October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. One of the toughest cases that I’d ever had to handle personally was one I worked on as an intern at Legal Services for the Elderly (www.mainelse.org). The client was a gentleman with an adult son living in a separate building on the client’s property. The son had access to the client’s house. The son was severely mentally ill and had an alcohol problem, and he would frequently stop taking his prescribed medication and go on drinking binges. Our client had given the son multiple ultimatums that if he didn’t stop drinking and go back on his meds, he would have to move off of the client’s property. The son even had other living arrangements available to him. I don’t remember the son’s source of income, but he apparently had enough money to buy alcohol, at least on occasion.

The son had seriously assaulted the client on several occasions, but the client refused to press criminal charges. We became involved after a particularly serious altercation during which the client’s son threatened to kill him and the client started to doubt whether he would be able to defend himself from the next attack. We recommended that the client allow us to send his son a “no trespass” letter, which, among other things, told him that if he drank alcohol again, he would be evicted. The client allowed us to send that letter. After the son violated several terms of the letter, we recommended that the client have his son served with an eviction notice and that he file a complaint for Protection from Abuse in court. The client seemed open to this plan, but, even after a lengthy discussion about these options with my supervising attorney, Denis Culley, the client decided not to follow through with our recommendations. Soon, the client stopped answering our phone calls, and I don’t know what happened to him.

I won’t presume to try to analyze this former client’s thought process during this difficult time. I assume there were multiple motivations for his failure to follow through with our recommendations. One of the things that came up in our internal discussions was that it is very hard for people, generally, to “give up” on their family members – especially parents to give up on their children. Many people hold out hope that their abusers will “come around.”

Please take the time to learn more about what you can do to prevent domestic violence in your community. For more information about what is being done in Maine, log on to http://mcedv.org/news/domestic-violence-awareness-month-2016-events.