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As St. Louis started preparing for the novel coronavirus and what challenges stay-at-home orders might bring, St. Louis County circuit judges worried that more cases of domestic abuse would accompany extended time at home. There are thousands of cases of domestic violence filed each year—at last count, there were more than 1,400 cases of adult abuse filed so far in 2020. Pre-pandemic, if a victim of domestic violence wanted to file an order of protection, he or she would visit either the St. Louis County Circuit Court or a local police station after-hours to fill out the paperwork. Judges knew that might not be as easy with a stay-at-home order. “We thought, OK, we're gonna have to get creative,” remembers St. Louis County Associate Circuit Judge Amanda B. McNelley. McNelley was one of two judges who served on a committee with the goal of making orders of protection accessible even during the pandemic.
Courtesy of St. Louis County Circuit Court
St. Louis County Associate Circuit Judge Amanda B. McNelley
Enter the IT team. Together with the judges, they were able to create an online form for filing orders of protection, the only circuit in the state to do so. In fact, they’re one of the few circuits in the United States that have a process for filing online. And that online filing might stay post-pandemic. At stlcountycourts.com, visitors can complete the paperwork and email it to the court for a judge’s approval. Soon, this service will be available 24-7.
But it wasn’t as simple as just creating the web page. “In this time of stay-at-home orders, when you can't leave your house, you can't go to your mother's house or your sister's house to file online, you have to do it in your home and you're isolated with the abuser...we just wanted to make sure that a safeguard was in place,” McNelley says. “We didn't want to create an escalation [of violence] with online filing.” Read more about the solution the judges and IT workers arrived at below in a Q&A with McNelley.
How did you come up with the idea to file orders of protection online?
Toward the end of February, we started forming committees at the courthouse to prepare for potential stay-at-home orders. St. Louis County Circuit Judge Jason Dodson and I were assigned to orders of protection, along with Carey DeLargy, who is our domestic violence court supervisor and runs the adult abuse office at the courthouse. We started preparing for what happens if the courts are shut down completely, meaning we were kind of preparing for a worst-case scenario. Our biggest concern was that we thought we were going to see a rise in domestic violence because people couldn't leave their homes. They possibly would have to be working from home, just the isolation aspect and not being able to even reach out to extended relatives. Particularly, [not] being able to get up to the courthouse to speak with one of our domestic violence advocates.
We met with our IT department, and that's when we started exploring, Can we do this online? We obviously had safety concerns. Folks are at home with their abuser, so we want to make sure that they can do this in a safe spot and not escalate violence. On our website, at the top of the order of protection web page, we have an escape button. If folks are in the middle of filling out an order of protection and need to get out of it very quickly, they can push that escape button, and yahoo.com will pop up. So another person wouldn't be able to see what they were doing online. At the courthouse, we have protections in place for folks. We have our security staff. The sheriff is at our fingertips if we need. But at home, we wanted to make sure we can put some safeguards in place for victims.
Why isn’t it more common across the country to be able to file for these protections online?
Pre-virus, there were a lot of benefits of going to our adult abuse office. We have domestic violence advocates that are there if victims of domestic violence need additional resources. If they need a place to stay, we have resources that are available in terms of shelters that can help. Additionally, our staff can help them through the paperwork, which can sometimes be onerous. The petition is four pages, and there are required things that we need for them to file for jurisdiction purposes. Sometimes, the domestic violence has just happened, and they need help walking through that paperwork, and there's a staff there that can help them.
Another change you made to help people during COVID-19 is to have a judge dedicated to domestic violence 24-7.
In the courthouse, we have duty judges that have to handle search warrants and those types of things, but we never before had a judge who was dedicated to domestic violence. So now we have a judge 24-7, and the judge has a DV duty phone. The police department and the adult abuse office can now call that judge in the middle of the night if an order of protection needs to be put into place.
You’re hearing cases via video conferencing. There’s so much order and process to court hearings. How’s that going?
If you come to the courthouse, in my courtroom there are TV monitors set up. You can see me on the bench. Anyone who comes up on my screen is also on the TV screens in the courtroom. And if there are litigants in front of me, we have a camera that's pointed at the table. Everyone is respectful, and so far, it's going really well.
If you are experiencing domestic violence, help is available. Visit the St. Louis County Circuit Court's order of protection site or the National Domestic Violence Hotline's site. You can also call the hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text LOVEIS to 22522.
