RUPTURED marriages can lead to nasty things: bitter arguments, personal threats, physical violence. Men and women involved often turn to cops and the courts for protection and for justice, generating thousands of lawsuits, protection orders and criminal charges every year.
But the legal system can be abused, too. All it takes is a sworn statement about events to which there are no witnesses to get your ex slapped with a protection order or even arrested.
A few weeks back, Denise Bentley, a 10-year city-prison guard, showed up at my desk with a stack of papers and a story. She said that she's paid thousands of dollars in legal bills and lost her job and health insurance because of a series of fabricated charges by her ex-husband, Frederick "Bud" Waters.
She says that Waters has repeatedly accused her of threatening and physically assaulting him.
I sat down with Waters, who seems like a reasonable man. He insists that Bentley has indeed assaulted and threatened him numerous times.
But the fact is that Bentley has been cleared of every accusation so far, and a veteran Philadelphia detective testified under oath in February that she believes that Bentley is the victim of false accusations.
Bentley has a clean employment record at the prisons and the respect of many supervisors who came to court to testify to her character.
But because she's a prison guard, the charges from Waters often have resulted in her suspension from work until things are cleared up.
She's currently out of work because of the latest accusation, which comes not from Waters himself, but from his new wife, Davora Hassan Waters, a police officer. More on that shortly. Here's a quick summary of Bentley's saga:
* In March 2005, when Bentley and Waters were estranged but still living in the same house, Waters called 9-1-1 and said that Bentley had hit him with a drinking glass. Bentley said that it never happened, that she went into their kitchen after police arrived and saw Waters with a cut on his forehead.
Bentley was arrested, but the charges were later withdrawn. Detective Roy Simonds concluded that the drinking glass had Waters' fingerprints, not Bentley's, according to court testimony. Waters said that the case fell apart because he didn't show up for the preliminary hearing.
* In October 2006, Waters said that Bentley approached him on a Center City street after a child-support hearing and cut his throat with a razor wrapped in a napkin. There were no witnesses, and the wounds didn't require medical treatment beyond a tetanus shot.
Waters' statement led to a warrant for Bentley's arrest, but Detective Margaret Castro withdrew it after an investigation, concluding that Waters' account had inconsistencies.
"I don't believe that incident took place," Castro testified in a later court hearing.
* In May 2008, Bentley was arrested again, after Waters said that she'd left him threatening voice mails. Bentley said that she'd never called Waters, and that the voice on the messages wasn't hers.
In a February 2009 trial, Common Pleas Judge Albert John Snite Jr. listened to the taped threats and found Bentley not guilty.
* In a case that's still pending, Davora Waters charges that in March 2009, Bentley approached her as she was in uniform (but without her weapon) after she'd parked her car near the 35th District police station.
According to Waters, Bentley called her a bitch and swung at her, leaving two abrasions on her right arm before fleeing.
The accusation is similar to earlier ones: an assault with no witnesses that leaves superficial injuries. But the District Attorney's Office finds it credible enough to prosecute, and a trial is set for Dec. 11.
In a brief conversation, Waters said that she couldn't discuss the case.
It's hard to believe that she would risk her police career to make up a story like this, even if her husband wanted her to.
And it makes no sense to think that Bud Waters would go to the trouble of fabricating these accusations for years, filing false police reports to torment a woman who's no longer part of his life.
But it also makes no sense to think that Denise Bentley, who's also moved on to another relationship, would risk her job and freedom by continually threatening and attacking Waters.
It seems particularly crazy to think that she would have repeatedly left threats on his voice mail. But breakups can be crazy.
Judge Snite, after acquitting Bentley in February, said that "in this case, you know, one side or the other has to be a pretty disturbed individual."
I have to agree, and I'll add that in my conversations with the parties, none of them remotely resembles the crazed actors in the disputed events at issue among them.
I have reached one conclusion, though:
City Prisons Commissioner Louis Giorla should put Denise Bentley back on the job. She's postponing doctors visits for herself and her daughter because she's lost her health insurance, and is struggling to renegotiate her mortgage and keep the home she lives in.
It's clear that the current charge is part of a long-running domestic dispute, and Bentley's history of exoneration from past accusations should give her the benefit of the doubt until a verdict is rendered in the case.
After that happens, I hope this sorry chapter in her life and Waters' comes to an end.