If you have a "protection from abuse order" against, say, Joe Blow, and you go to a public place and he's there, do you need to leave or does he?

Be the bigger person. Just leave

Not sure on this one. I had a restraining order against someone before and it only stated that HE had to stay away from me. So I suppose if you wanted to be a jerk, you could make him leave.

pinkparaluies Well, yeah! I agree 100%! But read the more…if you wanted to be a hateful B%# (Which is not something I’ve ever been tempted to be) could you force him to leave?
@ItalianPrincess1217 “If you wanted to be a jerk….” exactly.

I think technically you could call the cops and have them forcefully remove him from the premises. But as you say, that’s a real “b!+@#” move (You can say bitch here, fyi).

If I had a restraining order, if I felt legitimately threatened by the person (If they have a history of abuse in public places), I’d leave. Otherwise I’d just continue with whatever I was doing at the place. Abuses are people too, y’know.

@Sarcasm I know I can. I can say F and S too, but I personally choose not to. MOST of the time, LOL!
Well somebody would have to leave, because he’s not allowed closer than 500 feet or yards or miles (or something) so if you stay you’d be forcing him to break the law, and that wouldn’t be fair. I’d leave.

But who’s going to know that he broke the law unless someone calls the cops? It’s not like there’s going to be some big arrow floating above his head while he’s “too close”. The general public isn’t going to know about every restraining order that everyone else has.

Hell, even the cops won’t be like “Oh hay, that guy has a restraining order from that lady!” if you don’t call them.

Well, if you have the papers on you (which is a good idea) you can show them to the management, and they’d ask him to leave. If he doesn’t then you call the cops.

He is supposed to leave. However, you can be the bigger person and do so.

@avvooooooo OK. I see. But that would be awfully rude to force him out when he was there first! But, gee. He does have a PFA for a reason. I guess “rude” is relative!

Let’s think about it like this. He’s at a place where you can be expected to turn up (like the grocery store you always go to). He choose to be at that place and once he knows you’re there, its his responsibility to leave. If its a place where you don’t normally go, and he does (the auto parts store?), it would be polite for you to leave. But even then, its his responsibly to leave. If he chooses not to leave as quickly as possible, he takes his possible violation into his own hands and the police response to your call. “As quickly as possible” may include paying for his shopping if he’s at the grocery before leaving, but it definitely involves getting in the line to do so immediately. Its his responsibility to avoid you and use common sense to do so, and your responsibilty not to seek him out. If there is an encounter, it is still his responsibility to do everything possible to avoid you and violating the order.

@avvooooooo That’s a good answer.

@Val123 Thanks. Get one yourself against someone, then work in mental health where a lot of people have them against other people and you learn all about them and the practicalities. :)

@avvooooooo Bleh! I wouldn’t ever want to have a PFA out on someone! How horrid! Well, maybe I want on the mice I keep seeing scurrying around the house. Where is that damn cat,anyway??
Do you work in the mental health industry?

@Val123 Was, will again, but not at the moment.

I had one out against the upstairs neighbor who ended up getting evicted for her craziness and aggressiveness, including standing outside my and another girl’s door screaming that we were demons and didn’t deserve to live. I actually got it for myself, my little brother who witnessed that mess, and the other girl as well as the apartment building we were all living in. With the luck of the draw, getting the police officer who had previous dealings with her and her habit of determining someone who lived around her was the source of all the problems in the world helped with that one.

@avvooooooo Oh mercy! How scary!

Joe Blow is supposed to leave but irl, Joe Blow is usually the one stalking, purposely pushing the boundaries and disregarding court orders.

@Val123 The worst thing was that she liked to throw things off the balcony… the same one that I (and the girl next door) had to walk under to get in and out of my apartment. There were times when my neighbor and I were wary of walking out because of the possibility of being beaned with who-knows-what. Especially since you could hear when doors opened and closed in that particular building, even the ones upstairs from you. I took to the bushes several times. :P

@avvooooooo so what’s the end of the story?

@Val123 All the residents got a retaining order as well as the complex and she was evicted/told she was going to be and left before the whole thing happened. We didn’t have any further problems with her, but the order was just in case she saw us in public or something and did who knew what. She was nuts and unpredictable. The apartment guy who was in charge of complaints (who kept trying to minimize the things she was doing, “Oh, she’s not so bad.”) encountered her at a Braves game a while later and she started shrieking at him. He told me she was going nuts on him, but not what she was saying. Probably something about demons. He believed us then.

she needs to be hospitalized…

@Val123 Yep. She was majorly paranoid after a car accident and brain damage, along with a bunch of other stuff that added up to “nuts.” She traveled from apartment complex to apartment complex, getting evicted regularly because she went nuts on folks. This was a college town and I was trying to finish my degree while living under hammering at 4 in the morning and other stuff like that. I’d been there for 2 years before she moved in. :P Nobody that had to deal with her (family and so on) wanted her to move in with them because nobody can stand to deal with her and so she terrorized college kids all over town. What she really needed was to live out in the woods where there’s nobody around to blame things on. As far as I know, she’s still running around, working her way through apartment companies until she can’t find anyone who will rent to her.

Sounds like she’d have the wolves for lunch! She REALLY needs to be committed! Why hasn’t she been, I wonder?

@Val123 Probably has to do with insurance or lack thereof.

Damn.

I could probably Google her (if I could remember her last name) and find out that she’s been arrested for threating someone. Maybe she has and is getting what she needs… to be somewhere locked up and not going nuts on people. Loads of sedatives…

I feel your pain….but I feel hers too. spinning around with her demons, no help, no one to turn to…..sucks

Oh, she had a boyfriend… Though I think he was using her for certain things. She certainly wasn’t allowed to live with him. She hated her mother, but… I think that she had at least someone to turn to. There was also the advocate that came to court with her… I still can’t emphasize because there is the lasting effect on my undergraduate GPA that occurred due to living underneath her and the never ending craziness. I lived in the student center during finals my last semester of undergrad (up to 22 hours a day) because I couldn’t get anything at all done with her there. Went home to shower, change, catch a quick nap, load up my food bag and then went back.