chen available for further interviews.
The deputy district attorney, Lucas King, told me: “It seemed so stupid that he would enter as her attorney. [The police] were asking for my input, and I had to explain, ‘No, that’s not my role. I’m not allowed to give legal advice.’” King decided not to prosecute, writing to police that he didn’t believe they had enough to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt, and Liu was issued a detention certificate in January 2021. (Multiple requests to interview Foster City police were sent without success.)
Liu proceeded to file three more lawsuits against FCPD. In one, he claimed that an officer who responded to the December 2019 misdial had unlawfully pushed open the door to his house and stuck a foot into the doorway. In the subsequent suit, Liu claimed he “suffered false imprisonment” – among other errors by law enforcement causing him “severe emotional distress” – when he was suspected of battering his ex-wife back in March.
And finally, he filed a suit claiming in a rambling complaint that police had humiliated him and infringed his rights during the rape investigation.
•••
By early 2021, Chen was enrolled at the College of San Mateo. She wanted to dive into her studies and try to move past her ordeal, but Liu had other plans. She said he warned her of deportation if she didn’t remain his partner. “I was pretty new in the US, and I thought that would be possible,” she said.
Grace Huang, the policy director at the Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence, told me that abusers were “notorious for making threats about immigration and deportation”. The Immigration Marriage Fraud Act of 1986 required anyone immigrating through marriage to stay married for at least two years. According to Huang, attorneys and advocates saw victims staying in abusive marriages only to fulfill the two-year condition, so the Immigration Act of 1990 created a waiver of the two-year requirement for abused spouses.
Nevertheless, many abusive US citizens never actually submitted immigration applications for their spouses. The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 addressed this issue by providing immigrants a way to apply on their own, without having to rely on their abuser to petition for them.
Then, in 2000, the U visa was created for victims of certain crimes, including sexual assault, who are willing to help law enforcement. Huang said those provisions were intentionally put into law because of the ability of abusers to use the immigration system to manipulate people.
Getting a U visa isn’t so straightforward, though. The process can be difficult to navigate without help from a lawyer. Police sometimes refuse to sign the required form to verify a victim’s cooperation. And the backlog of applications is in the hundreds of thousands. The government is limited to issuing just 10,000 U visas per year.
Regardless, Chen didn’t know anything about the U visa, and she continued to suffer through the rest of the year.
She later described in court documents, which included pictures of her injuries, the different incidents during which Liu had allegedly grabbed her neck, bruised her knee with a flashlight, scratched her with a key while she was sleeping, threw boiling water at her ankle, and pressed her hand against a hot kettle, leaving her fingers blistered.
I showed Chen’s photos to Catherine Garcia, a retired San Diego police department detective. Garcia now teaches sexual assault and domestic violence investigations to law enforcement in California. I was curious if, in her opinion, the pictured injuries aligned with the events Chen described.
Speaking broadly, she said, “these would be very supportive of a case, definitely”.
•••
Chen decided she had to leave Liu for good in December 2021. She left his house after another violent outburst and promised herself never to return.
Soon after, Liu started sending her emails, which he later included in court documents, demanding debt payments for expenses he covered during their relationship. On 1 January 2022, he sent a list of credit card transactions totaling $8,746.33. He followed up on the 10th: “Please remit payment as soon as possible … If not, a lawsuit will be filed against you for breach of contract and money lent.”
By the time he followed up a fourth time, 10 days later, the total Liu claimed she owed was “at least $20,000”. The next day, Chen found a letter, also included in court documents, signed by Liu on her door demanding she pay back “more than $30,000”.
Chen said Liu had offered to pay for certain things, including her tuition, while they dated. “I have never had any contract with him. He just allowed me to use his credit card, and he wrote some checks to me.”
