Family Forum / Parenting / Parenting / January 2008

The following is reproduced from a fathers' rights message board.  How many
young men contemplating marriage know about this sort of thing, I wonder. I
also find it interesting that this extraordinary development, which
apparently happened about six months ago, has not been covered in the
mainstream media.

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New Jersey Does Away with Any Pretense of Meaningful Judicial Oversight of
Restraining Orders

According to the Justice Department, two million restraining orders are
issued each year in the United States. The vast majority of these are
related to domestic violence allegations, yet research shows that these
orders often do not even involve an accusation of actual violence. Usually
all that's needed to obtain an order is a claim that the person to be
restrained "acted in a way that scared me" or was "verbally abusive"-what's
known as "shout at your spouse, lose your house."

Such orders are generally done ex parte, without the accused's knowledge and
with no opportunity afforded for him to defend himself. When an order is
issued, the man is booted out of his own home and can even be jailed if he
tries to contact his own children. In this way divorcing women get their
husbands out of their houses, and position themselves as their children's
sole caretakers, which helps them win custody.

A restrained person does have the opportunity to contest the orders at a
later hearing. However, these proceedings are often just a formality for
which little time is generally allotted, and the evidence standard is low.

Now a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling has done away with even the pretense
of meaningful judicial oversight to these orders. According to After-Hours
E-Filing Allowed for Domestic Violence Cases, TROs (New Jersey Law Journal,
7/24/07), all that is now needed for a restraining order is for the woman to
give testimony over the phone to an on-call judge. The judge then issues the
order electronically so it's immediately enforceable.

In other words, all a woman has to do is pretend to be frightened over the
phone and her husband gets booted out of his own home and will be arrested
if he tries to visit or call his own children.

An excellent example of the assemblyline manner in which orders of
protection are issued is the case of TV host David Letterman. In December
2005, a judge granted a temporary restraining order against Letterman to a
woman who had never met Letterman, but who claimed that he had mentally
harassed her through his TV broadcasts.

Reflecting the mentality of too many judges, the judge who issued the order
explained, "If [applicants] make a proper pleading, then I grant it"--as if
what matters is not the accused's guilt or innocence, but instead whether
the accuser knows how to fill out a form properly.

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After-Hours E-Filing Allowed for Domestic Violence Cases, TROs
By Charles Toutant
New Jersey Law Journal, 7/24/07

Starting immediately, domestic violence complaints in New Jersey may be
filed electronically, and temporary restraining orders obtained, on nights
and weekends, when the courts are closed.

The state Supreme Court announced Monday the statewide expansion of a pilot
program known as E-TRO, which began in 2002 and is used in
38 municipalities.

E-TRO calls for relaxation of certain court rules to allow electronic
signatures of judges and complainants on nights and weekends, and it allows
for complaints to appear immediately on court databases.

Night and weekend filings make up about 40 percent of domestic violence
cases, court officials say.

The greatest advantage of the new system is that the order is immediately on
the central registry for service and enforcement, says Harry Cassidy,
assistant director for family practice at the Administrative Office of the
Courts. "The second factor is that it reduces the burden on the police and
reduces data entry."

The procedure goes like this:

. A police officer interviews the complainant at the police station,
completes the complaint and proposed TRO on a dedicated computer terminal
and enters the complainant's name electronically in lieu obtaining the
complainant's signature and then faxing it.

. The police officer contacts an on-call municipal judge, who takes sworn
testimony by telephone. If the judge issues a TRO, the officer enters the
judge's name on the order electronically, making it immediately enforceable
and ready to be served and allowing a hearing to be scheduled sooner.

. The police officer transmits the documents to a computer server that
interfaces with the judiciary's Domestic Violence Central Registry and the
Family Automated Case Tracking System.

E-TRO is more direct and therefore faster than the current practice for
night and weekend filings, by which an officer must write out a complaint,
fax it to the judiciary the next business day and wait for a court employee
to input the complaint manually.

To make the E-TRO system work, the judiciary eased several rules on domestic
violence restraining orders. R. 1:44-4(c) was relaxed to make an electronic
signature of the complainant in typewritten form the equivalent of a faxed
signature. R. 5:7A(b) was relaxed to allow the officer to electronically
enter the judge's and complainant's names on the TRO form. And R. 4:42-1(e)
was relaxed to allow electronic signatures of a  Superior Court or municipal
judge for a TRO.

Statewide implementation will take about six months, depending on how soon
the judiciary can complete training for police officers, Cassidy says.

Officers will find E-TRO is similar to a program for electronic filing of
criminal complaints, known as E-CDR, adopted statewide in
March 2006, Cassidy says. E-CDR allows summons and complaint data to be
entered electronically and transmitted to the municipal courts'
Automated Complaint System database or Superior Court's Promis/Gavel system.
It replaced preprinted forms that were typed or filled out
by hand and then entered into the database by clerical workers