A man’s Facebook posts rose to the level of a true threat to kidnap children, a published ruling from the Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Two.
The ruling also reversed the defendant’s conviction for perjury, finding that statements written in a proposed court order are not written under the penalty of perjury.
Robert Michael “Vanleeuwen” Tafoya was convicted by jury July 21, 2022, of stalking, eight counts of forgery, seven counts of perjury and attempted child kidnapping.
All charges stemmed from the long-term harassment and stalking of a woman he met at a restaurant. He claimed to have known the woman in high school, and that they had two kids together. The woman denied ever having a romantic relationship with him, and said her two children were born before she met Tafoya in 2015.
Tafoya would regularly come into her workplace, a fast-food restaurant, and stare at her. He would stand outside her apartment window and take photos of her and her children, then post the photos on Facebook. He once entered her apartment, refused to leave, slept overnight, then made her breakfast the next morning. His behavior continued to escalate. The woman found tracking devices inside her car. He showed up while she was shopping with her daughters. The woman obtained a restraining order in June 2016.
The woman moved in with her ex-husband for protection, and would regularly find his car vandalized. She believed Tafoya would search her car and steal items from her porch in an attempt to make her scared of the neighborhood. She obtained a second restraining order on Nov. 29, 2016.
Tafoya then left her daughter a necklace at her school office with a note saying he will never leave her side, and that he was always around.
Tafoya would continue posting photos on his Facebook, including a picture of a baby he claimed was the woman’s newly born child. He claimed fatherhood over the newly born baby, and said he helped choose the name.
In March 2018, Tafoya lingered outside one of the children’s middle schools during drop-off time, and told a security guard he was there to pick up his daughter. The guard alerted the front office, and Tafoya walked away. He made a Facebook post saying he was going to pick up the girls from school.
He was arrested on March 20, 2018. Tafoya pleaded guilty to making a criminal threat on July 12, 2019, and was released the same day.
Tafoya filed a petition June 13, 2019 to establish visitation rights and a parental relationship with one of the daughters, using the name Robert Vanleeuwen. He also asked for the daughter’s last name to be changed to Vanleeuwen.
On Aug. 29, 2019, he filed a request for a restraining order against the woman, in which he claimed she was an ex-fiance of eight years. He falsely claimed to have served the woman with the petition.
He later asked for a default awarding of the restraining order, because the woman did not respond to the petition he did not serve her.
A court granted his request on Sept. 10, 2019.
Tafoya asked investigator Hector Santana of the Riverside District Attorney’s Office for help enforcing the order. Santana learned that Tafoya’s story was fraudulent, and helped the woman prove her daughters’ true parentage.
On Oct. 22, 2019, the District Attorney’s Office recommended the family court orders in Tafoya’s favor be revoked. A court-ordered biological test proved he was not the father.
Prosecutors filed the case relevant to the appeal on Jan. 9, 2020, alleging falsified statements in his court filings, and a true threat on Facebook to kidnap the woman’s daughter. The woman had quit her job because she felt harassed by Tafoya, and had a fourth child after marrying.
During trial, Tafoya gave a friend his Facebook log-in credentials so that he could continue making posts under the claim that he was the father to the woman’s children.
He was convicted on Dec. 13, 2021, and sentenced to 25 years and eight months in prison.
He appealed, arguing that the convictions on his stalking count must be reversed. The conviction was based on his Facebook posts, which are protected by his freedom of speech, he argued.
The Court of Appeal disagreed.
“To the contrary, the conviction was based on five years of persistent unwelcome contact and tracking, amounting to harassment that culminated in defendant’s statement on social media that he planned to pick up (the woman’s) child without her permission,” the ruling says.
The Court of Appeal also said that the post would constitute a “credible threat” to carry out a kidnapping.
The ruling did throw out one of his convictions. He was convicted of perjury due to the form for a restraining order he had filled out, and which a judge had signed.
The Court of Appeal found that statements filled out on a form are not under oath.
“However, there is no statement executed under penalty of perjury in the restraining order, although there had been such a statement in the proof of service that had been the original basis for Count 10,” the ruling said.
Case information
Case No. RIF2000128
Appellate Case Nos. E079488, E081708
Cynthia Jones, under appointment, represented Tafoya.
Deputy Attorneys General Collette Cavalier and Ksenia Gracheva represented the People.
Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Two, Presiding Justice Manuel Ramirez wrote the opinion, which Justices Douglas Miller and Michael Raphael joined.
Read the ruling here.
