CHARLESTON -- The state Supreme Court has ruled that a perceived threat of violence is enough to justify the granting of a domestic violence protection order.

The unanimous ruling overturned Clay County Circuit Richard Facemire, who denied Kimberly Thomas' request for a protective order against her former boyfriend of 12 years, Joseph Morris. In January, Facemire upheld a family court judge who denied the order, saying Thomas had failed to prove that acts of domestic violence had occurred.

The case stemmed from a July 2008 incident where Morris arrived at Thomas' Clay County home, but spent one to two hours knocking on doors and windows in an attempt to talk to her.

The opinion, written by Justice Thomas McHugh, noted that Thomas and her boyfriend waited until they believed Morris was on the back porch before they ran out the front door to a neighbor's house about a quarter mile away to use the phone. Thomas did not have cell phone reception at her home and Morris' vehicle was parked in the driveway, blocking hers, the opinion noted.

In the two months leading up to the incident, Morris had phoned Thomas at least 150 times, sent her flowers and proposed marriage in an attempt to resume their relationship.

Thomas, who now lives in Kanawha County, sought a protective order twice, but was denied on both occasions.

In his opinion, McHugh said that requiring "overt or explicit threat of harm" to be necessary to obtain a protective order ignores the Legislature's intent for the law to be "liberally construed to further the purposes of deterring, prevent and reducing domestic violence through legal intervention."

The court sent the case back to Clay County Family Court with instructions to issue a protective order.

Angie Rosser with the West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence praised the ruling.

"It calls our lower courts to a deeper examination and consideration of the context and pattern of behavior that constitutes domestic violence," she said.

Advocates say that domestic violence petitions, even when they are granted, are often dropped because of lack of support. The Cabell Circuit Clerk's Office compiled a report showing 64 percent of women in the county either terminated an emergency restraining order or failed to appear in court after beginning the process in 2006. At least 449 domestic violence petitions had been dismissed for the same reasons this year, according to a January to September tally provided by Cabell Family Court.

The Clerk's Office report showed relative success for those women who followed through, as family court judges granted final restraining orders in 61.8 percent of those cases.

FBI statistics state at least 1,333 people died at the hands of their significant other during 2008.

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