By: Lindsey Siegel, Staff Attorney, Atlanta Legal Aid Society
AVLF, together with the Family Division of the Fulton County
Superior Court and the Partnership Against Domestic Violence, operates the Safe
Families Office at the Fulton County Courthouse to assist victims of domestic
violence secure Temporary Protective Orders (TPO) and receive other assistance
such as safety planning. Many of our domestic
violence clients continue to have legal problems after they are awarded a TPO. One
common scenario is that an abuser comes to or constantly calls the victim’s
workplace and that victim resigns or is fired as a result. One study found that 74% of employed battered
women were harassed by their partner while at work. In the Safe Families Office, we constantly
hear of batterers sabotaging a victim’s employment, sometimes in an effort to
make the victim more dependent on them, in retaliation for asserting
independence, or to find a victim who is in hiding.
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| Lindsey Siegel, Staff Attorney, Atlanta Legal Aid Society |
Earlier this summer, I teamed up with the Atlanta Legal Aid
Society to take an unemployment insurance case to the Georgia Court of
Appeals. The case came about after a
domestic violence client of mine resigned from her job because the father of
her two children appeared at her workplace and she feared for her life. After
her employer opposed her application for unemployment benefits, she was denied
benefits. I took her case on appeal of
that denial. The case is one of first
impression in Georgia, as no court here has ever awarded a domestic violence
survivor unemployment benefits after she resigns from her job because of the
abuse.
About a year ago, this client’s former abuser and father of
her two children (who wasn’t supposed to know where she worked or lived) showed
up at her workplace. Because the past
abuse she experienced was so severe, because he wasn’t supposed to have any
contact with her, and because she thought her location was hidden, his mere
presence at her job terrified her. When
he showed up at her home a week later, she knew she had no choice but to escape
to a domestic violence shelter. She not
only feared for her and her children’s safety, but she knew everyone at her job
was in danger if she stayed.
And she had good reason to be afraid. Those of you who saw the July 2013 New
Yorker article on domestic violence know that there are certain high-risk
factors that indicate a likelihood of being killed. In our case, the abuser’s conduct toward our
client met many of those indicators, including obsessive behavior, stalking,
violation of court orders, and a history of severe physical abuse (including
during her pregnancy). Her workplace
would not be immune to the threat of his violence. As many of you likely remember, in Atlanta ’s not-so-distant past employees at the CNN Center
As my two-year fellowship at AVLF comes to a close this
week, I’m reflecting on our decision to pursue this case through the various
levels of appeal. Economic
self-sufficiency is critical for our domestic violence clients, as it often
decides whether they can afford to leave an abusive situation. Like any other employee who faces an unsafe
situation at work, victims should be free to resign without risking the loss of
benefits they’ve earned. I’m glad that
AVLF has supported this work and I’m thrilled to be continuing my work on the
case in my new position at Atlanta Legal Aid’s DeKalb Office.
AVLF has been a wonderful place to start my legal career,
and I’m so thankful to them and to the Skadden Fellowship program for giving me
the opportunity to work on so many interesting and important cases. On a daily basis, the staff, volunteers, and
interns at the Safe Families Office have impressed me. Their work with domestic violence victims and
survivors is challenging (to say the least) and requires commitment, tenacity,
and sometimes even a sense of humor.
Although I’m starting a new chapter in my legal career, I look forward
to supporting and staying connected to AVLF’s work in any way I can.
