Shabana Ansari: Thanks a lot Daman, for giving me this opportunity to share my knowledge with you. For our listeners, my name is Shabana Ansari. I have been associated with Maitri for the past 5 years as a legal advocate. I have completed a degree in law from Mumbai University and I have also graduated in social work. Before getting connected to Maitri, I was practicing law in Mumbai and Chennai courts and before that I was working with domestic violence cases, women hygiene issues and child education rights for 7 years.

SA: Through Maitri’s legal program, we provide confidential and free legal advocacy services to South Asian domestic violence victims and survivors. Maitri’s legal program started in 2006 and we got accredited by the Department of Justice in 2011. Through this accreditation, we are able to provide immigration assistance to domestic violence victims. Through our legal program, we not only provide DV victims with essential information, but we also connect them with the legal experts, if need be. In community education, we provide our community with information on immigration rights and domestic violence. With that, we also organize legal clinics, where we connect our clients who come to us for help, with legal attorneys so they can discuss their matters and concerns with them.

SA: Definitely! Maitri’s legal program has 3 broad umbrellas. First we do legal advocacy, next immigration assistance and third policy advocacy. But today, I will tell you about legal advocacy. Firstly, when we get a call from someone, we have to somehow establish that the person is safe. Secondly, we understand if the person who has called us, if they require language assistance. If they do, then we help them in language assistance. For instance, if someone tells us that they can only speak Telugu, we first try to find someone in our staff who can help them in Telugu. If we can’t find anyone, then we turn to our huge volunteer pool. We contact our volunteer pool and connect the client with them so we can make sure that they are getting the necessary help. Similarly, we help clients in answering their legal questions. Like I said before, our job in the legal process is to provide our clients with the necessary information and resources, but at this time we do not provide any advice to them because our purpose is to give them information so they can understand it clearly and take the next steps accordingly, at their discretion. Next things in legal advocacy are - If someone is not feeling safe and they want a restraining order, we help them complete their paperwork for a restraining order. We also help them with their family law paperwork. We have a great set of lawyers who help our clients, if our clients wish to contact these lawyers, to fill out this paperwork. Some other kind of help that we provide in legal advocacy is that we can accompany our clients as a support person in their court hearings. But this support person can only provide emotional support to the client. We also provide language interpreter services to our clients. A lot of times, clients get scared that they don’t understand English so how will they ask for help, so we help them with that. You can request an interpreter in the court, and we help our clients with that. I want to also emphasize that we make it easier for our clients who don’t know the legal system or are afraid to maneuver the legal system all on their own. We explain the intricacies of the legal system to our clients in layman terms, that makes it easier for them to understand. So, for instance, if a client contacts us and asks us to explain the legal process of getting a divorce, so I will tell them that anyone can file for a divorce here in California, if they have been a resident of California for at least 6 months and they have lived in the county in which they are filing a divorce for at least 3 months. If someone needs a divorce in Santa Clara county’s San Jose court- if you have stayed in Santa Clara county for at least 3 months, you can file for a divorce. All this information is already available on the court’s website courts.ca.org and on womenslaw.org. But clients call us at the time—there’s anxiety a lot of times and that's when our role becomes important so we can explain these intricacies to them calmly.

SA: Thank you Daman. Some of our clients want to understand the legal process, how the court system works here, what options and rights they have and how they can move forward with their cases. Second reason is if they have ongoing cases and they don't know how to maneuver, they contact us to ask for help. Sometimes, people have some questions about their safety and they want to get a restraining order and we help them understand how to get a restraining order, and whether they should contact a family court or a criminal court for the restraining order. I would also like to add that we get calls for help from not only California but a lot of South Asian countries and cities as well as a lot of other US states. A lot of the times, clients contact us because they get to know that we help South Asian communities and we are aware about the South Asian culture, so they just want to talk to us about their problems because we can help them according to their culture. Also, we help everyone, not only women. Anyone who is a victim of domestic violence can call us.

