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June 13, 2022 \u2014 Five years after filing a lawsuit against Mendocino County and her ex-boyfriend, Amanda Carley will have a chance to make her case in court.\nCarley is suing the county, the probation department, her boss at the time, and Noble Waidelich, who is now the chief of the Ukiah Police Department. At a hearing on Friday morning, Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Jeanine Nadel granted Carley\u2019s request for a jury trial, scheduled to begin on September 26 of this year.\nThe fifteen-count complaint, filed in April 2017, accuses Waidelich of physical and emotional abuse and breach of oral contract, for failing to adhere to agreements to pay Carley her share of an investment in a home they bought together. Her complaints against the county and probation department stem from what she alleges was a conspiracy of mistreatment after she made contradictory reports of abuse by Waidelich. Waidelich was a member of the Ukiah Police Department and Carley was an adult probation officer. Defendant Albert Ganter was the head of the department in 2015, when Carley\u2019s daughter Madisyn told a school counselor that her mother was being abused. The counselor, who was required to report the statement to the authorities, did so, which led to Andrew Porter of the Mendocino County Sheriff\u2019s Office interviewing Carley in April of 2015.\nPorter was was dubious at her denials of abuse. \u201cI explained to Amanda that I believed she was minimizing incidents and involvement and I told her I understand her concerns,\u201d he wrote. He added that \u201cAmanda appeared deceptive and caught off guard by several of my questions and she countered with what sounded like a rehearsed statement about not being abused or being held against her will.\u201d\nPorter wrote that prior to his interview with Carley, the Ukiah Police Department hired independent investigator Bill Cogbill to investigate Waidelich, but nothing came of it because Carley denied that she was being abused. Porter\u2019s final entries about his contacts with Carley state that he spoke with her again in July of 2015. \u201cI told Amanda I did not believe she was honest with me when I previously interviewed her,\u201d he reported. \u201cAmanda agreed with me that she was not.\u201d He concluded by describing photographs that Carley sent him of injuries she said Waidelich inflicted on her. But by then, District Attorney David Eyster had returned the investigation to the sheriff\u2019s office for lack of credible evidence. Eyster did not prosecute Waidelich.\nMichelle Roberts, the director of the Fort Bragg office of Project Sanctuary, a non-profit organization that advocates for, counsels, and houses families who are seeking to escape domestic violence, told KZYX last year, in an interview about a separate suit against Waidelich by Amanda Carley\u2019s daughter Madisyn, that it\u2019s typical for people experiencing domestic violence to deny it. \u201cPeople often don\u2019t understand that there\u2019s many reasons people stay in abusive relationships, or that it takes them a long time to get out,\u201d she said.\nCarley believes she was unfairly punished for behaving as a typical victim of domestic violence. In 2016, Eyster placed her on the \u201cBrady list,\u201d a database of law enforcement officers who are known to be dishonest. This effectively disqualifies officers from testifying in court, because they are not considered reliable. Eyster believed that the contradictory statements in Porter\u2019s report made Carley vulnerable to a subpoena if she testified in prosecutions. Carley claimed that Eyster and the probation department conspired to place her on the list, investigate and demote her, and deprive her of her weapon, in order to silence her.\nThe 2017 complaint alleges that, following her placement on the \u201cBrady list,\u201d she was subject to a hostile work environment in the probation department, including sexual harassment and constant humiliation. She contends the deprivation of her service weapon rendered her unable to fulfill her Constitutional duties in a manner that ensured her own safety and that of others. She claims that the county, the department, and her boss at the time, Albert Ganter, authorized conditions that were discriminatory and designed to punish her for reporting the crime of domestic violence of her.\nEyster was included in the original complaint, but the court found that he was protected by the anti-SLAPP statute. This is a free speech law in California that protects people from being personally sued for four categories of speech about activities \u201cin connection with a public issue,\u201d including written and oral statements connected with lawful, official proceedings. Eyster was removed from the list of defendants four years ago.\n\nThe case wound its way through the court for years. In 2020, it traveled from judicial review to an \u201cactive shelf\u201d to the basement of the courthouse in Ukiah. On Friday morning, Judge Nadel faced lawyers for the plaintiff, the county, and Waidelich, and demanded to know why no one had done any work on t...