She provided me with emails sent between her and Liu in July 2021. According to an independent translator hired by the Guardian, Liu wrote: “I’ll take care of you … if I want to fuck you I’ll fuck you, if I want you to fuck off you’ll fuck off.” Then, in an email Chen sent him in August 2021, she wrote: “Didn’t you say you would pay my tuition? We start school tomorrow.” Liu responded: “Can do.”
Worried his demands for money would escalate to a physical attack, Chen got a temporary restraining order against Liu in late January 2022. Not long after, she found unfiled drafts of legal complaints regarding Liu’s money that had been left at her door.
She called the San Mateo police department because she thought Liu was violating the order – and this is when, Chen said, the responding officer told her something she hadn’t known. From a quick records check, it appeared that Liu’s ex-wife and children had a restraining order against her – one that had been in effect for almost a full year.
Chen had seen Liu’s children on several occasions during that time, but nobody had ever mentioned any court order. “I thought there was no issue between us,” she said.
The officer wrote in a report that, while he was interviewing Chen, Liu had called her cellphone. Noting they had spoken in Mandarin, he continued: “Based on Liu’s speech, I could tell that he was probably intoxicated. Chen told me that Liu was trying to convince her to get back with him and boasted about suing FCPD officers stating something to the effect of, ‘They need to see how powerful I am.’”
Two days later, Liu sent the same officer an email with links to the lawsuits he had filed against Foster City police.
•••
In the early weeks of 2022, Chen met a man I will call by the pseudonym Coby, at his request (he’s concerned about harassment from Liu).
Coby and Chen found each other on a dating app, but both could tell there was no romantic spark as they made small talk over sushi on their first date. Chen thought they were too culturally different: Coby was born in Japan and raised almost entirely in the US. He interpreted her tense body language and quiet demeanor as a sign she wasn’t so into him. Curious about what kind of guys she did like, he asked about her last relationship.
Chen told him about Liu, cautiously at first. Coby couldn’t keep himself from prying, and he could tell Chen was relieved to have someone to talk to. “She doesn’t have any really close friends here in the US,” Coby said. He decided to try to find her some help.
Coby called dozens of lawyers, hoping to find someone who would represent Chen on her student budget, without much luck. He also searched through court records to see what he could learn about Liu’s conflict with the FCPD and the mysterious restraining order Liu’s ex-wife had against Chen. He followed fragments of the narrative from one lawsuit to the next, flipping over each card in Liu’s stack.
And then came the big reveal. Coby and Chen were stunned to find records of Liu pretending to be her lawyer. Ruess, the police department lawyer, had filed copies of the emails Liu had sent him over the detention certificate. It was the first time Chen had heard of Liu’s purported representation of her, and she didn’t understand how anyone believed she had willingly agreed to that.
There was more: they also learned that Chen stood accused of strangling Liu’s daughter with a ribbon, poisoning Liu’s milk and his son’s water bottle with Drano, and threatening to hurt Liu’s ex-wife, according to the petition for the restraining order against her.
“I felt really mad, then sad, because I actually treated his daughter really, really nice,” Chen said. “The children love me a lot, and I also love them.” She denies all of the allegations.
Next, they wondered how a restraining order against her had been in place without her ever knowing it. That’s when they realized that Liu had signed a proof of service claiming he had served her the initial temporary restraining order in person at his house in February 2021. Liu signed two further proofs of service, claiming he served Chen at his address in Foster City in March and October.
Chen said she had never been served.
She missed every court date, and the restraining order against her was extended three years, until October 2024.
•••
Chen was late to battle, but she chose to march forward. And she needed a lawyer to help her extend her restraining order against Liu.
The first one who was willing to take her case was an eccentric lawyer-cum-programmer-cum-photo-studio-owner and Democratic congressional candidate named Andrew Watters. “We had a very limited budget; we told Andrew that,” Coby said. “But clearly, it was not even close to enough.”
Chen spent thousands of dollars – whatever she could spare – on Watters, but it only got them through one court appearance. “All that money was gone,” Coby went on, “and then we couldn’t get any help from him any more. It was a big bummer.”
