Stalking Charges and Protection From Abuse Orders in Dauphin County

In Pennsylvania, stalking charges with a range of serious criminal consequences, such as hefty fines and jail sentences. Civil actions like Protection From Abuse (PFA) orders are common responses as well. This is to say nothing of the negative social impact; stalking charges can make friends, family members, employers, landlords, and other community members hesitant to associate with you.

That's why you shouldn't wait to get dedicated and competent legal assistance as soon as you discover that you're being charged with stalking or hit with a PFA order. It could make all the difference in your reputation, career prospects, and standard of living in Dauphin County. To set yourself up with the best support possible, call the LLF Law Firm Criminal Defense Team today at 888-535-3686 or fill out their confidential consultation form.

If a judge approves it, a PFA order is valid and enforceable for up to three years. They often come with stipulations that you're required to follow until they expire, including the following:

• No direct or third-party contact with the PFA order's petitioner.
• Temporary loss of custody of any shared children with the petitioner, who will have full custody until a hearing about the order.
• Pay child support, spousal support, and other expenses as needed to the petitioner.
• Eviction from your residence, even if your name is on the deed or lease and/or you contribute to the mortgage or rent payments.
• Heightened scrutiny from employers and law enforcement officers.

Stalking charges tend to affect your career, personal relationships, housing, and many other aspects of your life for years after the fact. The sooner you get legal representation after learning about the charges against you, the more likely you are to overcome them. Contact the LLF Law Firm right away so that they can get ahead of the problem.

Stalking Laws in Pennsylvania

Knowing what qualifies as stalking in Pennsylvania is an important step toward avoiding or fighting any accusations against you. According to state law, stalking is defined as a pattern of behavior that carries malicious implications or threats, such as:

1. An intent to cause harm to another person, including physical, emotional, mental, financial, or social.
2. An intent to provoke another person into a temporary or permanent state of mental or emotional distress, especially to the point of affecting their day-to-day activities.

Dauphin County court judges consider several factors as context when choosing whether and how to convict someone accused of stalking. These factors are usually the most significant:

• Intent: The incidents of stalking and related actions are intended to bring physical or emotional harm or a sense of fear to the target and/or their loved ones.
• Repeated Acts: Making unwanted contact or being in the same space once or twice does not necessarily indicate stalking. However, if it happens twice or more at short or regular intervals, it qualifies as a repeated act and, therefore, stalking.
• Course of Conduct: Harassment, intimidation, threats, bullying, assault, and other abusive actions demonstrate that each incident of unwanted contact or proximity is meant to cause harm. In other words, the course of conduct over time proves stalking.
• Emotional Distress: When put together, the intent, repeated acts, and course of contact all create a state of temporary or permanent emotional distress for the target.

First-time stalking offenders are usually charged with a first-degree misdemeanor in Dauphin County. Second and subsequent offenses are graded more severely as third-degree felonies. Even a misdemeanor could become a felony if the stalking includes any of the following actions:

• Breach of a protective order
• Reckless endangerment
• Simple assault
• Aggravated assault
• Kidnapping
• Rape
• Involuntary deviant sexual intercourse

Grading Criminal Stalking Charges

Dauphin County courts consider a defendant's criminal history and the severity of the stalking when deciding how to grade the charges. The most common grade for a first-time offense is a first-degree misdemeanor, potentially resulting in a maximum of five years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines.

For more serious stalking incidents and defendants with prior convictions, Dauphin County courts often elevate the charge to a third-degree felony. Stalking a member of your family or household or the same person as before can have the same effect. Either way, the felony could result in a maximum of seven years in prison and fines of up to $15,000.

Offenders frequently commit other crimes alongside stalking, which may cause the Dauphin County courts to give it an even higher grade and assign stricter punishments. Other contributing factors include opinions and statements that Pennsylvania law would consider “seriously disparaging” about a victim's child, especially if it's bad enough to cause the victim and/or their child to endure “substantial emotional distress…which produces some physical manifestation.”

Stalkers sometimes engage in terroristic threats, too. To be clear, Pennsylvania law defines threats as terroristic if they have the following traits:

• They cause the people in a building, public, or place of assembly to evacuate.
• There is an intent to terrorize the target(s).

