Newswise -- Women who experience threats of violence or abuse from an intimate partner may be best protected by a permanent civil protection order, a recent study indicates -- even though many victims may be skeptical about the effectiveness of taking a legal avenue.

"Based on these findings, civil protection orders appear to be one of the few widely available interventions for victims of intimate partner violence that has demonstrated effectiveness," says study author Victoria Holt, PhD, MPH, of the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington and the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center, both in Seattle.

Civil protection orders are legally binding orders designed to prevent partner abuse. An individual who violates such an order may face civil contempt, misdemeanor or felony charges. Only 20 percent of the approximately 2 million U.S. women who are physically abused, stalked or raped by partners each year obtain these orders, according to the study.

Holt and colleagues conducted a series of interviews during a period of more than nine months with approximately 400 women who had been threatened or abused by their partners. One group of women had obtained a temporary or permanent civil protection order and the other group had contacted the police after being threatened or abused, but had not obtained a protection order.

The researchers found that women who obtained and maintained a civil protection order were safer than those without them in the five-month period after they were initially threatened or abused. The intimate partners in the protection order group were significantly less likely to have threatened the women or to have inflicted psychological or physical abuse on them.

When Holt and colleagues interviewed the women again four months later, they found the protection order effect had grown even stronger. At this point, women who had maintained their protection orders from their first abuse incident were also less likely than those with no protection order to have been sexually abused or injured or to have received medical care for abuse.

One experience the protection order did not shield against over the nine-month study period was unwelcome phone calls.

The study results were published in the January issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The findings contradict those of a study, which found that protection orders did not shield women from abuse. Holt and colleagues suggest that this disagreement may relate to the shorter study period of the study, which spanned only four months. They also suggest that civil protection orders may be more effective today than they were two decades ago. Penalties for civil protection order violation have shifted from civil to criminal and "police response has improved following the institution of mandatory arrest laws," according to the study.

"While obtaining a civil protection order is no guarantee further abuse will be prevented, health and criminal justice providers should consider providing information about civil protection orders to all individuals affected by intimate partner violence," Holt concludes.

This study was supported by a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Justice as part of the Interagency Consortium on Violence against Women and Family Violence Research.

Source: Health Behavior News Service