ROs suffer from a number of deficiencies: if someone's really bent on doing harm, they can be grossly ineffective. And in some cases (particularly child custody, though also other divorce proceedings, as well as immigration situations due to provisions of VAWA), ROs can be grossly misused to attempt to gain benefits not otherwise available.
Typically a TRO should have a hearing within a few weeks, however this isn't always the case (particularly in more complicated situations), so "temporary" may be an extended period of time.
Orders are rarely granted reciprocally, that is, as mutual stay-away orders, though these are granted in some cases. A unilateral order turns what are otherwise lawful actions into criminal ones (usually misdemeanors, but not always). The requesting party may use the order to trap the restrained party, particularly as forms of indirect contact (as described in this story) may be construed as violations of the order.
Indeed. Among other things you have to tell the target where to stay away from (namely where you live, work, etc).
if someone really wants to hurt you, the restraining order contains all the information they need to carry out an attack.
The flip side of that statment is that in some situtations they are effective at stopping harm, and that they act as a deterrent.
The question isn't "do the orders do some good?", but "is this the best possible means to achieve the goals desired?" And in this I think the answer is "no".
That dismisses the collateral damage: orders are easy to obtain, can themselves be wielded as weapons, and are seen as part of the "getting even with" aspect of many failed relationships.
Truth is, relationship are messy, tangled, and deep. And when you put the law in the way of people doing what they do, the picture gets messier, not cleaner. When I was researching a couple of points for my comments above, I ran across the following link concerning reciprocal orders:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130821170316AA...
I got a restraining order on my soon-to-be ex about three weeks ago for him constantly harassing me. We were married 11 years, have three kids, and he has always been an emotional abuser to us.
Anyway, I was served with a temporary restraining order last night, which claimed the same things in his application, as mine. He wrote humiliating lies and twisted truths saying how I have always been the abuser, etc. I am sick because it's not true, and once again he is mirroring his abuse, onto me. I can't even believe the judge signed it, and if I was so awful, why didn't he say so during our interim parenting plan hearing? I just want to move on, and I have full custody (except for one day a week) so I want to know if anyone else has dealt with something similar?
The point is: the judge in issuing an order against her was applying precisely the same legal basis for doing so: an ex-parte order based on prima facie evidence. Or for those not versed in Latin: an order issued without notice to or testimony from the restrained, based on the presumption of validity of the statements of the petitioner.
I actually see some strong merits to this, and believe that reciprocal orders as a matter of course make quite a bit of sense. The objective isn't to punish but to secure the safety of the parties involved.
The response of the attorney in that thread is on point:
Meanwhile, what's the big deal? The restraining order says you can't contact him, which I'm sure you don't want to do anyway. So let it go and have your say in court. I'm not saying don't fight it, I'm just saying don't let it bother you.
The fact that in many jurisdictions there's also an unequal balance of costs in filing and fighting claims (a petitioner may request legal and other fees from the restrained, but not vice versa), there is even more potential for abuse.
It also suggests to me that a system under which the entire process is made far less adversarial, and in which a better system of shelters and resettlement is provided for, might be, on balance, a far more effective system. Again: the goal is to secure safety, not to punish. If there is actual violence or threats of violence, there are legal means to pursue these (and the order might stand as a sign of prior notice and concern).
A significant problem with "no contact" as it's construed, which can include 2nd-hand commentary from mutual acquaintances, or, as in the possible case of the G+ incident referenced, automated notifications through third-party electronic services, is that for someone unjustly restrained it makes the process of investigating the case very much more difficult.
And the costs are real. $2000 is a good low-order estimate of what a lawyer's retainer will require. If you're looking at a family / domestic situation, odds are that your family law attorney isn't versed in criminal law, which is where the order will land you. For something like this to explode to legal and incidental costs of $10k - $100k isn't unusual, and that's just the direct costs to the individuals, exclusive of court, police, service, and other costs. Which are merited for legitimate uses, but somewhat less so where abused.
Perhaps the reason why women seek TROs and ROs is because they are much more likely then men to be the victim of physical assault, stalking, harassment, or murder from their partners or former partners.
That's the common belief. How do we know it's true, and not a "just so" story?
