Also: 209A Abuse Stings Sister, Too 

Massachusetts News 
By John Maguire 

October 1--Marilyn Willey is a 65-year-old retired hospital worker who lives with her husband, John, in Merrimack; She's the grandmother of Denna and Sara. 

"I think the girls have been really hurt by this restraining order, because they want to see their father," she said in a phone interview. "I know one thing -- he never abused her. He was always for his children." 

She remembers the first phone call she got from her son, Dennis Watts, from jail. He'd never been arrested in his life. She asked him why he'd been arrested, and he said, "The kids came down to the house, and they were sitting on the back steps talking to me." 

He told her the police had pulled up, arrested him in front of his daughters, forced the girls into the backseat of the cruiser, then drove their dad to jail and them back to their mother's house. "It breaks your heart," says Mrs. Willey. 

Then he was jailed for 55 days for waving to Denna from his car. 

"That really upset me," she says." She says she got "terrible phone calls" from him when he was in jail -- her son, the devoted father, talking about suicide. "It took a lot out of me, as much as it did him, too." 

She has stayed away from court, since the one humiliating time she went to give Dennis some moral support. There was a hearing in the Lewiston courthouse, and the girls were kept in the corridor. She and Dennis came out of the courtroom, and they went over to say hello to her granddaughters. 

"The bailiff grabbed my son real rough. He shouted, 'You can't have any contact with them!'" The whole hallway was watching.  "It was embarrassing; it was a whole hallway full of people. They made us stay in the hallway until his wife and children left the building, and then they escorted us out because they thought we were going to do something. I don't know what. 

I do feel like I am being treated like a criminal," this grandmother says. "Other people don't know what is going on, and they just look at you like you are a criminal." 

She says she knows she is not the only one whose life has been so damaged by a restraining order." You read about it every day in the paper, and you read about these people who molest their children, and they get to see their kids. We all miss the kids, and they are growing up so fast." 

She hasn't seen her granddaughters in 30 months. She heard from them twice in the last year. She doesn't dare call them. It could throw her son in jail. But they call her. They called her at Christmas to thank her for a present, and they called on Mother's Day. "They said, 'We love you Nan, we want to see you, too.'" 

 "I just think it's too darn easy for the women to get these restraining orders," Marilyn Willey said. "They don't have to prove anything. And I just think that all these women lawyers don't understand at all. They didn't even give him any time to explain. I talk about this to my close friends," she said. 

She explains the restraining order nightmare her son and her whole family is in. "They don't know what to say. They can't believe it. They can't believe that the judge would do it.