C.C., Appellant-Petitioner v. M.N., W.N., Jr., and W.N., Sr., Appellees-Respondents (2026)

MEMORANDUM DECISION

Case Summary

[1] C.C. petitioned for orders for protection against M.N., W.N., Jr., and W.N., Sr. (collectively, “the Respondents”), based on alleged harassment. The trial court denied the petitions, and C.C. now appeals. We affirm.

Facts and Procedural History

[2] C.C.’s home in Lafayette sits roughly three feet from a commercial building leased by the Respondents, who use it as an event and podcast space. Appellant's App. Vol. 2 p. 23; Tr. p. 45. In June 2025, C.C. filed three petitions for orders for protection—one against each of the Respondents—alleging “repeated acts of harassment” and itemizing 16 incidents. Appellant's App. Vol. 2 pp. 10, 11, 12, 17-22. The trial court held a consolidated hearing in December 2025, at which C.C. appeared by counsel, testified, and offered five exhibits, and each Respondent appeared pro se and testified.

[3] C.C., who had lived in her home for 23 years, agreed that she had been “tasked with kind of being the neighborhood watch.” Tr. p. 10. In the roughly 18 months before the hearing—the same period the Respondents had operated their business there—C.C. called police “upwards of ninety to one hundred times” about events she attributed to the Respondents and their patrons. Id. at 47. She also videotaped the men from the second floor of her home and from the street in front of it, a practice she said she began after police told her that video was better than photographs. See id. at 16. She described a series of encounters in which she claimed the Respondents called her vulgar and profane names. See id. at 22-23, 26-27, 30-31, 33, 35-37. C.C. testified that she was afraid of the Respondents and didn't feel safe, id. at 24, 38-39, but when asked whether there had been “any contact or remarks or intimidation or threatening” since she filed the petitions six months earlier, she answered, “[n]ot from them,” and added that “[t]hey don't even park around my house anymore,” id. at 41.

[4] Race surfaced repeatedly at the hearing from both sides. C.C. testified that each Respondent called her a “crazy white bi*ch,” id. at 22-23, 33, 36-37, and that W.N., Sr., also called her a “racist” and a “racist bi*ch” after she called police or asked him to move a car, id. at 26-27. W.N., Sr., admitted that he had “trolled [C.C.] on the internet” by posting her photograph and calling her “a racist POS.” Id. at 60, 62. C.C. testified that she saw the post in September 2025, after she filed the petitions. Id. at 39-40. W.N., Sr., in turn, testified that the Respondents were “harassed, marginalized,” and subjected to numerous police calls that he attributed to “the color of [his] skin,” and M.N. testified that C.C. and her husband “automatically blame” the Respondents for neighborhood problems because their establishment is “predominantly black.” Id. at 54-55, 58-60. M.N. also testified, over a hearsay objection, that C.C.’s husband had called him names, including “fat a** roly poly”; the trial court admitted the testimony as a statement against penal interest and potential provocation. Id. at 49-50. The Respondents denied the in-person name-calling C.C. attributed to them. Id. at 54, 58, 62.

[5] At the close of the hearing, the trial court observed that it was “getting told very opposite stories”—“Getting very extreme story. Very extreme story”—and, noting that the “[t]ruth is always somewhere in the middle,” acknowledged that it was the court's “job to determine what's happening.” Id. at 63. Having taken the matter under advisement, the trial court denied all three petitions in March 2026. Appellant's App. Vol. 2 pp. 23-24. Specifically, the court found that C.C. “has appointed herself as the neighborhood watch” and viewed the Respondents “from a lens of negativity,” and that the video she offered showed a group of men “talking, laughing and smoking” on the sidewalk who “were not committing any crime, nor directing their activities or conversation in any way toward [C.C.] or her property.” Id. at 23. It found that C.C. “frequently videotapes the men” and “frequently calls police to ‘report’ events in the neighborhood,” that the Respondents are “outside on either the sidewalk or street and are not directing any activity or action toward [C.C.] or her home,” and that over time this “monitoring” had “bred resentment.” Id. at 24. “From the evidence and testimony presented (including testimony that the Petitioner's husband has directed racially derogatory words toward the Respondents in his interactions with them),” the court concluded that C.C.’s “dislike of the Respondents is in no small part ․ based on their race and the behavior she attributes to them on that basis.” Id. at 23. The court found that the Respondents “have not issued threats,” that their responses—including “racist bi*ch”—amounted to “[c]riticism” that “does not equate [to] harassment,” and that C.C. “has been the one to initiate and provoke” the exchanges. Id. at 24. The court concluded C.C. “failed to meet her burden of proof that the Respondents have committed ․ harassment.” Id.

[6] C.C., pro se, now appeals.

Discussion

[7] Because the Respondents have not filed an appellee's brief, we apply a less stringent standard of review and may reverse if C.C. establishes prima facie error. See H.W. v. M.R., 266 N.E.3d 737, 741 (Ind. Ct. App. 2025).

