Rachel Lieb
Host: New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG)
Sponsor: Baker McKenzie, Merck & Co., Inc.
Katherine will improve outcomes for battered women and their children by developing tools and trainings for Child Protective Services (CPS) workers to better address cases involving domestic violence and by providing legal advocacy to battered women in custody disputes.
Adequately addressing the co-occurrence of domestic violence and child maltreatment is a national problem. Although many advocates for women and children recognize that protecting children necessitates protecting mothers, as the system currently functions, a battered mother—rather than being treated as a co-victim of a violent perpetrator—is often treated as a co-perpetrator by CPS, due to her failure to protect her child from abuse or witnessing abuse. As a result, fear of CPS involvement and removal of a child may discourage women from seeking assistance, and the removal of a child from his or her mothers’ custody may cause further emotional harm to the child’s wellbeing. Finally, racial bias in CPS collection has led to a persistent disparity in how child maltreatment cases are handled and who is placed in out-of-home care. Working with CPS and domestic violence advocates to develop the nuanced understanding of intimate partner violence and assessment tools needed to help both child and mother in domestic violence cases will improve outcomes for both women and children.
During the Fellowship period, Katherine:
Host: New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG)
Sponsor: Baker McKenzie, Merck & Co., Inc.
Host: Greater Boston Legal Services
Sponsor: General Electric Company, King & Spalding LLP
Host: Illinois Prison Project
Sponsor: Albert & Anne Mansfield Foundation
Host: UnCommon Law
Sponsor: Apple, Baker McKenzie