In your view, any “seriously disparaging statements” or terroristic threats you may have expressed may simply be misunderstandings, miscommunications, or exaggerated interpretations of what you meant. Even so, if the plaintiff and their legal counsel convince a Dauphin County court judge otherwise, your first-degree misdemeanor or third-degree felony could end up upgraded even higher.

How Stalking in Dauphin County Leads to Protection From Abuse Orders

Criminal convictions and penalties are ruinous enough, but stalking often carries consequences in civil courts as well. The most significant example is likely Protection From Abuse (PFA) orders. With these orders, Pennsylvania law gives Dauphin County courts the power to support and protect victims of domestic violence, especially the following:

• Prior and current sexual partners.
• Spouses and anyone living as spouses, both current and former.
• Parents, children, siblings, and other family members, whether by blood or marriage.

Anyone who is a victim of isolation, kidnapping, involuntarily confinement, or physical or sexual abuse can receive a PFA order. The same is true if they have a genuine reason to fear that the subject of the order will harm them because of a pattern of frightening or hurtful behavior, such as menacing, harassment, bullying, assault, intimidation, and other actions that often occur in tandem with stalking.

Located in the Dauphin County Human Services Building at 25 S. Front Street, 7th Floor, Harrisburg, PA 17101, the office that issues the Dauphin County Victim Witness Program is where residents can file PFA order applications. At minimum, they must provide the following details:

• A list of everyone relevant to the case, including third parties and witnesses.
• The locations, dates, and times of each stalking incident and any associated crimes.
• The specific threats, abuse, and other actions or tactics that demonstrate a harmful course of conduct.
• Information about any physical, mental, or emotional harm that the victim has suffered because of the stalker.

Those who apply for PFA orders can request stipulations beyond basic protection if circumstances warrant them. These are the most common additions to PFA orders:

• Eviction of the defendant from any residence that they share with the victim.
• No contact between the defendant and the victim, their family members, or any shared children.
• The victim gets full temporary custody of any shared children.
• The defendant must pay spousal or child support, legal fees, and other relevant expenses to the victim.
• Law enforcement must confiscate the defendant's ammunition and firearms if they have any.

Temporary Orders

Dauphin County courts usually approve temporary PFA orders to victims who apply. These orders are granted on an ex-parte basis—meaning that the defendant doesn't have to be present—but are only valid until the court holds a formal hearing about the stalking charge within ten business days after the filing.

Magisterial judges also have the power to grant emergency PFA orders in the following circumstances:

• The victim and/or their loved ones reasonably fear immediate harm, constituting a “true emergency.”
• The Court of Common Pleas is unable to conduct a hearing about the petition right after it's filed.

Emergency orders are only valid until the end of the next business day, but the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas may upgrade it to a temporary PFA order before then. After that, they will wait for the formal hearing before making more decisions about the situation.

Protection From Abuse Hearings in Dauphin County

The hearing is where both the defendant and plaintiff can plead their cases to a judge from the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas. They can present any evidence, witness statements, perspectives, context, and legal arguments they may have in their favor. After considering all the information provided, the judge will dismiss, reduce, or finalize the PFA order. If the judge upholds the PFA order in any form rather than granting you a dismissal, it will then go to your employer, licensing agencies, local law enforcement, and your children's schools.

Without professional training, it's impossible to anticipate everything that could happen at a hearing for a stalking charge. You could end up blindsided by the arguments, evidence, witness statements, and even procedural errors or inconsistencies mounted against you. Not only could it all result in a full and finalized PFA order in civil court, but it can be used in criminal and child custody proceedings as well.

PFA orders and the accompanying criminal convictions can devastate your present and future, so you must be prepared for the formal civil hearing. Don't leave it to chance or assume that truth or sympathy will win over the judge. Hire the LLF Law Firm Criminal Defense Team to be your advocate and guarantee the best possible outcome.

