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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Justice Chairman: More Needs to be Done to Curb Dating Violence

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Friday, December 13, 2013   

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The struggle to push tougher dating-violence laws through the Kentucky Legislature has momentum, according to the main sponsor of a bill that would provide new protections.

House Judiciary Chairman John Tilley urged those gathered Thursday for the annual Ending Sexual Assault Domestic Violence Conference to help push his bill to passage.

Currently, dating partners cannot obtain a protective order in Kentucky.

Tilley says that makes no sense and is unfair.

"The most vulnerable population are young girls, or girls and women in this age range, 16 to 25,” he explains. “There shouldn't be those distinctions on who can access this immediate protection because we know it saves lives."

To obtain a protective order in Kentucky, you have to either be married, living with your partner or have had a child with that person.

Legislation extending that protection to dating partners has passed the House the last three sessions but died in the Senate.

Tamara Reif, vice president for programs with The Center for Women and Families, says the dating violence law is important.

"We talk about protective orders as a safety planning tool,” she explains. “And when we don't have that option for a lot of our clients, then it just sort of feels like we have to figure out what else we're going to do instead because it's just not an option for them."

Reif says that forces the center to do a lot of scrambling to figure out how to keep victims of dating violence safe.

Rife says she hears concerns that people take out protective orders too often, but she says they work.

"They're a great tool for our clients,” she stresses, “not always, but they're still a, it's a huge protective factor for our clients to be able to take out protective orders."

Tilley is wasting no time in trying to move his bill. He says his House Judiciary Committee will hear the bill on Jan. 8, the second day of the 2014 legislative session.

He says that for every dollar the state spends on protective orders for dating partners it can save $31.

"I think it makes sense, that's why you can see the common sense that it makes when you talk about averting other costs in a very expensive criminal-justice system," he says.

An $86 million savings, according to the University of Kentucky study Tilley is citing.





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