As much as I enjoy picking on Stacey's bills, I think these don't suck. Orders of protection are given out like matchbooks to anyone who wants them, with little evidence, and mostly based on he-said/she-said nonsense. When couples get divorced, first one to file an order wins.

There are problems with the system and there are legal consequences without due process of law (loss of right to own a firearm, a blip on a security check for a job, etc.).

I'm all for having the respondent be allowed to defend himself. Currently, the system works like this:

Petitioner: i want an order of protection.
Judge (or more commonly some counselor): OK. Sends letter or makes call to respondent who then has to prove he's not a wife-beater.

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SayUncle
Can't we all just get a long gun?

I don't know about 990, but 995 seems to make sense to me. For instance, if you for not valid reason (ultimately determined if judge dismisses the petition) drag me to court, then I am forced to pay my legal fees. Now the petitioner would have to pay these costs. Hopefully this would lessen frivilous suits.

The only thing that worries me is that truly battered women may see this as another obstacle in filing.

Craig Thomas
(link...)

if this bill had been in existence as law when I was trying to get free of my abuser...rather than risk the financial burdens if I got a judge that felt I didn't need an order of protection to keep my ex-boyfriend from beating the daylights out of me anytime he felt like it, I would have just used the "frying pan method"...i.e. waited til he was asleep and bashed his brains in with an iron skillet.

Better to spend a ton of money defending a murder charge and KNOWING that he would never beat me again, than to have to fork over a ton of money because I got a judge that believes a woman's place is in the home with her mouth taped shut. And if you think judges like that don't exist, I have some prime land in the extreme southern region of Florida that you might want to take off my hands for a song.

"You can't fix stupid..." ~ Ron White"

"I never said I wasn't a brat..." ~ Talidapali

I would have just used the "frying pan method"...i.e. waited til he was asleep and bashed his brains in with an iron skillet.

There is just one more in a growing list of reasons to love that cast iron.

Come See Us at

The Hill Online

But who will protect the dingy white T-shirts?

Here's the situation: Knox County has as many OPs as all other counties in the state combined in a some years, and have averaged about 42% over a 6 year period, according to the Administrator Office of the Courts (AOC). Is Knox County the Wife Beater capital of Tennessee? Is there any evidence that our domestic violence rate is any different than the rest of the state?

These numbers put a huge strain on the police who must serve each warrant, and on the clerks office who rarely collects the costs from usually broke respondents. This costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. (This would be a great investigative story, if one could get the data from the Knox County clerk's office.)

And then there are stories, such as the wife who got an OP because because her husband wouldn't have sex with her. The 2 year old girl who got an OP against her mom. (I defended that Mom, successfully, as the Grandmother abused the OP system to avoid juvenile jurisdiction by taking out the OP in the name of 2 year old.) Or the "female impersonator" kicked out of his muscular boyfriend's home on the same day the ex parte OP was signed. Was the muscular boyfriend really afraid of the "female impersonator"? (At trial, he admitted he wasn't.)

Let's be honest. Abusers need to be "hit hard." (I guess that's a bad pun.) "Hit hard" is what the OP statutes contemplate by giving the plenary powers to Judges. There is no excuse for any violence, any threat, any imtimidation. None.

Likewise, there's no excuse for abusing the system. If Representative Campfield's intent is to limit the abuse, and give some due process rights to respondents, then I applaud him.

OPs are used in Knox County in lieu of eviction actions, in lieu of "dependency and neglect" petitions, in lieu of custody actions, and in lieu of child support actions. Just file it, and you've got the kids, child support, the house, and all you did is get to the court house first. Thus the "first to file wins" rule of Knox County domestic practice.

Often, spouses each file OPs against the other and both get granted. Neither pays court costs.

As I read bill giving the right to discovery in an OP, the lawyer (not the respondent) asks the questions, via telephone.

Another problem not addressed by any of these bills is the pecular practice in Knox County making the petition for the OP secret. By law, the petition is a public document, although the subsequent documents are not public. I've tested this by visiting all the surrounding counties and asking to randomly see the OPs. Try that in Knox, and you will find that you can't. (Very embarrassing if the 'denial of sex' OP saw the light of day.)

I respect Rep. Campfield for trying to make the system better.

PS: This discussion does not benefit from name calling. One blogger called him "A misogynist miscreant who would rather have living children suffer while promoting barbaric male domination." (That makes me laugh, because I know Stacy and know that he is a nice guy.) He is also a tireless campaigner who has listend to far more people complain about OPs in Knox County than anyone else.

I don't know how Stacey "X" came about but I do know he must be so traumatized by his girly first name that he now hates all women. Knox County government and Tennessee state government are already so embarassing that it's hard to top, but Stacey X is dangerous. His swagger and macho bill-proposing are real threats to women and children in this state. He has no understanding of reality for abused women, children and their mothers, nor the fear of men like him and the powerful legal and government systems. This is not funny. We all need to stand up and call bullshit on his efforts at intimidation.

I guess he has a mandate....

Mandates will be outlawed soon enough.

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Recursive blogwhore.