The Illinois Senate has unanimously passed a bill to expand orders of protection to online spaces and allow victims to indefinitely extend protection orders.
The bill would give law enforcement more authority to investigate and bring charges against anyone who uses online spaces to harass someone with an order of protection against that person.
People with protection orders would also be able to indefinitely extend the order of protection.
Jennifer Welch, chief of policy at the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said current laws involving domestic violence and orders of protection have not kept up with modern technology.
“It has not kept pace with the way that offenders use technology to harm and harass domestic violence victims, and that's why the coalition worked with its members over the last almost two years to gather information about all of the ways that survivors were harmed by technology,” Welch said.
Victim advocates note that online harassment cases are often more difficult to prove because perpetrators can often hide their identity.
Democrat state Sen. Adriane Johnson, representing a suburb of Chicago, introduced the bill. She said the measure expands the definition of harassment to include doxing, electronic tracking, repeated surveillance and making or disseminating altered sexual images and other harmful online content without consent.
Johnson said courts will also be able to order the deletion of online harassment content and they can stop the use of technology allowing offenders to track victims.
“Abusers often use technology to stalk, monitor and maintain control over their victims,” Johnson said. “That is why we must empower survivors by allowing them to use the court to hold their abusers to account.”
Johnson said the bill will allow survivors to feel safer and reclaim their privacy.
Expanding of protections
Nastasha Powers, assistant director of YWCA McLean County's Stepping Stones sexual violence crisis center, said enabling survivors to extend their protection orders indefinitely gives greater protections to survivors who have dealt with verbal abuse and other forms of harassment — before it leads to physical abuse.
Powers said currently it is hard for survivors to extend orders of protections unless they have a criminal protection order because of physical abuse.
“It's even harder, because a lot of times it's not the physical wounds that leave the deepest, it's not the physical scars that leave the deepest wounds. It's those psychological, those emotional and also those virtual wounds,” Powers said.
Powers said knowing that orders of protection can be extended over a lifetime makes survivors feel protected knowing they have done everything they can and an abuser will be held accountable if they violate an order of protection.
Virtual court hearings
The bill would also allow petitioners seeking orders of protection to attend court hearings virtually.
Powers said that would further protect victims from reliving their trauma by removing some of the senses that might trigger the trauma.
“Allowing it to be virtual takes away that touch, it takes away that smell, and to a certain extent, it can take away the hearing,” Powers said.
Powers said having virtual hearings can empower victims and give them more control over their lives that they might have lost to their abuser.
“When [government entities] allow [survivors] to be empowered, it allows them to see, hey, I'm in control of this situation. I'm able to make the decisions. I don't have to do what this person is telling me to do,” Powers said.
Some advocacy organizations have raised concerns that law enforcement has not pursued these cases as aggressively as they say is warranted.
Powers said YWCA has a relationship with the law enforcement in McLean County and has trained police in supporting survivors in sexual assault cases and helping survivors to come forward when they feel comfortable.
“If we do find a space where law is not being upheld, or if we find a space where we feel like maybe some things are slipping into the cracks,” Powers said. “Luckily, in McLean County, we have that relationship with our police departments where we are able to have that conversation to see what needs to be done.”
Powers said YWCA focuses on sexual assault cases, which does overlap with domestic violence, but they refer people to the Bloomington nonprofit Mid-Central Community Action when a case involves domestic violence.
Local lawmaker
Democratic state Sen. Dave Koehler, representing parts of Peoria and Bloomington-Normal, was a bill co-sponsor.
Koehler said he wants to see law enforcement have more tools to prosecute violations of protection orders.
“We want [the bill] to be clear. Want [the bill] to be easy to enforce, or at least that the experts can enforce them the way that we intended it to be enforced,” Koehler said.
Koehler said this bill could reduce the number of incidents where domestic violence escalates, sometimes leading to the death of a victim.
In 2024, WGLT reviewed more than 100 police reports over a six-month period related to alleged order of protection violations in McLean County. Fewer than one third led to a conviction or pending charge.
“The purpose of the bill is that there are too many incidents where violence, domestic violence, really escalates and people end up getting murdered by it because of the situation,” Koehler said.
Koehler said laws are always being revised and the current bill will give more tools to law enforcement to prosecute violations of orders of protection.
The bill now advances to the Illinois House for a vote.
