The High-Conflict Harassment Method: What to Watch For, How to Protect Yourself, and What Happens If It Happens to You

I have spent the last year inside one of the most documented examples of this pattern in Michigan court history. Here is what I learned, who it targets, how it works, and what you can do about it.

How I Know What I Know

In July 2025, Kevin Lindke began threatening me. We had a prior online working relationship that ended badly. About a year later he came back, and he came back with a playbook. Death threats. Domains registered in my minor daughter’s legal name. Coordinated contact with my employer. Making false reports to manufacture a jailing. Public mockery of me and my children to an audience of thousands through a Facebook group called Through My Eyes.

His attorney, Philip L. Ellison, received a formal cease and desist from me in September 2025 documenting that his client had registered a domain in my minor daughter’s name. Ellison forwarded the complaint to Lindke as a “courtesy.” Lindke then mocked me publicly for objecting to my child being targeted. I reported the conduct to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. NCMEC assigned CyberTipline No. 222110727 and transmitted my report to the Michigan Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Despite being a victim of harassment, Ellison filed a defamation lawsuit against me.

Since then I have documented this pattern across eight PPO proceedings in three Michigan counties, two federal civil rights cases, one active criminal perjury investigation by the Macomb County Sheriff’s Department and Prosecutor’s Office, a seven-count counterclaim I filed in May 2026, and eight investigative articles on this platform. I have watched the same template applied to Dean Hines, to other members of the Lindke network’s target list, and to people who have never heard of me or each other. The pattern does not change. The instruments vary. The methodology is consistent.

This is what it looks like.

Signature One: The Return With Accusations

High-conflict harassment rarely begins with strangers. It almost always begins with someone you know, or someone who has decided they know you, who disappears after a conflict and returns with a new frame: you are the aggressor. You harassed them. You threatened them. You would not leave them alone. The return comes with documentation they have been building in your absence and a network they have been warming up to receive it.

In the Lindke case, this pattern is documented across multiple targets. A falling out occurs. A period of relative quiet follows. Then the target begins receiving contact, posts about them appear on Through My Eyes, and a PPO petition arrives claiming they were the harasser all along. Dean Hines did not know Kevin Lindke until Lindke began contacting him. The St. Clair County PPO petition Hines filed documents exactly what happened: Lindke called him from a burner phone, threatened him, and organized harassment against him through a group that Lindke’s own family administered. Then Lindke’s network filed a counter-petition claiming Hines was the aggressor.

Signature Two: The Through My Eyes Architecture

Every coordinated harassment campaign needs an amplification platform. For the Lindke network, it is Through My Eyes, a Facebook group with thousands of members that began as a platform connected to a custody dispute and expanded into something else entirely. Posts identifying targets by name. Photographs taken at court proceedings. Taunting commentary delivered to an audience designed to validate it. Coordinated contact campaigns organized through group communications.

What makes a platform like this legally significant is the administrative structure. Through My Eyes has administrators. Administrators have the ability to moderate content, restrict posting, and remove material. When an administrator allows threatening or harassing content to remain on a platform they control, they are not a passive bystander. They are a facilitator. When the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled in ARM v. KJL, Docket Nos. 357120, 358858, and 358859 (July 14, 2022), that Kevin Lindke’s contempt conviction for Facebook tagging was properly affirmed, it held that a person’s right to free speech must be understood in light of another person’s interest in being left alone. The platform is the instrument. The administrator is accountable for what the instrument does.

If you are being targeted through a social media group, document the administrative structure of that group. Screenshot the member list if it is publicly visible. Document who the administrators are. The administrator’s role matters legally in ways that a casual viewer’s participation does not.

Signature Three: Process Servers as Weapons

In the Lindke network’s documented methodology, process servers are not neutral legal instruments. They are deployed for maximum disruption. JM, Kevin Lindke’s mother and the respondent in my active Macomb County PPO, directed a process server to serve Dean Hines on Easter Sunday and paid extra to ensure service on that specific holiday. That is documented in St. Clair County court records. Philip L. Ellison dispatched a process server to my home after dark while my children were inside. The encounter was immediately broadcast to the Through My Eyes network as entertainment.

