Maria Fitzgerald, Barnard College '06

This summer, I interned at Sanctuary for Families, a large nonprofit organization devoted to serving victims of domestic violence in the New York City area. More specifically, I was working in their Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services (CBWLS) for the Courtroom Advocates Project (CAP). The Courtroom Advocates Project recruits, trains, and supervises New York law school students and law firm summer associates to serve as advocates for victims of domestic violence seeking orders of protection in NYC Family Court. The staff consists of four attorneys who supervise the advocates’ individual cases, take over complicated cases from them, and represent those petitioners as Sanctuary clients. There is also a project assistant (a non-lawyer), who provides general program support as well as legal and non-legal assistance to clients. Though I interacted with the entire staff of CAP, as well as many other members of the CBWLS staff, I worked most closely with the CAP Director and the Project Assistant.

Working with CAP as their undergraduate (and only) intern has been an intense learning experience. From my ten weeks there, I have gained knowledge ranging from organizational skills and project management, to domestic violence law and the intricacies of the various court systems of New York State. Following a week-long training session during which the interns gained an informal understanding of the various projects at the legal center (matrimonial, immigration, and community liaison), I was fortunate to be involved in every aspect of CAP. This included everything from training and recruiting the law students and organizing their court dates to processing the students’ cases after they returned from the initial court dates to following up with their progress and helping them to prepare for their adjourn dates. I also assisted the individual attorneys with their own cases (these were more complex than simple orders of protection cases), following up with former clients, obtaining resources for the clients (including food and clothing), and keeping track of each case as it developed.

I spent a significant portion of most days collecting and tracking information regarding each CAP case as it came in, as well as any trainings, meetings, or talks given or attended by CAP attorneys. All the Sanctuary attorneys keep and share these records among themselves for general reference and grant-writing purposes. These records are also important for tracking the relationships Sanctuary staff members form with any group or individual who may interact with victims of domestic violence. Throughout the summer, I also worked on individual grants, drafting parts of applications for both the African and the South Asian Community Liaison Projects. In addition, I drafted a few emergency fund requests for CAP clients -- ranging from money to relocate a large family away from the abusive spouse, to simply paying a utility bill. I regularly conducted over-the-phone legal intakes, assisting callers who contacted Sanctuary seeking legal assistance.

I went to court four times over the course of the summer, twice as an advocate and twice to accompany CAP attorneys arguing their cases. During my first time as an advocate, I met a petitioner in Bronx Family Court who was filing for a temporary order of protection against her husband of ten years. Though she was born and raised in New York, Spanish was her dominant language. With the help of her brother to translate, I assisted her in drafting her family offense petition, explained to her what she could expect from the process, sat and waited with her for several hours before her court appearance and, finally, accompanied her before the judge. She received a full stay-away order of protection for herself and her child.

Less than a week later, the petitioner called to inform me that she had reconciled with the abuser. I was quite surprised and concerned, and I made sure that she knew she could go back to court any time she felt threatened. Seeing how visibly shaken she was at court, and then her complete change in attitude a few days later, made me appreciate the complexity of the cycle of domestic violence in a relationship and the nature of my role as her advocate. Like the lawyers with whom I worked, I could only show her the help available and assist her when she chose to take advantage of our resources.

My second experience as an advocate was assisting a woman at her court return date, with her abuser, to obtain a permanent order of protection. The judge would not allow me to sit with the petitioner or to speak. The petitioner handled herself with confidence and received all the terms she requested. Her spouse, the abuser, tried to approach her but backed away when I made my position as an advocate known.

Apparently worried by my presence, he tried to explain his own custody concerns to me and then left both of us alone. I accompanied one of the attorneys to a hearing regarding an order of protection and custody in a case for a woman from Sierra Leone, about four years older than I am, and her two young children who sought protection against her dangerously abusive husband. I stayed with the client and her children as they waited at court, helping with her children, answering her questions, and keeping track of the husband’s whereabouts in the waiting area.

