No Mediation

Having lived through the hell of an NFH for four years, I can safely say that mediation with one of these people is unwise at the very least. NFHes have a talent for building trigger buttons in their targets. You get sick and tired of certain phrases or looks or whistles, whatever, and the NFH knows it. They then use that trigger in a mediated meeting and you are wounded again. If you don't go ballistic on the spot, you are lucky. Mediation with a serial bully or predator or psychopath is NOT a good idea.

Dealing With A Lying Neighbor

Our NFH told lies better than we told the truth and that was a real problem. He said we were racists, which we are not, but most of the police appeared to believe him, even though we offered them videotapes showing we did not call him or his family names. In fact, our NFH called us names. Most cops did not want to watch the tapes - I think because of the 'bad cops caught on tape' television programs.

Why Don't You Just Move?

Moving away from a predator is a lot harder for some people. Financial situations, in particular, make it difficult. In our case, our place needed a lot of work just to get it into selling order. Painting our two-story needed scaffolding and with our predator's penchant for shooting and using a wrist-rocket, we would be in peril of being shot and falling. No thanks. We didn't have much choice but to hope the cops and the courts would do their job.

Writing

A few months ago, I finally began writing about my experiences with this predator. Today I worked on the most disturbing part - his accusation that my husband and I are racists. We are not and never have been, but he knew that by accusing us of that it would undermine anything we tried to do to stop him from harassing us. The cops appeared to happily believe him and easily dismissed our complaints. We are white, he was Hispanic. They apparently preferred to believe him, rather than believe he could be pulling the race card. It made our lives all that much more difficult.