Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Domestic Violence (And Maybe a Little More)

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Domestic Violence
(And Maybe a Little More)

Robert C. Phillips
Deputy District Attorney (Ret)
April, 2020

In November, 2011, thirty-four year-old Kathy Scharbarth was murdered on her birthday by her ex-boyfriend, Michael David Robles (later to hang himself while in jail).[1]  A restraining order, commanding that Robles stay away from Kathy, was not enough to protect her as he repeatedly and openly continued to stalk and harass her, eventually strangling her to death and dumping her body in a remote area of San Diego County.[2] 

In 2012, Assembly member Ben Hueso (D-San Diego) introduced Assembly Bill 2467.  Effective January 1, 2013, AB 2467, amending Penal Code § 136.2, gave judges the authority to order electronic monitoring of certain domestic violence perpetrators in conjunction with the issuance of a restraining order tailored to the domestic violence situation.

In enacting AB 2467, now known as “Kathy’s Law,” it was noted that in California, about 70,000 women had been subjected to domestic violence in one form or another; a number three times higher than the national average. At the time of the signing of AB 2467 into law, there were more than 220,000 active restraining orders in California, most of which involved intimate partner violence.  An estimated 50% of such orders had already been violated.  AB 2467 was intended to provide law enforcement with a little ....

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