SA: Like I have mentioned before in the discussion, a lot of our clients are immigrants. So if there is a new immigrant and they don't know about how things work here, then it becomes extremely problematic because a lot of times the victims call the police here that they are being abused. When the police arrive and they arrest the abuser, it is a culture shock or very embarrassing for the victim because a lot of times they call to just complain so some authority figure can admonish the abuser. But here it does not happen like that, if there has been physical violence then police have to arrest the abuser. So that’s one challenge. The other one is, since divorce is a stigma in our culture, so a lot of times people think that if their spouse has filed for a divorce and if they don’t sign the divorce papers, it won’t be finalized. But it is not like that here under family law. Thirdly, a lot of times people think that since our marriage has been under personal law, we can't get a divorce here but it is not like that. Here, the law is the same for everyone. So a marriage done under personal act is not considered here. So to give them this understanding that they can get a divorce or they can file for a divorce needs some help and attention. Another challenge is for alimony. In California spousal support is calculated based on the income of both the partners and for how long the couple have been married, unlike in our countries where alimony is granted based on if they are women or not. For instance, if you have been married for 2 years then you will get spousal support for at least 1 year but it will also be based on both of their incomes.

SA: This is a very important question that you have brought up. And as we all know it is very important for anyone who is going through domestic violence to tell someone that they are going through it. And for a victim to have self-confidence so they can go and confide in someone else is also very essential. So as a society or as a community, if you notice that someone is going through domestic violence and they come to you and confide in you about that, then the first important step is that you should believe them. That what they are saying is the truth, and it is very important that you understand them and you support them. Because the first feeling that a victim goes through is this doubt in their own minds that no one will believe them. So, the first step is to believe in them and to believe what they tell you. Second step is to give them emotional support. They should have this feeling that someone is supporting them, and someone is understanding them, and the victim should have this trust that they can tell that one person everything that is happening to them. Like you also mentioned in your question that a lot of the people here are immigrants. Which means everything is new for them, new city, new people, new law. So it gets extremely difficult and tricky to find some trustworthy people. In our society, generations after generations, we have been made to believe that domestic violence is a matter of one’s household and you don’t have to tell anyone about it, so if someone is taking the first step to show some trust in you and they come and tell you about their situation, then please you should support them, you should believe them and you should give them assurance that you won’t them judge them. You should not try to find faults in them or in their situation. Just listen to them first. Another thing to note is that you have to wait for the victim to come and show trust in you and to talk to you. Even if you can see that something bad is happening to them, you have to wait for them to come to you because if they are not ready then no one else can take this forward. Once they come to you themselves and confide in you about their problems, you should give them the resources and contacts of different organizations that can help them with this. If they don’t have a phone and if you are comfortable you can give them your phone and ask them to call the domestic violence organizations themselves. And like I said there is no difficulty if the victim does not speak or understand English and they want to talk in a different language. In Maitri, we make sure that anyone we put them in contact with would know the language that the client is most comfortable in. Third step is that you should not give the client any advice from your own side. You should leave that on the organization that you are putting them in contact with, because your work and even the organization’s job is not to advise the victim. We have to first inform the victim about different processes and once they have understood the processes, they will think about their situation and accordingly decide or not decide to take action. Last point that I want to make is that domestic violence organizations have a confidentiality privilege. We cannot share a client's situation with anyone unless they give us the permission to do so. For instance, if there is a subpoena that is issued for a domestic violence organization from a court to come and talk about their client, we can deny that permission saying that the client has not given us the permission to talk about their case with anyone. But if you are someone who is helping them and supporting them as a friend or anyone outside of the organization, you do not have the confidentiality privilege. If you get a subpoena from the court, you will have to go to court. One more thing that I want to add is that as a domestic violence organization, we know that it takes some time to provide different options and resources to the client according to their needs, that is why all the lawyers in our organization have completed a 40-hour training that train us to understand all their needs and then provide them with the required knowledge.

SA: Anyone who is a victim of domestic violence can contact the court or the police for their complaints. There is no discrimination based on visa statuses in this case because legal service is available for anyone. But I would like to add, is someone is undocumented or have arrived as an illegal immigrant and they want to get some help from the police, they should contact an immigration attorney and understand their options and then they should either contact the police or the court. I would again like to emphasize that anyone and everyone can go to the court with their issues. No one will ask them their immigration status and they do not even need to tell the court or the police about their immigration status.

SA: I wanted to say that they would not be denied any sort of service by the court or by the police. But if they have questions in their mind about what will happen to them because they are on H4 which is a dependent visa, they should contact an immigration attorney for their options. For instance, if they want to get a restraining order from the court, they can go and ask for that from the court. No one will ask them about their immigration status because a victim’s safety is the most important thing.

