Clark County sheriff’s deputies are investigating a Vancouver defense attorney for allegedly forging documents related to a civil protection order against her client.
Josephine Townsend is being investigated for allegations of forgery and complicity to violation of a protection order, according to a search warrant affidavit filed last week in Clark County Superior Court. Court records do not indicate Townsend has been charged with any crime.
In an email to The Columbian, Townsend largely reiterated what she had told investigators: that her client and his girlfriend gave her documents to scan and send to them and that she had never seen the allegedly forged document before. She further declined to share specifics of what her client told her, citing rules of professional conduct.
According to the affidavit, deputies arrested Travon Santiago, 26, in December on suspicion of first-degree assault. A judge ordered a criminal protection order, as well as GPS monitoring, in that case prohibiting Santiago from coming within 1,000 feet of the victim, Joseph Prendergast.
Around that time, Prendergast’s significant other, Angela Foss, filed for a civil protection order against Santiago. The civil protection order was issued in January and restricted Santiago from coming within 5,000 feet of her, according to court records.
On April 25, Judge Suzan Clark issued an order to change the distance restriction in the criminal protection order involving Prendergast to 500 feet. Deputies learned that was because Santiago’s apartment was roughly 1,000 feet from Prendergast’s home. But, they said the civil protection order prohibiting Santiago from coming within 5,000 feet of Foss was never changed, according to the affidavit.
On July 17, deputies responded to a 911 call from Foss reporting a violation of the civil protection order. When deputies accessed the online GPS monitoring system, they saw Santiago was at his apartment, which was in violation of the 5,000-foot restriction, court records state.
When deputies went to the apartment, Santiago was uncooperative, they said, and his girlfriend presented them with a document that claimed the protection order had been modified. (Court documents do not make it clear which protection order was being referred to — the civil or criminal one.)
Deputies said Santiago’s girlfriend was on the phone with someone they learned to be Townsend, Santiago’s attorney. Deputies said the document Santiago’s girlfriend gave them had a different case number from the civil protection order they were there to enforce, the affidavit states.
Ultimately, the deputies left the apartment.
Santiago’s girlfriend later called the sheriff’s office. She told a sergeant that Santiago’s attorney, Townsend, had sent her an order showing the protection order had been modified. The woman forwarded the order to the sergeant, which deputies noted was dated April 25 and now had the correct case number for the civil protection order. They said it also had Judge Clark’s electronic signature — with the same time stamp, down to the second, as the modified criminal protection order — along with the clerk’s office’s e-filing stamp, according to court records.
The sheriff’s office’s records unit was unable to find any record of the order Santiago’s girlfriend sent to the sergeant. The county clerk’s office was also unable to find a record of that order, but it did find in the civil case file a motion to modify the protection order dated July 18, the day after deputies responded to Santiago’s apartment, the affidavit states.
The sergeant said he began to suspect the order had been forged, and he said he found inconsistencies in the markings on the order, according to court records.
Investigators followed up with Santiago’s girlfriend, who said she was frustrated because the couple were assured the protection order had been modified. She said she was also frustrated with Townsend because it took hours for Townsend to send her the order, according to the affidavit.
Deputies also showed Santiago’s girlfriend the motion filed July 18 to modify the civil protection order with narratives requesting the change and with Santiago’s signature. Santiago told deputies he did not write the narratives and that it wasn’t his signature. He said his name was misspelled in the signature, court records state.
Deputies met with Clark, who said she had never seen the order Santiago’s girlfriend had provided, and the judge said she never signed it, according to the affidavit.
Investigators reviewed the recording of the court hearing in which Clark agreed to set the distance provision in the criminal protection order involving Prendergast at 500 feet. But Clark noted the civil protection order still prohibited him from coming within 5,000 feet of Foss, and Santiago would need to file a motion in the civil case for that judge to consider changing it, court records state.
Townsend sent deputies an email earlier this month saying, “I am not sure what is going on with the client. But here is what we have on the file,” the affidavit states. The email included the order modifying the criminal protection order to 500 feet and the July 18 motion to modify the civil order.
The investigator said he replied to Townsend with the order that Santiago’s girlfriend had sent him, and he asked Townsend whether she could confirm she’d sent that order, according to court records.
Townsend replied to the deputy two days later, saying Santiago and his girlfriend provided documents to her office to be scanned. She said her office did not create the documents, and it advised the couple that some of the documents were not in the court file. She said her office told the couple they would need to go to civil court for the order they were seeking and that the narratives were e-signed by Santiago, the affidavit states.
Townsend has since withdrawn from Santiago’s cases, citing professional rules around confidentiality, court records show.
“Based on all this, I believe Josephine Townsend received a modification for one of two protection orders on behalf of her client. Ms. Townsend was contacted by her client on the night of 17 July 2024 who advised Ms. Townsend that law enforcement had arrived to arrest her client for violating the unmodified order. I believe Ms. Townsend then forged an order modifying the second protection order and emailed it to her client to present to law enforcement and thus evade arrest by deception,” the investigator wrote in the affidavit.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include Josephine Townsend’s response to The Columbian’s inquiries.
