When she had him arrested in 2016 for choking her, he cut off that financial support. And the power company cut off her lights. We filed an appearance in the criminal case to help her obtain the additional relief she was entitled through the order of protection. When we showed up in criminal court, we were looked at like aliens.

Never before had a civil attorney filed an appearance in a criminal matter in the way that we were doing, but we were determined to get Talia the relief she deserved. We got her an order that awarded her possession of her children and child support, but there were still roadblocks. Even though child support had been statutorily available for tens of years, the Child Support Division had never been asked to process a child support order originating from a criminal case order and couldn’t originally do it.

At every new step, Talia was game to be part of this process. And, with some aggressive legal maneuvering, we eventually were able to get her the relief she needed to maintain separation from her abuser. Moreover, what we learned on Talia’s case provided the building blocks for the $2.4 million dollar grant we received this year to help other victims with children in common with their abuser get the relief they need through participation in a criminal domestic violence case.

Through a partnership with the State’s Attorney’s Office, the Legal Aid Society now has four attorneys and two paralegals that exclusively help victims like Talia, through our Safe Families Program. One of our new paralegals is the advocate who originally referred Talia’s case to us, and one of our new attorneys worked on Talia’s case as a law student intern. We are committed to being a model of how a civil legal service provider can partner with a prosecutor’s office to ensure that victims of the worst crimes get the best service. And we wouldn’t have been able to do it without clients like Talia, whose willingness to be part of our original experiment was essential.