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For most Utah women, protection orders work. Others find they offer little protection against abusers who flout the law.

One man, banned from contacting his domestic violence victim in Salt Lake City, was charged in 2002 with seven felony counts of violating the order.

But four of the cases were dropped. He served only 30 days in jail, despite a sentence of six months.

His story was uncovered by Chuck Diviney and Asha Parekh, who set out to discover what happened in 279 charges filed against those accused of violating protective orders in Salt Lake City in 2002.

What they found alarmed them - and may be a snapshot of a larger problem in Utah, where domestic violence-related homicides are about 26 percent higher than the national average.

Of 279 charges filed, 143 - about 51 percent - were dismissed. Of the remaining cases, 32 had been filed as felony charges. Of those, nearly half were pleaded down to a misdemeanor.

Most offenders spent little time behind bars for their crimes. In another case, a man failed to show up for court four times. He spent 30 days behind bars and disappeared, said Diviney, a clinical trainer for the state's Adult Protective Services.

"These are people who have been in the system over and over and over," he said.

Protective orders are civil court orders designed to keep one person from harassing or hurting another. Violations can be charged as crimes. But if the orders are not enforced, they are ineffective, said Stewart Ralphs, director of the Salt Lake County Legal Aid Society.

"As a matter of public policy, we do want these to be dealt with criminally. That's what they were designed to do," he said. "These were designed to have teeth in them. They're only as good as law enforcement will treat them and prosecutors prosecute the violations."

Marty Verhoef, a spokesman for the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office, said congested court dockets often mean the cases sit idle for weeks before they're heard by a judge. During that time, the victims may decide helping prosecutors pursue the violation is not worth it.

"They're difficult cases and each one is unique. They're difficult to prosecute," he said. "We deal with court schedules, with witness schedules and witnesses' desire to show up."

Additionally, "our desire to go forward sometimes is hampered by the defendant or defense counsel," he said. "A lot of times, they're in no hurry to go to trial."

And then there are technical violations - for example, a message left on a cell phone. "[Those cases] don't have a lot of jury appeal," Verhoef said.

Diviney and Parekh, who works for the YMCA's Safe at Home Coalition, received a small stipend from the Salt Lake Area Domestic Violence Coalition in 2003 to investigate what happens to those who violate protection orders.

They started by examining Utah's domestic violence statutes. Then they went through the protection order violation charges filed in Salt Lake City in 2002 to see the outcomes.

"A lot of perpetrators are being let go with a slap on the hand," Diviney said.

By and large, protective orders seem to work, Ralphs said. In an informal survey of 57 people who had filed protective orders about a year ago, 86 percent reported there was no violence in the short term. About 91 percent said there was no violence in the long term, either.

In the cases when protection orders are violated, however, the perpetrators often walk away without taking responsibility for their actions, said Rickell James-Irish, a domestic violence coordinator for the Division of Child and Family Services.

"[Enforcement of protective orders] is spotty; it's inconsistent," she said. "There are some judges who are excellent, who get it, and there are some who are not."

Between 1994 and 1999, 14 percent of homicide victims in Utah had protective orders, according to the Utah Domestic Violence Council. More than half of those protective orders were violated at least once.

Diviney suspects that even after protection orders were filed, most perpetrators were allowed to keep their guns.

It's a federal crime to possess a firearm while subject to a protection order, or after conviction of a state misdemeanor of domestic violence. In the 133 charges that were pursued, six defendants surrendered firearms.

Diviney was also surprised that only one protective order violation case was accompanied by a charge of committing the crime before a child.

"I knew it would not be good news, but I was disappointed it was that bad," said Ralphs, who sat in on Diviney's presentation Tuesday at a Utah Domestic Violence Council meeting.

"I really thought we as a community working together on both sides of this - both the civil side and criminal side - we were making more headway and we were taking it more seriously."

Diviney doesn't want to accuse judges or prosecutors of not doing their jobs, he said. Instead, he says he wants to make the information available and discuss it in a larger debate of how to curb domestic violence in Utah.

"This is simply an evaluation of the process, an evaluation of the system so we could report back," he said.

Diviney plans to present his findings to 3rd District Court judges and prosecutors in December.

Do you have a story about enforcing a protection order? Contact Lisa Rosetta at lrosetta@sltrib.com.