BILL NUMBER: S3394A
SPONSOR: GOUNARDES
 
TITLE OF BILL:
An act to amend the civil practice law and rules, the penal law, the
criminal procedure law, the judiciary law and the executive law, in
relation to anti-stalking orders
 
PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:
To follow the precedent of 43 other states in allowing for civil orders
of protection for certain stalking or harassing forms of behavior that
may not be easily or quickly prosecuted through the criminal court
system.
 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Section one of this bill names it the Ceasing Repeated, Extremely Egre-
gious, and Predatory (CREEP) Behavior Act.
Section two of this bill creates a new Article 63-B in the Civil Prac-
tice Law and Rules (CPLR) to create a new type of order of protection,
called an anti-stalking order, for anyone subject to a series of enumer-
ated penal offenses including stalking, assault or attempted assault,
harassment, unlawful dissemination or publication of an intimate image,
reckless endangerment, identity theft, and coercion. There is existing
precedent for orders of protection for this subset of crimes, as they
are also some of the qualifying offenses for which victims may petition
for an order of protection in Family Court if they occur between family
members or intimate partners.
Petitioners may be granted a temporary anti-stalking order ex parte
until the date of a hearing during which a final anti-stalking order may
be issued. Such final anti-stalking order, which may include forms of
relief such as cessation of contact, refraining from remotely control-
ling the petitioner's devices, avoiding the petitioner's home, school,
or business, paying reasonable counsels fees, or any other behavior
which puts the petitioner at risk, shall be issued upon a fair prepon-
derance of evidence that supports the allegations of the petitioner.
Anti-stalking orders shall be entered into the statewide computerized
registry that other orders of protection (OP) are entered into and may
be reconsidered or modified upon the request of the petitioner.
Violations for breaking an anti-stalking order are subject to the same
penalties that apply to violations of other orders of protection, which
may range from a Class A misdemeanor, if the violation fits the defi-
nition of menacing in the second degree or criminal contempt in the
second degree, to a Class E felony, if the violation occurs as part of
criminal contempt in the first degree, to a Class D felony, if the
violation occurs as part of aggravated criminal contempt. The bill
ensures that prosecutors would effectively have the same menu of options
available to them for infringements of an anti-stalking order as exist
for other orders of protection and could charge the defendant according-
ly depending on the circumstances of the case.
Courts would also be required to provide full faith and credit to orders
of protection from other states and territories that are substantially
similar to the anti-stalking orders created in this bill.
Section three of this bill allows anti-stalking orders to be added to
the existing section of Civil Practice Law and Rules that allows for a
$190 court filing fee to be waived.
Section four of the bill make a conforming change to the allow the
offense of menacing in the second degree in section 120.14 of Penal Law
to incorporate violations of the new civil order of protection created
by this bill alongside violations of existing orders of protection
issued under section 530.12 of the Criminal Procedure Law, Article 8 of
Family Court Act, or by a court of competent jurisdiction in another
state.
Section five makes a similar conforming change to section 215.51 of the
Penal Law to allow the offense of criminal contempt in the first degree
to incorporate violations of the new civil order of protection created
by the bill alongside violations of existing orders of protection issued
under Domestic Relations Law, various articles in Family Court Act,
section 530.12 of the Criminal Procedure Law, or by a court of competent
jurisdiction in another state.
Section six makes a conforming change to allow police officers to arrest
a person where they have reasonable cause to believe that such person
has violated a duly served anti-stalking order, the same as they can for
violations of existing orders of protection.
Section seven adds anti-stalking orders into Section 212 of Judiciary
Law, which describes the process for translation services in OPs in
Supreme Courts.
Section eight adds anti-stalking orders into the statewide computerized
registry for all OPs across the state as well as for extreme risk
protection orders (ERPOs) under CPLR Article 63-A.
Section nine sets the effective date.
 
