by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

September 18, 2008

After 15 years of marriage, Susan discovered her husband Bruce was a cocaine addict who was deeply in debt. Then he threatened her with a knife.

Barbara’s husband Jake dragged her out of bed one night and beat her severely in front of their daughter.

Stephanie endured several beatings with a stick by her husband, who said he wanted to teach her “to act properly.”

The names are pseudonyms, but the situations are all too real. The three women are clients of the Rachel Coalition, a branch of the Jewish Family Service of MetroWest that was founded in 1998 as “a comprehensive response to the devastating issue of domestic violence.”

Both JFS and the Rachel Coalition are beneficiary agencies of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ.

In Susan’s case, the coalition provided her with the legal resources to begin divorce proceedings, undergo counseling, and study to become a teacher.

Its volunteer staff helped Barbara connect with a pro bono attorney, receive financial counseling, and begin a career as a nurse.

After she contacted the coalition, Stephanie was able to obtain a restraining order against her husband, gain custody of her children, and limit his contact with them to supervised visitation.

Other cases might not have such positive outcomes; some end in tragedy. Violent husbands can slip through the legal limits of restraining orders and attack their wives and children. Sometimes, the people assigned to evaluate abuse have not received sufficient training to spot endangered family members — thus enabling abusers to gain unsupervised contact with their sons and daughters. Sometimes police officers and judges don’t take victims’ complaints seriously enough.

With these situations in mind, officials at the Rachel Coalition are urging that laws giving domestic abuse victims and their children greater protection be strengthened.

So while he acknowledged that “New Jersey has one of the strongest laws in the country,” JFS executive director Reuben Rotman, whose agency oversees the coalition, said, “We want to make things more foolproof.”

To that end, Rotman — together with Suzanne Groisser, staff attorney for the coalition and its coordinator of legal services, and Dianne Finn, a licensed social worker and coordinator of its client services — met with officials in the office of State Senate President Richard Codey (D-Dist. 27) last spring to press for upgrades in the domestic abuse statutes.

Although its client base extends beyond the Jewish community, Groisser noted, Jewish women tend to leave abusive homes later than other women — on average, after seven years of abuse rather than the more common three-to-five years. “It is about its being a shonda, bringing shame,” she said. Some in the Jewish community consider it “worse for a woman to leave and bring disgrace than for a man to abuse her.”

“But we don’t want to single out anyone,” Rotman added. “We see every ethnic group in our caseload. Jewish. Not Jewish. Orthodox. Not Orthodox. High income. Low income.”

“We’ve had 10 new clients in the past month,” said Finn.

“That’s a jump,” said Rotman. “That’s a big number.”

Sexual abuse happens “a lot,” said Finn, with husbands raping their wives in some cases; in others, there are “strong allegations that fathers are sexually abusing their daughters,” She noted that between 30 and 60 percent of the men who are abusive to their spouses also physically or sexually abuse the children in their homes.

‘An issue for men’

In a lengthy interview at a conference table at the JFS office in Florham Park, the three coalition officials told NJ Jewish News they definitely want tougher legal requirements for the training of people who evaluate family members for signs of victimization.

“A judge deciding custody issues is guided by the legal principle of ‘best interest of the children,’ said Groisser. “They have the people go to psychologists, mental health experts, or psychiatrists who have no training in [recognizing] domestic violence. There is no requirement by the American Psychological Association or by any association of mental health experts to have training on domestic violence.

“We would like the law to set a minimum standard, a number of hours, and a requirement for continued training,” said Groisser.

Such enforced consistency in the standards, said Rotman, will ensure “that judges who make these decisions have the proper education and training.”

Groisser added that oftentimes the outcome of a case is the result of deals being made with the judge. “Five different judges can give five different rulings,” she said. It shouldn’t be like that.

Another problem, said Finn, is that “judges rotate. They may end up going to family court, where they have no particular aptitude or interest. They need to have some orientation towards wanting to understand these messy human dramas.”

On one occasion she accompanied a client “who was seriously beaten up” to a hearing in an Essex County municipal court, where “it was so clear that the judge took a much stronger interest in prosecuting traffic offenses. They don’t approach domestic violence in the same way,” she said.

That can also be true for the police officers who are dispatched when complaints of domestic abuse come in. While Groisser said she believes that “some police departments are outstanding,” others “will make someone victimized in the middle of the night or on a weekend wait until Monday morning” for law enforcement response.

“The law requires the police must determine who the primary aggressor is, and that’s not done in many cases,” Groisser alleged. “What I am asking the police to do is what they are directed to do: do their job. The response from law enforcement is greatly improved but there is more to be done.”

The tighter laws being sought by the coalition and the New Jersey State Association of Jewish Federations, along with advocacy groups outside the Jewish community, are part of what Rotman called “our education and awareness efforts. We want people to know there are options and supports out there, but we want the general society to know even with all that, there are still gaps we are trying to address.”

“The Jewish community has a long, proud history of trying to be involved in legal changes,” said Groisser. “There is a responsibility for all of us to help keep people safe, through changes in laws, through advocacy, through volunteer work.

“It is not just a problem for women. It is just as much of an issue for men. Nobody wants their sisters, their daughters, or their mothers to be abused.”

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