Editor’s note: This is the first article in an occasional series examining issues low-income clients face and how New Hampshire’s legal services organizations are helping meet these clients’ legal needs.

By Lisa Sandford

IT’S 2:17 A.M. A Laconia woman who has been both physically and emotionally abused by her husband for the last eight years has just endured another attack and decides it’s finally time to leave him. As soon as he passes out on the couch, she quickly bundles up her two young children and packs a suitcase with the bare necessities for her and the kids. They scramble into the family’s only car — a beat-up, 14-year-old rust bucket — and drive away without looking back.

He wouldn’t “allow” her contact with the few friends and family members she was once close to, so in the middle of the night she turns to a local crisis center. She knows he’ll try to find her — wait for her at the children’s school in the morning, perhaps.

She has $22 in her pocket, no job skills, hasn’t held a job in years. Among the other services the crisis center makes her aware of — job training, welfare, counseling, low-income housing — is the New Hampshire Bar Association’s Domestic Violence Emergency (DOVE) program. She contacts DOVE and is put in touch with an attorney who helps her get an emergency protective order. The order is good only for a year, though, and she knows she must act quickly to get him out of her life for good, before she succumbs to his voice in her head telling her she’s stupid and worthless and could never make it on her own. She doesn’t want to go back again. Divorce and custody of the children are her priorities.

Working together
When a victim of domestic violence (in New Hampshire, recent statistics show 85 percent are women) turns to one of the state’s 14 participating crisis centers, NH’s legal community is prepared to help her. The Bar’s DOVE Program, which trains volunteer attorneys to provide free legal representation to low-income clients in obtaining emergency protective orders, can assist on an immediate basis.

To meet her other, non-emergency legal needs, there are several ways in which NH legal services can help a victim of domestic violence. Organizations offer a variety of civil legal services to help the victim go forward with divorce and filing for custody of the couple’s children, if any.

The Domestic Violence Advocacy Project (DVAP) is a collaborative effort of New Hampshire Legal Assistance (NHLA), the Bar’s DOVE and Pro Bono programs, Legal Advice & Referral Center (LARC), New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence (NHCADSV) and Franklin Pierce Law Center (FPLC). Its mission is “to provide access to high-quality civil legal services for low-income victims of domestic violence in New Hampshire.”

In 1999, a group of NH legal services organizations pooled their efforts to develop a grant proposal to fund a coordinated, statewide delivery network to provide direct legal representation to domestic violence victims. The Domestic Violence Advocacy Project was awarded $225,000 through the U.S. Department of Justice’s Violence Against Women Act, and a second year of funding to the tune of $275,000 was recently approved, according to Susannah Colt of NHLA, who is director and senior staff attorney for the project.

When a victim goes to a crisis center, she is interviewed to determine if the violence of her situation “rises to the level of a civil restraining order,” according to Pamela Dodge, the NHBA’s DOVE coordinator and assistant Pro Bono coordinator. If the victim wants to enlist the services of a DOVE attorney, the advocate conducts a financial screening (only low-income individuals qualify) and puts together a case summary to submit to the DOVE program.

A victim of domestic violence must meet at least one of four criteria to qualify for a DOVE attorney: the batterer is represented by counsel; there are child custody or visitation issues involved; the victim is facing criminal or civil charges herself; or the victim is emotionally or mentally unable to defend herself pro se. (Dodge said the program is “flexible” in its requirements.) If she qualifies and so requests, Dodge puts the victim in touch with one of the program’s volunteer attorneys to assist her in getting an emergency restraining order and other temporary orders (such as child custody).

Once temporary orders are in place, Dodge now serves also as the “gatekeeper” for the new DVAP; she determines which legal services agency is best suited to deal with the victim’s civil legal needs, such as filing for divorce and child custody. Victims who qualify financially but whose needs are not as pressing are referred to a Pro Bono attorney. Cases with “the most serious abuse and legal issues,” said Colt – especially those in the more rural northern and southwestern parts of the state, where there are fewer private attorneys to do pro bono work – are referred to Colt for the DVAP.

Dodge said that there is a “stop gap” in place through DOVE with temporary orders, which are good for only one year. Because the Pro Bono program deals with numerous clients with a variety of legal needs, Pro Bono attorneys “can’t always react as quickly as necessary” to assist domestic violence victims in obtaining permanent orders.

“The Pro Bono program is very successful at finding attorneys to help domestic violence victims, but we identified a need,” said Dodge. “Pro Bono is not an emergency program. We can’t drop everything to respond to these victims’ needs. They’ll get in the system, they are a priority, but we can’t always react as quickly as we need to,” Dodge said.

The DVAP was formed in recognition of that need. “I take a holistic look at the case and ask if it’s more than the Pro Bono program can do. Resources are a big factor,” said Dodge. She said she usually consults attorneys from the other legal services organizations, using their legal experience to help determine how difficult a case may be. The most urgent or involved cases are turned over to Colt.

Colt’s work focuses on those rural pockets of the state where pro bono attorneys are scarce – towns like Berlin, Littleton and Claremont. She said that since the DVAP started in May, 1999, she and a second staff attorney have represented or assisted 60 victims of domestic violence in civil legal matters. They have gone to court for 37 of those clients and put in about 1,300 hours of work. Since much of Colt’s time in the past year was spent getting the program off the ground, she expects the number of clients to rise in the future.

