I'm sorry,
did we
date?

When Bujdoso filed the original petition on November 6, 2020, she listed Lenington's address as 3950 N. Lake Shore Dr., #1829, Chicago — his former residence. He had not lived there for years. His former roommate received the petition packet from Frumm & Frumm and informed Lenington of it. She did not know where he lived when she filed. He had moved — specifically because people in the comedy community knew his old address and he no longer felt safe there. At the ex parte hearing, Judge Bertucci Smith offered to delete her address from every document. Bujdoso said: "He already knows." The judge left 2047 W. Walton St. in the record on that basis. The sole foundation for "He already knows" is the car ride claim. If the car ride did not happen, the sworn statement "He already knows" was false. Her address remained in the public court record because of a false sworn statement made directly to the judge at the ex parte hearing. He did not have her address. She did not have his. She learned his current address only when he was required to include it in his appeal filings — years into the proceeding.

Bujdoso submitted text messages to Abby Stassen as part of her petition — offered as evidence of Lenington's threatening nature. The same documents, read in full, tell a different story. The incident that ended contact was a comedy scene opinion dispute — he argued about a post, she didn't want to hear it, he wouldn't drop it. She removed him. That is her own account of what happened, written in real time to her friend. What she wrote at the end of that account: "Part of this is because I wouldn't go on a date with him." She acknowledged in the same text that no date had occurred. She also wrote: "He's like the kind of guy that shoots people because he doesn't get his way." She submitted documents as evidence of danger that simultaneously contain her contemporaneous admission that no date took place, that his bar visits were not dates, and that the "shooting" characterization arose from a comedy scene argument — not from any romantic incident.

There is one screenshot of a Facebook Messenger exchange in which I asked whether she wanted to get dinner sometime and whether she was single. She said yes to both. The dinner was never arranged. It never happened. In the same conversation both parties expressed they were not looking for anything serious. That one screenshot is what the petitioner built an entire case on. Everything else — the claimed date at Flat Iron, the claimed daily communication, the claimed courtship, the claimed car ride home, the claimed arm-grab at the coffee shop — rests on testimony alone. No corroborating document. No witness. No police report. No contemporaneous mention to anyone. One unremarkable social invitation surrounded by sworn statements that the record itself contradicts. That is the evidentiary foundation of a two-year order of protection and a permanent published appellate opinion.

Lenington filed his written response to the petition — C-191 — in January 2021. It contained his full factual defense: zero dates, business and social context only, denial of the car ride, denial of the coffee shop incident, the first citation of Alison v. Westcott, and the Stassen text as a contradiction of the dating relationship claim. The response was in the court file for over a year before the trial hearing. Right before the hearing began, Judge Rosenberg acknowledged on the record that she had not read it. One would think that in any civil proceeding a respondent has the basic right to have his written responses considered before a judge rules on the merits of the case against him. A judge who has not read the written defense is hearing it for the first time from someone who has not prepared to address it. Every advantage in that dynamic flows to the party whose version was read — and away from the party whose version was not. This also provides context for the appellate opinion's misattribution of Lenington's position. The opinion treats "even if one date took place" — conditional legal argument, acknowledging petitioner's claim hypothetically for the sake of argument — as his factual concession that one date occurred. His actual stated position, in every document including C-191, was zero dates. If the trial court did not read C-191, and the appellate court misread the conditional language in the brief as a factual admission, then Lenington's actual defense was never squarely before either court on the merits. He was litigating a defense that neither court had fully read. A respondent arguing "even if one date took place, it still doesn't meet the Westcott standard" is making a stronger defense than one conceding one date occurred. The appellate opinion evaluated the weaker version of his argument — the version he never made.

In Illinois civil proceedings there is no right to a court-appointed attorney. That right exists only in criminal cases. I had no money and could not afford private counsel. I was not introduced to AI legal assistants — they were not widely available or prominent in 2020, and I had no access to any tool that might have helped me understand appellate procedure, briefing rules, or the standard of review. When Lenington told Lincoln "we will be looking at the law and how the court system has previously decided," Lincoln replied by email: "Who is 'we'? Did you hire a lawyer?" He was checking immediately. When Lenington clarified it was just him, Lincoln had confirmed his opponent was still unrepresented. Lincoln knew the proceeding from that point on would be him, a licensed attorney with years of family law practice, against someone navigating it alone. That is not a level proceeding. The e-filing system itself was inaccessible. When Lenington tried to file his Motion to Vacate electronically in January 2021, the case could not be found in any e-filing tool. He sent the motion to a wrong email address first. He navigated all of this alone over a holiday weekend. A represented party does not encounter any of this. Throughout the proceedings Lenington referenced evidence he had: Google Timeline location data, bank records, phone carrier records, authenticated Facebook messages. In his closing argument, Lincoln correctly stated: "He offered nothing into evidence, period." That statement is factually accurate as a description of the record. It is not accurate as a description of what existed. The distinction is procedural. His Google Timeline, bank records, and phone carrier records — all of which he stated he had — were never in evidence because he did not know how to get them there. The court's own clerks provide procedural guidance to petitioners navigating the filing process. That assistance is not extended to respondents in the same way. I was not told what Rule 341 required. I was not told what manifest weight of the evidence meant. I was not told that arguments not cited to the record are forfeited. I learned all of these things after they had already cost me the case. The tone of my briefs reflects someone who was angry, frightened, and alone in a legal system he did not understand. I am stating these facts because anyone reading this site who is in a similar position deserves to know that the playing field in civil domestic violence proceedings is not level — and that the consequences of navigating it without resources are real and permanent.