Debbie Gibson Gets Restraining Order; Does She Need It?

1980s singer Debbie Gibson has filed a restraining order against Bassas Jorge Puigdollers, a man from Spain who runs her fan club, according to the Huffington Post. Gibson claims that Puigdollers is going to all of her nationwide concerts, appears backstage, and sometimes follows her to her hotel room. Gibson filed the restraining order after Puigdollers came to her Los Angeles home and knocked on the door. Gibson claims to be afraid for her life.

The emergency restraining order would allow Puigdollers to get within 10-yards of Gibson while she is appearing at shows, but would require Puigdollers to remain at least 100 yards away from her home. Puigdollers claims that he attempts to get multiple autographs from Gibson to give to other fan club members who can not get to her shows. To me, on the surface, it sounds like Gibson may be overreacting to a polite fan from Spain who has different cultural contact customs than our standoffish ones in the US.

But, with restraining order issues, you can never be sure of what the victim may be over-stating, or not including on paper. I had to file a restraining order during the 1990s and it was not a pleasant experience. The first temporary restraining order (that holds you over until the hearing for a more permanent one) has you explaining all kinds of details about your situation to a stranger called an advocate, and sometimes to other people as well, before you fill out the papers.

As you are explaining your personal details about the situation, your mind is racing for selective information; you have questions how much you can say before your attacker kills you for stating details, and there's the wonder of how the gossip will injure you as people start to discuss the situation that you are bringing to light. It would be nice if nobody gossiped about restraining order information, but here we are gossiping about Debbie Gibson, and my information was juicier than hers with weapons involved.

To get my restraining order, I finally decided to tell just one small part of the overall picture, and just enough to get the protection that I honestly needed. But, even with this scaled-down version of events, it was horribly embarrassing for me to have my personal affairs being discussed by strangers. With Debbie Gibson claiming that she is afraid for her life because of a fan club president going to every show, and trying to talk to her, I wonder if there is more to this story than what she is telling.

If Debbie Gibson is not telling everything on her restraining order, then perhaps she still has something to be worried about. Puigdollers is claiming that he still plans to go to all five of her May New Jersey concerts, which the temporary restraining order allows him to do. On Friday, when Gibson goes before the judge to get a more permanent order the judge has the option of modifying the order to include no concert attendance for Puigdollers. If the judge does not modify the order, Debbie Gibson will still have her fan.

If you are thinking about getting a restraining order, you may want to do things a little differently than I did. Instead of allowing strange advocates to question you to find out what your story is, decide beforehand what you will tell and have it all written down in the words that you would like to use before going. Have photos or other documentation ready to submit with your words.

They say to give copies of your restraining order to everybody around you that might see your attacker before you do; know that this is going to happen before you decide on your final words. Don't believe for one second that the piece of paper that the restraining order is written on will give you any protection; your attacker will be mad when he hears about you talking, so plan accordingly.

After the restraining order is issued, call everything in to law enforcement from that date forward so that it to goes on record. Call for big things and call for little things; if you show up injured or dead later, your call list will help to put your attacker behind bars.