The Psycho Ex-Wife

The Psycho Ex-Wife (thepsychoexwife.com) was a blog that operated in the United States
between 2007 and 2011. The site was shut down following an order by family court judge Diane
Gibbons (Pennsylvania) who said that the website subjected the blogger's ex-wife to "outright
cruelty" and could be harmful to the couple's children. The case received widespread news
media attention as the blogger and his girlfriend argued online that the family court's decision
was violating of his rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and as he sought
crowd funding to take the case to Pennsylvania Superior Court.[1][2] Ultimately, a case was not
heard before the Pennsylvania Superior Court, and the thepsychoexwife.com remained shut
down. The Psycho Ex-Wife was the second website business of the bloggers closed by court
order.

History
Starting in May 2006, Anthony Morelli and Misty Weaver-Ostinato, his girlfriend, began publicly
chronicling Morelli's custody battle and grievances about Morelli's wife, Allison Morelli, on
BPDFamily.com, a support group for family members of people suffering from Borderline
Personality Disorder. The Morelli's had been divorced since 2004, with shared custody of their
sons[3][4][5] and Morelli was fighting his ex-wife's accusations of child abuse and other violations
of the divorce agreement.[1][6][7] Morelli and Weaver-Ostinato posted 4,500 messages at
BPDFamily.com anonymously as "Mr. M" and "mmm".
In response to increasing pressure from the
moderators at BPDFamily.com to temper his
aggressive and caustic style, Morelli and ThePsychoExWife.c
Weaver-Ostinato set up an online blog. There
Morelli wrote anonymously as "LM" and used om
pseudonyms (e.g. PEW for "Psycho Ex-Wife")
when referring to his ex wife.[8][9][10]

In December 2007, ThePsychoExWife.com

domain was created by Morelli and Weaver-
Ostinato.[11]

In September 2009, Morelli and Weaver-

Ostinato started a quasi-legal consultation
service together, named Mr. Custody Coach,
for clients going through high-conflict divorce
and custody cases.[12] Misty Weaver-Ostinato
had previously sold quasi-legal consultation
services (bankruptcy filings) and had been
shut down by the Federal Bankruptcy Court in
North Carolina for fraudulent, unfair and
deceptive acts and for practicing law without
a license.[13]
ThePsychoExWife.co
ThePsychoExWife.com attracted an audience
who shared their own divorce and custody
m homepage on May
experiences in the couple's advice
column.[14][3] Morelli and Weaver-Ostinato
31, 2011
eventually expanded the website to include a
members-only message board to publicly
discuss divorce, child custody, borderline Type of Blog
personality disorder, and parental alienation site
syndrome. Morelli started writing reviews for
divorce-related books and websites for its
"suggested reading" list. They also began Available in English
selling advertising space on the website.[15]
Morelli and Weaver-Ostinato claimed that
within four years of its launch, Owner Misty
ThePsychoExWife.com was attracting over
200,000 followers a month,[4][5][9][11] however Weaver-
independent tracking services like Alexa
showed a significantly a smaller audience.[16] Ostinato

Controversial Created by Anthony

Morelli
Editorial
and
Content Misty

Morelli and Weaver-Ostinato wrote thousands

Weaver-
of controversial blog posts on this subject.
Morelli claimed that he had spent $80,000 on
Ostinato
legal expenses subsequent to the divorce[1][6]
fighting his ex-wife's accusations of child URL http://www.thep
abuse and other violations of the divorce
agreement.[1][6][7]
Commercial Yes
According to Morelli, blogging was a healthy
place to "vent" his feelings about his failed
marriage, divorce, and subsequent custody
Registration Require
battle over their two children.[17] Amongst the
more choice insults for his former partner to post
Allison Morelli were that {{quote|"she looked
like Jabba the Hut [sic]" and "suffers from
Launched 2007
Borderline Personality Disorder". "She’s on the
precipice of 40 and probably looks all 50-years
of it," and that she was "terroristic".[1] Current status inactiv
Misty Weaver-Ostinato posted that:
 "Over the past 4 years I have been involved with a man who has a psycho ex wife."
She stated that the ex-wife had divorced the man, but "she can't let go" and that
"she has wrecked (sic) havoc on our lives and the lives of our children," and that
they had gone through "3 custody evaluations, 6 false contempt petitions, 3
custody schedules, 1 psych evaluation, 1 false child abuse allegation, 2 false calls to
the local sheriff's office, 4 years of parental alienation, $80,000, 1 break in, 1 case
of stalking, 1 restraining order" and "FINALLY" had obtained "50/50 custody of
their children". Her post said "We have fought a legal system that keeps children
with their mother no matter what she does" and promised that the website would
"lay it all out for you".[11][18]