My fourth and final visit to court was in Manhattan Family Court. I accompanied the CAP Director into the courtroom and sat in the courtroom as she argued a case for a grandmother’s custody of her murdered daughter’s two children. Three other lawyers were in the courtroom: the children’s law guardian, the children’s father (who is being held for their mother’s murder), and the stepmother (current wife of the father). I look forward to hearing how the remainder of the case unfolds.

Finally, the project assistant and I were responsible in large part for organizing and executing CAP’s most important public relations event of the year. The CAP Recognition Ceremony was created in order to improve the working relationships among Sanctuary and other domestic violence nonprofits, major law firms, judges, court clerks, security guards, and others who work with CAP or CAP’s clients during the year. We handled the bulk of the logistical and outreach work. The event was a great success.

My favorite part of this internship has been working directly with clients themselves – particularly doing legal intakes. I feel fortunate to have been for many the first person at CAP with whom a victim of domestic violence shares her story, and to have been able to help her in a substantial and real way. I find that using the law and legal system to enable clients to change their lives for the better can be a source of empowerment and growth for them and for me. Completing an intake generally involved finding as much out about the victim and her life as possible, explaining to an attorney the nature of the victim’s problems, and then either following up myself with the victim or letting the attorney take over.

These experiences were particularly significant for me on a couple of occasions. The first was when, listening to a victim relate her story about the dangerous and obsessive father of her daughter, I realized that the woman was almost exactly my age. She was my peer, but unlike any other young woman I knew given her levels of strength, maturity, and courage. At only twenty, she was a working mother with a three-year-old daughter and a life fraught with violence and fear. She had decided for herself to take whatever actions necessary to secure the safety of herself and her child.

The second was an intake I did later on one evening, and I did not expect anyone to answer the phone. The intake caller was initially polite, quiet, and reluctant to go into any detail regarding the abuse. After a few minutes, the conversation that ensued revealed a brutal history of domestic violence from an abuser with whom this woman was still in love. The violence included a beating that resulted in the early delivery and death of the child she was carrying. The woman had finally summoned the soundness of mind and strength to seek help from the outside, and I was her first contact. I remember the fear in her voice, her two babies crying in the background, and her finally breaking down on the phone as she recalled what her life had been before the abuse and what it had become. Previously, she had been employed as a teacher with plenty of friends and relatives. Yet, by the time she finally separated from him, years later, she had lost contact with all her old friends and much of her family.

Doing these intakes and reviewing the cases as they developed allowed me to view a wide spectrum of situations and to be able to discern patterns of abusive behavior and relationships that can turn dangerous. More importantly, these two intakes revealed to me a new understanding of the role of the public interest lawyer, particularly for domestic violence victims. Having completed these intakes, combined with my experience as an advocate in court, I realized that the impetus behind these cases was not the lawyer, the abuser, or even the law. The process of attaining justice and safety was in the hands of the victim herself. Her lawyers sought to accomplish for the victim what she sought for herself, and nothing more. Once her lawyers informed the client of her options (which might range from filing for an order of protection to applying for a Violence Against Women Act self-petition) and provided the appropriate support, the victim took control of her own life as she never had before. If a victim withdrew her case because she was frightened of retaliation from her abuser or because she reconciled, that was her decision. If a victim needed money to pay a bill or relocate her family, we would find the resources to help her. However simple this realization may seem, it was a crucial part of my internship experience and my understanding of what public interest lawyers do. Once a victim committed to the process and found adequate representation, she was able to change her life for the better.

My current plans include possibly completing another legal internship with a different agency (perhaps a defense-focused organization) in the spring semester. Before attending law school, I hope to work for at least a year in the United States for perhaps another legal aid agency. It is also my goal to live abroad for at least a year in order to gain proficiency in another language. I am currently interested in programs in South America that provide an opportunity to work for a period and learn Spanish. My fellow law student interns at Sanctuary who had lived in South America for a year and returned with a working knowledge of Spanish, as well as the many other bi- or trilingual attorneys and staff members at Sanctuary for Families have inspired me to develop proficiency in a second language. Though I worked with a few Latina clients, I was disappointed not to be able to communicate as completely as I would have liked to with many of them, particularly with the woman on behalf of whom I first advocated in court.