Battered Women Who Get Legal Help Have
Better Chance to Break Cycle of Violence

by Susan G. Millmann

Now there is factual evidence that confirms what legal aid attorneys have known anecdotally for years: battered women who get legal help have a much better chance of breaking the cycle of violence.

Domestic violence has declined 21 percent nationwide from 1993 to 1998 according to a 2000 report by the Department of Justice. Access to legal services is a key factor behind this decline. A new study by economic professors Amy Farmer and Jill Tiefenthaler entitled "Explaining Recent Decline in Domestic Violence," reveals that legal services is the only social service that reduces domestic violence over the long run.

Social services such as shelters, counseling, hot lines and emergency transport help secure a victim's immediate safety, but access to legal assistance is the one service that enables a woman to permanently escape a violent home.

As a new family law attorney in 1980, I was stunned when women described unspeakable violence committed against them behind closed doors. There was an eerie similarity in their stories of shattered lives.

Poor and low-income battered women, traumatized and frequently with children in tow, wandered through the courthouse from one overburdened clerk to another, begging for help. None was available, and unrepresented, poorly prepared and emotionally drained litigants clogged courtrooms and left hearings feeling even more battered and frustrated by the justice system they had thought would protect them.

Judges, lawyers and mental health professionals then had little understanding of the social and psychological dynamics of domestic violence. Even if the court did issue a protective restraining order, the Los Angeles Police Department had no mechanism to file it or track it, and police were often reluctant to enforce it, not wanting to be involved in a family dispute.

Over the last two decades, staunch advocates such as shelter workers, lawyers, women's rights organizers and counselors worked tirelessly, and often without pay, to create a safety net of social services for battered women and to foster public awareness of domestic violence. In 1994, the O.J. Simpson trial brought the issue out of the shadows and into homes across America.

Makers of public policy then took note. New dollars for research on domestic violence unmasked its enormous social costs. It was discovered that women are four times more likely to be injured in their homes by their current or former partner than in motor vehicle accidents. Between 25 percent and 35 percent of all women seeking emergency care in the United States did so because of domestic violence.

Battered women suffer job consequences as well, as they often must use company time to call doctors, lawyers, shelters and counselors because they cannot do so safely from home. They and their children frequently wind up homeless. The cost of domestic violence-related civil and criminal court cases and related law enforcement duties is enormous.

In 1997, the National Center for State Courts issued a resource handbook for judges and court managers that advised them how to identify, process and resolve custody cases involving domestic violence.

It noted that "the pervasive impact of domestic violence on our culture is well documented ... Significant public and private resources are now supporting government and community efforts to stop violence, empower its victims, hold perpetrators accountable, and foster the development of a violence-free society.

"Courts play an essential role in these efforts ... [and] courts increasingly are confronting domestic violence and attempting to stem its negative effects." Throughout the 1990s, the courts reversed their traditional hands-off attitude and supported establishing courthouse clinics that helped women get restraining orders.

Working in cooperation with the courts, nonprofit service providers established domestic violence clinics in nearly every Superior Court courthouse in Los Angeles County. Staffed by legal aid attorneys and volunteers, the clinics assist thousands of women each year to obtain emergency restraining orders that provide them safety until they can decide how to secure their long-term stability.

The Los Angeles Police Department enters these restraining orders in the statewide law enforcement telecommunications system and officers may call up the information from their departments or their cars and make arrests when restraining orders are violated.

Even when physical violence stops, batterers often continue the battle in the courtroom. An abusive father who has shown little interest in the children may now sue for custody. There is no surer way to send a woman back to her violent home than the threat of losing her children.

In many cases, the abuser is the sole family support and threatens to cut them off. If she doesn't have legal counsel, a battered woman usually is unable to secure custody or get the financial support that is vital to stabilizing the family and staving off homelessness. Legal Aid attorneys represent victims in court and help them get permanent custody of their children, as well as child and spousal support orders to help ease the difficult transition to self-sufficiency and a violence-free life.

Bleak budget deficits threaten to undo these gains, as services fall to cost-cutting measures. We cannot turn back the clock on victims of domestic violence. Now that we more fully understand the depth and breadth of the social costs of domestic violence, we must not abandon our commitment to its prevention.

Instead, we must redouble our efforts to preserve and secure state, federal and local resources to sustain the partnerships of public, private and nonprofit agencies that serve battered women and their children, especially funding for legal services. Although our society has come a very long way in addressing this issue, we still have a long way to go. We cannot afford to erode this vital part of our social service network.

Susan G. Millmann is a senior staff attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and the vice chair of the city of Los Angeles' domestic violence task force.

This commentary originally ran in the April 1, 2003 edition of the Daily Journal

back