Morelli used the blog to publicly expose alleged harassment from his ex-wife and former in-laws
with e-mail, instant messages, and voice mail.[6]

In addition to his struggles with divorce, Morelli wrote about his frustrations with family court.[6]

Court rulings
Morelli's former wife, Allison Morelli, complained about it to the Bucks County, Pennsylvania,
family court. At a June 6, 2011, hearing, Judge Diane Gibbons ordered Anthony Morelli to take
the website down. In that hearing and in a second hearing a week later, she said that the website
statements about Allison Morelli were:

"inaccurate and denigrating" and belittled her, going beyond "venting" to "outright
cruelty".[3][9] She told Anthony Morelli that she might give Allison full custody of
their children if he refused to close the website.

Although the parents disagreed on whether their sons had actually read the blog, the court
determined their children were aware of the website.[6][9] Judge Gibbons also banned him from
mentioning his ex-wife or his children on any public media.[3][5][11][17]

At the second hearing, Anthony Morelli contested the judge's order, arguing that it was an
infringement on his and Weaver-Ostinato's freedom of speech. Gibbons told Morelli:
 "This is about children. You may say anything that you would like to say. You may
publish it. You may put it on a billboard. But you will not have your children,
because that is abusive."[4][19][20]

She additionally threatened Morelli with contempt of court.[3] This is the second website
operated by Misty Weaver-Ostinato that was shut down by court order. In 2004, Misty Weaver-
Ostinato and Motherhood Media, Inc. were shut down by the Federal Bankruptcy Court in North
Carolina for fraudulent, unfair and deceptive acts and for practicing law without a license.[13]

Although ultimately forced to comply with the family court ruling, Morelli believed that his first
and fourteenth amendment rights had been violated and hired attorney Kevin Handy to challenge
the decision in Pennsylvania Superior Court.[11][19] Handy called Judge Gibbons' order "a classic
example of an overly broad and unenforceable prior restraint on free speech".[6][15] He cited
Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a
California state ban on the sale of violent video games to minors, as an example of an unlawful
restriction on constitutionally protected speech for the purposes of child welfare. Morelli and
Weaver-Ostinato also started another website, SaveThePsychoExWife.com to raise funds for
their legal defense.[5][10][11] The website had raised $8,000 in donations.[4] No accounting of
Morelli's actual costs were ever reported.[9]

Legal analysis
In Morelli, the judge did not seem to consider the implications of her order on the free speech
rights of the father; instead, she considered only how the children would choose if they could
and which outcome would benefit them the most. Recall the judge’s assertion that the children
“don’t want to hear that dad is a bastard . . . or mommy’s a bitch because that’s someone they love,
and when you say something about someone they love, you hurt them.[21]

According to the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the case law is dead-locked over
whether the children’s best interests should override parental free speech rights.[21]

When looking at the courts that have ruled in favor of children’s best interests there is no clear
standard for defining children’s best interests. When looking at the courts that have ruled in favor
of parental free speech rights, the children’s best interests were not considered.[21]
Robert D. Richards, founding director of Pennsylvania State University's Pennsylvania Center for
the First Amendment, felt Gibbons' "did overstep her bounds a little bit"[17] adding that even if the
blog was defamatory the correct action was to sue for libel not block the speech.[3]

