Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County No. LD038436, Maren E. Nelson, Commissioner.
Mansour Ghadiriabyaneh, in pro. per., for Defendant and Appellant.
No appearance for Plaintiff and Respondent.
ZELON, J.
Mansoureh Sadeghpanahi obtained a restraining order against Mansour Ghadiriabyaneh that was renewed in August 2005. Ghadiriabyaneh appeals on numerous grounds. We affirm.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
Sadeghpanahi and Ghadiriabyaneh were married until January 2004 and are the parents of a son, A. In 2002 Sadeghpanahi obtained a restraining order against Ghadiriabyaneh that was set to expire in September 2005. In 2005 Sadeghpanahi moved to renew the restraining order.
Sadeghpanahi testified that on June 17, 2005, she received a telephone call from the Redondo Beach police informing her that Ghadiriabyaneh was at her home and was accusing her of kidnapping A. She explained that the court order on visitation commenced the following week, on June 23, 2005. When she arrived home, Ghadiriabyaneh parked his car behind hers and began yelling at Sadeghpanahi and her then-fiancé (now husband), Esmail Soltani. Soltani told Ghadiriabyaneh to leave; Ghadiriabyaneh exited his car and advanced toward Sadeghpanahi and A. Ghadiriabyaneh ripped Soltani’s shirt, and Sadeghpanahi took A. inside and called the police. Both Ghadiriabyaneh and Soltani were arrested.
Sadeghpanahi testified that she had reported four violations by Ghadiriabyaneh of the restraining order. She also testified that Ghadiriabyaneh had threatened her that if she did not remove the restraining order against him, he would “make matters worse.” She declared that as of July 21, 2005, she had not seen A. since Ghadiriabyaneh took him for scheduled visitation on June 29, 2005. She testified by supplemental declaration that when she went to pick A. up on August 17, 2005 at the time and place set by the parties’ visitation order, Ghadiriabyaneh did not deliver A. to her. She went to Ghadiriabyaneh’s home with the police, and was able to see A. for an hour.
After a contested hearing that spanned many months, in February 2007 the trial court issued a new restraining order against Ghadiriabyaneh. Ghadiriabyaneh appeals.
DISCUSSION
I. Sufficiency of the Evidence
“A trial court should renew [a] protective order, if, and only if, it finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the protected party entertains a ‘reasonable apprehension’ of future abuse.” (Ritchie v. Konrad (2004) 115 Cal.App.4th 1275, 1290 (Ritchie).) Applying this standard, the trial court properly found by a preponderance of the evidence that Sadeghpanahi had a reasonable apprehension of future abuse if the restraining order was not renewed.
The trial court gave an extensive explanation of its reasons for issuing the renewed restraining order. First, the trial court examined the original allegations that gave rise to the restraining order, as contemplated by Ritchie, supra, 115 Cal.App.4th at page 1290 (“the trial judge ordinarily should consider the evidence and findings on which that initial order was based in appraising the risk of future abuse should the existing order expire”). The court explained, “ . . . On September 4 of ’02[,] Respondent is alleged to have grabbed the child out of the car, grabbed her purse out of the car, then pulled her out of the car, and pushed himself into the car. He was arrested.”
As there was insufficient evidence of violations of the restraining order prior to the Father’s Day weekend conflict, the court focused on the Father’s Day weekend incident. The court believed that Ghadiriabyaneh had properly involved the police in the visitation issue because he believed that he was entitled to the visit. The court specifically found that his initial conduct was reasonable. It was Ghadiriabyaneh’s conduct after the police relayed to Ghadiriabyaneh that Sadeghpanahi said that the visitation did not commence that week that convinced the court that the restraining order should be renewed. As the court explained, “What does he do? Does he say, well, this is problematic?. . . . I should go back to the court and ask for some clarification because this isn’t clear. No. He says, this is my Father’s Day weekend. I’m entitled to my Father’s Day weekend.” The court said, “Instead of living with [what the police advised], he’s got to prove he’s right. In violation of the restraining order, he goes over to her house. The course of conduct from that point forward suggests to me that she does have a reasonable apprehension that there is going to be future violence here. The—there is a lack of impulse control. Was she entirely forth[]right with the court about everything? No. Do I find, however, that she . . . has a reasonable fear that an objective person would have about [whether] there could be future violence? The answer is yes.”
