Discussing domestic violence and PFAs
A panel including, from left, Maggie Novotny, Allison Weakland, Kristen Clingerman and Officer Jonathan Miles discuss PFAs.
At left, Washington County Assistant District Attorney Kristen Clingerman and North Strabane Township police Officer Jonathan Miles speak at a PFA information session hosted by Domestic Violence Services of Southwestern Pennsylvania at Citizens Library in Washington. Above, a panel including, from left, Maggie Novotny, Allison Weakland, Clingerman and Miles discuss PFAs.
The homicides of Dalia Sabae and Tierne Ewing, who both obtained protection-from-abuse orders against their estranged husbands, led some to question the effectiveness of PFAs.
Domestic Violence Services of Southwestern Pennsylvania hosted an information session on PFAs Thursday at Citizens Library in Washington to explain how they work, how they keep domestic abuse victims safe, and why, in some cases, they don’t work.
Washington County Assistant District Attorney Kristen Clingerman said, “I don’t agree that PFAs are useless or ineffective. They have their place in the system. They’re not a cure-all for every single case and every single situation. But, in most situations, they give police the opportunity to immediately make an arrest. They don’t have to do an investigation, they don’t have to get a warrant. They can do the arrest. So, they’re a valuable tool, but they are only one weapon in an arsenal to fight domestic violence.”
Sabae obtained a PFA last month against Michael Cwiklinski, her estranged husband, who fatally shot her Nov. 10 in a duplex in Canonsburg. He also killed Canonsburg police Officer Scott Bashioum and injured Officer James Saieva.
A PFA was enforced against Kevin Ewing when he took Tierne Ewing at gunpoint Aug. 31 to an old barn on a dairy farm in West Finley Township, where he shot and killed her.
Why didn’t the PFA orders keep them safe?
Clingerman said under current Pennsylvania law, a defendant who is served with a PFA is not permitted to possess, use or own firearms. The defendant is given 24 hours to turn weapons over to the sheriff’s office, or he may turn them over to a third party, such as a brother or an uncle, who is permitted to possess firearms.
“My feelings about that are, if you have a defendant with the kind of murderous intent that Kevin Ewing had, or Michael Cwiklinski had, how can you reasonably expect them to be honest and forthright and say, ‘Here are all of my weapons,'” said Clingerman. “And even if they give police the power to go in and clear a residence of weapons, it’s pretty easy to go out there and illegally get a gun on the black market. I don’t have a definite answer that legislature should do A, B, or C, but it’s definitely worth talking about and trying to figure something out.”
Victims of domestic abuse should not be discouraged from getting PFAs, said Maggie Novotny, Washington Legal Advocacy Manager.
She encouraged domestic violence victims to continue to seek help and to work with agencies like Domestic Violence Services to develop a safety plan that may or may not include a PFA.
“PFAs can work. Each case is different. We discuss with every client who comes in if this is the absolute best choice for them, We discuss safety planning, and they always leave with numbers to our shelter, a safety planning brochure and a number to our office,” said Novotny.
North Strabane Township police Officer Jonathan Miles said police want to help protect victims of domestic violence and connect them with the help they need.
“You have to understand how much we really want to help you,” said Miles. “We want the victims to know – the ones we know about and the ones we don’t – that we care about your safety.”
A few women in attendance shared their stories of domestic abuse, including one who filed a PFA against her husband, who she said “used me as a punching bag. My face doesn’t say ‘Everlast.'”
The system doesn’t always work, said Miles.
“I’ve had district justices set bond from $1 to $100,000 for the same thing,” he said, recalling a domestic violence case he was involved in where a man who had been served with a PFA broke into the woman’s house, beat her inside the home and dragged her outside the home where he beat her again. The district justice set the bond at $1.
Three times in the past 13 months, a Washington County woman was killed by her estranged spouse.
Clingerman said domestic violence is an epidemic.
“It’s a deadly epidemic. We have to stay vigilant,” she said. “Actually, we’ve been lucky that there haven’t been more than three (domestic violence deaths) in 13 months when you see the volume of abused people who come through the system and the volume of abusers. It’s amazing that there have only been three. It’s horrendous what these women go through. We need to stop victim-blaming. We need to blame the abusers. The question shouldn’t be, ‘Why does she go back?’ The real question should be, ‘Why does he choose to blacken her eye? Why does he choose to tell her she’s going to die? Why does he choose to strangle her?'”