The Kentucky General Assembly should rewrite laws to stop protecting stalkers

Imagine for a moment that someone is following you. You come out of your house to go to work, they’re watching you from their car across the street. You come out of the grocery store with your child in your arms, they’re sitting in the fire lane with their flashers on. You look out the window while you work your shift, they’re sitting in the parking lot with the engine running. You get strange telephone calls at all hours of the day and night, you get creepy letters in the mail. You come home one day to find an envelope on your porch. You look inside and it’s full of photographs of you at the gym when you didn’t think anyone else was there.

Creepy, huh? Imagine living your life this way. I think most people would want a restraining order. Unfortunately, if you live in Kentucky, you probably couldn’t get one.

That’s because Kentucky’s restraining order statutes are weirdly prohibitive. First, you have to file the appropriate petition in the appropriate court. This is itself a major roadblock for many in our state. It’s not always widely known where and when to obtain these petitions and there are often few resources to assist petitioners in filling them out correctly. Second, you have to know where your stalker lives so that the local sheriff’s department can serve them with a copy of the petition and a summons. If you don’t know where they live then you may never even have your case heard.

Assuming you are able to take the time off work to do all that, the court will then hold a hearing to determine, by law, if you are entitled to a protective order. There’s another day off work. Then, even if you are able to jump through every one of those hoops, get ready to tell your story to the judge in a public hearing while your stalker stands right next to you and denies any of it ever happened.

But wait, it gets worse. Even if you do everything right in order to get your case in front of a judge, you still wouldn’t qualify for a protective order under the facts I’ve listed above. That’s because Kentucky law requires that protective orders based upon an allegation of stalking prove two elements: Stalking has occurred. The stalker has made an implicit or explicit threat of violence toward the Petitioner.

Even if you have excellent documentation of every incident of stalking, simply following you everywhere you go is insufficient grounds for a protective order without an additional threat of violence. You’ll still be denied an order, and your stalker will now be emboldened to continue his behavior unabated. I represent victims in this exact scenario all the time.

This problem only exists because of the General Assembly’s own legislative laziness. Rather than type out a separate definition for stalking to supplement the protective order statute, our representatives chose to simply direct judges to the definition for stalking already codified in the criminal statute. While it’s understandable that the General Assembly wouldn’t want to criminalize driving around in your car without some other element of criminal activity, protective orders are civil proceedings and result in no punishment for the respondent — only protection for the petitioner. Why be sorry rather than safe?

Not every problem with the law is an easy fix, but this one ought to be. Everyone has a right to be free from stalking, and the General Assembly should change the law to say so.

Miles Devon Skeens IV is a practicing civil litigator and the owner of Skeens Law, PLLC in Louisville.