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"Domestic violence advocates said they were relieved Wednesday when a House committee decided to kill a bill many said would weaken protections for victims.Dozens of people showed up to testify against HB 1608, a bill they said would weaken the role of law enforcement in arresting and detaining violators of protective orders. But lawmakers apologized to those who planned to testify when the sponsor of the bill didn't show up for the hearing.Bill sponsor Rep. Skip Reilly, R-Grafton, didn't show up last week when the bill came before the committee, telling the chairman that he would be out of town. The hearing was rescheduled to Wednesday, but Reilly again didn't appear. He told News 9 that he wasn't prepared to testify about the bill.\"To have people travel great distances on two separate occasions to come here to testify and then have the prime sponsor not show up or send a surrogate, I thought that was beyond the pale,\" said Rep. Steve Shurtleff, D-Merrimack.Reilly said he sponsored the legislation at the request of Plymouth prosecutor Gabriel Nizetick, who said his original intent was completely lost in the wording of the bill.\"It was intended to protect victims of domestic violence,\" Nizetick said. \"It was not intended to criminalize civil misconduct.\"Nizetick said he was trying to bring regulations currently on the books in compliance with state law, saying recent amendments lumped civil disputes in with criminal infractions. He said that he in no way intended to strip away protections that restraining orders provided to victims of abuse.But the proposed legislation as written alarmed many on the front lines of domestic abuse.\"The coalition has been very alarmed at the number of anti-domestic violence bills that have been filed in this past session,\" said Amanda Grady of the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence.John Cantin, whose daughter, Melissa Charbonneau, was shot and killed by her husband in 2009 in front of him, said he was gravely concerned about legislation that appeared to remove power from police officers to arrest violators of domestic violence protection orders.\"After my daughter passed away, that went like a tsunami through the entire family, so we're all victims to this,\" Cantin said. \"That person needs to removed out of the situation as soon as possible.\"The bill will not be considered any more this session.  Nizetick said he hopes to rework the language to introduce what he called technical corrections to the legislation in the next session."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.wmur.com/article/committee-rejects-domestic-violence-bill/5171726>