By now, most people know that our nation’s largest trial court system, the Los Angeles Superior Court, is beset with huge budget deficits.  In a memo released earlier this month, Presiding Judge Edmon announced $30 million of staffing cuts beginning June 30, 2012.  Altogether, it is anticipated that more than 350 Court staff and more than 50 courtrooms will be directly impacted.  These changes will affect millions of litigants and attorneys but will have an even more devastating effect on victims of domestic violence. 

 The impact of courtroom closures caused by the reduction of court staff on domestic violence victims and their children is dire.  Already, the family law courts have severely restricted full custody evaluations and there are long delays to conduct solution focused evaluations.  In contested and high conflict divorce or custody cases, which domestic violence cases almost always are, the absence of a neutral to evaluate the impact of abuse on children will make sound resolution of  cases even more difficult for the judges who preside over them.  Without the necessary expertise to guide the court in its decision-making, these cases turn more and more on a victim’s credibility and on the biases and stereotypes each judge brings to the case. Furthermore, even after the court decides custody, options like professionally supervised visitation are rapidly becoming less of an option to lower income families because of budget cuts to subsidized supervised visitation centers.  Many lower income families no longer have an option of professionally supervised visitation because no one can afford private unsubsidized visits.  Instead, abuse survivors must rely on family members or friends to monitor visits often putting themselves and these family and friends  at risk of further abuse.   

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