Willow Domestic Violence Center is in the process of interviewing attorneys.
A $556,063 grant from the New York State Office of Victim Services will allow the organization to hire, for the first time, an in-house attorney to help survivors of domestic abuse with their legal needs free of charge. Civil cases can include divorce, immigration, and custody.
"Oftentimes the abusers will use the court system as a tactic of control,” said Willow president and CEO Meaghan de Chateauvieux, “calling the survivor back to court over and over and over again about disputes, or minor issues, or revisiting custody, or appealing a decision. It can bankrupt a survivor to have to go through this process over and over again and to hire their own attorney."
The five year grant will pay the salary of a full-time attorney and a part-time paralegal. The attorney will be based at Willow and work under the guidance of the Legal Aid Society. Despite previous support from the Legal Aid Society and individual attorneys who provide pro-bono service, de Chateauvieux said there were not enough resources in the legal community to meet the needs of Willow’s clients.
Another barrier faced by survivors of domestic violence is access to affordable housing. When representatives of the Office of Victims Services toured the Willow shelter in Rochester recently, de Chateauvieux mentioned this to them.
"We have survivors in our shelter who don't have that safe pathway to affordable housing,” she said, “so they may elongate their stay with us. They might end up leaving the shelter into a space that isn't safe or not in the school district that their kids were in previously."
Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul was in Rochester Thursday regarding funding for other domestic violence victim assistance programs with Planned Parenthood of Central and Western New York.
