Courts move slowly granting protective orders

Listen to this article

By Jessica Holdman

COLUMBIA — Domestic violence victims in parts of South Carolina, particularly the rural counties and the Grand Strand, are going weeks without legal protection orders, according to a report by University of South Carolina researchers.

South Carolina is the only state without temporary, emergency protective orders, put in place by judges to safeguard victims who file for them until they can hold a hearing for long-term approval.

The delay allows their abusers to have ready access to a gun while they wait.

With a protective order, a judge can require the abuser to turn in their guns for the length of the order, usually six months to a year, and they’re disqualified in background checks from buying a new gun during that time frame.

That’s “one of the biggest gaps in law,” said Lisa Martin, a professor at the Joseph F. Rice School of Law at the University of South Carolina who leads student clinics offering legal assistance to domestic violence victims.

That’s especially a problem due to the wide variance across the state in how long it can take a Family Court judge to hear a victim’s request, a key finding of the USC study.

It involved a review of a year’s worth of court documents and protective order filings in 45 out of South Carolina’s 46 counties. (Berkeley County opted not to participate.) The research was done by Martin’s law students and USC students taking psychology and women’s and gender studies classes.

They found a statewide average of 14 days between a court filing and hearing. Across those 3,451 cases, 91% of those seeking protection were women. A quarter of thoe cases cited the alleged abuser’s access to guns. Researchers did not analyze reasons for the delays.

The time gap grew to more than a month in the worst cases.

In Chesterfield County, 54% of victims waited more than 15 days to get a hearing.

In Edgefield and Union counties, 57% waited that long. It was 62% in Dillon County and 70% in Marion County. In fast-growing Horry County, where judges heard petitions from 114 people seeking protection, 72% of petitioners waited more than 15 days.

In Lee County, only nine victims sought orders but all of them waited 30 to 45 days for a hearing. Only one was approved.

Timing of these hearings is important because abuse victims are most at risk around the time they leave a relationship, said Sara Barber, who heads the S.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.

“There are lives here that we can help or hurt,” Barber said of the cases featured in the study.

Barber said those who sought protective orders reported terrifying incidents, to include being pushed down stairs or having their head squeezed so tightly their nose bled.

“He said you belong to me until the day you die and you’re not dead, yet!” one court filing read.

Researchers didn’t evaluate why judges denied requests, though they noted that reasons varied from paperwork errors to people not showing up for hearings. They plan to delve into that more in following phases.

Jessica Holdman reports for the South Carolina Daily Gazette news website.