Sanctuary for Families: Judy Kluger
The Five-O-One is joined by Judge Judy Kluger, Executive Director of Sanctuary for Families, New York’s leading service provider and advocate for survivors of domestic violence, sex trafficking and related forms of gender violence. In this episode we talk about how Judy Kluger came to this work after serving 25 years as a judge in New York State, the evolution of the New York domestic violence court system, and the services and programs Sanctuary offers in support of victims of domestic violence and their children.
To learn more about this work visit www.sanctuaryforfamilies.org.
Talia: Domestic violence affects 10 million people every single year, one in four women and one in nine men, annually. Judy, how have domestic violence cases changed since the organization was founded in 1984?
Judy: I'll start by saying we still have a long way to go. However, in 1984, domestic violence was not considered a serious matter. Judges and police officers said, this is a family matter-- even prosecutors. I started out my career as a prosecutor, and I remember very clearly judges saying when I brought a case, oh, you know, this should be in family court, and family court and criminal court are two very, very different courts; one is civil, the other is criminal. The sanctions and the remedies are very different. And there were tragedies that resulted from domestic violence cases not being taken seriously. A number of domestic violence homicides were as a result of the person not being placed under arrest, the issue not being taken seriously. It's become almost a cliche, but in fact police officers would come up and come to the home and say to the abusive partner, we're going to walk you around the block to cool off and then let you come back home. And I recently watched the hour and 10 minute video from Gabby Petito, her encounter in, I guess, Utah, Wyoming, I forget which, and sadly, we're not where we should be, because that encounter was fraught with a lot of problems, and if it would have been handled differently, it might not have had the result that that it had. But getting back to Sanctuary and other organizations like us, really advocates at that time started to call for change -- and we were ready. You never want a change to be because of tragedies, but often that is in fact how change happens. So there were a number of domestic violence homicides and just a recognition that things needed to be different than they were. So the legislature changed the laws around family court and criminal court, really focusing on the fact that if you were the victim of domestic violence, and you wanted to proceed in both courts, you couldn't you had to decide within 72 hours, were you going to proceed with a petition in family court, or were you going to proceed with a criminal prosecution. So just imagine a victim of domestic violence and has to within 72 hours decide what forum they are going to use for some kind of resolution -- and laws were promulgated that required in certain situations police to make an arrest, and they had no discretion... I really credit organizations like Sanctuary and just recognition that we need to change and they began advocating for change and change happen.
Talia: So since the landscape was so different back then, was it a challenge to create this organization?
Judy: It started very small. One lawyer, one social worker -- it was a tiny organization, very hands on, grassroots, by the founders. One of the founders recently told me when we opened our shelter, which was a few years later, in the Bronx, we bought a building and rehabbed it and it's a domestic violence shelter till today and quite a welcoming and home like one; a couple of the volunteers are founders were putting together the IKEA furniture for the shelter. So it was small but very committed. The original staff as well as the Board and the people who founded the organization saying that our clients need more than just shelter, they need legal services, they need counseling, they need job training -- we have to be advocates on the local, state and national level in terms of changing laws and procedures to assist victims of gender violence.
Talia: So then how did you get involved?
Judy: So I was a prosecutor in the 80s in the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, and right around the time when there was movement to make some change. And I haven't described my own career as being parallel to the changes in the way domestic violence cases were considered, were looked at by society, as well as by the justice system, the district attorney at that time in Brooklyn, and several others, decided to create domestic violence sex crimes units within the office; specially trained prosecutors that would handle these cases, and kind of take them out of the general crimes area. So I was a very junior prosecutor, I think I'd been there for a year, and I was assigned to this unit, there were only six of us. And we were handling all the domestic violence and sex crimes cases. As a prosecutor, I did the advocacy that I could on my end. And it began to be easier to make these cases and to have police prosecutors, and other advocates realize that this was important work that had to be moved forward. So I did that for a number of years, and then I became a judge and was doing general cases for the first few years on the bench. There was a newish Chief Judge, Judith Kaye, she passed away a few years ago, but she was a mover, she wanted to make things happen. And there were two very high profile domestic violence murders around the time she became Chief Judge. She talked about creating domestic violence courts, specifically having trained judges, and I was not in one of those courts. But by that time, I'd become the head of the criminal courts in New York City, and I became involved in creating those.
Talia: For our listeners who don't know, can you describe the landscape of the court system at that time?
Judy: New York has a very complicated Byzantine court structure. It is not a trial court and appellate court and a Supreme Court. It is many different courts on different levels. And as a result, domestic violence survivors, if they had a case in the criminal courts, a family court matter that needed to be resolved and wanted to get a divorce -- it had happened in three different courts. So it absolutely makes no sense. So Judge Kaye tasked me with putting those courts together and it was challenging, it was rewarding. Now in New York State, a victim of domestic violence if he or she has overlap in another court is handled by one judge. So it's kind of the one judge, one family model. So through all that, I got to know Sanctuary for Families. They were very instrumental in helping me understand the needs of survivors who were not in the criminal courts. But I really only knew Sanctuary's legal work. I became a judge quite young, and I always felt there'd be another chapter to my professional career. So I got the job, It'll be eight years in January, and it's been an amazing experience. I love being a judge, I had a really interesting career as a prosecutor, but it is a job like no other and an organization that has a breadth of work and support that really is hard to replicate.
Talia: So let's say someone comes to you, they're in an abusive relationship -- what does that intervention with Sanctuary look like for them?
