By: Lindsey Siegel, Staff Attorney, Skadden Fellow, AVLF Domestic Violence Project
Two summers ago, when I was a law student intern with the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation’s Safe Families Office, I worked with Silvia, a Spanish-speaking woman who came to the office for a protection order. Silvia’s husband had broken her arm the night before and she didn’t feel safe staying at her house. Nor did she have any family or friends with whom she could stay. With the help of the courthouse interpreter, I helped her fill out the petition and secure a coveted space at a local domestic violence shelter. After the judge signed the protection order, though, Silvia wanted to go home to get some clothes and personal items. I told her I was afraid for her safety, but she insisted, so I waited for her to return so we could drive to the shelter’s drop-off point. When she didn’t return after several hours, I figured she lost her chance at leaving, and I couldn’t stop worrying about her. Then, two weeks later I was attending the 12-month protection order hearings and I spotted Silvia in the courtroom. She wasn’t alone, though—she had with her not only an advocate, but also a pro bono attorney. After her hearing (where she did obtain her 12-month protection order), I went up to her in the hallway to find out how she was doing. As it turns out, she had found space at a different shelter soon after she came to our office, and the advocates there had connected her with the attorney for her case. I couldn’t believe how resourceful Silvia had been all along her journey escape her abusive husband—all the while being new to the area and having a language barrier. I was so impressed, and the experience reminded me why I enjoy working with such strong women.
When I heard a few months later about how recent law graduates can obtain Skadden fellowships to design new public interest projects, I immediately thought of AVLF and the Safe Families Office. I knew that it was the goal of the office to expand and provide more holistic legal services to survivors, and a fellowship seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so. In creating a project to address some of the most pressing needs, we looked to a study AVLF conducted in 2009 with domestic violence service providers in Atlanta. There, housing and employment arose as two of the areas with biggest gaps in legal services.
Unfortunately, many women are not as lucky as Silvia, and instead must choose between staying with abusers or homelessness. Many times, survivors of abuse find it difficult to maintain their housing and their employment while they try to escape the violence. It is no surprise then that domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness in the U.S. In Atlanta in particular, between 22% and 57% of homeless women have reported that domestic violence was the direct cause of their homelessness. For low-income women, most of whom rent, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that housing managers and landlords will sometimes evict the entire family after an abuser is violent or will impose high penalties if a survivor wants to terminate her lease early to seek safety. An employer with an abused employee can also create barriers to a survivor maintaining the economic self-sufficiency needed to escape the abuse. Employees facing violence at home often need to miss days of work to hide the signs of abuse, placate abusers, or attend court hearings, and many lose their jobs as a result. Further, a survivor’s job may be in jeopardy when her partner or husband shows up or calls her office repeatedly.
To address some of these barriers, the fellowship project we’ve created will provide housing- and employment-based legal services to survivors of domestic violence. Through the project, I aim to enforce the rights that survivors have, and if necessary, create new precedent where gaps in the law exist. It seems only apt, then, that we launch the fellowship project during Domestic Violence Awareness Month, a time where advocates bring this all-too-pervasive problem to light and discuss solutions to eradicating it. Two years after that summer internship, I’m thrilled to be a new member of the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation staff and I’m eager to take AVLF’s work in new directions with this fellowship project. I hope to reach clients who are facing barriers, but who otherwise may not have found people to advocate for their rights. Most of all, I’m excited to rejoin this movement and put my newfound legal education to work for those escaping abuse.
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