SCS/SB 321 - Current law allows a person, including a child, who has been subject to domestic violence by a family or household member or any person who has been the victim of stalking to be granted an order of protection. This act also allows the courts to grant protective orders to victims of sexual assault. Under the current definitions' section that applies to provisions relating to orders of protection, sexual assault is defined as causing or attempting to cause another to engage involuntarily in any sexual act by force, threat of force, or duress. This act adds causing or attempting to cause another person to engage involuntarily in a sexual act without that person's consent to the definition.
Current law defines stalking as when a person purposely and repeatedly engages in an unwanted course of conduct that reasonably causes alarm to another person. Course of conduct is defined as a pattern of conduct composed of repeated acts over a period of time, however short, that serves no legitimate purpose. Repeated is defined as two or more incidents evidencing a continuity of purpose.
Under this act, stalking is when a person purposely engages in an unwanted course of conduct that causes alarm to another person or a person who resides together in the same household with the person seeking the protective order. Also, the reference to repeated acts in the definition of course of conduct is replaced with two or more acts.
In addition, a definition for what repeated means with regard to the stalking definition is repealed.
MEGHAN LUECKE