Last month, I was one of three panelists who spoke to more than 1,000 Ontario family law lawyers at their annual conference. Our topic was “Self- care and vicarious resilience for lawyers managing cases involving intimate partner violence.”
I focused on four key points, which I am excerpting in this and next week’s posts.
We can’t know what we don’t know
I really didn’t know what I didn’t know when my first client — a woman fleeing a situation of abuse, who had had to leave one child behind in order to get away — walked into my office 30 years ago, but I set about to learn what I needed to. At times I am astonished, at other times, embarrassed, by how little I knew when I hung out my shingle.
I quickly learned to really listen to my clients and, as a result, came to understand the complexity, nuance and, often, apparent contradictions that define family violence. I also spent time at the women’s shelter and learned how terrified many women were — not just of their abusive partner, but of the legal systems that those of us who work inside them think of as helpful, and, believe it or not, of me.
Everything I learned was invaluable to me in my work. I didn’t stay a practising lawyer for long, though, because I developed vicarious trauma and, even though I was able to get it under control thanks to my work with an excellent therapist, it remained a reality for me. In fact, in my experience, VT never goes away – even now, after not practising law for more than two decades, I can and do still experience episodes of VT.
Vicarious trauma
I want to tell you what I think was the biggest reason I developed VT, because I’m sure that more than a few of you do this, and I want you to stop – for your sake as well as for the sake of your clients.
I wanted to be the hero of my clients’ stories; be the one person they could rely on for everything; be the person who fixed their lives. Big mistake.
When I became a lawyer, I thought that, when the law was used well, it could solve all the problems of the world. I also thought that if I was a good enough lawyer, I could use the law to fix everything that was bad in my clients’ lives.
Wrong. The law is, at its best – as many, perhaps most, of you know – a clumsy tool that should only be turned to as a last resort. And, even the best of lawyers – which I never became – can really only assist a client with a small part of what is troubling them.
Don’t get me wrong – we need laws, and really good lawyers, especially in situations involving intimate partner violence. But we need to see ourselves as just one part of the solution our clients need and to engage with those who are providing other important supports.
Working with others
For example: I want to encourage all of you to use Ontario’s Family Court Support Worker program, a province-wide service that assists survivors of family violence navigate their family law case. Workers, who are not lawyers, provide safety planning, explain family court process, provide legal information, accompany clients to appointments with their lawyer and to court appearances, assist them gather evidence of abuse, and make referrals as needed. It’s free, and there’s no financial eligibility requirement.
The best thing you can do for your clients – and for yourself – is to connect them with this program. A good FCSW will allow you to do your job of representing your client, knowing that her court support worker is taking care of everything around that. It might keep you doing this work for longer and allow you to take on more family violence cases.
When you represent survivors of IPV or those who have caused the harm, your knowledge and skills will make a significant contribution to the well-being of your clients and their children.
However, at the end of the day whatever order or agreement is in place is but a piece of paper, which the abuser may decide to ignore. Furthermore, a survivor may make choices that continue to expose her to abuse, either by the partner she has left or the next one in her life.
This does not mean what you do doesn’t matter. It does. It does not mean that survivors of abuse can never break free of their former partner. Many of them do. It does not mean that those who engage in abusive behaviour never change. Sometimes, they do.
What I want you to take away, though, is that you are just one part of helping that survivor, abuser and their children towards violence-free lives.
Next week: trauma and finding your right place in the work.
Dear Pamela,
I have tried this support work, they have been very nice, and Ive had referrals to lawyers, but when it comes down to discussing my case, the majority have no idea what should be done and some were charging me a fee that I cannot afford, especially being a single mom and receiving no child support either. I did not qualify with legal aid either, because they told me I have to live in Canada. Its living the experience all over again, even after 17 years. I am a surviver of IPV, but the abuser continues his abuse. I fled overseas with my son when he was a baby, because the system failed to help us, my lawyer at that time too. Least to say Ive had bad experiences with the ones Ive had. My son and I would like to go back to Canada, but there is a warrant for my arrest for Child Abduction, even though the police has been informed that this case came to Chile under the Hague Convention, and that the Hague denied the return of my son to Canada, but the father was granted visitation rights. According to the police the Crown has the case in there hands now and wants to proceed with it. So, the father uses this opportunity to victimize himself on social media by posting that we are still missing and that he has not seen his son or heard from him for many years, when in fact he has.He has sent emails to my son only to talk bad about me. My son has asked him to stop with the defammation, but he hasn´t. My son has lived hard times at school because of this too. Its been destressing on him. I have reached a dead end, and I have no idea who can help me and my son. Or is it that we will always have to continue living with the abuse…Help!