In this first installment, MuBANY member, S. Ahmed, discusses the experience she had as a legal intern in the Summer and Fall of 2006 for the Domestic Violence Clinic and Family Law Program of the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG).

 

 

 

 

                    In summer and fall of 2006, I interned with Domestic Violence Clinic & Family Law Program at the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG). Hopefully, by sharing these experiences with MuBANY members and the larger Muslim community, more law students will consider exploring public interest law or providing pro-bono assistance while working at private firms.

NYLAG and the Domestic Violence Clinic/Family Law Program

                  Domestic Violence law primarily concerns obtaining orders of protection (also known as restraining orders in other states) against abusive current and former spouses and against the parents of an abused child. It is considered a subset of family law, which is the practice area dealing with divorce, child support, child custody, and other related matters.

                  The New York Legal Assistance Group (http://www.nylag.org/) is nonprofit law firm providing free legal services throughout the New York City metropolitan area to individuals who would otherwise be unable to afford attorneys. NYLAG’s practice areas include general legal services, family law, immigration law, legal health law, and special litigation (class and other impact litigation). In the aforementioned areas of law, NYLAG attorneys also provide weekly training for interns, staff, outside attorneys, social workers, and immigrants.

                  During the summer and fall of 2006, I interned for NYLAG’s Domestic Violence Clinic and Family Law Program. I came across NYLAG at the New York University Public Interest Summer Job Fair. I was immediately drawn to the mix of structure and independence that the internship provided. As a 1L, I knew I needed a lot more guidance and training especially since much of the practical aspects of law are not taught in law school.

                  The Domestic Violence Clinic Program lasts two semesters primarily because of the time it takes to resolve cases and because NYLAG believes that it was best not to abandon already vulnerable and distrustful domestic violence victims. As a result, interns see a case from beginning to end and are, therefore, able to develop a rewarding rapport with their clients.

                  During my internship, I found the supervising attorneys to be very approachable and very supportive of an intern’s endeavors. They treated the interns like practicing attorneys and expected them to perform like full-fledged professionals. While the atmosphere at NYLAG is very collegial, the attorneys and staff take their work very seriously. There were definitely days that were extremely hectic, but for the most part, the flow of work and routine was very constant.

                   Supervising attorneys also encouraged me to take an active role in shaping their intern experience. For example, during the office-wide intern orientation, I was encouraged to get involved with other cases and to accompany my supervising attorney(s) or other departments’ attorneys to court. Most other internships usually confine the intern to an office to work on memos.

                  The Family Law Unit and Domestic Violence Clinic also provided me with the opportunity to present cases to a judge under a student practice order. Watching cases in family court and then eventually presenting cases was a very exciting (and at times intimidating) experience for a 1L, but I gained an incredible amount of insight on the New York Family Court system, as well as the issues affecting domestic violence victims and their families.

Lessons Learned

                 There were a number of situations I was not prepared to encounter. The condition of some domestic violence victims was utterly abysmal. It was difficult at first trying to comfort a woman who bore bruises from her ex-husband’s abuse. I have never been beaten up and I’ve never had to tell the humiliating details of my personal life to a courtroom full of strangers. With time, I became much better at just listening and telling the client that he or she was entitled to feel whatever he or she was feeling without having to say I “knew” their story. I never realized until my first case how hard it was to just shut up and listen. Part social-worker, part lawyer, part counselor, but a total novice and student, I had to learn not to demand trust and to simply let a person just volunteer her own narrative at his or her own speed, building trust over time.

                One client, a twenty-two year Muslim born and raised in the U.S., was disowned by her Arab parents because she bore a baby out of wedlock with a boyfriend. Her own parents had divorced when she was younger. She moved away from home and into the home of her boyfriend’s mother. There the boyfriend began beating her and cheating on her with the ex-wife of a convicted felon. During these unspeakable times, the client would constantly vacillate between reconciling with her abusive boyfriend and reuniting with her family. We finally convinced her to seek counseling for herself and her son. The boyfriend continued stalking and harassing her. It took her a lot of courage to finally get an order of protection against him and his girlfriend. The client tried her best to minimize her son’s exposure to the abuse, but her small child was already scarred. He was overly anxious about being separated from her, and did not want to attend court ordered visitations with his father. Ultimately, we successfully obtained a final order of protection for our client, and our client was able to move on with her life by getting a new job and a new home with her child.

                The other thing I learned, or what was actually reaffirmed, was that divorce can be a very crushing and painful experience. Most of the clients who were seeking divorces had married very young, either because they were expecting a child with their ex-spouse, because of parental/societal pressure, or to escape an unhappy home life with their parents. No matter the cause, divorce for the most part was a depressing and shameful ordeal and outcome for many clients we came across. (In the Muslim community, the number of divorces has sky-rocketed, but the compassion and tact with which divorcees are addressed in our community has not kept up pace, I’m sorry to say.)

                On the other hand, divorce was an awakening and liberation for a number of clients, especially for those in abusive relationships. This included some male clients whose wives would hurl objects at them, hit them, steal money from them, or verbally abuse them. However, the vast majority of abused clients were women whose children had also witnessed their husbands and boy-friends abusing them. Many of these women said they’d prefer their children grow up without fathers than to continue with abusive ones. One woman told me that her son had started acting out aggressively toward girls in his third-grade class, calling them “bitches” and “sluts” just like his father called her. Her child also started disrespecting her and damaging items around her home. Without intensive counseling or good male role models, it is not too hard to presume how her son will grow up and how he will view women.

               Beside American-born victims and abusers, there were many immigrant families in which domestic violence was tolerated until a woman or a child ended up in the hospital emergency room. The nationalities of the victims and their abusers spanned the Muslim world—India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, Malaysia and so on. Many victims did not speak English nor did they have immigration status.

              What shocked and embarrassed me was the lack of support many Muslim women and children received from their communities and mosques. Fortunately, organizations like NYLAG and Sakhi (www.sakhi.org, a nonprofit that assists women of South Asian descent with domestic violence matters) have given their unconditional support to these women and their children.

Conclusion

               Domestic violence affects men, women, and children, and its damaging consequences are community-wide and are intergenerational. Long after the abused is separated from their abuser, the abused’s children continue to suffer emotionally and financially. Despite popular belief, domestic violence is not a problem that affects only lower-class, uneducated men and women, nor is it confined to only immigrant groups. It is not an easy topic to read about let alone discuss, but it is a serious problem in the Muslim community that cannot be ignored.

               As lawyers and future lawyers, we have an obligation to educate and improve our communities against injustice and to protect the most vulnerable against exploitation and abuse. As Muslims, we have an even greater duty to be compassionate, vigilant, and strive to achieve the higher ideals of nonviolence and dignity for all which Islam commands of us.

              To that end, I hope that more Muslims will recognize the need for open discussion and concerted action against domestic violence and that more men and women will think twice about dismissing domestic violence as “just a woman’s issue.” It is a matter that goes to the heart of how we view ourselves as a community and the families that comprise that community.