NEXT L.A. / A Look at issues, people and ideas helping to shape the emerging metropolis : Court Fights Spouse Abuse With Faxes

Judge Richard Denner had seen too many frightened, exhausted women wandering around the family law division of Superior Court in a weary search for the right documents.

So he created a new program that will let victims of domestic violence obtain restraining orders against abusive husbands or battering boyfriends without ever entering the courthouse.

Denner has trained 130 advocates from women’s shelters and poverty law centers to file petitions by fax. Within a day of receiving the papers, a family judge law will reply by fax, handing down orders designed to stop the abuse. Faxes also go out to the Los Angeles Police Department and the county Sheriff’s Department, alerting officers to restraining orders.

“These poor people would come in to court, mostly women with a few kids, and they’d be schlepping around the courthouse most of the day trying to get documents,” Denner recalled. “Their kids would be getting cranky and it was just chaos. I’m hoping to siphon off some of that walk-in traffic, for their benefit and for ours.”

Since the program was introduced in August, the high-powered fax machines Denner purchased for about $4,000 have received an average of one petition a day. By training more advocates to use the fax-file system, Denner hopes to attract at least 100 petitions each week.

At the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women, services coordinator Francine Ocon thinks the system could catch on once victims realize that they can get judicial help by simply stopping at a neighborhood shelter, instead of plotting bus routes to the Downtown courthouse.

“It’s more convenient,” she said. “It speeds up the process.”