Judy: The first thing is, are you safe? What do we need to do to make you safe? Are you in a shelter? Do you need to go to a shelter? Do you have issues around your immigration status? Is your housing situation unstable? Do you have matters in family court that need to be resolved? So we do an intake and see where the pressure points are. We want to give you whatever avenue we have or whatever road we can go on with you to ensure that you have stability and safety and independence.
Talia: So what are those avenues then?
Judy: So if you want to proceed with a criminal case, if you want your abuser arrested, we will connect you to the appropriate law enforcement. If you need an order of protection, and that's one way to to help ensure safety, we will go to family court with you and petition for an order of protection. We will help you with your custody and visitation matters. If you want to get a divorce...
Talia: And how many individuals are you serving every year?
Judy: So we serve between 7,500 and 8,000 individuals. So if they also want job training, we have a very high level job training program, which is a four and a half month program. It used to be in person COVID change that, I call it the very small silver linings of COVID, for us, that our clients really did well with Zoom classes, and we want laptops and internet access for everybody. And we're going to continue that model. We have about 50 master's level social workers who are trauma informed and trained, who will provide counseling for your children and you, separate and together. We have a boutique, I call it the cashless boutique where if you need clothing for yourself, we have the ability to provide whatever a victim of gender based violence may need to be free and safe and independent.
Talia: Yeah. Can we talk about the safety piece? Because I think I read somewhere that the most dangerous time for a violence victim is that period when he or she decides to leave their circumstance...
Judy: Correct. So we help strategize how that should happen. And try and give our clients a strategies of how to leave and places to go and support them in any way we can. But it is the most dangerous time.
Talia: And how exactly do you fund this work? Do you have government grants? Or is it all private donors and foundations?
Judy: We're about 65% government contracts and support but the rest is private individuals and foundations. So we have more flexibility than other organizations that are funded 95% by the government, because government doesn't provide cash assistance for the clients who need it on a very immediate level. So we give $1.5 million a year in cash assistance to clients, it can be for medicine, it can be for rent, it can be for uncovered doctor's bills...
Talia: I know that you guys have a team that is specifically focused on the Orthodox Jewish community, there are certain laws and customs pertaining to marriage and that community...
Judy: Sanctuary has always been culturally attuned to different communities around the city. And there are many, many different religious cultural communities that have different rules and laws and customs. So when I came on, I asked the head of our legal center do we have Orthodox clients who we represent in civil court, but may have matters in Jewish court -- we had clients like that, but we didn't have a lawyer and a team that had expertise in the customs of this community, as well as if you've been married by a rabbi, in order to get divorce religiously, you have to get something called a Get, a religious divorce, that has not changed in many 1000s of years. And it requires agreement on the part of the man. And oftentimes clients are prevented from getting that because the husband refuses because he may want money, he may want custody, the children, it's leveraged. It's tremendous leverage that not all Orthodox men who are getting divorced a yield, but some do. So we have gone to the Beit Dins, the religious courts and advocated for our clients. We also have an understanding of the complications in their lives, stigma on children, and the ability to get the right match in terms of marriage, and the importance of religious schools and who pays for that. So we developed an expertise -- now we have a greater understanding and the ability to navigate the religious aspects of the divorce as well as the civil.
Talia: Are there other communities in which you've developed a similar type of expertise?
Judy: So nothing is better than when someone is speaking to you in your own language. And we're able to do that -- we have 30 different languages at Sanctuary, expertise in customs of different African countries, because we have a lot of immigrant clients that come from whether it's the Ivory Coast or Ghana. So we have developed an expertise in that. And we have a very diverse staff. One of our social workers is from an African country, in addition to the other work she does, she handles cases of female genital mutilation. So as you know, it's illegal in this country, but it doesn't prevent it from happening. And also, there's something called vacation cutting -- children are taken back to their home country for this procedure. We did some training for border agents at Kennedy Airport to be able to identify perhaps someone who was being taken out of the country for that purpose.
Talia: I can't even imagine.
Judy: Yeah, and human trafficking, you know, sex trafficking, we started to do that work, because our lawyers and counselors who working in domestic violence-- the client presented as a victim of gender based violence. More often than not what people consider domestic violence, your partner is physically, emotionally, financially abusing you. However, when the conversation got deeper, it was clear that some of these women were also trafficked by their abusers. What starts out as a loving, intimate relationship, an abusive partner will want to exercise power and control and one of the methods might be we need rents, so you have to go out and you know, have sex with my friend and get paid for it. So there was a nexus between domestic violence and trafficking that we identified and then began to address and we have a we call our ATI, our anti trafficking initiative, which has lawyers and counselors, just helping our clients do that work.
Talia: If anyone listening is a victim of domestic violence, what would be your message to them?
Judy: So first message is if you're not safe, call the police. If you want services, there are a couple of ways you can contact us through our information on the website. Also, there are family justice centers in each county that are walk-in locations. We are there and many other organizations that there that can provide support and help in a wide range of areas. The most important thing is to get your children and yourself safe -- and if you're afraid of even being in your home, it's not that going into shelters easy. It's not domestic violence shelters are very different than homeless shelters. There's a lot of support and services or shelter, everybody has their own apartment and their own kitchen. There is a hotline that is available, the New York City domestic violence hotline, and if you need shelter, you can call that anytime, it's a 24-hour hotline and get shelter. And don't be embarrassed to tell whether it's a relative or a friend that you are a victim because it's hard to go it alone.