Advocates see an increase in restraining order requests
Gilroy – It began with name-calling, recalled the 29-year-old mother of four. Then it got physical.
“He’d pull my hair. Punch me on the back. When I was pregnant, he’d push me down,” the Gilroy woman recalled, speaking on condition of anonymity because she feared retribution from her abuser. “In 2000, he hit me on the head with a crowbar. He gave me two black eyes, and two fat lips. Busted one open, in fact. He gave me 14 lumps to my head.”
When news of Franca Barsi’s murder hit Gilroy, her tormentor was already behind bars. But the all-too-familiar story encouraged her to take out a new restraining order against that man, who still writes her love letters from his cell.
“She said, ‘I’ve got to follow through on this, because I don’t want to end up like [Barsi,]’ ” said legal advocate Anita Wilson. “Then she got in the car, and we went to court.”
Franca Barsi’s murder has become a cautionary tale, motivating victims of domestic violence to seek help, Gilroy advocates report. Barsi’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, David Vincent Reyes, confessed last week to killing the former Garlic Queen Tuesday, Sept. 12 in a fit of anger. The murder followed a turbulent relationship that veered from abuse to reconciliation to abuse, say Barsi’s family and friends. Since the story hit newsprint, some women in similar situations have reassessed their options, to escape a similar end.
“As of this incident, there’s been an increase in women [seeking restraining orders] who in the past were not really certain if they wanted one,” said Perla Flores of Community Solutions, an agency that assists domestic violence survivors. Typically, Community Solutions helps two or three people seek restraining orders each week, said Flores: this week, they’ve assisted four people, two of whom explicitly mentioned Barsi’s murder.
Barsi’s story echoed her own, said the Gilroy mother.
“She thought in her heart that he would change,” she said. “That was my problem. But it just got worse and worse.”
County-wide, Gilroy is second only to Morgan Hill in domestic violence calls per capita, according to a civil grand jury report released this summer. The report found that Gilroy averaged 5.5 calls per 1,000 residents; Morgan Hill averaged nearly seven per 1,000. Last year, the Gilroy Police Department handled 232 reports of domestic violence. The GPD refers domestic violence survivors to Community Solutions, said Sgt. Kurt Svardal. Flores estimates that the agency helps 70 to 100 people secure restraining orders each year.
Flores is glad to see more people seeking help, but she cautioned that restraining orders aren’t failsafe.
“Sometimes it’s safer not to file a restraining order,” she said. “If someone relocates here from a different county, and they want to request a restraining order, the perpetrator has to be serviced, and so they find out the county, and where the victim is.”
The Gilroy mother said she took out restraining orders in the past, to little effect.
“He just violated it,” she said. “It helped picking him up, cop-wise, but he didn’t pay any mind. It didn’t prevent him from coming around me” –and, in one case, she said, from breaking into her home.
Wilson added that conflicting orders can cause problems. For instance, she explained, a police officer may issue an emergency protection order, or a family court may issue a temporary protection order. Both expire unless the victim seeks a more permanent order, sometimes within as few as five days.
“If you don’t have something physically on you that says something’s in effect – maybe the batterer has a copy that’s expired – they might say it’s expired,” Wilson said. In other instances, she added, orders haven’t been added to the statewide computer system, which police consult for information on whether a restraining order is in effect.
Svardal said he hadn’t run across such problems personally. Restraining orders create a “space cushion” around the victim, he said, and are “a useful tool” for police.
“When someone gets arrested for violating a restraining order, hopefully it’s a message to the offender: don’t do this,” said Svardal. Sometimes, problems arise due to victims’ unwillingness – or inability – to keep the orders up to date, he said.
Now remarried, the Gilroy mother said she feels a little safer, with her abuser locked up and her family close by. As his release date nears, however, her fears are mounting. The new restraining order might help, she said, but she’s not banking on it.
“They should have [abusers] monitored 24/7, knowing where they’re at,” she said. “A piece of paper doesn’t mean anything to them. Us girls are living in fear, looking over our shoulders. We always have to be watching, wondering who’s around.”
