We still have work to do to ensure that a protection order is more than just ‘a piece of paper’

There is no question that the legal system failed Julie Elguezabal. The larger question is what could have saved her.

Elguezabal died Friday, April 26, when her husband Winston Elguezabal, who was facing misdemeanor charges of domestic violence, defied an order of protection, went to their Villa Park home and shot her, then killed himself. Winston Elguezabal was wearing an electronic monitor that alerted police when he came within 1,000 feet of the home, but by the time they arrived minutes later, both he and his wife were dead.

Law enforcement authorities were understandably “devastated,” to quote DuPage County State’s Attorney Bob Berlin. And they responded decisively.

Berlin instituted policy changes designed to decrease the chances that a dangerous defendant, even one facing only misdemeanor charges, would be released. And he increased overnight staffing on the office’s screening team. The measures address factors that might have given prosecutors cause to press harder for detention of a defendant like Elguezabal.

And state Sen. John Curran, a Downers Grove Republican, promised to submit legislation this week that would modify the state’s cashless bail policy to require domestic violence suspects to prove that they will not pose a threat in order to avoid detention.

Curran’s proposal has merit, but it’s important to note that this case was not specifically a failure of the cashless bail system. Even before the SAFE-T Act took effect, bail required of a misdemeanor domestic violence defendant would likely not have been high enough to keep Winston Elguezabal behind bars.

No, Julie Elguezabal was a victim of the same shortcomings that have cost the lives of women and children in numerous tragic cases over the years. Just six weeks ago, an 11-year-old Chicago boy was stabbed to death by a man on parole against whom his mother had sought, unsuccessfully, an order of protection. The parole board chair and a board member resigned as a result of the case, and Gov. J.B. Pritzker promised “additional safeguards and training ... to prevent tragedies like this from happening again.”

That’s a common sentiment in such cases. Berlin repeated it himself in an interview with our Cops & Crime columnists Charles Keeshan and Susan Sarkauskus. “We are going to do everything we can to make sure this never happens again,” he said.

And we’re sure he’s sincere and committed. But the sad truth is that, although orders of protection have been shown to be effective in a large majority of situations, in those where they aren’t, the consequences are often devastating.

Andrei Kisliak had been arrested in September 2022 for an order-of-protection violation, just two months before he killed his wife, mother, two daughters and himself in their Buffalo Grove home. Similar cases have occurred periodically over the years throughout the suburbs. Winston Elguezabal was wearing a monitor during his release period because of a law passed in 2008 after Cindy Bischof, of Arlington Heights, was killed by an ex-boyfriend violating a protection order.

Each tragedy brings new refinements to policies and practices, and yet too often, we still find ourselves left to imagine the terror under which some domestic violence victims must live, wondering whether the order separating them and their potential attacker has value or is, in the words of a 2010 study out of the University of Kentucky, “just a piece of paper.”

We are thankful for actions like those taken by Berlin and Curran. It is clear, though, that much more study and action is needed before we can have real confidence that such cases, as the politicians promise, “will never happen again.”