This week, Kansas' protection orders technical assistance project:

The Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence (KCSDV) is a statewide network of sexual assault and domestic violence programs serving all one-hundred-five (105) counties in Kansas.  KCSDV maintains a protection order project funded with  S.T.O.P. VAWA. Grant funds.  The project’s goal is to educate, inform, and positively impact, for the benefit of survivors, all systems associated with the protection order process. These systems include law enforcement, court personnel, advocates, judges, attorneys, prosecutors and other professionals.

The project provides technical assistance and training to each of these groups, working through issues such as an out of state law enforcement agency seeking to charge for service of protection from abuse papers, drafting of a memorandum regarding complicated jurisdictional issues for attorneys representing survivors, assisting with child support documents necessary to ensure child support is part of the final protection from abuse order, and drafting motions to set aside mutual orders not issued in accordance with statute.  The project provides community trainings across the state of Kansas.  These trainings are designed to bring together all persons associated with, or who have a stake in, protection order proceedings.  The trainings target specific issues identified by the community as needing attention within the community.  The trainings are improving the response that survivors receive in the communities where trainings take place.

In addition to technical assistance and training, the project provides publications to assist each of these groups.  These publications include:

• Frequently Asked Questions: The booklet is designed to address in plain words (English and Spanish) questions survivors have regarding the protection order process, before, during and after, the issuance of an order.  In addition to encouraging survivors to contact the advocacy program nearest them, it provides critical contact information for these programs. 
•  “Protection Order Guided Interview” (Guided Interview): The Guided Interview is an interactive online tool which assist survivors with an assessing their personal safety and preparedness before actually filing for a protection order.  It walks a survivor through all aspects of safety considerations, as well as, other possible considerations such as, how local practices may vary, a defendant’s access to court documents, other court orders and proceedings, and finances.  The final step explains qualifications and court processes regarding protection orders.
• Kansas Protection Order Manual:  The manual, which is updated annually with new case law and changes in statute, has become ‘the’ desk reference manual for all systems associated with the protection order process.  Requests for the manual are received regularly from judges, law enforcement, court clerks and other professionals.
•  Law Enforcement Pocket Card:  The pocket cards are laminated cards designed to fit in a law enforcement officer’s shirt pocket.  The card provides valuable short hand information regarding protection order violations, enforcement of protection orders, and full faith and credit regarding protection orders.
• Advocate Guides (Guides):  These Guides deal with specific issues that advocates encounter when assisting survivors through the protection order project. The first Guide recently published is “The Harmful Practice of Mutual Protection from Abuse Orders in the State of Kansas.”  The Guide defines a mutual order; how mutual orders are supposed to get issued; how mutual orders usually get issued; the differences between consent order and mutual orders; the harms of mutual orders; individual advocacy and mutual orders; and system advocacy and mutual orders. 

Finally, the Protection Orders Technical Assistance Project is also engaged in the direct representation of survivors in protection order proceedings.  The following are some results of providing this representation:

• Courts have found abusers in contempt for violating orders in instances where prosecutors would not file criminal charges. 
• Protection orders for child victims of sexual abuse and assault have been issued, where the abuser is being released from prison, and where criminal charges were never brought. 
• In every instance where children were involved, the project has obtained child support for the protected parent caring for the children. 
• Obtained reversal of denials of protection orders, and the issuance of mutual orders have been set aside. 

Every one of these endeavors – technical assistance and training, publications, and representation – results in a survivor whose story ends differently because of these efforts.