Watters said that Liu was “inundating us and the court with correspondence and filings”. This included a motion in which Liu unsuccessfully argued that the alleged harassment was protected speech. Watters said most of Chen’s payments went to responding to Liu’s filings, rather than the actual trial of her case.
Liu added Watters to his list of enemies. “I’m no longer involved with that case, and yet, I’m still suffering harassment from this guy,” Watters told me. He said Liu had made multiple accounts on Yelp, where he reposted screenshots of state bar complaints against Watters that Liu had written, as well as cases Watters had lost. (One screenshot documented in court records included the added text: “Court ordered Watters’ client pay 50K to the other side. GREAT attorney work.”)
Liu also sent Watters emails accusing him of ghostwriting legal documents filed by Chen. “He wanted me to assure him that I was no longer helping Yifen with her case, which I wasn’t. I told him, even though you have no right to prevent me from helping her, I am not, in fact, helping her, so will you please take down the photos?”
Liu wrote back: “OK. I will clean up your Yelp. It was a misunderstanding. Apologize for the inconvenience.”
He started posting the Yelp reviews again about a month later, according to Watters. (Watters reported the posts to Yelp, and they have since been removed. Watters also sued Liu for defamation and posted about him on his blog.)
From then on, Liu escalated his hostilities.
His next move was to forward emails to Chen that showed he had made Title IX reports to her college as well as the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she had been accepted as a transfer student.
He told staff there that Chen had tried to strangle his daughter with a ribbon because he had refused to lend her money to pay for her tuition, and included a photo of a pinkish mark on a young child’s neck with the face cropped out.
I showed it to Garcia, the retired San Diego police department detective. She was dubious.
“That’s ridiculous. Like they’re going to do something? That’s not who investigates something like that. If you’re that worried about your child, you call the police, and you call child protective services, and you keep that kid away from this person. So he’s just using entities – that’s what it seems like to me – to cause her trouble.”
Nightmares kept Chen up at night. She feared she would lose her scholarship and admission to UC Santa Cruz, and was terrified of what Liu might do next.
Liu offered Chen a way to bring everything to an end. He proposed to withdraw the Title IX reports, as well as criminal complaints he’d made against her for assaulting his daughter and credit card theft, if she dismissed her action for a restraining order and withdrew her criminal complaints against him, according to a draft settlement agreement Chen included in court documents.
That was not an option Chen was willing to consider. Accepting the settlement wouldn’t fix anything – she had tried to move on with her life, but he had still showed up at her doorstep demanding more.
•••
Indeed, Liu’s ultimate act of hubris was still to come.
In early June last year, Chen was at the San Mateo county courthouse to extend her temporary restraining order against Liu when she was served with a civil lawsuit. The plaintiff was a John Doe, but she knew immediately it was Liu.
Chen’s eyes jumped to the numbers. He was seeking $17m in compensatory damages and $10m in punitive damages.
The lawsuit made several stunning allegations. Liu claimed Chen had sexually assaulted him by insisting they have sex without a condom, and that unbeknownst to him at the time, she was “having unprotected sex with numerous males, went through diagnosis of chlamydia trachomatis and gonorrhea, and was thus aware of her increased risk of transmitting sexually transmitted diseases”. After he realized that Chen had “exposed him to such STDs”, the lawsuit claimed, he suffered “extreme emotional distress”.
To bolster his claims, Liu cited anonymous profiles on what he called “sex-for-money” websites, alleging they belonged to Chen, and included a screenshot of an unknown person’s pubic region. Later, in an amended complaint, Liu added screenshots of Chen’s profile on the dating site Seeking.com, formerly known as Seeking Arrangement, which had a reputation as a platform for sugar dating.
He named three men, and claimed Chen provided them with her services “for somewhere between $400 and $500 per sexual encounter”. As evidence, he included copies of Chen’s bank statements from late 2019 and early 2020, showing Zelle payments and wires from these men to Chen.
