Neighbors & the Law

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Never trust your neighbors. Never. We've lived here for 5 yrs. Neighbors across the street are our friends, a man who lives with his ex-wife. She runs a dog grooming business out of her home. He is always friendly, nice, helpful. My husband can always count on him if he needs help on a household project. She and I talk frequently. We told our kids, ages 8 and 13, that if something happens, they're to go to their house or call them. My sisters and I take our pets to her business. Last Friday, he came over to use our computer. He was wearing a bathrobe because it was early morning & he's working midnights. For the past 2 weeks I've been seeing him outside in his bathrobe, didn't think anything of it. His ex-wife was working at her dog grooming business, which faces our front yard & it's a screened in porch area. So I let him in. He explained he just needed to quickly check 1 website. His ex-wife doesn't believe in having a computer. He took a lot longer on the computer than he originally said. Long story but he ended up walking up to me and opening his robe. I thought he had pjs or shorts on, but no, he was naked. Afterwards he didn't leave right away, even when I kept telling him that I needed to leave. There are 3 incidents afterwards where he just stood there, staring at me and the police tell me those times were where he was contemplating raping me and thinking if he could get away with it or not. He blocked me twice from the door. The police tell me that I handled it perfectly, 100% perfectly. I didn't get upset at him during the incident, I didn't yell at him, I just kept talking to him as though he was still my friend but with the intent on getting him to leave. The police tell me that if I would have started yelling at him and telling him to leave that there's no telling how he would have reacted or what he would have done. They encouraged me to press charges. The police ran a criminal history check and come to find out, he was arrested for Fondling a Child in the 80's in another state but the charges were dismissed. He has multiple drug, burglary and weapons charges and was arrested in 2005 for Indecent Exposure. I had to type up a statement of what happened and how I felt during that time and gave it to the police. They took my report to the prosecutor's office and the prosecutor's office wouldn't file charges because "he was a guest in my home". That's right. Indiana law states that he can be charged with Indecent Exposure inside my home only if he exposed himself to someone inside my home who did not live there. Does that make sense? Another officer told me that if it were him, he'd call the prosecutor's office and try to fight their decision. I am going to call there today to ask them about it. I check the sheriff's website & the family watchdog website regularly. There was never any mention of this neighbor because, like I said, the charges against him were dismissed. There isn't a database for people to look up to see if their neighbors are convicted felons, like mine. It just goes to show you that no matter how friendly and helpful a neighbor might be, they could be someone with an extensive criminal history, like mine is. The police encouraged me to go around & tell the other neighbors about him so that if they see him in my yard, they will call the police. As if! I went to one house and found he's been standing naked in his window which is directly across from their window. She keeps the blinds closed on that window 24/7. In all these years, she's never told me to be careful around him or said "hey you might want to have your kids play in the backyard since he likes to stand in the windows naked". Went to the other neighbor's house only to find out that a few days before my incident, the neighbor saw two girls walking down the street. She looked over at him sitting in his driveway with his bathrobe on and saw that he was exposed. She didn't call the police. She went over to him with a paper bag and when he asked her what it was for, she told him "to cover your nuts". She didn't bother mentioning this to me, either. So these neighbors that I thought I could trust I am finding out that I sure cannot. They certainly don't care that there are children living in my house and that this awful man could have exposed himself to my children. I was granted a protective order yesterday from a judge. When I told him the prosecutor's office wouldn't file charges, he shook his head in disgust. Usually a protective order is good for 30 or 60 days and then you have to appear in court, but he automatically gave me an order that won't expire for 2 years. I was really upset over this incident, still am, and blogged about it on my MySpace account. I have a lot of friends there and I thought I would blog about it to get it out and that I'd get support from my friends. It's been 5 days and only 1 person has commented on my blogs about the incident. So wow, turns out you can't trust the neighbors OR your MySpace "friends".