In Montgomery County, Md., 25 people have volunteered to monitor cases in District Court in which victims ask a judge for a protective order restraining an abusive spouse or acquaintance from approaching the victim or threatening violence.
In the past six months, Court Watch Montgomery has monitored 642 cases.
“I’m a former law professor recently retired and I'm a lawyer and I've been in courtrooms where judges have their own little fiefdom, and in domestic violence cases, women are victims and they come in again and they’re victimized by some judges,” Court Watch Montgomery volunteer Joyce Batipps said.
Most judges do a good job, volunteers say, but four judges were impatient or rude.
“Judges are sometimes insensitive to women,” Court Watch Montgomery Executive Director Laurie Duker said. “They do a lot of things right, and we're more focused on fixing the system than talking about specific judges.”
Sixteen percent of the women seeking protection don’t speak English and can’t follow what's going on in court, according to Court Watch Montgomery’s report. So the group is asking that a short video be prepared in English and Spanish to help victims understand the process of seeking a protective order.
“We are recommending that it be in Spanish because we have a high percentage of domestic abuse victims that are only Spanish speakers,” said Enid Gonzalez, of advocacy group Casa de Maryland.
Court Watch Montgomery is trying to reduce obstacles to legal protection and hold offenders responsible. In 2006 Mark Castillo, of Rockville, Md., drowned his three young children in a Baltimore hotel room after his wife, Amy, fought a losing struggle in court to limit his contact with them, fearing he would try to hurt her by killing the children.
Court Watch Montgomery is making suggestions to reduce violence, like keeping victims and abusers separated in court and afterwards by staggering the times they can leave, asking judges to require abusers to surrender firearms and to make it clear that it is a crime to violate a protective order. Some judges have already started using the suggestions.
