by Aisha Rahman, JD
Yesterday, I had a trial in a divorce case that was filed against my client in 2018. My client, who had endured every form of abuse imaginable, had waited three years for justice from a court of law – she knew she would never get it from her abuser. In this new COVID world, we had a hearing via zoom. After an hour of logistics, the trial finally began. The abuser’s interpreter only had one device. His phone. Between interpreting for the abuser and hearing the court, one device just wasn’t sufficient. The interpreter function on the zoom portal, that the county had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for, wasn’t working. Half way through the abuser’s testimony the judge suddenly called a mistrial. He couldn’t hear the interpreter. To add insult to injury, the judge ordered that because the case had been set a few times, and had not been able to be pulled off virtually, that he would not put it on a calendar until the courthouse re-opened fully in person. His estimate of when that would be? 2023. 2023! A full five years after the case had begun.
Let’s rewind a minute. Let’s talk about the process. My client married her husband as a student. She was swept off her feet by a charismatic man who offered her the world. Her love was so deep that when he told her to drop out of school because he didn’t like the way other men looked at her, she obliged. She dropped out of school even though she was in the U.S. on a student visa. For the next several months they courted and ultimately decided to get married. In the Islamic marriage, he promised her a gift of $50,000. He never gave her the money. As an aside, the ceremony was in English. He consented in English. He works as a salesman and speaks to his customers in English. He now goes to school where he speaks English. It is his civil right, of course, to have an interpreter at trial. Incidentally, my client’s right to a timely trial, is not as important.
After they married, they bought a house. Because she was out of status, she didn’t have a bank account. She didn’t have a work permit. She sold her gold jewelry and gave her husband cash for the down payment. The lender told them that it needed to come via a bank account so that there was a paper trail. It is unclear to me why a bank would refuse cash. So, the abuser gave the cash to his siblings who wire transferred it to him from their account. They even wrote him a promissory note!
For the year that she was in the house, my client contributed to the home. She helped with renovations. She made the house a home. Does that matter in the law? Actually, no. The house was marital property. After the parties got legally married, they added her name to the deed of the house. She is a co-owner of the house whether she put any money into or it not. His argument at court? She shouldn’t get a share of the home. She was not in the home for a cumulative of more than 3 months, he said. She had since been out of the house for two years.
Why had she been in and out of the house? The truth is that she had been in the house for much longer than three months. After a particularly gruesome episode of abuse, during which he burned the skin off her belly, my client fled to her family home. Her abuser came to her a week later and begged on his hands and knees for her to return. She did. The next time she left the house, he had told her he was having his friends over to gang rape her. She ran to the bathroom and locked the door. He had his friends waiting for her, breaking down the door, when her sister showed up to rescue her. She would have called the police even though she was undocumented. That’s how dire the situation was. She only had time for one call before he broke her phone. His abuse is why she left. She fled. And he wanted to use her time away from the home against her? She never knew she could ask for exclusive use and possession of her home. When she learned she could, the court told her it was too late. At trial, the abuser called this “separation.”
My client spent the next twelve months in shelter. The shelter had a policy – the maximum stay was 6 months. They figured out a way to keep her – maybe at the expense of another survivor needing a home. (By the way, fund shelters). Then, miraculously, she found a room in another person’s home. She found two agencies to help her with rent. Two months before trial, she got her work permit. One month before trial, she got a job. Her abuser at trial told the court that she lived in a swanky neighborhood. He had no idea she had rent assistance – he is not entitled to that information. To him, she was self -sufficient. She had a job. She had no need for money or support.
In litigation, there is something called a calendar call. Calendar calls are days when the judge calls up the lawyers and asks them how long the trial will last. After the calendar call, the court sets you on a trial calendar that month. My client had three calendar calls in her case. Three times that the case could have been set and wasn’t. For whatever reason. Two weeks ago, the court finally had given us a trial date and we prepared. My client relived her all of the abuse she experienced. She prepared to be badgered by her abuser’s attorney. She prepared to see his face. To hear his voice. To let his lies wash over her. The wounds from her trauma were so deep that she took days off of work. Days she couldn’t afford to take. We showed up for trial ready to go. The interpreters didn’t come. They had been requested over and over again. The court reset the case for two weeks later. That was yesterday. She had prepared all over again. She had taken more days off of work. The trial started. She endured his lies. Then, suddenly, a mistrial.
Now, she has to either settle for nothing, forfeiting all of her rights just to be divorced from this monster, or wait another two years for “justice.” Tell me, is this justice?
After court ended abruptly, she called me. She cried. She told me I couldn’t possibly understand. She was right. I couldn’t feel her pain. I couldn’t feel her frustration. Does the judge have no mercy, she asked me? Does the judge not understand the physical pain I still feel when I see him? Does he not understand what will happen to me if I wait two more years to have my day in court? Does he understand that even if I can get a few thousand dollars out of this I’ll be able to pay a doctor to heal my three year old wounds? Wounds I never addressed because I have no insurance? Should I give up and just be free of him so I can move on?
Her words are haunting me. I have no solutions. I have no faith in this system that I uphold everyday as a trial attorney. Still, we fight.
Leave a Reply