Survivors and advocates of domestic abuse believe a measure before state lawmakers can help protect them from violent partners.

But some say remedies already exist.

Our June Lefler has more as we began tonight's legislative update.

Judges can grant victims of domestic violence no contact orders.

That makes it a crime for a perpetrator to come anywhere near a victim physically or virtually.

But one survivor says her protective order did not stop her abusive ex-husband.

Within six days, he had started breaking the emergency protective order by making false accounts and fake profiles and following me on Facebook Instagram, Tik Tok.

I found them.

I contacted the Lawrenceburg Police Department.

They issued a warrant.

He was re-arrested.

During that time, he sent me a three page letter from jail because they let him.

He tried to call me from the jail and my number had to be blocked.

And on December the 30th, the Franklin County jail decided he was a good inmate and he was released.

A Taylorsville representative proposes stiffer penalties and House Bill 38.

Currently, if there is a violation of an order of protection, it is a Class A misdemeanor.

What this legislation does on the third violation of an order of protection as it's written on the on the same order, the same individual that would move up to a class D felony.

The House Judiciary advanced the bill unanimously, but the committee of mostly lawyers suggested some tweaks as it moves through the legislature.

They heard from a former public defender who's now with the Criminal Defense Lawyers group.

The testimony that I heard that stalking and it's felony stalking, but the problem is not that we don't have laws on the books, that felony is the behavior when it needs to be found honest.

You know, the problem is perhaps not using all the arrows that are already in the quiver.

On a separate matter heard in the same committee today, a Republican from Louisville once again proposed compensation for Kentuckians who served jail time for a crime they did not commit.

I would like for us, each of us, to put ourselves or our loved ones in their position, because as they sit here today, they are just as innocent of the crime for which they were convicted and served as each one of us are.

Johnetta Carr is one of the youngest people to be exonerated with the help of the Kentucky Innocence Project.

When I walked into the interrogation room, I thought that if I just told the truth, I would get to go home, which is what I was told.

I did tell the truth that I was innocent.

House Bill 206 would compensate exonerees $65,000 for each year they were incarcerated and $32,000 for each year on parole.

The committee advanced the bill unanimously.

A similar bill last year did not make it past the finish line.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Jean Leffler.