Victims can cut phone plans

ROGERS — A cellphone is both a lifeline to seek help and a link for an abuser to follow for victims of domestic violence. They will be able to keep the lifeline and cut the link under a law that takes effect Saturday.

The law allows a judge to sever a victim’s cellphone from an abuser’s phone plan.

This will allow the victim to keep the phone with the same number and get their own plan. Children under the care of the victim may also keep access to their phones under the victim’s new plan.

AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and other major service providers all gave legal help to draft the law and supported its passage in the Legislature earlier this year, said Cathy Foraker, spokeswoman for AT&T.

All those companies have encountered the problem of abuse victims being dependent on an abuser’s phone contract because it’s in the abuser’s name, she said. There was no legally sanctioned method for splitting a plan- holder’s contract and a clear need for one, she said.

“We finally have a path,” she said.

Like a restraining order, getting the court order doesn’t require the alleged abuser be convicted of a crime. The act requires a court finding that a preponderance of the evidence supports an abuse allegation.

A cellphone is a way for abuse victims to stay in contact with friends and other helpers, and a modern-day record-keeping device, said Rep. Jeff Williams, R-Springdale. Williams is sole sponsor of Act 577 of 2017. Only six other states have similar laws on the

books, Williams said he found when he researched the bill.

“If you leave your cellphone behind, you’re leaving all your phone numbers, your text messaging, the apps you use to pay bills, and all your emails” along with photos and other personal files, Williams said.

But if a fleeing abuse victim keeps a phone, they carry a device the abuser can track.

“Just touch the ‘ where is this phone’ app on your phone, and you know where the other phone is,” Williams said Thursday in Rogers. Also, an abuser could drop service to a victim’s phone out of spite, he said.

An abuse victim who has left the home is often trying to keep kids in school, find a place to live, earn any money and is likely to not have a car, said Amber Lacewell, spokeswoman for the Northwest Arkansas Women’s Shelter. Getting out of a phone plan can be a major hurdle to someone with such difficulties, she said.

Phone companies have been cooperative, but bound by the terms of the contracts issued with phone plans, she said.

“Having one less fight to fight matters a lot,” Lacewell said.

“People take a phone for granted now,” she said. “I don’t remember phone numbers anymore. Being able to keep your phone and have the same number is more important to us than many of us realize.”

“Abusers, meanwhile, have stalked their victims in incredible ways I could never think of,” Lacewell said. It’s easy to track a victim through a phone tracking feature or through billing statements and phone records available to the account holder, she said.

Williams and Foraker requested the interview Tuesday in Rogers to spread word about the change in the law.

“It doesn’t do the people who would use this any good if they don’t know about it,” Foraker said.

Williams pursued this legislation because he grew up in a home where domestic abuse took place, he said. He credited Rep. Charlotte Douglas, R-Alma, with helping formulate the idea in their discussions of how to help abuse victims.

The new law applies to any domestic abuse victim, not just spouses, Williams said. Elderly parents, disabled siblings, domestic partners, adult children are all eligible.

Williams