Legal Help for Domestic Violence Victims

WomensLaw is the first and only free, legal resource for survivors of domestic & dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking that offers safety and legal information and resources in "plain language" in both English and Spanish. We are dedicated to empowering survivors and their advocates to make informed decisions about their options, safety, and legal remedies. 

From February 1, 2019, to April 30, 2019, 242,581 people accessed the life-saving information that is housed on WomensLaw.org.

In the past three months (February 2019 through April 2019), we worked directly with 1,740 victims, survivors, and their friends, advocates, or family members through our Email Hotline. We have had a large increase in people we are serving through the hotline since we redesigned our user interface. Our unique hotline offers victims a direct line to ask a question of our attorneys and volunteers, who specialize in domestic violence and the law. We respond to every request as quickly as possible, but take time to respond thoughtfully and include individualized resources and information. We frequently correspond back and forth with the women and men who write in, and many are grateful for our assistance and support. We also hear from the advocates providing direct services to victims who use WomensLaw.org to support their clients. Some responses we have received over the Email Hotline are below:

“Thank you, that was a wealth of knowledge. You answered the questions and gave options and resources. Truly appreciated. I understand It's not a easy thing but I thank you for giving me something to look into. I haven't seen my only daughter since 2010 and no information on where she was (I Googled for years hoping for something to pop up). I just found her, of course in another state, so I wanted to know where to start. I wish I had this information years ago. Thank you.”

(WomensLaw Email Hotline, February 2019)

And:

“Thank you so much for the kind, detailed, and prompt response. Thank you again for your help and for the resources. It is appreciated so much.” 

(WomensLaw Email Hotline, March 2019)

We answer questions and provide our expertise on a wide range of topics - including custody, divorce, relocation, and more. Often, victims or their loved ones are writing in to us to get some basic legal information about their situation when they cannot find legal representation. Although we do not provide legal advice, we can explain relevant laws that may help the victim to make an informed decision.

It is especially rewarding when someone tells us that the information we provided was thorough and helps them feel understood and validated. Here is one such reply that we received on the Email Hotline from a survivor looking for information:

“Thank you so much for all the detailed information. Thank you again. I will check in to the info you provided. I feel like there has to be a way to prevent controllers from manipulating the court system and allowing the abused and their children to struggle so much.” 

(WomensLaw Email Hotline response, March 2019)

We are constantly updating our website (WomensLaw.org) – making changes and additions to it daily. Our priority is to make sure that the legal information that we have is current with changes in the laws and to continue to add new information that would be useful for victims and survivors of abuse. Between February 1, 2019 and April 30, 2019, we made hundreds of updates, such as:

• We updated our Oregon Family Abuse Prevention Act Restraining Orders page. Spanish coming soon!
• We updated the links on our Alabama Download Court Forms page.
• We updated the contact information for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence (PCADV) and the Women's Law Project on our Pennsylvania Statewide Programs page, based on their new website. We also added new information about PCADV's new legal information helpline, PA Safe Law. All changes made in English - Spanish soon to come.
• We added the crime of "Violating custodial order" to the Iowa Crimes page and the Selected Iowa Statutes page. 
• We added two new resources to our Mississippi Legal Assistance page.
• We updated our Oregon Stalking Protection Orders page. Spanish coming soon!
• We updated our Safety While Using the Internet section, re-wrote Can I permanently delete my Facebook profile? and created a new question in English called What precautions should I take if I want to email a domestic violence program for help? Spanish soon to come!
• We completely re-organized and revised our Mississippi State Gun Laws section to make it easier to read. In addition to adding a new sub-section called The Abuser is Not Supposed to Have a Gun...Now What?, we also removed the majority of the federal gun laws information so that the section focuses on Mississippi state laws. 
• In our Louisiana Custody page, based on 2018 changes to the law, we re-wrote the information in multiple questions regarding when a parent who committed violence or sexual abuse can get custody or visitation. We also created four new questions called If my child was conceived as a result of rape, can the parent (offender) get any rights to my child?, Can a parent who sexually abused my child (or another child) get visitation? Can a parent who sexually abused my child (or another child) get custody? and Can a non-parent get custody?
• In our Maine Custody section, we re-wrote the question Can a grandparent get visitation? to clarify the difference between having "standing" to file a petition and actually getting visitation and to include information based on changes to the law. We also added a related statute to our Selected Maine Statutes page. Lastly, we added additional factors that a judge will consider to the question How will the judge decide on a parental rights and responsibilities arrangement? 

 .…and these are just a handful of the changes and improvements that we made over the past three months! See them all here on our What’s New page: WomensLaw.org/about/news.

Thank you for supporting WomensLaw and the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV).

Stay in the loop! Sign up for occasional action alerts and updates from NNEDV at: NNEDV.org/signup.