>I believe it is a common strategy for (especially) women to exploit this in order to gain some sort of advantage over their partners following a breakup.
The data is here. Common? You decide.
http://www.sp2.upenn.edu/ortner/docs/sorenson_doc2.pdf
The available information about restrained persons typically
has been documented within the context of assessing the efficacy
of restraining orders that were issued because of domestic violence. A random sample of 200 defendants in domestic violence or
civil protection orders in San Diego during a 10-week period in
1990 (Meloy et al., 1997) indicates that most (72%) were men, and
that the average age was 38 years (range 15 to 70 years). Caucasians
predominated (57%), but there were substantial proportions of Blacks (22.5%) and Hispanics (17.5%) as well; ethnicity
was unknown for 3% of the defendants. (Whether any of these
groups were disproportionately represented is unknown; rates
were not calculated.) A total of 11% had at least one contact with
the county’s mental health services agency. A study of all 663 men
against whom civil protection orders were granted in Quincy,
Massachusetts (Klein, 1996), also in 1990, found an average age of
33 years (range 17 to 70 years) for the defendants. Half (49.5%)
were not married, 46.6% were married, and 3.9% were formerly
married. Almost 80% of the defendants had a prior criminal
record within the state; more than half (54%) had at least one prior
record for an alcohol or drug crime, usually drunk driving.
Information on defendant ethnicity was not reported.
The primary, albeit not the sole, focus of the present research is
the person to be restrained. Such information can help increase
the effectiveness of violence prevention efforts, which is not a
small consideration given the history of violence among
restrained persons—about three fourths of men against whom
restraining orders are issued have prior criminal records (Isaac,
Cochran, Brown, & Adam, 1994; Klein, 1996), and nearly half
have committed a violent crime (Isaac et al., 1994).
Results indicate
that about one fifth of the restraining orders are to restrain someone of the same gender as the protected person. It is not possible
to ascertain with the available data whether these cases represent
violence in gay and lesbian relationships or heterosexual pairings
gone awry (e.g., to order the former male partner of a woman to
stay away from her current male partner) or an unrealized relationship, as is often the situation in cases of stalking. Further
research is needed to address the nature of same- and opposite-
sex pairings in restraining orders.