One of them is Chen’s ex-boyfriend, who did give her money. The other two men, according to Chen, were Chinese friends in the Bay Area with whom she had exchanged Taiwan dollars for US currency. (None of them responded to my interview requests.)
Liu divulged in his complaint that, around the time of the money transfers, Chen got an STD test at Planned Parenthood, suggesting she knew she was putting him at risk. Chen showed me the test results, which were negative, and said it “was just a doctor’s recommendation”. (The CDC recommends women get tested for gonorrhea and chlamydia every year.)
Chen denied ever having sex for money, or doing any type of sex work. She also told me it wasn’t Liu who wanted to use a condom, but her: “I have a birth control, but I sometimes cannot get my medication because it is out of stock, so I asked him to wear the condom, and actually, he’s the one who forced me not to use [one].”
As for Coby, he was admittedly suspicious of Chen when he first learned of her possibly selling sex online. “It wouldn’t be surprising if she did it,” he initially thought. But the more he got to know her, the more unlikely it seemed. “As far as I can tell, after talking to her for so long, it doesn’t seem like any of it is true. Now, did she have an ex-boyfriend who spent money on her? Absolutely. That seems to be the type of guy that maybe she wants to have as a boyfriend. But that alone isn’t illegal.”
•••
I will confess, after everything I had learned, I was nervous to call Liu unannounced. I typed his number into my phone and hit the green button as fast as I could, not giving myself a moment to reconsider it.
“Hello.” Liu’s tone was like a barbell hitting the floor.
I explained who I was and why I was calling. At first, Liu seemed unsure about why I was interested in his lawsuits. I started a question, saying, mistakenly, “I see you sued the Foster City police department three times …”
Liu interrupted. “No, actually four times. And I won.”
Liu was wrong – he lost his first lawsuit. The police issued the detention certificate he wanted, but the judge later ruled in favor of FCPD. The other three lawsuits were indeed settled in January 2022, so I asked him how much the settlement was.
Liu didn’t want to say, nor did he want to talk much about those lawsuits: he didn’t want to come across as badmouthing the police department. That wasn’t a concern when it came to my questions about Chen.
“Did Yifen actually agree to have you represent her as her attorney?” I asked.
He replied: “Is there anything that would suggest otherwise?”
“Yes. She said in her response to your civil lawsuit that you represented her without her consent.”
“Exactly! Did she have any actual proof to support her allegations? So far, I don’t see any ... And then, I would say, in this country, any allegation made by an online sex worker lacks credibility, to say the least.”
This argument would come back time and time again during our exchange: according to Liu, a sex worker could never be credible. I tried to redirect the conversation, if only for a moment.
“I’m wondering if you have a written agreement that [the money you gave Chen] were just loans and that she needs to pay you back?”
He said: “A written agreement is not required. An oral contract is a contract.”
I pointed out that Chen said there was never any agreement.
“Exactly! You see, it comes down to the credibility of the speaker! Would you rather believe a distinguished lawyer, or would you rather believe an online sex worker who charges guys 500 bucks a pop?”
Next, I asked about the photos of Chen’s alleged injuries. “[She] claimed that you choked her, burned her, hit her, and scratched her on different occasions. Can you tell me about those incidents?”
His answer: “We’re going to have to look at the speaker’s veracity. At this point, it’s basically not existent. It’s domestic violence accusations by a person who claimed rape and then recanted the next day, and who is a thief, who is a prostitute, and with all that, I wouldn’t spend more than one minute on those allegations.”
He repeated many versions of this: “If the speaker is a distinguished lawyer that practices pro bono matters for a lot of clients, then I would say that the veracity of that speaker is likely high,” he said. “If the speaker is a sex worker or prostitute that makes $500 an hour – hey, I’m not discriminating against any particular profession, a job is a job – but if Ms Chen was working in this country illegally, against the terms of her visa, that makes it illegal.”
