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PFA unit director keeps it moving, despite carnage, confusion, no computer
Sunday, August 29, 1999 By Mackenzie Carpenter, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
She is a tall, commanding woman with a friendly face who operates at the epicenter of the PFA unit of Allegheny County Common Pleas Court's Family Division: its director, its facilitator, its punching bag. People shout at her sometimes -- "There are people who think we filed the PFA against them, not their spouse" -- but many attorneys are grateful for Beth Keenan.
When she's not poring over new petitions, she's in the courtroom or the hallway, "putting out fires." She can't give legal advice, but she can help attorneys with the fine points of the law as they try to reach agreements -- and she always tries to be polite to pushy lawyers who inform her that they are not going to settle.
"They and 400 other people want a hearing now," she said wearily after one recent morning jousting with egos.
Abuse doesn't take a vacation. On a recent Tuesday after the Fourth of July holiday, 40 people showed up to file for PFAs -- "the post-holiday rush," Keenan grimaces -- although she won't touch the Super Bowl story of several years ago that erroneously claimed that more men beat their wives after watching their favorite football teams lose.
"Protection from abuse orders don't reflect how much abuse is out there," she said firmly. "The number of PFAs only reflects who is willing to file them."
Keenan is something of a connoisseur of PFA petitions. Every morning she screens dozens of them, rating the strongest to the weakest based on whether they detail abuse according to the state statute.
"One of the big challenges is getting the women to write down what really happened," she said. "Some of them tend to minimize. Only after you push for 20 minutes do they sometimes get to the real stuff: Oh, I almost forgot, he hit the kids in a rage -- that's the strongest part of her claim, but she says it in almost an afterthought."
In this stack of petitions, there are plenty of red flags: One woman filed for a PFA two months after the abuse occurred; another lists no physical abuse except pushing; a third isn't clear about what the police did. Keenan takes a closer look. Why, she wonders out loud, was the defendant arrested for only intoxication and disorderly conduct after firing a gun at the back door?
"Why didn't the police take his guns? Did they take his guns?" she asked herself. It's not clear.
She looks at one petition and sounds out the almost illegible writing carefully: "He tried to break down the door and threatened to burn down the house ..." and then rewrites it in clear, blocklike letters so the judge can understand it.
Another document earns her admiration. "Now that's a well-written petition," she said, noting that it not only has readable handwriting but also lists specific times and places where abuse occurred. "He hit her 10 times, there are bruises, scratches." She read aloud: "He's a walking time bomb. He's suicidal, he threw me down 10 steps and put my head through a glass door."
In the next room, it's as quiet as a law library as people silently, carefully write out the petitions she will begin reviewing as soon as they're finished. It can be a time-consuming, difficult process.
The volunteer legal advocates from district crisis centers try to help, to make sure the PFAs are processed correctly. They also are supposed to talk to these women, to advise them of their legal options, but there is little time for that, given the number of people who need assistance before the cutoff of 11 a.m. That deadline is important. Two hours later, a judge will begin ruling on whether to grant the temporary petitions before moving on to an afternoon of contested hearings.
"What these people need is a quality half hour to discuss legal options and safety planning," Keenan said. "They need to know that sometimes, a PFA can make a situation worse rather than better. And is it really what they want to do? Are they really afraid?"
One woman, her face a blank, peers over the form while her 7-year-old son hangs on her arm. A volunteer legal advocate offers a worn-out baby doll from the toy box to a little girl. The door opens and another woman walks in to fill out a form. She is wearing a neck brace.
"They come in waves. Sometimes you'll get a whole bunch of people in here with black eyes," Keenan said.
Once, a woman who came in to file was immediately sent to the hospital with her young daughter who had untreated cuts and bruises. Another woman, apparently mentally ill, keeps returning, insisting she needs a PFA on behalf of her father because her mother feeds sugar to him.
Then there was the day a homeless man in a wheelchair showed up, drunk, with three of his friends, also drunk -- to file a PFA against a fellow resident of his homeless shelter, whom, he claimed, beat him up. His petition was rejected.
Despite Keenan's efficiency, her operation -- which is funded out of the court budget -- seems pitifully antiquated. Statistics provided to a reporter are handwritten. Keenan has no computer, although she insists it's easier to write orders out on the spot in the hallway or the courtroom once attorneys reach a settlement with both parties.
And she has no way of knowing whether the defendant has a PFA against him or her in any other jurisdiction. That will change -- eventually -- when a new statewide database operated by the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence is made available to county courts.
But even when that system is in place, Keenan will have limited communication with other agencies -- the district attorney's office or juvenile court or Children, Youth and Families -- thanks to the county's long-standing absence of computerization.
A PFA petitioner or its target may have been sprung from the county jail the night before on assault charges, or may be under investigation by CYF for child abuse -- but there's no way for Keenan to know that. During one phone call to the sheriff to determine if an inmate had been served with notice of his hearing on a PFA, she is switched to six different people, and never does get the answer. But no matter, the inmate appears for the hearing with a lawyer anyway.
As Keenan talks, she sees a defendant craning his neck to get a look inside the courtroom, which is off-limits to him. She strides across the room and closes the door in his face.
This happens several times a morning. There is always someone trying to get a glimpse inside the courtroom, where, most likely, his ex-spouse or former lover is sitting.
"They think there's something mysterious going on here that they don't know about," she said.
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