Harassment restraining order update

When a person violates a harassment restraining order by contacting a person via text message, e-mail or Facebook, where is the crime prosecuted?

Sponsored by Rep. Tony Cornish (R-Good Thunder) HF738 would eliminate that confusion by amending the state harassment restraining order (HRO) to allow the victim to file charges in either the county they reside or the county where the alleged violator resides.

Approved by the House Judiciary Policy and Finance Committee on March 10, the bill was sent to the House Public Safety and Crime Prevention Policy and Finance Committee. It has no Senate companion.

The bill adds language in the state HRO statute that addresses communication technologies used by the violator to contact the victim.

“A person may be prosecuted at the place where any call is made or received or, in the case of wireless or electronic communication or any communication made through any available technologies, where the actor or victim resides…” the added language states.

The bill also includes language that a person who commits HRO violations against another in two or more counties may be prosecuted in any county in which one of the acts was committed.

Rana Fuller, an attorney for the Battered Women’s Legal Advocacy Project, cited as an example under current law where a violator establishes contact with the victim at their home in one county and workplace in another, each individual county would have to prosecute the violations separately. HF738 would give counties the ability to prosecute the separate violations together in either county, Fuller said.

“These two changes in statute will give prosecutors the tools they need to hold respondents who violate HROs responsible and reduce the need for multiple counties to have to prosecute multiple violations,” Fuller said.