julie ryals

Here I was living my simple, yet respectable life -  never been sued, never had a criminal record, never filed bankruptcy, never foreclosed on my house, never involved in prostitution, never been arrested, never served time in jail and certainly never schemed to defraud anyone, was now being attacked by a person who had experienced all of the above.  Dolen knew how it felt to be threatened, backed into a corner and always looking over her shoulder not knowing what was going to happen next because of a guilty conscience.  I don't know if she wished that on me or if it made her feel better by attempting to make me feel less than her..??  A lot of what she did, did not make any sense.

Back when my tormentor, Deborah Dolen, first contacted me with all kinds of bully tactics, I have to say, it was quite scary.  She was sending emails to me counting down the days that I had to respond to her scare-tactic-lawsuit, calling online associates of mine, emailing copies of a lawsuit that didn't technically exist yet, sending me messages saying things like "wake up call 2:00 AM, better get a babysitter oh yeah yours lives in your backyard", threatening criminal charges and it got worse as the days went on.  I received multiple emails simply stating "Merry Xmas you have X amount of days to respond, Happy New Year, I'm going to be following you for the rest of your life" for the sheer purpose of torturing and playing games with me.  Dolen intentionally sent a dirty process server to my house on New Year's Eve just before 10PM.  It wasn't until later that I realized that is exactly what this bully intended - to scare me, to make me hide, to make me feel less worthy than her, to ruin my holidays, all with her hopes to make me pay her - to go away. 

I always thought I had been careful not to release too much personal information out into internet land because I have heard many stories about strange lurkers and predators out there.  Clearly, it only takes one to latch onto a person and infiltrate your personal life and everyone in it.  At the first start of Deborah Dolen attempting to disrupt my family life, I grew even more careful with what I posted online.  On my Facebook, I locked up everything and started deleting all new friend request because I didn't know what identity she would pretend to be to gain access to my personal stuff.  On Twitter, I didn't release much of what I was doing until after the fact.  Knowing she had a full-blown criminal history, I really didn't know if she would try to snatch one of my kids or even try to break into my house.  I called ADT and had my system upgraded to a higher level of security, we bought security cameras, I setup a PO Box for domain name registration information which was public, increased security settings on various accounts, changed all my passwords to something extremely secure and edited my web sites to not give out any real identifying information.  Afterall, this is the same person that emailed me insinuating that she would associate my name with child porn dealers!

Dolen had a field day in online postings of my home address and making up wild stories along the way.  Most web sites took that information down as quick as she posted it because it all was clear libel.  However, Dolen liked to frequent a web site called Ripoff Report which is really intended for people who have legit issues with companies.  It's also a web site that has a "once it's up - it doesn't come down" policy which is clearly why she frequents it and uses it to libel people when they don't do what she wants them to - even to date.  In her revenge-filled libel trip she was on, she created many posts on Ripoff Report about me including one on my husband pretending to be one of his customers complaining about a bad "bushhog job".  Well, there were two big problems with that story.  One, my husband never did "bushhog work" and hasn't done any lawn work for anyone in 8 years.  When she was "researching" me and my family, she found an old listing for his business license that he once had for doing a few lawns for friends and family (we are legal with everything even though we really didn't need a license for what he did do back then).  And two, she posted as if she (the customer) lived in Kansas.  Um, sorry, we are born and raised in Florida - never been to Kansas. 

One other web site did keep up a ridiculously libel filled article that Dolen authored under the name of Rocher Rembrusher (no surprise on that because she has many made up names to hide behind).  The web site is an online newspaper (if you want to call it that) which accepts scandal type articles for posting.  After researching who the owner of the site was, I found she was very much like Dolen.   Many other web sites online were talking about the owner and all her crazed antics including lawsuits filed to harass people, ip scanning and blocking, neighborhood feuds, etc.  I couldn't find anyone online that mentioned her name without saying the words; "nut", "crazy", "lunatic" and so on.  I figured it wasn't worth my time to go after removal of the libel and if anyone did read it, the obvious libel stands right out and frankly doesn't make any sense.  I won't give the so-called "newspaper" site any publicity by naming it here.  Negative attention is still attention and that's what those types strive for.

Since this has happened to me, Dolen has attacked quite a few other people online.  They've posted their stories online and I've been directed to the new Ripoff Reports she's posted to bully a few others as late as last week.  This is what Deborah Dolen does - she bullies people, she scares people, she threatens people and who knows what other nasty things she does that I don't know about.  I feel sad that she's moved on to harass others, but I'm happy to be free from the bully and tormentor that she is and I am  forever thankful to the very respected Federal Judge Merryday of Tampa, Fl for ultimately putting an end to this "pay me and I'll go away or I will sue you" lawsuit scam.

My story is online and this blog is created to help those needing support in a similar situation.  My word of advice is to never trust who you are dealing with over the internet unless it is someone that you can absolutely verify.  Always keep your personal life private.  If you feel the need to post your pictures and personal family information online - use the privacy settings on Facebook.  In my situation, people helping me had identified at least eight different Facebook profiles with varying names that Dolen had created to make herself look popular online by commenting on her own posts and commenting back to herself.  Be very careful with letting anyone in as a friend online because they may not be who they pretend to be. If you do business with anyone online, make sure it's a reputable company and not just because they say they are.  Google was very useful to me during this terrible experience and I didn't stop researching after the first few pages.  I selected the legit sites to learn from and skipped the self-promotion that Dolen created to hide the real truth online.  These days you can pay people five dollars to do anything even leave positive feedback when they didn't really buy anything - needless to say, Dolen has spent a lot of "fivers".  I've learned not to trust just any review for that very reason and stick to legitimate sites like the Better Business Bureau because those types of places do verify the sources and reveal true problems. 

Another tip is to Google yourself and see what personal information is online and get a head start on getting information removed that you don't want public.  In my situation, Dolen had looked me up prior to her first contact.  She found where I lived, what my family did for a living, that I am a mom with children, who I associated with, what my hobbies are, who my friends were, and who knows what else because this greedy, jealous person planned to make my life miserable and turn it upside down -- her words. 

Again, you never know who you are really dealing with unless you advocate for yourself in advance.  At anytime, anyone can unexpectedly target you or your family either for the sheer sport of it or for the matter of extortion.  Whichever the reason, protect yourself online from this very type of person and now's a great time to start.

Special thank you to Kent Rowald, my attorney, who patiently tolerated this tormentor / pro se plaintiff, Deborah Dolen.