Providence Judge Punished Blogger For Not Removing Story About Transgender Man Accused Of Child Abuse And Not Dropping Protection Order For Family By Issuing Order On Blogger
Providence Superior Court Judge Melissa Darigan is attempting to get me to remove a blog that exposed a man who was accused of abusing his children, and also wants me to request that a Leominster District Court Judge drop a restraining order and warrant that is currently out against him for harassing and stalking my family.
We first wrote about East Providence transgender father Ashley St. Angelo in late August 2020 after his “missing” 16 year old daughter Marissa took to Facebook and accused him of abusing her. Her older sister came forward with similar allegations. Police reports and court records show that Ashley St. Angelo was abusing his wife and children for years and constantly threatened to kill himself as his family screamed out for help that never came.
Shortly after the blog was published Ashley began emailing me asking to have the blog removed. He contacted me four months later with “evidence” which he claimed proved he was innocent. However, he mostly used it as an opportunity to smear and slut shame his daughters, so the blogs stayed up.
A week later in early January 2021, Ashley publicized an anonymous blog while pretending to be an online anti-defamation organization he “found” called The Justice League. This non-existent entity published a blog with pictures of my 3 and 5 year old children with the caption “I hope these kids are not being sexually demonized by their father.” The blog was filled with baseless defamatory statements about me sexually assaulting grown women and minors. He even accused my wife, who has nothing to do with my blog, of being a co-owner of the blog, and listed her employer’s information.
Ashley’s stated goal while penning under the Justice League was to torment my family until I was ruined completely and agreed to remove the blog about him.
Just so you know Turtleboy WE WILL NOT STOP OR BE STOPPED UNTIL YOU GIVE IN OR ARE RUINED COMPLETELY BY THE ACTIONS YOU HAVE CAUSED
While this was happening he was emailing me using a burner account with the alias Jenny Manning, attempting to extort me into removing the blog, while claiming that Ashley St. Angelo was a client they were protecting.
On January 6 Ashley contacted my wife’s work and told them that they were employing a sexual predator. At this point I emailed him back, told him to stop contacting, and went to file a police report with Holden PD. After being alerted to this Ashley preemptively went to Providence Superior Court and applied for a restraining order against my wife and I, and had it granted by Judge Melissa Darigan. Judge Darigan had given out orders to Ashley in the past.
On January 13 Ashely drove to Holden to have the police serve me. He showed them the affidavit he wrote to obtain the order, which was filled with lies, including one that stated the Holden Police told him to get the order. According to them there was no grounds for an order. Holden PD attempted to reach out to the Judge to let her know but she was uninterested. At my hearing I attempted to present this police report which she would not accept into evidence because she said she didn’t trust the Holden Police because they didn’t call her back.
On February 12 Judge Noonan in Leominster District Court imposed a restraining order on Ashley St. Angelo that barred him from contacting me or my wife’s employer. Within days he violated the order by leaving a voicemail threatening to show up there and protest, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Unfortunately the warrant is non-extraditable and issued in Massachusetts, so East Providence Police cannot arrest him.
On April 7 I had to drive to Providence for a hearing with Ashley, that ended up lasting nearly 3 hours. Ashley admitted to the judge that I did not contact or threaten him, but Judge Darigan insisted there was lots to unfold and suggested I get an attorney because this would require several hearings to litigate. In reality it should’ve been dropped the moment he said I wasn’t harassing or contacting him.
Judge Darigan asked me if I’d remove the blogs, and although I was initially hesitant to do so I agreed to do so later in the hearing. However, she also wanted me to get Leominster District Court to drop the prevention order against Ashley, which would endanger my family’s safety.
Judge Darigan was unprofessional and hostile towards me, even mentioning that she wasn’t happy about being criticized in a previous blog. She pressured me to give up my First Amendment rights and endanger my family, and if I didn’t she would intentionally drag this simple matter out and impose an order on both my wife and I. Giving into them would not only go against everything I believe in, it would also get rid of an order that was in place to protect the people I love most.
So I chose to fight, which will require obtaining counsel. To that end I started this GoFundMe to help raise money to hire an aggressive attorney who isn’t afraid to take on an out of control judge and an abusive lunatic. Click here to see all the documents pertaining to this case and read a more in depth analysis of it.