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[ NEIGHBORHOOD ](https://www.citywatchla.com/neighborhood-politics)
# If Your Family Were Being Stalked, Who Would Protect You?
October 12 2026
Written by Cody Lightfoot.
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MARSY'S LAW - Imagine a 54-year-old man fixates on your child. He won't stop. Then he turns on you and the rest of your family.
You take him to court. In August 2024, a judge orders him to stay away from your family, your home, and your workplace, and rules that even talking about the family on his YouTube channel violates the order. That doesn’t stop him either. So the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, which prosecutes misdemeanors across the city, files 26 charges: most for violating the restraining order, plus two counts of stalking and four of willful cruelty to a child. He still doesn’t stop. In October 2025, a judge revokes his bond and issues a warrant.
This is not a hypothetical situation. It is People v. D'Amato, Los Angeles Superior Court case No. 24CJCM07073-01. The defendant is a YouTube streamer. He found the child, a 16-year-old boy, online.
Two months after bond was revoked and the warrant was issued, on Dec. 23, 2025, the original charges ended in a plea deal. The defendant pleaded no contest to two counts of disobeying a court order. The court dismissed every stalking charge and every child cruelty charge. He got three years of probation.
The family says no one asked them first. Enri Marini, who holds his own restraining order against the defendant, filed a brief in the case in April. It says prosecutors told the judge the victims had been consulted and had agreed to the deal. According to the brief, the family was never told about plea talks and learned of the deal only after the judge accepted it. California's Constitution, through Marsy's Law, gives crime victims the right, on request, to be told before a case is resolved and to be heard before a plea is accepted.
Next, the money. The court ordered the defendant to pay the mother $7,757.91 in restitution for her losses. To get the payments to her, the City Attorney’s office gave him her workplace address, where he had earlier served her with court papers. The court's July 31 record says it in one line: "The People provide the victim's address to the Defendant in open court." Two years earlier, a judge had barred him from taking any action to obtain the protected family's address or location. Now the prosecutors handed him one.
A family being stalked should be able to count on its prosecutors to guard where they can be found, not hand that over in open court, even if the defendant already has the address.
On July 31, 2026, the court set payments at $25 a month. In August 2026, the court raised the payments to just $75 a month. By the time his probation term ends in December 2028, he will have paid about $2,150, roughly 28 cents on every dollar the court ordered. Unpaid restitution remains enforceable as a civil judgment, but collecting it puts the burden on the victim. State law provides 10 percent annual interest on restitution. None of the orders include it, and the record does not show prosecutors asking for it.
You might be thinking this family should appeal. They can't. In misdemeanor cases, a California appellate court has held that only the prosecution or the defendant can appeal a restitution order (People v. Subramanyan, 2016). The mother can ask the trial judge to enforce her rights, but if her own prosecutors accept an order that shortchanges her, she cannot take it to a higher court herself.
The prosecutor on the case is Deputy City Attorney Ethan Greene. At an Aug. 27 hearing, he called in by phone from another trial. Court audio captures three moments every voter should hear about.
First, the judge had ordered the defendant in July to delete his online posts about the victims. The mother reported to the court that posts and videos were still up following the ordered deadline of August 10th. Greene told the judge the deletion was "not the court's order," but "rather an agreement." The court's own July 31 record says the judge ordered it. Greene called the material "pre-plea posts," but the order reached back to January 2024. More than two years after the family first went to court, posts about and containing photos of a minor boy were still online. Greene told the judge the mother had sent him dozens of emails, none of which he had passed to the defense. She brought the screenshots to court and handed them over herself.
Second, the office had accused the defendant of violating his probation, citing threats of violence in an April 2026 filing and a July 20 post. On July 31, the judge found him in preliminary violation, revoked his probation and set an Aug. 27 hearing to schedule a violation hearing. On Aug. 27, Greene told the judge he had no further evidence and asked to continue the matter to the next court date instead of setting the hearing. The judge set another scheduling date for Jan. 27, 2027. Probation remains revoked, and no violation hearing has been set.
Third, the judge ruled that her son's name appearing in the defendant's livestream chat did not break the protective order. In April, Greene's own office had argued in writing that it did. The name can be blocked from the chat or at least removed when seen. When the mother raised it, and the judge argued with her, Greene said nothing. He let a victim speak up for her son on her own.
Two people say they heard what Greene thinks of all this. Armando Herman, a process server who was in a courthouse hallway on April 24 with Greene, the family and a member of the office's victim services staff, says so in a sworn declaration. Marini, who was also there, says so in a verified court filing. Both say Greene acknowledged, in substance, that Marsy's Law had been violated in this case, then said "there are no causes of action for violating Marsy's Law," meaning there was nothing the family could sue over. According to Herman, Greene also told the mother her input was "irrelevant" and "moot." Greene and the City Attorney’s office did not respond to questions sent Oct. 8 about the plea, the address, restitution, the Aug. 27 hearing and the hallway conversation.
This matters now because the person in charge is leaving. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto lost her June primary. On Nov. 3, voters will choose between Marissa Roy and John McKinney, and mail ballots are arriving now. Whoever wins decides how the City Attorney’s office treats victims and whether Marsy’s Law will be upheld.
Before you mark your ballot, here are a few questions both candidates should answer, with a firm yes or no:
1\. Will your office tell victims before it agrees to a plea deal, and make sure they can be heard?
2\. Will your office stop giving victims' addresses to defendants so they can mail restitution?
3\. Will your prosecutors ask for the interest state law already provides on restitution, every time?
We deserve a City Attorney who treats victims' rights as part of the job, not an annoyance. Voters deserve those answers before the ballots come back. So does the family whose case shows why these questions matter.
***(Cody Lightfoot** is an independent journalist with HeroNotZero ([heronotzero.org](http://heronotzero.org/)), where he covers online harassment and victims’ rights in California. His reporting draws on streamers’ own videos, court documents, and public records.)*
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