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Last updated 5:52 pm CT November 20, 2009.
AG Aims to Serve Thousands of Orders of Protection
"We have ones that are just distraught. Some of them are injured. We have women with black eyes, cuts, bruises," Stanton said.
Before those victims appear in a courtroom, she helps them fill out pages of paperwork for legal orders of protection meant to keep abusers away.
According to Attorney General Lisa Madigan 20 percent of the nearly 28,000 orders of protection in Illinois haven't been served.
"Orders of protection are not in effect until they're served on the party," Stanton said.
"It's critical in order to protect women from domestic violence that these orders of protection… are actually what we refer to as served on the abuser," Madigan said.
Madigan's Serve and Protect initiative has identified some of the reasons those papers are going undelivered.
In some cases paperwork is inaccurate. Unless law enforcement has the correct date of birth for alleged abusers, Madigan explains, the order can’t be properly served.
If victims don’t know information like their abusers’ birthdays, the attorney general urges them to work with police officers who can help find that information.
In others, Madigan says, the statewide database isn't up to date and police are unaware of the orders when they arrest abusers for other crimes.
The attorney general’s research also revealed that defendants in hundreds of unserved orders of protection were prison or jail inmates or parolees.
By cross-referencing the outstanding orders list with an Illinois Department of Corrections list, Madigan’s Order of Protection Enforcement Group has identified those defendants.
Since July, hundreds of orders of protection have been served in the Cook County Jail alone.
Through letters or third party messengers, Madigan explained, "[Inmates] can still be very harassing and very threatening and still terrorize these women even if they're not physically able to get access to them because they're in prison."
Stanton knows from sitting next to victim's how much solace they get knowing those court orders have been served.
"When used properly they're worth their weight in gold," Stanton said.
By Dana Jay
djay@wsiltv.com
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