Well I presume that as well; I hope someone here has experience with that and can tell how hard it is? Because I just had that 'wow!' experience ; it feels like they hand them out at the police station to anyone asking :) I know they are not, but some 'actual', non media enlarged information would be great!
IIRC the process is something like this (disclaimer, this is secondhand from listening to lawyers and I have no experience with the process):
1. Alleged victim goes to judge, gets temporary restraining order on essentially no evidence. This is supposed to be a stop-gap while further process is going on.
2. Alleged perpetrator is notified and a court date set to discuss whether the restraining order is appropriate.
Temporary restraining orders really require nothing more than an allegation to get. The idea is that if the situation is life-threatening, you don't want to wait for evidence, but they are also supposed to be temporary. Longer-term restraining orders are supposed to require evidence and an actual adversarial process.
The article does not say what sort of restraining order was at issue.
Imagine a person who is likely to kill/harm you in a fit of passion.
If the harasser could get carried away in an argument and start beating, but didn't leave the house planning to kill, then restraining orders can limit the time the harasser is around you and limit the time before they 'blow their cool'. When the harasser breaks the restraining order and comes near you "just to talk, I promise", you can get the police involved straight away, and the harasser can be hauled off before they lose their cool, and things escalate.
So you get a restraining order and when they approach you just to talk anyway and you call the cops to come arrest them because they were not following the restraining order then they go into the same murderous rage. I am really not seeing how it is helpful, it would be illegal for them to harass you anyway.
Generally (yes there are cases of abuse-of-the-system) these temporary restraining orders are the result of domestic violence situations. The abuser is given a restraining order, and in conjunction the police provide some extra level of protection if it is a case of "(s)he may come back". It is a legal way of allowing the police to diffuse a situation before it gets worse - because there would otherwise be no good way to stop an offender from doing it again until an assault is in progress. It's a relatively effective way of the legal system saying "look, you got us involved, now we are requiring you to take a few days to calm down, and we'll deal with it after cooler heads are present".
In some places, restraining orders can be a barrier to things like purchasing a gun. But generally speaking, restraining orders alone aren't enough to prevent life-threatening situations.
Are there any jurisdictions where it is a barrier to, say, purchasing a knife? I doubt it. Again, if I thought my life was in danger, a restraining order would not be sought.
Oh I agree with you. If I thought someone might actually try to kill me (not just hurt me), a restraining order is the last thing I would get. I'd go into hiding instead. But I understand that to be the theory.
This person knows where you live, where you work, who all your friends are, your family.
Yeah, right. You are expected to quit your job, take your kids out of school (who are possibly also his kids), move hundreds of miles away, and possibly still not get away because they are following you around. On a whim. Oh, and never contact your friends and family again, they can be watching.
a restraining order is the last thing I would get. I'd go into hiding instead
Not an option for some people. You need savings and cash while hiding. What if you have children, can you just pull them out of school (say), while you hide? How long would you hide for? 5 years?
No necessarily, the custody issues might be solved. e.g. what if a couple (with kids) break up due to the husband beating the wife and kids. Father gets no custody and there is a restraining order to prevent him contacting them (y'know so he doesn't beat them again).
I'm confused as to why you are under the impression that restraining orders are 'normal', or that they hand them out to anyone asking, based on a single data point of one person getting one restraining order?
There are 2 to 3 million of them handed out each year [1].
If not "normal," that's certainly _common_. There is no proof or evidence required to issue one. The judge only reads a description of events. It is not required for the restrained party to be there to defend or present counter-evidence.
It's simply a 5-10 minute meeting between a judge and a person who alleges "fear" or "emotional harm." Exact laws vary from state to state.
They are free to file and cost 5-10 thousand dollars to appeal.
The 2-3 million figure is based on an _estimate_ by http://www.mediaradar.org/ and http://www.acfc.org/, which are not neutral sources (though this does not mean that they are wrong). The one clear piece of evidence cited is ~38,000 orders for Pennsylvania, which comprises 4% of the US population.
Edit: My initial comment understated the issue. Media Radar states that women are twice as likely to engage in unidirectional (unreciprocated) violence towards their partners are men. While domestic violence against men is real and subject to a lot of shame and silence, this estimate seems insane: I have previously seen figures like 10% of domestic violence stemming from women.
Right you are talking about a temporary restraining orders, right? For a full fledged restraining order there is at least supposed to be a showing of evidence and an opportunity to rebut the evidence on the part of the other party, right? The article you link to seems to lump these together with no real discussion of the process.
The idea behind a lax standard for TRO's is that if there is danger, the court should temporarily try to mitigate it, pending further process.
That was my whole reason for asking; they seem common because of the media. Now that I see other comments here it seems really easy to get them which seems like something open to abuse. I am just surprised because they are so uncommon here.
Probably varies from state to state. I once had a temporary restraining order served on someone based on nothing but my say so. I went to a judge with my lawyer, and the other party wasn't there and knew nothing about it until they were served.
To an outside observer it probably looked pretty mundane, but inside the little circle of conflict there were real dangers and the judge went with caution.
