Private Investigator, Private Detective, Cheater, Cheaters, Infidelity, Adultery, CheatersCT
A man who hired a detective to trail his wife to a motel where she was having an affair with a local priest was not stalking her, an Orange County, N.Y., judge has ruled. Forced to resign after her husband turned over a recording of her and the priest to officials at the church where she worked, the wife accused her husband of violating an order of protection requiring him to stay away from her home and place of employment. But Family Court Judge Debra J. Kiedaisch, who was sitting in the Supreme Court’s integrated domestic violence part, held that the husband, who only handed over the tape at the urging of church officials, had the right to gather evidence to defend himself in a divorce proceeding. “The hiring of a professional licensed private investigator in a matrimonial action to gather evidence is for a proper and legitimate purpose,” the judge wrote in Anonymous v. Anonymous. After the wife filed for divorce in November 2008, her husband countered that she was having an affair. On Feb. 26, 2009, the court issued an order of protection, directing the husband to stay at least 1,000 feet away from his wife’s residence or place of employment, except for court-ordered visitation or to attend church. Entered without a finding of fault against the husband, the order further prohibited him from committing a family or criminal offense against his wife. According to the decision, a private investigator hired by the husband in August 2009 followed the wife to a motel, where he recorded her encounter with “Father L.,” a priest assigned to the church where she worked who regularly said Sunday Mass attended by her, the husband and their daughter. Claiming he was so distraught by the news that he could not accept Communion from Father L. and had to return the host to another priest, the husband finally told another priest about the affair. To avoid a scandal and protect his daughter from embarrassment, the husband claimed he begged the priest not to tell the monsignor. But in September, when the monsignor came to the husband’s house and said church officials needed to investigate the matter, the husband gave him a copy of the DVD. The next month, the husband moved to amend counterclaims against his wife, who had filed for divorce, alleging she was committing adultery with Father L. While the wife did not contest the affair, she accused her husband of violating the order of protection by hiring the investigator. She also claimed he had not been legally bound to turn over the DVD, which she claimed caused her to resign from her post at the church and amounted to harassment. Judge Kiedaisch disagreed. “Under the circumstances, the hiring of the private investigator, in and of itself, was not an unlawful intrusion upon the rights of the wife secured by the order of protection,” she said. The husband did not have to accept his wife’s claims she had ended her affair with the priest, and had the right to “gather evidence up to the date of trial in defense of the matrimonial action and in support of his own counterclaims,” Kiedaisch added. And while delivering the DVD to church officials was not necessary to prosecute or defend the divorce action, the judge held that it did not qualify as harassment. “If the husband had the wife followed and recorded … for the purpose of gathering embarrassing material to deliver to her employer with the intention to cause her to lose her employment,” that might constitute “conduct which alarms or seriously annoys another person, and serves no legitimate purpose” — second-degree harassment under Penal Law §240.26 — Kiedaisch wrote. Here, given that Father L. continued to administer Communion to the family after the husband found out about the affair, the husband had a “legitimate and justifiable” purpose in telling church officials about the relationship, the judge concluded.