The Michigan Court of Appeals addressed this exact methodology in LW v. SCM and KJL, Docket Nos. 359150 and 359153 (January 19, 2023). The Court affirmed PPO relief on the grounds that otherwise legitimate legal conduct, including process server contact, does not acquire legitimacy when deployed in a documented pattern of harassment. The holding is precise: it is the additional facts and circumstances that allow a court to infer that otherwise legitimate conduct was used to facilitate a PPO. Kevin Lindke was the respondent in that case. Philip L. Ellison was his attorney. The same attorney who now argues that process server contact at my home is neutral court procedure.

Signature Four: Coordinated Institutional Contact

The most sophisticated version of this pattern goes beyond courts and social media. It reaches into employers, professional contacts, probation officers, landlords, and anyone else whose institutional relationship with the target can be weaponized. The goal is not just to harass through legal process. It is to destroy the target’s economic and social infrastructure simultaneously.

In my case, the coordinated contact reached clients and colleagues, costing me work and time explaining what was going on. It came in false police reports. That coordination is documented on court transcripts where I fought and won.

If you are experiencing coordinated institutional contact, file police reports for each incident. Contact your employer proactively if you believe contact is coming. Document who reached out to whom, when, and what was said. If you are on probation or parole, inform your supervision officer directly that you believe coordinated contact is being organized against you, and put that conversation in writing.

Signature Five: The False Victimhood Template

The false victimhood template has four consistent features across every documented case I have studied. First, phone call allegations that never happened. The petitioner claims the target called, texted, or messaged them with threatening content. No records exist because the calls did not occur. Second, fabricated timelines positioning the target as the initiator of conflict that the aggressors actually started. Third, PPO petitions filed in jurisdictions chosen for accessibility rather than connection to the parties, what courts call venue shopping. Fourth, aggressive social media presence simultaneously with victim claims: taunting the target publicly while filing court documents claiming to be afraid of them.

JM filed two rounds of show causes against me claiming I had posted content on Facebook. I do not have an active Facebook account. Meta’s DMCA copyright enforcement process under 17 U.S.C. 512 confirmed both times that the content had been posted by another party. That is not my characterization against hers. That is a federal copyright enforcement determination. The show causes were perjured. The perjury is now under criminal investigation by two Macomb County law enforcement agencies.

Steve Murray, Kevin Lindke’s stepfather, filed a PPO petition claiming I had served him process on May 19, 2025. St. Clair County court records show the process server was Amy Dove, a woman. I was working in Kalamazoo, more than one hundred miles away. He filed that perjured petition weeks after testifying in Adams County, Ohio, where he referred to me as a journalist. The perjury investigation covers his proceeding as well.

Signature Six: The Compensation Fraud Architecture

The most sophisticated version of this methodology is not random harassment. It is financially motivated. Michigan’s Crime Victim Compensation program under MCL 18.351 et seq. provides financial assistance to innocent victims of violent crimes, covering medical costs, counseling, lost wages, relocation expenses, and residential security. The innocence requirement is statutory: MCL 18.354(4) provides that compensation shall be reduced or denied where the claimant contributed to the crime or was engaged in criminal activity.

If a network files fabricated PPO claims to manufacture innocent victim status for compensation purposes, every hearing they attend as a “victim” potentially builds their claim. Every show cause they file against the actual target generates documented court participation records. The relocation of Lindke and his fiancee Amber Kinder to Oakland County, potentially funded through a compensation claim based on a Macomb County PPO proceeding that is now under criminal investigation, would have produced a confidential new address for a man with significant law enforcement exposure across multiple jurisdictions.

And the target has to be silenced permanently, not just for now. A damages judgment compensates for past speech. A permanent injunction stops future speech. The injunction Ellison sought against my journalism was not a defamation remedy. It was the compensation scheme’s most important protective mechanism. My documentation of the network’s non-innocence was an existential threat to any compensation claim requiring innocent victim status. Stopping my journalism permanently would have protected those claims indefinitely.

What to Do If This Is Happening to You

The single most important thing I can tell you is this: document everything in real time, and understand that the pattern matters more than any single incident. Courts respond to documented patterns. A single threatening call is easier to dismiss than a timestamped log of seventeen contacts across six months. A single PPO petition is more credible when the only counter is your word. A pattern of fabricated claims, documented with primary sources, looks like what it is.

