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Victims/Survivors

A critical aspect of judicial response to domestic violence and sexual assault is responding to the needs of victims/survivors. This area encompasses a wide range of topics, including trauma-informed justice systems, safety planning, confidentiality, child custody and victim-centered response. In this area, judges can find resources and assistance on many foundational victim/survivor issues.

Immigrant Survivors of Domestic And Sexual Violence in Your Courtroom: Family Court and Civil Protection Order Cases

This webinar for judicial officials will provide an overview of how immigration issues related to domestic violence intersect with civil proceedings. At the end of this webinar, participants will be better able to:

  • Explain the dynamics of immigration-related abuse
  • Examine how immigration issues may impact judicial proceedings related to DV/SA, including the U visa certification process
  • Assess how criminal and civil findings intersect with an immigration matter

Immigrant Survivors of Domestic/Sexual Violence in Your Courtroom: Introduction to the Immigration System and Status Options

This webinar for judicial officials will provide an overview of the immigration system and the status options for victims of domestic and sexual violence through a discussion of the basic avenues to immigration status and how what happens in court may help or harm survivors’ ability to gain safety through secure immigration status.

Protecting Survivors’ Economic Security in Later Life: Divorce, QDROs, and Coercive Control

Concerns about long-term economic security can make it difficult for survivors of domestic violence to leave abusive relationships, and abusers often exhibit economic control and coercion over victims. We’ll explore how survivors can obtain part of a former spouse’s retirement benefit at divorce through a Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO), and how abusers exercise coercive control by hindering QDRO access. This session will help advocates working with an increasingly aging population to better understand the role that retirement benefits play in promoting survivors’ long-term economic security, to identify legal resources specific to retirement, and to support survivors seeking to obtain a portion of an abuser’s earned retirement benefit at divorce. Judges will also benefit from an increased understanding of how access to retirement benefits promotes survivors’ long-term economic stability and greater awareness of how the QDRO process operates once parties have left the courtroom.

Protecting Victims and Communities in Domestic Violence Cases: Collaborative Strategies

Is your community doing all it can to prevent firearms-related violence perpetrated by abusers in DV cases? Are you encountering challenges to implementing existing state, tribal, and federal firearms restrictions? Learn about strategies for effective implementation at all stages of civil and criminal domestic violence cases, as well as a new national project, the Firearms Pilot Site Initiative, through which the NCJFCJ and other national experts will provide communities with in-depth TA, training, and other support.

Links

  • Opens in new window'Victims, Not Perpetrators': Ohio's Changing Actions to Change Habits Court

    Judge Paul M. Herbert of the Changing Actions to Change Habits Court in Ohio's Franklin County Municipal Court explains how a problem-solving approach to prostitution treats offenders as victims, giving them the support and links to social services they need to escape a cycle of exploitation and abuse.

  • Opens in new windowAn Integrated Approach: A Court's Innovative Response to Domestic and Sexual Violence

    Domestic violence can involve physical, emotional, financial and sexual abuse and require litigants to participant in multiple cases in many courtrooms before many judges. The Manhattan Integrated Domestic Violence Court streamlines the process by combining a family's cases in one courtroom before a single judge. By doing so, the court promotes greater victim safety and makes it easier to link litigants to services and monitor compliance with court orders.

  • Opens in new windowCentering Survivor Voices in Abusive Partner Intervention

    Juan Carlos Areán is joined by Carmen Pitre, executive director of the Sojourner Family Peace Center, and Cheryl Davis, former program director of the Colorado Domestic Violence Offender Management Board. They discuss the importance of centering survivor voices in abusive partner intervention work both at the community-based and system level. They highlight the value in forging mission-driven partnerships between victim services providers, abusive partner intervention program, and other system players and offer strategies to safely center survivor voices and experiences in the work, such as hosting multi-disciplinary case staffings, offering surrogate victim impact sessions, and including survivors in the curricula review and staff training processes.

  • Opens in new windowProject SAFE

    Project SAFE works to improve the services offered to criminalized black women who are survivors of intimate partner violence and sexual assault.

  • Opens in new windowSpotlight on Victim Safety

    Complainants in domestic violence cases have unique needs, so the prompt and effective provision of services to victims is of paramount importance. What follows are key principles for ensuring victim safety gleaned from the operation of domestic violence courts in New York.

  • Opens in new windowWhat Victims Really Need: A Conversation with Author and Victim Advocate Susan Herman

    Susan Herman, who served for seven years as the executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, talks about her book Parallel Justice for Victims of Crime.

  • Opens in new windowYouthful Offender Domestic Violence Court: Working With Teen Victims and Abusers

    Judge Miriam Cyrulnik explains how the court—the first of its kind in the country—addresses the unique needs of adolescent domestic violence victims and perpetrators.