This clinic is centered in the Dorchester Division of the Boston Municipal Court, where our advocates find their clients, assist them in developing safety plans, work with them to prepare their cases, and help them to obtain court orders across the broad range of relief authorized by the state's protective order legislation. For one woman, the issue may simply be to keep her violent boyfriend away from her apartment and her place of work. Mother may need to evict her violent husband from the family home, and obtain custody of her children. Mother may be in shelter, but need an order telling the man who has been stalking her that he must stay three hundred feet away from her at all times, and relinquish his gun. Increasingly, batterers come to court portraying themselves as victims, and advocacy on behalf of women includes helping the court to identify the primary perpetrator of violence.
When the Dorchester Court is not enforcing the Abuse Prevention Act, it is primarily a court of criminal jurisdiction. This means that many of the women who come seeking protective orders must also decide if they wish to press criminal charges or cooperate with the District Attorney's office if it is interested in pressing charges. In these proceedings the state represents itself, the abuser/defendant has his own lawyer, but the woman also needs someone to look out for her interests, which may diverge from the interests of the state.
NUSL advocates at Dorchester Court can go some way toward filling that gap by making themselves available to women who are negotiating the criminal process, particularly those who decide that they are unable or unwilling to participate in the prosecution of their batterers. Northeastern advocates also provide support to women who find themselves accused of criminal conduct by abusers using the criminal process as a means of retaliation.
By working out of the courthouse, NUSL advocates rub shoulders daily with the many individuals and agencies on whom women rely for legal protection, from the judges to the restraining order clerks, from the police to the prosecutors, from the child welfare workers to the probation officers. These contacts enhance students' learning experience, but at the same time they allow advocates to function as agents for systemic change in the way the legal and related social service systems respond to the problem of domestic violence.