Getting a protective order

Why this is on a site about people

A protective order changes what can be written about them here, and how safely. Right now what you know is your own account of it. You can write a review here and it will stand — but it stands as your word against theirs, and that is the fight they will pick.

A protective order does not replace your account. Your sworn statement is how you get one, and it stays in the court’s file. What the protective order adds is a judge who read it and acted. That decision is a public record with a named court and a case number, so what goes on their page is not an accusation a reader has to take on trust — it is that a court ordered this person to stay away, in a case anybody can look up. Much harder to argue with, and much harder to frighten anybody into taking down.

A protective order also does something this site cannot. A review here warns the next person who looks them up, and that is all it does. A protective order makes contacting you a crime tonight, with a number the police can act on. Getting the protective order is the half that matters; putting it on their page is the smaller one.

Taking this page out of your history

Safest of all is not to read this on a device they can reach. A library or work computer, or a friend's phone, leaves nothing for them to find. The Leave this page button and the Escape key only clear the screen — they do not take this page out of your history. This does.

Deleting everything is often what gets noticed. If wiping your whole history is not something you normally do, an empty history is itself a signal. The advocates who specialise in this — the Safety Net project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence — say so plainly. Removing the single entry is quieter than clearing the lot.

Chrome, Edge and most Android browsers. Press Ctrl+H, or Cmd+Y on a Mac. Find the line for this page, hover over it, and use the three-dot menu or the X at the end of that row to delete just that entry.

Safari on a Mac. History menu, then Show All History. Right-click the entry and choose Delete.

Safari on an iPhone. Tap the book icon, then the clock tab. Swipe left on the entry and tap Delete.

Firefox. Press Ctrl+Shift+H, or Cmd+Shift+H on a Mac. Right-click the entry and choose Delete Page.

Next time, open a private window before you start. Ctrl+Shift+N in Chrome or Edge, Ctrl+Shift+P in Firefox, or Private in Safari's tab view. Nothing is written to history at all, so there is nothing to go back and delete.

If the device itself may be monitored, none of this is enough. Software that records what you do captures it before the browser ever saves anything, and a private window makes no difference to it. Nor does any of this help if somebody is simply watching the screen. Use a device they have never had access to, and call the hotline from that.

You go to a court yourself and ask a judge to order someone to leave you alone. You do not go through the police, and nobody has to be arrested or charged for you to get one. Breaking a protective order afterwards is a crime — that is the whole point of it. It turns something the police could not act on into something they can arrest for.

What you do not need

You do not need to have gone to the police.
You do not need anyone to have been arrested, charged or convicted.
You do not need a lawyer. The forms are written to be filled in by you.
You do not need bruises, photographs, a doctor or any other evidence beyond your own sworn account of what happened.
You do not need to have been sober, to have fought back, or to have said no in any particular way. In some states a judge is barred by law from refusing you on any of those grounds.
You do not need to be a citizen.

What a protective order can make them do

Stop hurting, threatening or frightening you.
Stay away from your home, your work, your school and your children's school.
Stop contacting you at all — no calls, texts, letters, email or social media, and not through a friend or a relative either.
Move out of a home you share, even if their name is on it.
Hand over their guns and ammunition.
Keep paying the rent, the mortgage or child support while the protective order lasts.
Pay you back for medical bills or for things they broke.
Give you temporary custody of your children, and stop or limit their visits.
Go to a programme, or be tested for drugs.

A judge does not order all of it every time. You ask for what you need, and the judge decides.

Nothing you pick below leaves your device. This page sends no answers to us and keeps no record of them.

Which state are you in?

What happened?

In danger right now? Call 911.

National Domestic Violence Hotline — free, confidential, 24/7: 1.800.799.7233 · text START to 88788

First: what this does and does not make public

This site does not publish your name. There is no field for it. A record here carries the court, the case number and what the court ordered — nothing about who asked for it, and the form tells whoever attaches it not to name you either.

The case itself is still public. This site does not print the case number either — it is kept on file so the record can be checked if it is ever challenged, but it is not shown — so a reader is not handed the key to the court file. The case is still a public record, though, and somebody determined enough to search the court by the other person’s name may find it, and you named in it. Your address is the part courts do protect, and most states run a programme to keep it out. What a file shows varies by state, and the clerk or a court advocate can tell you exactly what yours will show before you file — in some places you can ask for parts of it to be restricted.

So what goes on their page is the court and what it ordered. Not your name, and not the number that leads to it. If even that is more than you can carry right now, do not attach it. The protective order protects you either way — it works whether or not this site ever mentions it — so you can come back and do this later, or never.

Putting it on their page

Open their profile and find “In the news and on record”.
Choose “Attach an article or record”.
Pick “Court order or judgment”, not “News report”.
Give the court and the case number. Both, or it will not attach — a record nobody can look up is not a record.
Say in plain words what the court ordered, and when.

Do not upload the protective order itself. This site will not take the file. Your address is on it, and often a child’s name. Cite it instead.

Can they make you take it down?

Not for saying it. A defamation claim is a claim that you said something false about them. What you have said here is that a named court issued a protective order in a numbered case — which is true, and a matter of public record. Truth is a complete answer to that claim, and an accurate account of what a court did carries its own protection on top of it. That is exactly why the form asks for the court and the case number rather than for your story.

So the letter, if one comes, has nothing underneath it. A demand to take down an accurate record of a court order is a demand this site has no reason to grant, and the person it is about has no claim against you for having made it. Keep it accurate and keep it attributed, and there is nothing there to answer.

What can change is the record, not whether it stands. If the protective order is later vacated, or the case dropped or dismissed, that goes onto the same record, whoever asks. Nothing here is allowed to hold only the first half of a case.