Between 2015 and 2021, there has been a 67% increase in requests for temporary restraining orders in nondomestic situations on Hawaii Island.
But at the same time, there has been a significant drop in requests for domestic abuse protective orders, just over 25%.
According to the Hawaii State Judiciary, there were 5,405 nondomestic TRO requests between 2015 and 2021. The lowest number of nondomestic TROs sought, 653, was in 2015. The number of requests rose every year after, culminating in 971 cases initiated in 2021.
Why the number of TROs being sought is going up is a matter of conjecture.
“I’m just speculating as to why these numbers have gone up,” Lt. Robert Pauole of Hilo Vice Section said last week. “But our population has gone up over time, people are more unhappy, I think, and people get more upset.”
“Look at the world today,” he continued. “We have high inflation, people are not able to afford things anymore. Gas prices are going up. That can make people angry, and when they’re angry, they tend to take it out on people that are around them, like their neighbors. Again, I’m just speculating. I don’t have any concrete evidence saying ‘this is the reason.’”
William Heflin, a Hilo criminal defense attorney, said he doesn’t “have any personal insight into the why” but called the rise in nondomestic TRO requests “a really interesting statistic.”
“I would say I have gotten more District Court TROs. I can’t explain why. The number of nondomestic TROs — meaning you’ve received the TRO and now you’re seeking the order for protection — I would say, is really low. Generally speaking, nondomestic TROs are, more often than not, neighbor disputes. You are still going to have to live next to that person if you have a TRO or not.”
In a Tribune-Herald opinion column published May 20, Hilo District Judge M. Kanani Laubach urged those who had issues with neighbors but weren’t in imminent danger to seek mediation instead of a TRO.
“Having presided over hundreds of these cases, I’ve seen many instances where the TRO does what it is designed to do (limit interactions between parties), but the issues continue unresolved (e.g., neighbor still plays music loudly),” Laubach wrote.
Heflin agreed with that assessment.
“I know people who actually have sold property and moved away because of issues with their neighbors,” he said. “Nobody wants to spend a half-million dollars to move next to somebody just to move somewhere else later on. So, the earlier you can try to resolve the situation, whether it’s just talking to the person or going to mediation, that would probably divert a lot of the cases away from that situation.”
Heflin added that those who are in imminent danger of harm or are being harassed by someone they aren’t related to or living with should file a police report and initiate a TRO case.
“One of the nice things about Hawaii’s TRO petition is that it basically lays out exactly what you need for a TRO,” he said. “You need to have past issues of physical abuse, an actual threat of harm, or you need to show extreme psychological abuse — enough that a reasonable person would be alarmed. The courts will grant you a temporary order just because they don’t want to be in the position where they’ve denied it and then later on there’s a problem. … It’s easy to get the temporary order. It’s much harder to get the order for protection.”
“If people could solve their issues without going to court, it would save a lot of time and money and may actually ratchet down the hostility,” Heflin continued. “That being said, if you believe you are in danger and your neighbor or your co-worker is going to hurt you, then by all means, you absolutely have to make a police report and follow up with a TRO.”
Over the same seven-year period, there have been 8,818 requests for domestic abuse protective orders sought in Big Island courts. The highest number of requests in a single year during that period was 1,524 in 2015. The numbers have decreased every year since, with one exception, with the smallest number of domestic abuse protective order cases initiated, 1,131, in 2021.
“I can’t give you any concrete evidence as to why those numbers are going down,” Pauole said. “I would’ve thought they would be going up, because during COVID, people were at home and were cooped up and more likely to have domestics at home.
“I would say month-to-month, the numbers can go up or down. May (2022) was a bad month. We had a bunch of domestic violence felonies that came our way. I’ve noticed an increase in strangulations. I think in those cases, the women are finally reporting it, and the violence is getting worse — a combination of those two things.”
While those numbers have decreased since 2015, they’ve remained relatively stable the past three years, with 1,150 TRO requests in 2019, 1,174 in 2020, and 1,131 in 2021.
County Prosecutor Kelden Waltjen said Kirsten Selvig, his Family Court deputy, thinks the most recent numbers of domestic TRO petitions have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
“She suspected that people may choose to stay in the same house (and) not get a TRO because the potential respondent had nowhere to go,” Waltjen said. “She shared that a lot of Family Court TROs involve parents who have issues with their adult children, and with services shut down, they may have just chosen to live with the mental health or substance abuse issue.
“For abusive relationships, petitioners may have felt like they had nowhere to go because of COVID issues or didn’t want to force the respondent out of their home because he (or) she would not have anywhere to go due to COVID issues.
“In addition, a lot of the felony domestic violence victims between 2020 and 2021 complained about feeling trapped because there were limited to no resources available because COVID shut a lot of options down. Keep in mind that even travel to get back to mainland or a neighbor island was out of reach for a lot of people.”
Pauole urged domestic violence victims to file a police report regardless of whether they seek a protective order in court.
“Once they make the reports, it becomes record,” he said. “Because once the report is made … we have to continue the case even though the victim may say they don’t want to prosecute because they and their husband or boyfriend have gotten back together.
“We are mandated to continue our case until we forward it to the prosecutor’s office, whether there’s an arrest or not, for final disposition.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