Screenshot everything before it disappears. Social media posts get deleted. Save them to a local drive and a cloud backup simultaneously. Note the URL, the date, the time, and the account name. Document the administrative structure of any group being used to coordinate the harassment. File police reports for every incident even when law enforcement does not immediately act. Each report creates a record. The record is cumulative.

Report domain registrations in your name or your family members’ names to the registrar, to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov, and if minor children are involved, to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline at cybertipline.org. NCMEC transmits reports to the Michigan Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Those reports create a federal record that predates any lawsuit filed against you.

Understand your PPO rights. In Michigan, a Personal Protection Order under MCL 600.2950a can prohibit stalking as defined by MCL 750.411h and 750.411i, electronic harassment under MCL 750.411s, and contact through third parties. If process servers are being used as harassment instruments, document each visit with the facts that make it pretextual and present those facts to the court when seeking PPO relief. LW v. SCM and KJL establishes that otherwise legitimate conduct supports PPO relief when the surrounding facts establish a harassment pattern.

If you are the respondent in a fabricated PPO proceeding, respond. Do not assume the court will see through the false claims on its own. Document your alibi for the alleged incidents. Obtain records that contradict the petitioner’s timeline. Subpoena phone records, employment records, and GPS data if the claims about your location are false. The perjury in my proceedings was established through exactly these kinds of primary source contradictions: process server records, employer records, and Meta’s own copyright enforcement determinations.

Michigan-Specific Protections You Should Know

Michigan’s Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, MCL 691.1851 et seq., effective March 24, 2026, is the most important recent development in this area. If you are sued for speech or publication related to a matter of public concern, UPEPA allows you to file a special motion that automatically stays all proceedings including discovery until the court rules. The burden shifts to the plaintiff to demonstrate a likelihood of prevailing. Fee-shifting is mandatory if the motion succeeds. I used this law against the attorney who sued me to silence my journalism. I was a named supporter of the bill that became the law. I am now living proof of why it was necessary.

Michigan’s stalking statutes, MCL 750.411h and 750.411i, define a course of conduct as a pattern of two or more separate noncontinuous acts evidencing a continuity of purpose. Cyberstalking under MCL 750.411s covers electronic monitoring that causes reasonable apprehension of harm. These statutes apply to coordinated harassment campaigns and to attorneys who monitor their clients’ victims’ online platforms while litigating against them. The IP surveillance documented in my case, traced to Ellison’s office through federal PACER records, is being pursued under exactly these provisions in my counterclaim.

The Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission investigates licensed attorneys whose conduct violates the Rules of Professional Conduct. MRPC 4.4 prohibits conduct that has no substantial purpose other than to embarrass, delay, or burden a third person. MRPC 3.3 prohibits false statements to tribunals. MRPC 4.2 prohibits direct contact with represented parties. If an attorney is participating in or facilitating the harassment campaign against you, file an AGC complaint. The complaint creates a formal record, assigns an investigator, and puts the attorney on notice that their conduct is under review. AGC complaints take time. File them anyway.

What I Want You to Take From This

I am writing this article from inside a case that is still active. Kevin Lindke is incarcerated. His mother faces contempt hearings in Macomb County on June 8, 2026. A perjury investigation is active across two law enforcement agencies. I filed a seven-count counterclaim with a jury demand in May 2026 documenting $171,234.90 in damages. The attorney who sued me to silence this platform is facing his own AGC investigation and a sanctions motion that now has my NCMEC CyberTipline confirmation, my domain forensics report, and a federal appellate court’s attention.

None of that happened because I had money or a lawyer or institutional support. It happened because I documented everything, understood the rules, used the tools that existed, and did not stop writing.

You do not have to be a forensic analyst to survive this. You have to be organized, consistent, and willing to build a record even when no one is immediately listening. The record is what courts read. The record is what investigators use. The record is what journalists publish. And when the record is complete enough, it speaks for itself.

If you are experiencing coordinated harassment through the court system and you need help understanding what is happening to you, I am available for consultation. The engagement form is below. You are not alone and you are not crazy. You are in a fight that someone designed to be unwinnable. The first thing we do is show you the design.