Bill aims to give rape victims legal shield others have

By Abigail Goldman

Friday, Feb. 27, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Miranda Smith was tired, out late having dinner with friends who were in no rush to leave. So when a guy at the table, someone she trusted, offered a ride home, Smith accepted.

He raped her several times, then warned: Tell, and I’ll come back for your family.

Smith, then 22, never filed a police report. But 13 years later, Smith says she could have braved that threat if she had been granted a restraining order against her attacker.

Truth is, there was no point in even asking. About half of Nevada’s sexual assault victims aren’t eligible for restraining orders against their attackers. Smith and similar victims face a difficulty — they aren’t close enough to attackers to legally keep them away.

In Nevada, victims of domestic violence can get protective orders, court-approved decrees that one party must stay away from another or risk punishment. So can stalking victims. But victims like Smith, who only casually know their attackers, are out of luck.

Slightly more than 50 percent of victims who seek assistance from the Nevada Coalition Against Sexual Violence casually know their attackers and aren’t eligible for restraining orders against them, Executive Director Andrea Sundberg said. The same is true at the Rape Crisis Center in Las Vegas, where the majority of victims who sought assistance last year were ages 19 to 28, Executive Director Lou Torres said. These victims are students and young professionals, people with wide and loose social networks that sometimes, as Smith learned, circle back to bite them.

The notion that strangers attack women in shadowy parking lots or masked predators slip in through windows at night is exaggerated, Sundberg said. The reality: Attackers are acquaintances, friends-of-friends, colleagues — people you know and maybe even trust.

Sundberg made the same point during a presentation to the Assembly Judiciary Committee this week, speaking in support of Assembly Bill 120, which would give sexual assault victims like Smith the right to apply for restraining orders. Because the proposed law is essentially a carbon copy of existing laws that allow stalking and domestic violence victims to seek protection orders, it’s been hard for anybody to question the bill’s language. For example, when someone raised a concern during last week’s meeting about holding attackers who violate their protection orders behind bars for 12 hours, all AB120’s supporters had to say was, “Well, that’s already state policy in any other restraining order case.”

Aside from the fact that most of this law is in place for other victims, it’s hard to imagine any politician will come out swinging against a bill that would help sexual assault victims feel safer.

Still, some concerns have been raised. There is the added cost to the courts, though nobody has suggested the financial toll is enough to vote against the act.

There are fears that without some restrictions, victims could use the protection orders as weapons, luring their attackers back just to call the cops and get them punished. When Washoe County District Attorney Orrin Johnson raised this issue, he told the Assembly Judiciary Committee that his office is, in fact, happily working out this concern with the bill’s sponsor — the Advisory Commission on the Administration of Justice. The commission is headed by Nevada Supreme Court Chief Justice James Hardesty and includes Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto.

The solution, Johnson said, is simple: Make restraining orders mutual. When a victim asks for a protection order, require judges to grant it only with the understanding that the victim also must avoid contact with her attacker or face penalties as well.

Like most victim advocates backing the bill, Sundberg calmly addressed the Judiciary Committee on Monday. But just underneath the polite appeals to legislators, she seemed desperate to see it pass.

“There is a gap where (victims) are not being offered protection,” she said. Allowing them to apply for restraining orders would send a very clear message to their attackers: Back off.

For victims like Smith, when their worst nightmare is someone they know, the fear can be sharper. Smith’s attacker knew where she lived, worked, hung out. Because she couldn’t use the court to keep him away, she kept herself hidden instead. She stopped going out, stopped talking to friends, became depressed, started having panic attacks and soon lost her job.

Her attacker would have been personally served with the protective order. In other words, he would have been informed of her legal stand against him, and with that, there are risks for any victim. Even knowing this, Smith says, it would have been worth it — and not just for her own safety, but for the sake of the next victim.

Smith hasn’t seen or heard from her attacker since, but that doesn’t mean he’s left her alone.

“The protection order would have given me the confidence to at least go file a police report,” she said. “I don’t know where he is. There are other people out there whom he’s possibly harmed. That’s what haunts me.”