August 2019 Bar Bulletin
By Karanjot Gill
The Washington Legislature passed a common-sense bill during the recent session that recognizes survivors need only prove that they have been sexually assaulted, nothing more, to seek a protective order. In a positive display of bipartisanship, legislators removed language from the Sexual Assault Protection Order (SAPO) statute that was cited in a state Supreme Court decision that denied survivors the protection they needed.
The story of how that bill came to pass is not a happy one. In May 2014, Megan Roake, then a freshman at the University of Washington, was sexually assaulted by another student on...