JUSTIFICATION:
Currently, victims of predatory stalking and harassing behaviors who
wish to secure an order of protection (OP), commonly known as a
restraining order, against their perpetrators may do so in one of three
ways in the state of New York.
Firstly, a victim can secure a restraining order through criminal court,
where a judge may issue the order against a defendant as a condition of
their release and/or bail in a criminal case. This means that a
restraining order may only be issued during a criminal arraignment,
after there has been a formal police investigation, arrest, and decision
by a district attorney to file charges. While a critical means of relief
for victims wishing to pursue charges, this method of securing an OP is
simply too slow-moving for many victims of harassment in the 21st centu-
ry, who may find themselves on the receiving end of certain Internet-en-
abled offenses like cyberstalking, revenge porn, rapidly spreading defa-
matory material, doxxing, or deep fakes in a way that was simply
inconceivable three decades ago. This method of obtaining an OP through
the criminal justice system, which involves methodical and thorough
investigations that are frequently dependent on local resources and
in-person interactions, is simply impractical for an individual who may
have gone viral on TikTok, for example, and thus finds themselves
besieged by a digital stalker within the span of a couple days partic-
ularly if said stalker lives hundreds of miles away and would thus need
to be extradited from another state.
A second means of obtaining an OP in New York is through family court,
which hears cases involving children and families as well as persons who
have been in an "intimate relationship," defined by factors such as the
nature and duration of the relationship and frequency of interactions.
"Casual acquaintance" and "ordinary fraternization" between two individ-
uals is explicitly placed outside of the jurisdiction of family court
under Section 812 of the Family Court Act (FCA). While Section 812 of
the FCA establishes a list of crimes for which family court and criminal
courts share jurisdiction, such as unlawful dissemination or publication
of an intimate image, harassment, identity theft, coercion, stalking,
and a range of other offenses, the act fails to account for the ways in
which technology has anonymized our relationships, such that many
victims of the crimes that Section 812 seeks to protect no longer meet
the definition of having had an "intimate relationship" with their
offender. Nowadays a victim may be just as likely to be harmed by a
jealous ex with whom they cohabitated, for example, as someone they've
met through an online chat room or went on one date with via an app.
The third and final means of obtaining an OP in New York is through
general Supreme Court, but only as part of an ongoing divorce proceeding
between separating spouses.
As outlined above, none of these three forms of recourse provide an easy
remedy for victims of harassment in the modern age. Not only has the
digital revolution enabled an entirely new type of criminal behavior,
such as revenge porn, "upskirting," or taking sexually intrusive photo-
graphs or videos without permission, online stalking, and more, but it
has also altered the way we discover and define new relationships. Many
victims of Internet-enabled crimes need immediate relief from their
offenders in a way that simply cannot be delivered through the criminal
justice system, and which may not fit the definition of intimate partner
violence that falls under the jurisdiction of family court.
This bill, called the Ceasing Repeated, Extremely Egregious, and Preda-
tory (CREEP) Behavior Act, follows the lead of 43 other states in enabl-
ing orders of protection called "anti-stalking orders" through civil
courts of general jurisdiction rather than solely through criminal
courts or specialized family courts. It draws upon many of the same
protocols that define the existing methods by which victims can obtain
OPs, such as the issuance of an initial, more limited anti-stalking
order that may be granted ex parte to provide immediate relief to a
victim, pending a more complete hearing after which a judge could issue
a final anti-stalking order to provide broader measures of protection.
It conforms the penalties for noncompliance with this new anti-stalking
order into the existing penalties for noncompliance for other OPs, which
range from criminal contempt in the second degree, a Class A misdemea-
nor, for a straightforward violation, to aggravated criminal contempt, a
Class E felony, if the noncompliance also involves a previous conviction
of criminal contempt in the first degree which may require various acts
that would reasonably cause the victim to fear for their physical safe-
ty. It also creates a mechanism by which the state must recognize out-
of-state OPs that are substantially similar to the anti-stalking orders
created by the bill.
In creating a new, more easily obtained order of protection through the
civil court system, the CREEP Act modernizes New York's OP system to
account for the broader, digitized landscape in which harassment now
occurs. It will provide immediate relief to victims of harassing behav-
ior without a prerequisite arrest, better protecting victims for whom
the existing methods of obtaining an OP are out of reach.
 
PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
2024: S9596 - Referred to Judiciary
 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:
TBD
 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act shall take effect on the one hundred eightieth day after it
shall have become a law.

Statutes affected:
S3394A: 221-a executive law, 221-a(1) executive law