Protection from Violence or Harassment

If you believe someone is harassing you, there are 3 possible ways to get help, but each method depends on the facts of the harassment and your relationship, if any, to the person you believe is harassing you. Discover more about the 3 possible ways to get help:

1. Domestic Violence Protection Order - This form of protection is available to victims of domestic violence, whether or not someone was charged with a crime. If the person harassing you has committed an act of domestic violence, such as assault, threats of future harm, property destruction or other offenses, and that person is a spouse, former spouse, an adult person related by blood or marriage, persons residing together, person with a prior dating relationship, persons who have a biological or legal parent-child relationship, and person who have a child in common, whether or not they have been married or lived together, you must use this alternative. The District or Superior Court Clerk's Office can help you to make this determination.
2. No Contact Order in Criminal Case - This type of protection is ordered by a judge as a part of a criminal case involving domestic violence, and also depends on your relationship to the person charged with the domestic violence crime. If you are a victim of a domestic violence crime (assault, threats of future harm, property damage or destruction, or other domestic violence crimes) you may request assistance of law enforcement and have the crime charged and a no contact order entered by the judge as a part of the criminal case. Contact law enforcement to report a crime.
3. Civil Anti-harassment Protection Order - This is available only when the incident or incidents are not domestic violence acts. Unlawful harassment is a knowing and willful course of conduct directed at a specific person which seriously alarms, annoys or harasses such person, and which serves no legitimate or lawful purpose. In order to be eligible for a protection order there must be repeated invasions of a person's privacy by acts and works showing a continuous pattern of harassment. Isolated single acts of harassment will not qualify a person for an anti-harassment protection order.

Contact the Jefferson County or City of Port Townsend Prosecuting Attorney's office if a crime has already been charged and you wish to have the defendant ordered to have no contact with you or your children.