North America

In State v. Zeidell, 154 N.J. 417 (1998), the Supreme Court of New Jersey addressed a case involving two young children, ages eight and ten, who observed the defendant masturbating from a distance while on a public beach. The defendant was initially convicted of second-degree sexual assault and endangering the welfare of the children. The Appellate Division reversed the sexual assault convictions, finding that the statutory requirement of specific victimization had not been proven. On appeal, the Supreme Court reinstated the convictions.

The plaintiff filed a petition for a protective order against the defendant, her ex-boyfriend.  The two  ended their relationship in 2007, but from 2009 to 2012, the defendant made repeated, unsuccessful attempts to re-establish contact with the plaintiff via e-mail and social media.  In 2013, the defendant escalated his attempts, first driving to the plaintiff ’s parents’ home in Canton, Ohio, and approaching her father at 6:20 a.m.

The accused engaged in increasingly inappropriate sexual behavior toward the 17 year old complainant whom he was interviewing for a job. The teenager reported feeling afraid and stated that she repeated “no” at each advance. Despite the teen’s refusals, the accused continued to touch the complainant. The trial court acquitted the accused of sexual assault charges based on implied consent and the acquittal was upheld in the Court of Appeal.

Ms. Streanga is a citizen of Romania who was smuggled to Canada by a sex trafficking ring. After escaping from her traffickers, Ms. Streanga submitted an application for protection. Her application was denied, the deciding officer concluding that since the Romanian government had “taken serious measures” to punish those responsible for trafficking, state protection would be available to Ms. Streanga upon her return. Ms. Streanga made a motion for an order staying her removal until such time as her Application for Leave and for Judicial Review of her application could be decided.

North Carolina passed a law, the Right to Know Act, which required physicians in North Carolina to show a woman seeking an abortion a live-feed of her ultrasound between four and seventy-two hours before an abortion and to describe the fetus in detail including dimensions and location of the fetus. A coalition of doctors and Planned Parenthood sued the President of the North Carolina Medical Board, the Secretary of Health and Human Services for North Carolina, the American Medical Association, and other similar entities.

In Summit Medical Associates, P.C. v. Pryor, 180 F.3d 1326 (11th Cir. 1999), the Eleventh Circuit addressed constitutional challenges to Alabama’s Partial-Birth Abortion Act and its Post-Viability Abortion Statute.

Suter filed a petition for a temporary protective order, alleging boyfriend committed various violent acts against her.  The court issued the temporary protective order and entered a final protective order five days later by consent.  Stuckey, Suter’s boyfriend, later filed an appeal of the final protective order.  Suter filed a motion to dismiss the appeal, arguing the appeal was time-barred, and Stuckey was estopped from appealing a consent judgment.  The court held that the appeal was moot because the protective order had expired; however, it concluded that the issue

Here, the plaintiff sought a protection order from a Delaware court.  The defendant argued that a Delaware court had no jurisdiction over him, as the alleged abuse did not occur in Delaware, and he was a non-resident.  Further, the plaintiff and her children were present in Delaware only for two days upon filing the petition.  Id. at 508.  The court noted that Delaware enacted the Uniform Interstate Enforcement of Domestic Violence Protection Orders Act, which allows courts to register and enforce valid protection orders from other states.  Id.