Media response
The story was picked up by the media within weeks of the ruling. Response was largely negative
with mainstream media outlets emphasizing the derogatory nature of his posts.[4] Criticism was
primarily focused on the insulting language used on the website's introduction, in which Morelli
referred to his ex-wife as "Jabba The Hut with less personality",[9] rather than other topics
discussed by Morelli. His hometown newspaper The Intelligencer published a particularly harsh
editorial and stated that Morelli "may have a right to embarrass and belittle his children’s mother
in a very public way, but that doesn’t mean he should do it".[20] Janet Shan of the Hinterland
Gazette was one of the few voices supportive of Morelli pointing out that the author had never
threatened his ex-wife and wrote "if the gist of the posts over the four years was to express
frustration with the divorce process through the courts, the emotional toll it has taken on him
and his children, and the angst he feels going through the process, then he has every right under
the Constitution to voice that frustration".[19]

Morelli's case had support from a number of prominent First Amendment legal experts.[9][20][22]
Robert D. Richards, founding director of Pennsylvania State University's Pennsylvania Center for
the First Amendment, felt Gibbons' "did overstep her bounds a little bit"[17] adding that even if the
blog was defamatory the correct action was to sue for libel not block the speech.[3] UCLA law
professor and fellow blogger Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy strongly objected the
ruling both on his website,[11][23] and during an on-air interview with WHYY-FM,[24] calling the
family court judge's order "a blatantly unconstitutional exercise of her authority. She’s flaunting
(sic) the U.S. Constitution."[9] CBS Los Angeles legal analyst Royal Oakes also discussed the
case commenting that "it makes the McCourt divorce look genteel by comparison".[25] Doug
Mataconis of OutsideTheBeltway.com brought up the issue of a possible conflict of interest, as
many of Morelli's posts dealt with his negative opinion of the family court system, and
questioned if it was appropriate to take the entire blog offline rather than removing posts
specifically about his ex-wife.[22]
Both Anthony and Allison Morelli appeared on The Today Show with Amy Robach and Matt Lauer
in early August;[11] afterwards the case was discussed by Star Jones and psychiatrist Dr. Gail
Saltz.[15][26] Lauer said during the show that Morelli "clearly does not have the best interests of
his children in mind."[4] That same week the case was discussed on Fox News' "Kelly's Court"
with host Megyn Kelly and guest panelists ex-prosecutor Jonna Spilbor and legal analyst
Mercedes Colwin.[27] The case was also covered by major U.S. and international newspapers
including the New York Daily News, San Francisco Chronicle and Time.[4][5][15] Gibbons declined to
comment on the case.[19]

The response from the blogosphere was mixed. Female columnists from CafeMom,[28][29] The
Huffington Post,[30][31] Jezebel,[32] and iVillage.com were all heavily critical of the blog.[33] One
exception was Yahoo! Shine senior editor Lylah Alphonse who commented "the posts that
Morelli and Weaver-Ostinato wrote at The Psycho Ex-Wife may have been libelous, but libel is a
civil court issue, not a criminal one".[11] William Belle of Salon.com compared Morelli's behavior
to that of Tricia Walsh who posted insulting videos of her husband on YouTube in order gain an
advantage in their divorce settlement and her attempts to have the pre-nuptial agreement thrown
out.[34]

Morelli found some of his strongest support in the fathers' rights movement. Fathers & Families
was one of the first websites to report the blog's shut down.[35] Dr. Tara J. Palmatier of
Shrink4Men.com defended the website and was concerned over the abusive behavior
documented by Morelli during his four years of blogging.[36]

Taking issue with his Today Show appearance, Morelli contested the media's perception that the
sole purpose of his blog was for "bashing my ex-wife".[37] The blogger also defended his writing
style as a means of attracting readers to the website, especially those experiencing similar
issues,[9] but also as a way to keep his sense of humor.

Our website and community is not about bashing our ex-spouses. I am not fighting
for the freedom to ‘defend my right to bash my ex-wife in public.’ I’m fighting to
prevent our support group — and every other one out there — from being silenced
simply because a judge doesn’t like what is being written/spoken about, or the
manner in which it is being written/spoken.[4][37]

Blogger Nathan Hacker of the family law firm Cordell & Cordell cited the case as a warning to
avoid "going public" by releasing information about divorce and child custody cases.[38]
References

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03) . NBC Today Show. Retrieved 8 August
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2. Honaman, Monique (August 10, 2011). "The
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3. King, Larry (July 31, 2011). "Divorce blog's
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