SA: A lot of resources and services are available for the clients. Firstly, there are self-help centers available in courts. As an example, in Santa Clara county or in alameda county, there are self-help centers available in the family courts where anyone can go and can meet a self-help attorney and discuss their case. Also, there are a lot of organizations who are working for victims and survivors. All this information about self-help centers or DV organizations is available on the court website. And, every county has started family justice centers in the family law courts. You can go there and meet different attorneys like district attorneys for criminal cases, immigration attorneys for immigration help and so on. If you go to the court's website, they also have information about organizations that provide pro bono services or low bono services. If you go to USCIS website, they also have a list of all the organizations that can help people with immigration services.

SA: This is a question that has been asked by a lot of people. A lot of times we get calls and the client feels that they need a lawyer immediately and they want to talk to a lawyer. But it is extremely essential to first understand your options and then contact a lawyer. There are different ways of finding a lawyer. People also search for lawyers on yelp, where they can see reviews and then contact them based on their reviews. But, I would like to say that if you want to find a lawyer you should go to the state bar of California’s website and search for the lawyer's name there to check if the lawyer is licensed and registered there. Secondly, if you have found multiple lawyers that you like, you can create your own set of questions and ask each of those lawyers and then compare their answers to shortlist 1 lawyer for yourself. You can, without hesitation, straight away, ask the lawyers if they have handled DV cases before or if they have taken training for handling DV cases. Another thing that I want to add is that once you have selected a lawyer, you should make sure that you read their agreement very carefully, check their billing structure, fee structure and retainer agreement. I would like to say that the way advocates function here is very different from how they function in the countries where we have come from. For instance, in India, lawyers have a different fee structure. There are different types of agreements. For instance, a lot of times lawyers ask for hourly fee or in retainer agreements they ask for a flat fee. Keep in mind that you only have to talk about or ask questions about your legal case with the lawyers. And make sure that you don’t contact them for every little question that you have because that could blow up your lawyer bill. A lot of times we have seen clients wondering about why their bill became so huge, it might be because the lawyers are representing you in court and also billing you for every small question that you ask them. On the California bar state website there are different resources on how to hire an attorney. If you want to understand how to hire an attorney for yourself, make sure you read those points like, how will you understand that this is the best lawyer for me or if they are trustworthy. You can also create your questions and ask them for free consultation. Free consultations last from 15-30mins. Last point that I would like to add is that make sure that any lawyer that you go to, they respect you and understand you and tell you about different issues.

SA: Like I said before that we get calls not only from the US, but also from a lot of different South Asian countries. For instance, if the client is residing in India and their case is going on in the courts in the US, maybe in California or some different state, we have still tried to help them here. As an example, one of our clients contacted us when she was in California and her spouse asked her to go back to India and he would call her back after some time. But she lost all contact with her spouse when she moved to India and that's when she contacted Maitri. We took her information and with her permission checked on the court’s website. We got to know that her case has been filed in the California court. But she said that she has not got any papers from the California court. I would like to add, if I forgot earlier, that whenever a case is filed in court here in California, it is mandatory for the papers to reach both the parties. If you got the papers and you didn't respond, then it is a different issue. But if you haven't got the paper at all, and we checked and it showed that they have petitioned for default order. In this case the client thought that if she didn't sign the paper, there would be no divorce proceedings. But it is not right now. So with client’s permission, we contacted a lawyer here, got her papers and then we asked her to fill those papers from India and then we submitted those papers here. We also helped the client get in touch with a lawyer and the lawyer helped to stop the default order and the court agreed to it. So there are a lot of successful stories. Every year we circulate feedback from people to ask their opinion on how we are doing or what things we should do differently. There are some comments that we have of our clients in English, that I would like to read to you: 1. With Maitri, I personally feel it’s a god blessing to you, having Maitri in your life as they support you and boost your confidence, helps you on a daily basis for you to come out of your stress and legal matters. 2. I personally feel a few years back when I came in, I was so nervous, I did not know what I am gonna be doing but being with Maitri has given me so much of confidence and made my life better. 3. I have had a great experience working with Maitri. I had no idea how to come out of my situation and get my life together. Starting from managing my finances to helping me plan my career, they have helped me throughout, I am very grateful to them. These are some of the feedback that we have got. This kind of feedback encourages us to make our services even better and to keep going. So please if you need help please reach out to us on 1-888-8624874 and you can also email us at maitri@maitri.org. And you can also contact us through our active Maitri bay area page.