PFAs are a “great tool,” to help protect people, “but it's just a start,” said Linda Strachan, executive director of Victim Outreach Intervention Center (VOICe).

“I do think it's really about the protection it can afford our clients who come to us in need,” she added.

Protection From Abuse orders can forbid contact and add other conditions against an individual involved in a potentially dangerous incident with another person.

Last year, 420 PFA petitions were filed, according to a report by the Butler County Court Administration Office. In 2016, that number was 449, while in 2015 and 2014, 410 and 398 petitions were filed respectively.

Tom Holman, deputy court administrator, said the numbers are “totally driven by behavior in the community” and as people get a better understanding of what PFAs are, those numbers can rise and fall.

District Attorney Richard Goldinger said in cases where criminal charges are not filed, PFAs are the only protection courts have for victims.

“If criminal charges are filed, that just gives them extra protection,” he said. “PFAs are a great step to providing these victims more protection.”

PFAs can be filed with the Domestic Relations Office at the Butler County Courthouse, or with on-call Magisterial District judges after business hours.

Those emergency PFAs issued by magistrate judges are valid until the next day, when a petitioner must then file for a temporary PFA, Holman said.

The complaint is then reviewed by the Family Court judge, who either grants the temporary order or dismisses it.

Temporary orders are granted after a hearing and served on the defendant by the Butler County Sheriff's Office.

The final order is then completed after a hearing, typically within 10 days, Holman said.

Final orders can last up to three years.

PFAD, an electronic statewide database, allows the widespread sharing of information easily to law enforcement regarding active PFAs, Holman said.

The mission is to establish and maintain a database that includes all PFA proceedings in the Commonwealth. It is a computer archival system designed to complement the operation of the Pennsylvania State Police Protection Order Registry, according to the program's website

“To me it's the first line of protection,” Goldinger said. “Victims can come in the following day to get that when charges are not filed right away, which helps ensure their safety.”

He also said violations of PFA orders also “have some teeth,” where violators could be sentenced to up to six months in jail.

Strachan said it can be a helpful tool for police. If the order is violated, officers can get involved and get the offender out of the situation, ensuring the safety of those who filed the order, she said.

“Most of the PFAs that are filed, the defendants are mostly respectful of them,” she said.

However, Strachan did say the most dangerous point for a client is after they file, because of some of the “unintended consequences” that can come about, such as the anger that can be churned up by that filing.

But she said it is important for those considering filing to understand the protections PFAs can offer.

Pennsylvanians are increasingly turning to a more than 2-year-old state law that expanded protective orders for victims of sexual violence and intimidation, and state lawmakers are debating whether to make additional improvements to the system.

The Sexual Violence and Intimidation Act that went into effect in July 2015 created two new types of orders beyond PFA orders that have long been available to restrict contact from an intimate partner or a family member.

The new legal mechanisms are protection-from-intimidation orders (PFI), designed to help children who are being harassed or stalked by nonfamily members who are adults, and sexual violence protection orders (SVP), for victims of sexual violence whose attackers are not family members or dating partners but strangers, friends and acquaintances.

As of December, state police said courts issued 315 temporary and final PFI orders in 2017, up from 310 in 2016 and 187 during part of 2015. The number of SVP orders was 552 in 2017, compared to 470 in 2016 and 260 during the second half of 2015, according to The Associated Press.

In Butler County, two SVP orders were issued, down from six in 2016, and three PFI orders were issued in 2017, up from two issued in 2016, according to the numbers provided by Holman.

Goldinger said these types of orders help protect other classes of victims, who possibly could not have gotten that protection before the expansion of the orders, including children and victims of sexual assault.

Strachan said that expansion of protected classes of people is important, allowing more people to be covered.

“I think it's really simple, we want to protect as many people as we can,” she said.

Following the homicide of a University of Pittsburgh student in her apartment, the state Senate also passed Senate Bill 196, a proposed bill known as “Alina's Law,” which amends Title 23 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statues dealing with domestic relations, allowing a judge to order an electronic monitoring device on a defendant in a PFA order.

Alina Sheykhet was found murdered allegedely by her ex-boyfriend in her off-campus apartment in October 2017. Sheykhet had filed a PFA against her ex-boyfriend, Matthew Darby, formerly of Cranberry Township, days before she was killed.

According to The Associated Press, Alina had a restraining order against Darby after he was arrested Sept. 26 and charged with felony criminal trespass for allegedly breaking into her apartment. She wrote in her protection order that Darby climbed up the gutter and broke into a second-floor window because she left him and stopped answering his phone calls.

This bill allows law enforcement to GPs monitor defendants in PFA orders “if the defendant is found to present a substantial risk of violating the final protection from abuse order or committing a crime against the victim punishable by imprisonment” allowing monitoring of “the defendant's location relative to all persons for whom protection is sought.”

“The court shall determine the distance at which the defendant is to remain from all persons seeking protection from abuse and specific locations from which the defendant shall refrain,” the bill states.

The bill has now been referred to the House for consideration.

Goldinger said he sees this as a “fantastic step” in protecting victims.

“This would ensure that we know where a perpetrator might be,” he said. “For someone who repeatedly violations these orders, it ensures the court and victims that we are going to know where the perpetrator is.”

Other changes to state law regarding protective orders are pending in the legislature, including bills that would make available police or deputies for protection for the time when a protective order is being served on someone, end the practice of turning over firearms under a court order to a third party instead of to police or a gun dealer, make it easier to extend an order if someone is getting out of jail, and let judges use risk assessment tools when setting bail for defendants in domestic violence cases, according to The Associated Press.