[8] C.C. bore the burden of proof below and lost. Because the trial court denied her petitions after a hearing, “she is appealing from a negative judgment,” and “we will reverse only if we are convinced that the evidence as a whole leads unerringly and unmistakably to a decision opposite that reached by the trial court.” Costello v. Zollman, 51 N.E.3d 361, 367 (Ind. Ct. App. 2016), trans. denied. In conducting that review, we neither reweigh the evidence nor determine the credibility of witnesses, and we consider only the evidence favorable to the trial court's decision. S.D. v. G.D., 211 N.E.3d 494, 497 (Ind. 2023). This deference is warranted because “our trial courts are far better than appellate courts at weighing evidence and assessing witness credibility.” Id. at 498 (quotation omitted). “[T]his is particularly true in protective order cases, where our trial judges see and hear the parties interact as they relay details about intensely personal, traumatic events.” Id.

[9] Under the Indiana Civil Protection Order Act, Indiana Code chapter 34-26-5, a person who “is or has been subjected to harassment” may petition for a protection order against a person “who has committed repeated acts of harassment against the petitioner.” Ind. Code § 34-26-5-2(b). For purposes of Indiana Code chapter 34-26-5, “harassment” “means conduct directed toward a victim that includes, but is not limited to, repeated or continuing impermissible contact” that (1) “would cause a reasonable person to suffer emotional distress” and (2) “actually causes the victim to suffer emotional distress.” I.C. § 34-6-2.1-80(a).

[10] To justify the issuance of an order for protection, “the harassment must objectively include a present and credible threat.” E.W. v. J.K., 253 N.E.3d 1111, 1113 (Ind. Ct. App. 2025) (citing S.H. v. D.W., 139 N.E.3d 214, 220 (Ind. 2020)), trans. denied; see also I.C. § 34-26-5-9(h) (“A finding that ․ harassment has occurred sufficient to justify the issuance of an order under this section means that a respondent represents a credible threat to the safety of a petitioner or a member of a petitioner's household.”). “A credible threat is plausible or believable.” E.W., 253 N.E.3d at 1113 (quotation omitted). “The burden is on the petitioner to show, by a preponderance of the evidence, that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the respondent presently intends to harm the petitioner or the petitioner's family.” Id. (quotation omitted); see also I.C. § 34-26-5-9(h).

[11] Here, the trial court found that the Respondents “have not issued threats” and that their responses were “[c]riticism” that “does not equate [to] harassment.” The court watched C.C.’s own video and found the men engaged in no crime and directed nothing toward her. Although the Respondents denied the in-person name-calling at the hearing, the court did not rest on those denials; it found that C.C. “has been the one to initiate and provoke” the exchanges through her persistent videotaping and reporting. C.C. herself estimated that she called police “upwards of ninety to one hundred times” in the eighteen months before the hearing. Based on the evidence and these findings, the court concluded that C.C. “failed to meet her burden of proof that the Respondents have committed ․ harassment.” That determination is amply supported, and on this record the evidence does not lead unerringly to the opposite conclusion. C.C.’s contrary arguments ask us to reweigh the evidence and credit her account over the trial court's assessment, which we cannot do.¹

[12] C.C. also contends that the trial court was biased, pointing to its observation that her dislike of the Respondents was “in no small part ․ based on their race.” A judge is presumed unbiased, and overcoming that presumption requires a showing that “the judge has personal prejudice for or against a party.” L.G. v. S.L., 88 N.E.3d 1069, 1073 (Ind. 2018).

[13] Here, the challenged statement was a factual inference that the trial court drew from the testimony before it, including the parties’ competing accounts of how race colored their dealings, and C.C. identifies nothing suggesting the court was motivated by anything other than the record and the governing law. Accordingly, she has not overcome the presumption that the judge was unbiased.

[14] C.C. has failed to establish prima facie error.

[15] Affirmed.

FOOTNOTES

1.   C.C. argues that the trial court erred in admitting M.N.’s testimony that her husband called him “fat a** roly poly” because (1) her husband “[wa]sn't in court under oath and subject to cross-examination” and (2) “roly poly” “is a non-existent racial derogatory word.” Appellant's Br. p. 13 (underlining omitted). We need not decide whether the testimony was properly admitted, because any error was harmless. See Ind. Appellate Rule 66(A) (error is not grounds for reversal “where its probable impact, in light of all the evidence in the case, is sufficiently minor so as not to affect the substantial rights of the parties”); Hayko v. State, 211 N.E.3d 483, 492 (Ind. 2023) (“Ultimately, the error's probable impact is sufficiently minor when—considering the entire record—our confidence in the outcome is not undermined.”), reh'g denied. The trial court's denial of the petitions rested on the absence of any credible threat or harassment by the Respondents—not on any testimony about C.C.’s husband, which the order mentions only in explaining its view of C.C.’s attitude toward the Respondents—so the ruling could not have affected the judgment.

Vaidik, Judge.

Tavitas, C.J., and May, J., concur.