All I can tell you is I came away from my protection order, divorce and custody hearings wishing I’d waited for my then-husband to hit me, hard. He had only strangled me and thrown me out in the February snow–neither of which required a doctor’s care or left a mark.

I, perhaps stupidly, certainly pridefully, sought out an attorney rather than going to the local shelter and using their advocacy system. I had money of my own and didn’t feel right using space and expertise that others less fortunate needed. This attorney negotiated with my husband’s attorney and made the protection order go away–before I learned I could have extended it for up to two years. This only emboldened my husband who began his reign of terror again. When I applied for another PFA, this time the Guardian ad Litem intervened, promising to get my ex-husband into a batterers’ intervention program, and again making the PFA go away. He never went to the BIP and that Guardian had to resign before being removed for bias.

Later, the court dinged me for bringing frivolous PFAs by stripping me, a teacher for a dozen years, of any say in my son’s education.

How could this happen? She must really be crazy, you’re saying, for this to have happened. Well, yes and no. Of course I’m crazed that my ex-husband’s family lied on the stand and our son is paying the price. Lied and lied and lied. Oh yeah, and made shit up, too.

As my attorney–now a superior court judge–said, “There’s not much you can do when people hijack the system and lie.”

Where you have a victim who refuses to testify and she’s your main evidence of misconduct, sometimes the best you can do is to secure a plea on a lesser charge so that the next time the abuser comes in, you have a means to lean on him for something more the next go round. Plus, it limits access to firearms and at least gets them into some counseling on some level.

It really sucks, but sometimes it can be all you can do when you have an uncooperative victim. And that happens way too frequently. SIGH

Another thing about VAWA is that it provides a way for immigrant victims of DV to get their permanent residency independent of their abuser, who often is already a permanent resident and is using the threat of deportation as a means of control.