abuse

“Do you miss it?”

I was sitting in court next to the legal advocate from our local women’s shelter this afternoon, as we supported a woman who’d been brutalized by her husband. The photos from the hospital showed ugly bruises inflicted by the man’s cane. Yes. Cane. The man had the temerity to beat her till she was black and blue and then came to court, claiming he was too disabled to have managed the feat.

“I do miss it,” I confessed. From 2001-2004, it would have been me advocating for this woman, bringing 15 years of legal experience to the aid of battered women as part of the Blossom Project. It was my baby, a special six county program solely devoted to assisting victims of domestic violence. As the Attorney Coordinator, I designed the services, including eight-week classes geared toward giving victims much-needed information and direction in terms of where to find jobs, housing, child care, and more. Each week, I also represented up to 15 victims, mostly women, in the process of gaining protection orders in court.

There are a few women who really stand out from the hundreds of bruised faces I saw over those years. One came to every class, listened faithfully to everything that was said, but refused one of the bright pink carnations the ‘graduates’ received, for fear her husband (who she was preparing to leave) would think she’d been with a man. Another waited two years before she gathered the quiet courage to leave, more for her sons’ sake than her own, once they became secondary targets of the violence; as she predicted, she lost her income, then her house and finally her children. The system managed to work against her at every turn. A different one did much the same, but finally her children saw the truth of things and came back to her. She put herself through college, got a Fulbright to go to Africa for a semester to help women there, and now counsels abused women professionally.

There is nothing worse I’ve seen in my law practice than the results of one human brutalizing another, particularly when that man or woman or child is one for whom the batterer has professed great love. What kind of screwed-up message does that give the loved one? Studies have shown that it obviously distorts the ideas about relationships for a child growing up in such a home. Many of the men and women who I represented had grown up in a home like this as a child. That’s why we believed the education component was so important–giving them a hand up, if they’d take it.

Some did, and it was a proud day for both of us when it happened. Many didn’t. Statistics show that a DV victim returns an average of seven times to the abuser before being able to make that final break. I’ve been lucky that none of my clients have received the other kind of finality. They’ve been threatened with capital punishment if they leave, and occasionally, I’ve been threatened as well with harm for helping them. But somehow I kept on.

I still take divorce and custody cases referred from the women’s shelter, often pro bono, because someone who knows what they’re doing has to stand up for these women. I teach the chapter on civil remedies each year during shelter volunteer training. The legal advocate knows she can call me day or night for immediate advice to help her clients, who often need to have information to make a split-second decision. But it’s not the same as being the one in that courtroom chair. That position was the one time in my career I could feel that I was a hero every day. Yes, I miss it.

For information and food for thought.

I’ve probably attended a dozen court hearings at which parents’ rights to their children were terminated. Some of these parents have been my clients. From an objective third-party point of view, the children may be better off. The children probably don’t think so; these are their parents, after all, for good or bad. Many abused kids still cling to the parent they know.

What amazes me, is something I’ve seen more in recent years: people whose personal agenda causes them to leave their children with someone else. Not even family. Just…someone. A neighbor, a friend–the most recent was their child’s 16 year old babysitter’s mother.

What is so important that you just leave your toddler with this person you’ve never even met face to face? Eh. You need to find yourself and start over in a different state. You promise as soon as you get things together, you’ll be back. But you never come. Three years later, the family finally decides maybe they should adopt the child so that he won’t be ripped out of the existence he’s come to know when you do come back. So they have a court hearing to end your rights to the child–and you can’t even be bothered to call in.*

Very sad. Not as sad as the parent who left her child with a neighbor, who then absconded with the child across multiple state lines. Several years later, they found her. and also found that the girl had been subjected to physical and sexual abuse, since she didn’t really belong to that family. Even now that the child has been rescued, she can’t go home. She’s too damaged. All because at some point the parent felt too overwhelmed to care for the child, and found a sympathetic ear.

But how can you give your child away like a worn out pair of jeans?

I’m not talking about the heart-breaking choices some mothers make, to place their child for adoption, knowing they cannot provide for the child and unselfishly allowing the child to be matched with a family who has been screened and who will raise the child as their own. This is a special sort of love, well-reasoned and hopefully rewarded. I’m talking about something that is a bad decision from the get-go.

Even on days I am most desperate for eight hours of respite from issue-laden kids, it would never occur to me to leave the children with someone I didn’t know down to the last shoe size. We don’t go out much, because we have two adults, and two adults only, who are our regular sitters. They each have families, too, and we can’t always arrange time. But would I leave the children with the neighbors to go away for the weekend? No way in hell. First off, the neighbors would come hunt me down after they had my children for a couple of hours. But second…you just don’t.

Call me a rebel, but this is one trend I intend to ignore.

*details changed to protect parties