Background
Sarah M. Delatore was charged with felony violation of an order of protection after allegedly approaching her 16-year-old son, Brody, who was protected by an order entered in her divorce case. The State proffered that Delatore walked onto the property where Brody was playing, followed him after he ran inside, knocked on the door, and later returned in a truck and yelled at him.
The State sought to deny pretrial release based on the danger Delatore posed to protected persons or the community. Delatore had two prior convictions for violating orders of protection and was on conditional discharge for those offenses. The circuit court ordered her detained, finding both an unmitigable safety threat and a threat of willful flight. It later denied her motion for release, and she appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The appellate court affirmed detention based on Delatore’s real and present threat to Brody. Reviewing the proffered record de novo, it held that her conduct—approaching Brody, following him to a residence, repeatedly knocking, and later returning to yell at him—placed him at risk of the same harassment the order of protection was intended to prevent. Her prior order-of-protection violations and her conditional discharge status further supported the finding.
The court also held that home confinement and electronic monitoring would not sufficiently mitigate the threat. Delatore allegedly committed the new offense while subject to conditional discharge requiring her to obey the law, and the conduct repeated behavior underlying the order of protection. But the court vacated the willful-flight portion of the detention orders because the State’s verified petition alleged only dangerousness, not a high likelihood of willful flight. The statute requires the petition to state the grounds for detention.
Key Takeaways
- A violation of an order of protection involving repeated harassment of a protected minor can establish a real and present safety threat without an allegation of physical injury or weapon use.
- Prior violations of protective orders and noncompliance with existing court-imposed conditions can support a finding that release conditions will not mitigate the threat.
- A court may not detain a defendant for willful flight when the State’s verified detention petition did not allege flight risk as a ground.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores that Illinois courts must make an individualized detention assessment, but may find an unmitigable threat from repeated court-prohibited harassment directed at a protected child. It also enforces the procedural limit on detention grounds: the State must include flight risk in its verified petition before the court may rely on it.
The order was issued under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 23 and is nonprecedential except in the limited circumstances allowed by Rule 23(e)(1).