LEWISTON – People seek protection from harassment orders for a lot of reasons: To get an ex to stop calling. To get a neighbor to stop threatening. To get a child to stop beating up his schoolmates.

In Androscoggin County, the district court deals with harassment order requests twice a month, 15 to 20 cases each time. Both sides are usually angry when they arrive. And usually at least one side is still angry when they leave.

“These are parties that really have serious issues with one another,” said Judge Paul Cote Jr.

But for the last year-and-a-half, the Lewiston District Court has found a way to satisfy both sides.

Mediation.

“I’ve seen it first-hand succeed,” said Cote.

Protection from harassment orders work the same way as protection from abuse orders. Someone files a complaint with the district court. The court holds a hearing and, if needed, OKs a protection order to force one person to stay away from the other.

Abuse orders protect people from family, spouses and lovers. Harassment orders protect people from former friends, co-workers, neighbors and businesses.

Nearly 4,600 harassment orders were filed in Maine last year, with 368 of them going through Lewiston District Court.

Local lawyer Fredda Wolf said she came up with the idea to offer harassment order mediation after watching a client’s simple neighborhood argument get out of hand.

“My thought has always been if you know your neighbor you can probably work things out,” she said. “You hear the other person’s perspective, you see it from the other guy’s point of view.”

In 2005, Cote, mediator Tracy Quadro and others agreed to help set up the program. With a grant from the Lewis Joseph Fisher Foundation, a charity run by Wolf, Quadro’s nonprofit Community Mediation Services started offering free, voluntary mediation to anyone who requested an harassment order hearing. The only stipulation: both parties had to be there.

One of Quadro’s first cases involved a pair of boys who were about 13 years old. They’d been arguing and beating up each other for months.

In mediation, a simple question – “Why don’t you like me?” – helped mend their relationship.

“At the end they wanted to be friends,” Quadro said. “That doesn’t happen in court.”

Because Quadro’s data is incomplete for some months, it’s impossible to say exactly how many cases have gone to mediation over the last year-and-a-half. But Quadro recorded at least 75. Of those, 62 came to some sort of agreement.

“It has been enormously successful, even beyond what we had hoped for,” Wolf said.

In about half of those 62 cases, the two sides dismissed the harassment order and resolved their issues.

The other half agreed to accept an harassment order. Proponents still consider that a win, believing people are more likely to abide by an order they’ve consented to rather than one imposed by a judge.

“To have people reach an agreement is an empowering thing,” Cote said.

Proponents say mediation also helps save the court time and money since judges don’t have to hear cases resolved through mediation.

“The question,” Cote said, “is how do we keep this going?”

After a year and a half of work, organizers have started to worry about the pilot program’s future. The Fisher Foundation spends about $10,000 a year on it and Wolf doesn’t plan to pull funding anytime soon, but she’d like other groups to get involved. She’d like the program to become more independent.

“I’d love to see it as not just a pilot program,” Wolf said.

Organizers says they’ve contacted a number of groups, including the United Way and the Maine Community Foundation, but none have come through with funding.

“A lot of people say the courts are benefiting, the courts should pay for it,” Quadro said. “But the courts don’t have the money either.”

So far, Quadro said, organizers have not asked area lawmakers for state funding. There are so many other priorities for the courts, from security to staffing, that they don’t believe mediation would go high on the list.

For now, organizers say they’ll keep looking to other places for help while they continue to offer their own help.

“I’m proud of it,” Wolf said. “It allows people to keep power in their own hands. It allows their better nature to shine through.”

By the numbers

75 cases

29: agreed to dismiss the harassment order request

33: agreed to the harassment order

13: no agreement

*Because data is incomplete for some months, there were more cases than those in this calculation.