Provisions and Impact of a PFA

Never forget that civil actions like PFA orders would be the end of your troubles. These orders have ripple effects for years after the fact, particularly if they're accompanied by criminal stalking convictions. Consider the following potential outcomes influencing the trajectory of your life:

• Loss of Rights: The Constitution says that citizens have a right to bear arms, but you'll be stripped of that right if you're convicted of stalking because Pennsylvania law will deem you too dangerous to arm. Law enforcement will take away your firearms, ammunition, and other weapons.
• Additional Scrutiny: Minor crimes and infractions wouldn't normally cause huge interruptions in your daily life or career, but they can if you have prior stalking convictions or a PFA order against you. Law enforcement could saddle you with higher fees or fines, as well as other harsh penalties.
• Lack of Housing: To reduce risk to themselves, landlords typically require criminal background checks for prospective tenants. Serious issues like PFA orders and stalking convictions could make you look dangerous and unreliable, so you may have trouble securing housing after being evicted from your residence. In other words, you could be homeless for an indefinite period of time.
• Fewer Employment Opportunities: Pre-employment criminal background checks are increasingly the norm for companies big and small. If you apply for a job, and your potential employer sees that you have a PFA order and stalking conviction on your record, they might think twice about hiring you. The same is true of professional licensing agencies when they're deciding whether to let you obtain, renew, reinstate, or simply maintain your license. Either way, your career may become stunted, perhaps irreparably.

What Happens if Defendants Violate a PFA?

Although PFA orders are civil actions, violations qualify as crimes. Whether the violation occurs by accident, misunderstanding, or assuming that it's invalid, committing it allows law enforcement officers to arrest you without a warrant. A judge may then charge you with indirect criminal contempt of court, which Pennsylvania law categorizes as a second-degree misdemeanor with the following penalties:

• Rearrangements in child custody or visitation schedules.
• Up to six months of incarceration for every count of contempt.
• A maximum of $1,000 in fines for every violation.

A judge might assign you probation, domestic violence counseling, anger management courses, or other rehabilitative programs instead of jail time, should they think you would benefit more from such alternatives.

If your violations include intimidation, bullying, harassment, threats, assault, property damage, or other crimes, the Dauphin County courts will likely file a new case against you and prosecute accordingly. A conviction would result in a new third-degree felony on your record and any associated penalties the judge sees fit to impose.

Can You Modify a PFA?

Even after a judge finalizes them, PFA orders are not necessarily unchangeable. However, the court will not acknowledge any modifications or new agreements you make with your accuser unless a judge formally approves them. Until then, violating a PFA order could still get you in legal trouble, no matter what you and your accuser have decided.

PFA orders can also be modified in a way that works against you. Specifically, your accuser can request that the court extend its expiration date, particularly if they claim you've continued to stalk, harass, threaten, bully, or abuse them. If you disagree, you'd need to appeal it within 30 days of its issuance and wait for the Pennsylvania Superior Court to decide whether to approve it.

Your Resource for Dauphin County Stalking Charges and Protection From Abuse Orders

Since petitioners don't have to inform the accused about PFA orders before filing, many defendants are surprised to learn about them. Additionally, the court must hold a hearing within ten business days so proceedings move quickly. Defendants commonly become overwhelmed and find their worlds turned upside down before they even have a chance to fully process what's happened. To minimize the order's impact and regain control of your life, it's essential to hire a committed and competent legal representation immediately.

The LLF Law Firm Criminal Defense Team is well-versed in laws surrounding stalking and PFA orders in Dauphin County and throughout the rest of Pennsylvania. They're always ready to jump to your defense, and they'll gladly offer you all these benefits and more:

• Legal Guidance: PFA orders are life-changing on their own, but the repercussions are worse if you violate them. With the help of the LLF Law Firm Criminal Defense Team, you'll know how to fully comply and improve your odds of winning your fight against it.
• Modification and Dispute Support: You have the right to combat criminal charges and PFA orders if you so choose, and you're far more likely to win with the LLF Law Firm Criminal Defense Team on your side. They can lead you through the process and advocate for you.
• Thorough Defense Strategies: The LLF Law Firm Criminal Law Defense Team is adept at seeing stalking cases from every angle and wielding the law as a shield for their clients. They'll devise a personalized defense strategy to make sure you're treated fairly and sympathetically.

Don't let PFA orders or stalking accusations taint your present or future. You deserve a chance to protect and stand up for yourself so that you can live your life to the fullest. That's why you must enlist the aid of the LLF Law Firm Criminal Defense Team. Call them today at 888-535-3686 or fill out a confidential consultation form.