My investigations into this led me to CDC reports (and others) showing that DV / IPV was largely 50/50. Harm was more often done to the smaller partner (i.e. women). But women also tended to use more weapons in their attacks.
These reports aren't hard to find. Most people don't look.
In particular, from the key findings sections of the report from the National Violence Against Women Survey:
"Women experience more intimate partner violence than do men: 22.1 percent of sur- veyed women, compared with 7.4 percent of surveyed men, reported they were physi- cally assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, boyfriend or girlfriend, or date in their lifetime; 1.3 per- cent of surveyed women and 0.9 percent of surveyed men reported experiencing such violence in the previous 12 months. Ap- proximately 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States." [1]
[1] https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/183781.pdf, page 6 under Key Findings
Further, women are more likely to be murdered by their partners than men. Safe Horizon's has a basic fact sheet that is pulled from sources at the bottom of the page: http://www.safehorizon.org/index/what-we-do-2/domestic-viole...
http://www.sp2.upenn.edu/ortner/docs/sorenson_doc2.pdf
Each year, more than one million people in the United States obtain restraining orders for intimate partner rape, physical assault, or stalking (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). An estimated 18.9% of the more than 5 million U.S. women and 4.3% of the more than 3 million U.S. men who are physically abused, raped, or stalked by an intimate partner each year seek and are granted a restraining order.
Whether or not that is the case, it is also possible that it is more that when they are (or, in the case of murder, expect to be) the victims of such things, they feel they don't have other effective remedies outside the legal system, whereas men feel more able to respond effectively (whether or not legally) with physical violence.
So these things to some extent perpetuate eachother.
The data is here. Common? You decide.
http://www.sp2.upenn.edu/ortner/docs/sorenson_doc2.pdf
The available information about restrained persons typically has been documented within the context of assessing the efficacy of restraining orders that were issued because of domestic violence. A random sample of 200 defendants in domestic violence or civil protection orders in San Diego during a 10-week period in 1990 (Meloy et al., 1997) indicates that most (72%) were men, and that the average age was 38 years (range 15 to 70 years). Caucasians predominated (57%), but there were substantial proportions of Blacks (22.5%) and Hispanics (17.5%) as well; ethnicity was unknown for 3% of the defendants. (Whether any of these groups were disproportionately represented is unknown; rates were not calculated.) A total of 11% had at least one contact with the county’s mental health services agency. A study of all 663 men against whom civil protection orders were granted in Quincy, Massachusetts (Klein, 1996), also in 1990, found an average age of 33 years (range 17 to 70 years) for the defendants. Half (49.5%) were not married, 46.6% were married, and 3.9% were formerly married. Almost 80% of the defendants had a prior criminal record within the state; more than half (54%) had at least one prior record for an alcohol or drug crime, usually drunk driving. Information on defendant ethnicity was not reported. The primary, albeit not the sole, focus of the present research is the person to be restrained. Such information can help increase the effectiveness of violence prevention efforts, which is not a small consideration given the history of violence among restrained persons—about three fourths of men against whom restraining orders are issued have prior criminal records (Isaac, Cochran, Brown, & Adam, 1994; Klein, 1996), and nearly half have committed a violent crime (Isaac et al., 1994).
Results indicate that about one fifth of the restraining orders are to restrain someone of the same gender as the protected person. It is not possible to ascertain with the available data whether these cases represent violence in gay and lesbian relationships or heterosexual pairings gone awry (e.g., to order the former male partner of a woman to stay away from her current male partner) or an unrealized relationship, as is often the situation in cases of stalking. Further research is needed to address the nature of same- and opposite- sex pairings in restraining orders.
That's quite a substantial amount of information posted, however, none of it appears to be relevant to the point in the GP comment.
I would also like to observe that if there are on the order of 1 restraining order in effect at a given time for every 100 members of the population (assuming the source article is correct), then, well, that's a lot of restraining orders.
> over someone that did nothing to cause you to have the disadvantage initially Disadvantages only exist in relation to others' advantages. Being in danger is a disadvantage, and threatening someone is an advantage. I understand that this is not just a question of gender, but that it's also related to the current conditions in the US that I only read about from afar (high gun posession and violence, relationship between police and citizens, mass incarceration and police brutality...) I don't know the situation, but saying women exploit restraining orders just smelled fishy.