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Though civil legal services can be incredibly valuable to sexual assault survivors, they are often overlooked. In “” published this summer in Social & Legal Studies, SPA Associate Professor Jane Palmer, the newly-appointed head of the Department of Justice, Law, and Criminology, and coauthors Jacqueline Lee (Boise State University) and Emily Michels (SIS, ’20) explored the civil legal needs of survivors, barriers to those needs, and the idea of survivor-defined justice.

Palmer worked as a practitioner in social work and nonprofits for over a decade before pursuing her PhD at American University. As an MSW practicum student, she worked as a legal advocate with a non-profit that was housed in a domestic violence court. Their role was to try to grab domestic abuse survivors before they met with the state's attorney, in order to offer information, options, and referrals before they were railroaded into opening a criminal case.

“They showed up bruised,” she recalled, “saying, ‘The cop last night told me I need to come here this morning to get a criminal order of protection.’ But they didn’t have to go that route if it wasn’t right for them.”

Later, as a doctoral student focusing on legal and policy responses to gender-based violence, Palmer encountered a 2005 article arguing for a focus on civil legal services instead of the criminal justice system. Civil representation can assist survivors in, for example, securing a job transfer to avoid an abuser, breaking a lease, or getting a name change. Even better, such services are available pro bono, courtesy of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

“It aligned with my experience as a practitioner working with both survivors and perpetrators of violence, and also with my experiences as a survivor,” she said. “If you're going to go through the criminal legal system, it will take forever, they probably won't find the person guilty, and you will be re-victimized in the process. It's, in my opinion, a really harmful system and not very trauma informed.”

Palmer points out a lack of evidence that incarceration stops future offenses, a connection between criminal justice involvement and increased lethality, and the wide variety of reasons why the survivor may want to avoid law enforcement. “Most survivors just want to feel safe, supported, and believed. For many, the retraumatization of the criminal legal system is just not worth it. Meanwhile, civil legal services can provide very concrete, practical things that can help a survivor's healing trajectory in a way that the criminal justice system is not equipped, or even set up, to do.”

Once she started her role as a faculty member at AU in 2014, Palmer contacted Executive Director Stacy Malone of the Victim Rights Law Center (VRLC), which provides pro-bono civil legal services and technical assistance to civil legal attorneys who are working with survivors of sexual assault, to offer her help as a researcher. She wanted to learn more about how civil legal services safeguard victims’ privacy, safety, education (including significant Title IX work on college campuses), immigration, housing, employment, financial stability, and ID needs. 

In 2019, the Center for Victim Research awarded Palmer and Malone a Victim Research-to-Practice Fellowship to study the civil legal needs of sexual assault survivors. She took on several research projects, including a full client case file review, to better understand their experiences with accessing civil legal services. The case file review was an arduous process, and they soon discovered the scholarly limitations of redacted attorney case files.

Palmer soon pivoted to an in-depth qualitative exploration of victim civil legal needs and barriers. With Malone’s permission, she invited attorneys at the 2019 National Sexual Violence Law Conference to meet with her for an interview. She sought to understand their experiences and hear from them about the value of – and challenges with – civil law. In the summer of 2019, Palmer interviewed 24 U.S. civil legal attorneys who work with survivors of sexual assault. 

“We wanted to write about why these services exist, the role they play, and the barriers faced by survivors and their attorneys,” she said. “Then ideas related to survivor-defined justice emerged from the data. . . A criminal trial [involves] the state versus the perpetrator; the victim is not even named. In a civil case, the victim has a lot more agency and autonomy, because it's the victim versus the perpetrator. As one attorney put it, ‘justice is more than jail.’”

Interviews revealed that some attorneys were survivors themselves, some also practiced criminal law, and, cumulatively, the sample had served hundreds of sexual assault victims. They identified a list of legal needs outside of the criminal legal system, especially related to increasing agency, safety, and stability, and shared how survivors’ lives have been positively affected by their services. They also enumerated barriers to service uptake, led by widespread ignorance of their existence, but also including legal complications, like immigration status or language barriers, which might prevent victims from seeking help. In fact, the Violence Against Women Act allows for immigrant survivors of intimate violence crimes to petition for legal status in the country, with an attorney's help. Some attorneys talked about their own experiences with compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and burnout. 

Study participants also discussed frustrations around restraining orders, or civil orders of protection, which vary widely from state to state. Some require cohabitation, disqualifying stalking victims and those with a casual or no intimate relationship to their abuser. In other cases, survivors can't receive a protective order without a criminal charge or conviction, forcing them through the criminal legal process. 

“I worked with an 11-year-old boy, who, of course, I'll never forget,” recalled Palmer. “His mom had gotten an order of protection because the uncle had committed sexual abuse. They came to therapy because the order was expiring, and the court wouldn't renew it without a new offense. . . We had to work therapeutically through other ways to feel safe.”

Once the interview transcripts were analyzed, the qualitative findings supported the need to broaden the idea of justice beyond the criminal legal system, in part, with the help of lesser-known civil legal services. Victims who are referred to civil attorneys are typically connected with a domestic violence or rape crisis center or learn about them through other public benefits or a criminal attorney. 

“I've always wanted to write a book about alternate paths to safety, well-being, and healing for survivors of gender-based violence, separate from the criminal legal system.” Palmer said. “Many police don't want these cases, they aren’t trained for them, and all too often they blame victims, even if they don’t mean to. ‘Well, what happened before that? Did you say yes to this?’ They don't understand what advocates understand. So why is our default to tell people to call the police? We could have a totally different response system, even one that is completely separate from the legal system, where their needs and desires will be heard.”

Palmer is currently working with SPA doctoral students on a second article on preventing and mitigating vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue. “Obviously, there's high burnout in this field, but we can create cultures of care in these nonprofits,” she said. This work aligns with other recent work of Palmer’s that focuses on addressing racism in anti-gender-based violence non-profit organizations.

Palmer sees her research agenda, and, perhaps, her whole career, as about examining ways to increase survivor agency and safety after they have been harmed. At the 2023 National Sexual Violence Law Conference, Palmer presented on this paper and spoke with attorneys and advocates beyond those in her sample, who said her findings resonated with their experiences. She plans to return to the conference in Fall 2025 to report on further findings and learn more from the field. 

“I've been in this work now for 25 years,” said Palmer. “When I worked at the domestic violence court, we'd sit around having beers after work, saying, ‘I would never send someone I love through this process.’ We need to have strategies that are separate from these traumatizing, often unhelpful processes. 

“All survivors deserve that.”