DAWN
Domestic Abuse Women's Net

http://www.willapabay.org/~anne/dawn.htm

DAWN: A net not only for Internet Networking, but a Safety Net spread across the United States -- other countries welcome to adapt as their laws may make possible -- to protect children everywhere. This information is free to the public, without restriction. The way to get action more independent of lawmakers and the courts, in a way the most helpless can afford it.

We need to help reform and bend the legal system to support others who are in the same shoes as we wear. Women who, like us, are always carefully looking out their own windows from behind curtains, and who look over their shoulders whenever fearfully walking down a sidewalk.

Too many young mothers around our country and world are destitute, even unable to hire a lawyer, while their abusers have control of the entire income and can hire any corrupt attorney to influence judges. Those judges and attorneys often unfeeling, macho womanizers. The only way to insure justice is to hit the oppressors where it hurts most, in the pocket book. Make it more worthwhile for any who are already as much a help as they can afford . . . and a spur for improvement of those who are a problem.

The traditional monetary reward can be offered by establishing local foundations nationwide, and eventually worldwide, to collect money for hiring selected attorneys. Always the best available, while more learn to improve, even if just for their own enrichment.

Join the accumulating e-mail list of interested parties who want to know how to set up such foundations in their areas by letting anne@willapabay.org know you want to be on a Bcc: list.

DAWN is to be small foundations established in local communities to help pay attorney fees, just as other foundations provide scholarships. With paid attorneys overseen by a local foundation, better able to afford serving than any who work pro bono, the best lawyers in the community will be getting the work. Doing ever better with practice, for the clients who come later. (Tips from those of us who have been there, can help others in similar circumstances learn how to cut off the attorney who drags things out for the money!)

Those lawyers found best able to help children of indigent mothers, are to be paid at the discretion of DAWN foundation directors living within the community. When good lawyers can afford to do work they could not do pro bono, somewhat less good lawyers will be inspired to do better work in order to be selected.

As with every other line of work, there are good lawyers as well as bad, and the object is to make the less good, better. (And the already good, the best.) Those lawyers found best able to help children of indigent mothers, are to be offered payment to take on certain cases at the discretion of DAWN foundation directors living within the community.

There is lack of support not only from the criminal justice system, but also from the media. I came out of the domestic violence closet partly to protect myself. (To make sure he was caught if anything happened to me.) I do still have a protection order and was advised -- by a woman state patrol officer -- to keep it in effect permanently.

The Crisis Support Network in Pacific County of Washington state, is local and helped me. CSN in this small county has the contract for the hotline for the whole state of Washington. (I lived less than a mile from their headquarters, but could only escape via a doctor's office where I had an appointment the first day of July 1998. I was hiding in a shelter, on Independence Day and for nearly a month afterwards.)

In October 1999 the Crisis Support Network held its first of what is to be an annual Candlelight Vigil on the Pacific County Courthouse steps in South Bend, Washington. The ceremony celebrated survivors and remembered victims of domestic violence who had been murdered. There were 22 women, men and children survivors present and it was media covered.

My now ex-husband ran my small business into the ground besides the usual Domestic Violence and I work to rebuild in order to make my own living if he is successful at cutting me off monetarily as he has done before.

Few of those enthusiastic about the idea of DAWN are out of the domestic violence closet. Fewer still are those in the greater community who understand the reasons some of us have for coming out, to speak out against domestic violence. Neither does society as a whole realize it is not just a question of getting a divorce and then everything is great.

So many want to protect the abused by keeping us unidentified and invisible. Out of the closet, I wanted to set up a foundation within my home county, to provide for payment for legal assistance for abused women and children who are left destitute. My own children are adult, I have the expertise to go about this, but I need a few others to be a group to set it up. And, if this is a valid pursuit in one place, why not everywhere?

As the working title -- to be decided for or against by the first elected directors -- for the community I want to cover, we could choose Twin Harbors DAWN. There could be a West Seattle DAWN, a Beauregard Parish DAWN, a Kodiak Island DAWN. Any group would choose their own, being entirely independent of all others -- the name confirmed or replaced by the first slate of officers. The best connection among all, can be by interchange of ideas and description of what works.

As a beginning, the foundation, once it has gotten funding, will decide just what to support. Not just to get a divorce with decent terms, but to get the children taken care of during and after the separation or divorce. DAWN can assist the most children in the best way, by getting the finest possible legal help.

My Public Relations work and public service announcements really started by accident, when the local shelter asked me to do an interview with the local CBS affiliate during National Domestic Violence awareness month. Two commercials were done during the last two years. I have a very good working relationship with two of the local tv stations and have kind of become the poster child for domestic violence awareness here!!

At first none wanted to use my real name or show my face. I told them I wouldn't do anything that way because my ex was the one who was violent, not me. I didn't want to feel ashamed of who I am.

There is so much shame and guilt involved in staying in domestic violence, I wasn't going to be any part of hiding from it. They said they feared for my safety, but I knew what they really feared, were law suits by my ex-husband. Finally, they agreed to do the interviews openly.

I've done numerous presentations throughout the years, including at the state penitentiary. The problem is, it is all on a volunteer basis and I need to be able to generate an income.

The lack of support really shows when I have tried to get organizations to back me financially. I left him five years ago and the first two years I was completely funding my project, but realized there was no way I could continue doing that. I came out of the closet to protect myself.

If he kills me, enough of the public will know the story that he hopefully wouldn't get away with it. Also, we had a big business together and he managed to bankrupt my portion of it. My ex-husband also took all of my retirement. In order to escape, I lost a huge beautiful home and every bit of financial security I had. After twenty years of living in fear of the man, I had to start over like an 18 year old.