A happy ending?
Colt said that most of the DVAP cases she has worked on are ongoing – divorce and custody issues are frequently revisited. One case that has seen a happy ending, of sorts, involved a woman who had been married for 12 years to a husband that was so controlling, the family had moved 12 times in order to keep her from forming relationships. He was a religious man and frequently invoked the word of God, Colt said, and told the couple’s adolescent children that their mother was “the devil.”

One day the woman decided to leave with her kids. She got a restraining order in Massachusetts (with full faith and credit in all states; see page 20 in this issue), temporary custody of the children and filed for legal separation. She fled to a NH crisis center, which linked her to several services, like welfare, low-income housing and support groups. She was eventually referred to the DVAP, where Colt helped her through the legal process of her divorce and gaining custody of the children. After a year, she got a divorce by default – her estranged husband had taken no action – and custody of the children. The father was granted visitation, but to this day has not exercised it, Colt said.

The woman, who was in her 40’s and the mother of two “difficult” kids, according to Colt, has obtained a scholarship to attend school and had a car donated to her by a church she joined. She is now successfully working and “her self-esteem has shot through the roof compared to when I first met her,” said Colt. “She is extremely appreciative of getting the free legal services that we were able to provide her,” she said.

Colt said that this kind of happy ending is rare. “Most abusers continue to stay in the woman’s life in some way,” sometimes leading to repeated court visits, she said.

Legal advice and referrals
Although LARC plays a “fairly discrete role” in the DVAP (it was part of the group that drafted the grant proposal and sits on the project’s advisory council), it plays a crucial role in the overall delivery of legal services to domestic violence victims. According to Breckie Hayes-Snow, one of LARC’s supervising attorneys, the organization has more client contact with domestic violence victims than any other legal services organization in the state. LARC does virtually all of the intake and referrals for Pro Bono and four of its staff attorneys also serve as DOVE attorneys.

LARC is utilized most by those low-income d.v. victims who have not yet gone to a crisis center or met with an attorney, but are looking for legal advice or assistance. According to Hayes-Snow, of the approximately 5,000 clients LARC worked with last year, about 50 percent were family law clients and about 1,000 of those identified themselves as victims of domestic violence. “We do a tremendous amount of intake and referrals to the Pro Bono program and crisis centers and referrals to DOVE attorneys,” said Hayes-Snow.

If a client calls in need of an emergency restraining order, LARC refers her to a DOVE attorney. If she calls again for a referral for her divorce or custody case, LARC does the intake and screening of the case for Pro Bono. (These are cases that have already been deemed not appropriate for the DVAP.) LARC also provides ongoing legal advice to pro se clients.

Hayes-Snow said that much of LARC’s work with d.v. victims involves helping them work through a complex set of challenges – usually stemming from poverty. Financial instability makes it difficult to find housing, provide for children or even leave an abusive spouse. “We try to help these clients strategize ways to get safe and not risk their children’s safety by staying with the abuser,” said Hayes-Snow. “It’s tremendously complex.”

LARC makes clients aware of the many services available through crisis centers to help address their complex issues. “They often have an inaccurate view of what these centers have to offer,” said Hayes-Snow.

The challenges of dealing with domestic violence
Colt, Dodge and Hayes-Snow agree that the challenges of working with victims of domestic violence stem from sorting through the complex emotional, legal and financial issues they face. New Hampshire legal services organizations lean heavily on the crisis centers to help deal with many of these issues. For Colt, the key is to stay focused on her role – as a provider of legal services.

“The purpose of this highly collaborative project is to provide well-rounded representation of the victim. The crisis centers offer a lot of the ‘hand-holding’ services, we are here to provide the legal services,” said Colt.

Dodge said she has to be “clear in her role” as the gatekeeper for assisting clients with domestic violence issues. “I need to get people where they can get the best help. I am here to provide the most effective solution, but not advice or emotional support,” said Dodge.

For Hayes-Snow, the line is not as defined. Because LARC deals with many clients who have not yet taken advantage of the services offered through crisis centers, the role of LARC advocates is more expansive. “[The clients] want legal advisors to provide more than legal advice,” said Hayes-Snow. “As attorneys we are also counselors. Helping clients make good decisions is a piece of the puzzle. Determining which are strictly legal decisions is difficult, so I prefer to err on the side of giving advice.”

“The stakes are so high for victims of domestic violence. Recognizing their many issues can make you more effective, humane…and will maybe help them take steps to get themselves safe,” said Hayes-Snow.

Wish list
If NH legal services organizations had more funding to help victims of domestic violence, the priority would be hiring more attorneys, agreed Colt, Dodge and Hayes-Snow. “There is an incredible need for direct representation,” said Dodge.

Colt pointed out that there are only two attorneys in the DVAP representing victims. “We can only do so much. The complexity of a lot of the custody or property issues makes some cases very time-intensive, and I’m balancing direct representation with policy work,” said Colt. “If we had additional finances, I’d hire more lawyers. We could probably use 10 more attorneys and still have too much to do.”

“I’d get more advocates on the phones at LARC,” Hayes-Snow agreed. “Demand exceeds our ability to meet the needs of domestic violence victims.”

Those victims who do not get the legal assistance they need, Colt pointed out, often return to their abusers and the cycle of abuse continues. “There aren’t enough resources. Hundreds are not getting served,” said Colt.

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