His answers only became more heated and bizarre. When I again inquired about his alleged representation of Chen and asked specifically if there was a signed retainer agreement, we went back and forth on this point for almost 30 minutes. He would not show me a retainer agreement, or even confirm Chen signed one. Instead, he lobbed insults, accused me of being a fake journalist, told me to go back to school, and again repeated his objectionable credibility argument.
“Was there a retainer agreement?”
“You’re not even a true journalist … All your questions are not very smart.”
“Chen says she did not sign a retainer.”
“Whatever. Again, whatever she says. She’s a prostitute, thereby having no credibility whatsoever. … If a prostitute says that you raped her in the ass, am I supposed to believe that?”
To try to prove his point, he presented me with this fictitious allegation: “Yifen Chen says you raped your mom, do you deny it or confirm it?”
“Mr Liu, this is unnecessary,” I said. “I’ve asked you a yes or no question.”
“What’s your choice? What’s your choice?” He was screaming now.
“Mr Liu, I’m asking you … ”
“I’m asking you! … Hey! Mr Journalist! Did you rape your mom or no? … Answer the question! … Did you rape your mom anally or vaginally?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to entertain him.
When I asked why he decided to report Chen to the Title IX offices at her schools, he said: “Because, if you read the first amendment to the United States Constitution, the people’s right to petition the government for redress of their grievances shall not be infringed. That’s why. Hey, you’re a journalist, man, you’re not even familiar with all the words of the first amendment? I mean, you really gotta study up.”
“I understand the first amendment. I’m just asking … ”
He interrupted. “The people’s right to petition the government for redress of their grievances – you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand those words.”
I said: “I’m just curious what you’re trying to gain.”
He scolded me. “It’s amateur to ask about people’s gain when they’re advocating their rights. Because the thing is, you uphold the constitution. That’s a gain.”
He then concluded on this point jovially, in a way I had not expected.
“Make sure you publish a good story. I look forward to seeing it. It’s definitely going to be a good story. I’ll send the link to my friends to make sure they understand … [it’s] a perfect example of how a person should use the legal system in a way to protect their rights.”
•••
Coby gave Chen rides to class a few days per week during her final semester at the College of San Mateo last spring. “You know, just to help her out,” he said. It was about a 10-minute drive from her apartment to campus, and Coby thought they could use the time to figure out what to do about Liu. But each morning, Chen just stared out the passenger window. She hardly spoke a word. For almost two years, Liu had been relentless. “He turned her into this silent person,” Coby said.
According to Huang, of the Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence, litigation that alleges harm a victim may or may not have caused is a typical tactic to discredit them. She said this case was a great example of how an alleged abuser shifts blame by dehumanizing the person he dated and supposedly cared for.
King, the deputy district attorney, could still bring criminal charges against Liu if provided with more substantial evidence. But he stated how difficult it is for prosecutors to justify sexual assault cases based primarily on one person’s word. Regarding a lawyer accused of a crime representing their accuser, King said it was totally unethical. He reported Liu to the state bar of California for it. (The Bar declined to comment on its investigation.)
•••
Instead of going to UC Santa Cruz, Chen switched to a different campus farther away to study economics and music (she plays the flute). Meanwhile, Liu’s civil lawsuit against her loomed – until she messed up the paperwork.
Chen never submitted the required response to an amended complaint Liu filed in January; she didn’t realize she had to. The deadline passed, and so did her opportunity to defend herself. Chen defaulted, and so it was determined – by matter of law and procedure – that Liu was the victim.
Untrained in the arcane operations of the court, Chen joined the last virtual hearing on 9 May only for the judge to admonish her to remain muted. She wasn’t supposed to be there; she had already lost. It was Liu’s day in court to demand damages.
Chen listened as Liu told his story. She listened as the judge made his ruling, awarding him $35,877.18, which she has to pay for.
She sat there alone, a square on a screen. She wasn’t allowed to speak.
In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid. In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org.