Ghadiriabyaneh contends that the evidence is insufficient to support the restraining order. Specifically, he argues that there was no evidence that he traveled from the police station to Sadeghpanahi’s home; that there are no ongoing exchanges of the child; that being at Sadeghpanahi’s residence to pick up the child was not a violation of the restraining order; and that he was entitled to visitation on the weekend in question. None of these asserted facts affects the outcome. First, even if Ghadiriabyaneh is correct in his assertion that “Ghadiri[abyaneh] was already at the Sadeghpanahi’s [sic] residence accompanied by police officers and then he was driving toward his home when Sadeghpanahi arrived home,” as he contends in his brief (underlining omitted), Ghadiriabyaneh still displayed the same absence of impulse control and overarching compulsion to prove that he was right and get what he came for when he returned to Sadeghpanahi’s residence after he had left for home, with the resulting altercation. Regardless of whether he drove to Sadeghpanahi’s house from the police station or began to depart the house but then returned when he saw Sadeghpanahi returning home, sufficient evidence supports the trial court’s conclusion that Ghadiriabyaneh’s conduct gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of future abuse if the restraining order was not renewed.
Second, Ghadiriabyaneh’s assertion that there are no visits going on now, because A. is not visiting his mother, is also irrelevant. The court observed that the issue of visitation is ongoing as part of its explanation that future contact between the parties could be anticipated and a restraining order was appropriate here, as opposed to cases in which a restraining order might not be necessary because no contact between the parties can reasonably be expected. Ghadiriabyaneh’s representation that visits are not presently occurring does not change the fact that future contact is probable between the parents of this minor child.
Third, the trial court did not state that being at Sadeghpanahi’s residence to pick up the child was a violation of the restraining order. The trial court found a violation of the restraining order in being at the house after it was made clear to him by the police that the visitation order was ambiguous and that they were not going to compel a handover of A. As it was evident that there was not going to be a transfer of the child on that date, Ghadiriabyaneh was no longer at the house to pick up the child—and that is where the court could properly conclude that a violation of the restraining order took place. Moreover, the restraining order permitted peaceful contacts related to court-ordered visitation, and this was not a peaceful contact. Finally, Ghadiriabyaneh’s position that he was entitled to visitation on that Father’s Day weekend is not relevant to the determination made by the trial court, as it was Ghadiriabyaneh’s conduct in seeking to get the visit he believed himself entitled to, and not whether he was in fact entitled to that visit, that gave rise to the objectively reasonable apprehension of future violence found to exist by the court.
Ghadiriabyaneh describes a number of instances from the restraining order proceedings in which he claims that Sadeghpanahi committed perjury and that her counsel violated the Rules of Professional Conduct by giving a false statement of the facts. None of these complaints bears on the central issue on appeal, which is whether Sadeghpanahi had an objectively reasonable fear of future abuse if the restraining order was not renewed. (Ritchie, supra, 15 Cal.App.4th at p. 1290.)
Last, Ghadiriabyaneh claims that his due process and confrontation rights were violated by the fact that he did not have access to the sealed transcript of his son’s testimony in a different matter, the proceedings for the restraining order Ghadiriabyaneh sought against Sadeghpanahi. Ghadiriabyaneh complains that he should have been able to review the transcript, that he should have been able to cross-examine his son and refute the evidence given, and also that the court should have taken A.’s live testimony in chambers outside the presence of the parties. As an initial matter, when the trial court reviewed A.’s testimony, it concluded that it had no credibility because A. was obviously coached by Ghadiriabyaneh. Thus, contrary to Ghadiriabyaneh’s assertion that evidence was used against him that was not revealed to him, this testimony was rejected and was not employed against him.
Additionally, Ghadiriabyaneh has not identified where in the record he objected to the use of the transcript of his son’s testimony on the grounds of due process, confrontation, the need to review the transcript, the need to cross-examine A., or an inability to refute the evidence in the transcript, and in our review of the transcripts we have not located any such objections. (In re S.C. (2006) 138 Cal.App.4th 396, 406-407 [“The party also must cite to the record showing exactly where the objection was made. [Citations.] When an appellant’s brief makes no reference to the pages of the record where a point can be found, an appellate court need not search through the record in an effort to discover the point purportedly made. [Citations.] We can simply deem the contention to lack foundation and, thus, to be forfeited”].) Ghadiriabyaneh did request that A. testify on a number of matters other than the events of the Father’s Day weekend, and the court asked for and received offers of proof on those matters, but all of those matters were resolved either by stipulation or by the court’s ruling that the evidence was either irrelevant or inadmissible under Evidence Code section 352. As it does not appear that the arguments made on appeal were raised in the trial court, Ghadiriabyaneh has forfeited them. “In order to preserve an issue for appeal, a party ordinarily must raise the objection in the trial court. [Citation.] ‘The rule that contentions not raised in the trial court will not be considered on appeal is founded on considerations of fairness to the court and opposing party, and on the practical need for an orderly and efficient administration of the law.’ [Citations.] Otherwise, opposing parties and trial courts would be deprived of opportunities to correct alleged errors, and parties and appellate courts would be required to deplete costly resources ‘to address purported errors which could have been rectified in the trial court had an objection been made.’ [Citation.]” (In re S.C., supra, 138 Cal.App.4that p. 406.)
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
We concur: PERLUSS, P. J., WOODS, J.