Protection From Abuse?

Are protection orders aggravating the problem they're supposed to combat?

by Esq. Gerald K. McOscar

The carnage continues. In the early morning hours of Nov. 25, Edward "Eddie" Carpenter broke into the Gloucester County, N.J., home occupied by his estranged wife Maryann and shot her to death before committing suicide later that morning. He had been served with a permanent restraining order on July 31.

On Sept. 9, police found the bodies of Jennifer K. Foster and her 16-year-old daughter, Nikea Goldsby, in Foster's South Philadelphia rowhome. Three days earlier Foster had obtained a protection-from-abuse order against Ronald Goldsby, Foster's estranged husband. He awaits trial in the double murder.

A random search of regional newspaper archives from August 2000 to January 2001 found protection orders linked with at least five murders (four wives and/or lovers and one 2-year-old boy) and one suicide. Women's advocates have criticized the Philadelphia police over their handling of the Foster case. Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson defended his department. "I don't know what more the Police Department could have done," he said. "The blame on this murder is on the person who murdered them, not the police."

The blame should be on the person who murdered them, but it might be time for authorities and women's advocates to ask themselves if protection orders are doing more harm than good. To be fair, some studies have found that they are effective in preventing violence; others aren't so sure. But the mute testimony of women and children like Maryann Carpenter and Jennifer Foster and her daughter suggests that further study is needed.

The problem is that the law of unintended consequences may be ramping up violence even as authorities "get tough" with domestic violence. Time was, a couple would bicker, argue, yell, curse and break an occasional vase without the long arm of the law becoming involved. Dust-ups would blow over and life go on. Not any more. Activists got involved and laws were passed. Nowadays police are called, charges are filed, severe punishment is meted out, lives and reputations are ruined, and families shattered beyond repair. Domestic storm fronts stall over the legal system, and fed by the hot air of recrimination, acrimony, confrontation, coercion, police, lawyers and zealots, grow into deadly emotional hurricanes.

In a recent Chester County case involving a wife's accusations of assault against her husband, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court opted for by-the-book legalism over justice, common sense and the family when it overturned Judge Juan Sanchez's reasoned and reasonable opinion that a wife may not be forced to testify against her husband so long as certain conditions are met and that the decision is motivated by her desire to preserve her marriage.

The icing on the cake was the Court's paternalistic advice that if her goal is to preserve her relationship with her spouse through forgiveness and understanding, she can demonstrate that forgiveness in her testimony. "If there is a conviction, or an understanding and forgiving plea," the Court intoned, "an appropriate sentence may, of course, be fashioned."

What happened to a woman's right to choose? The Justices made their point, but at what cost to women, children and families?

This case illustrates what may be a systemic blindness to the link between domestic violence and protection orders. Crumpled orders are found at the scene of many domestic crime scenes. Regrettably, no one seems particularly concerned with the possibility that at best they are woefully ineffective, or worse, that they heighten the risk of violence.

There are far too many tragedies like the Carpenter and Foster/Goldsby cases to ignore. Unfortunately, if past is prologue, they won't be the last.

Gerald K. McOscar practices law in West Chester, Pa. If you would like to respond to this Slant or have one of your own (850 words), contact Howard Altman, City Paper executive editor, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., Pa., 19106 or e-mail altman@citypaper.net.