Taking a courageous stand against abuse

It’s not hard to find the room in Los Angeles County Superior Court where restraining orders are handed out. It’s the courtroom on the second floor with the giant red “DOMESTIC VIOLENCE” placard posted on the wall outside.

Inside, the rows were crammed Monday with women waiting for a turn in one of the four glass-walled cubicles, where court workers help victims of abuse publicly detail their suffering.

I wanted to know more about the restraining order process because readers responding to my Saturday column -- about a woman shot to death by her estranged husband -- doubted the legal protection they’re supposed to provide.

The dead woman, Monica Thomas-Harris, had received a temporary restraining order two years ago forbidding her husband from coming near her. But she let it expire a few weeks later. A piece of paper couldn’t stop bullets, she told co-workers.

Some of my readers seemed to feel the same. “This is a wake-up call to all women victimized by violent husbands or boyfriends,” e-mailed Robert Price of Walnut. “The courts and police cannot guarantee your safety. . . . Buy a gun and learn how to use it.”

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In the courtroom and the hallway outside, I saw no busted lips or black eyes, no snarling husbands or cowering wives. What I observed seemed less like fear and more like a weary sort of desperation.

The logistical process is easy enough. Applicants fill out forms detailing their encounters. A court official reviews their requests privately and, a few hours later, a bailiff summons them to the front of the room to tell them if their temporary order has been approved.

More than 16,000 requests for temporary restraining orders were filed with Los Angeles County courts in 2006, the most recent year with stats on file. All but about 1,500 were granted.

But temporary restraining orders expire after a few weeks without a hearing before a judge. Officials say only about 60% of those granted the stay-away orders bother to come back to keep them in effect. For them, the crisis has passed.

For those who do return, court Commissioner Anthony S. Jones hears them out inside a tiny courtroom down the hall. The petitioner, usually a woman, sits at a table, separated by a few feet and sometimes by a Spanish-language interpreter, from the respondent, usually her husband or boyfriend.

A woman named Glenda wants her husband to stay away from her. He hasn’t hit her or threatened her with violence. But he won’t stop calling or trying to see her, and gets angry when he is rebuffed, she said.

Jones asks them if they plan to file for divorce. Before the interpreter can finish translating, Glenda answers, in a strong voice, “Yes.” Her husband looks bewildered and shakes his head.

If his wife wants to “fly away,” he says, waving his hand like a bird, he will stay away and not bother her. He asks the commissioner if he can still see her children. “They’re not mine, but I have learned to love them,” he says.

I think I hear his wife swallow a sob. But Jones extends the restraining order for six months -- “a cooling-off period” he calls it -- and the husband gets up abruptly and strides through the courtroom door, letting it swing back in his wife’s face as she follows. I see her smile as she heads toward a trio of friends.

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Jones heard four cases Monday morning, affirming the restraining order in all but one -- a schizophrenic man who has filed against his father, sister and stepmother. Then Jones spent the next few hours in chambers, evaluating applications from the morning.

By afternoon, the crowd inside the courtroom had thinned and the hallway outside was nearly clear. So I took an elevator ride to the eighth floor, to catch a peek at the Britney Spears child custody hearing.

There, the corridor was crowded, and six deputies were on guard behind a metal detector. Britney never showed.

She had come to court but wouldn’t get out of the car. She was freaked out by the crowds, cameras and paparazzi, I heard. She decided to let her lawyer do her bidding.

I thought about what I’d just seen and heard downstairs from women such as Consuelo. Her boyfriend had never been violent, but last month, when he was drunk, he acted indecently with their young daughter, she said through a translator.

She called police and had him arrested, then kicked him out of their home with a temporary restraining order.

The molestation allegation was a “fabrication,” her boyfriend said at Monday’s court hearing. “I know for a fact my daughters miss me.”

Consuelo didn’t back down. She pulled out two notes, printed in neat block letters from their two daughters, saying they didn’t want their dad around.

I thought about what it took for Consuelo to make it into that courtroom alone -- without security, without an attorney, a driver or bodyguard -- and to stand up to an angry man who accused her of lying.

Her life was being upended in that courtroom. But she never flinched. She left, alone and stone-faced, to retrieve her protective restraining order.

I realized that on this morning at least, what I saw on the second floor didn’t merit an onslaught of paparazzi. And it wasn’t so much about stopping bullets, but about standing up with courage against abuse.

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sandy.banks@latimes.com