The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) - Firewire News Case Study: A Common Case of Justice Derailed [Updated]

The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) was born of the struggles of one tenacious survivor of domestic violence and stalking. The NCIDP continues her work with the help of many. Read more about the NCIDP...

This is one Case Study of a series run by Firewire News about San Francisco cases.

(Firewire News) - When a victim of violent crime seeks help, most victims do not expect reperpetrations by the 'helping professionals' that they seek out, and nor does the public.

As the thousands of case files at The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) have made painfully clear, this expectation is naive at best.

Whether a front line law enforcement agency, a domestic violence agency, a health care provider, or any number of other agencies and organizations, an all too significant percentage of victims of violent crime receive less help than reperpetrations from those to whom the victims turn for help.

The judiciary is just as guilty of that as any other.

In this case that unfolded in the notorious City and County of San Francisco, at the California Superior Court in San Francisco, a severely traumatized survivor of a recent homicidal assault and ongoing violence sought legal help in obtaining a restraining order. The victim met with a lawyer at the Cooperative Restraining Order Clinic (CROC) in San Francisco, "the main way in which women in San Francisco obtain restraining orders" [CROC website].

In the process of creating and filing the papers, the attorney asked the victim if she would need assistance during the proceeding for her hearing impairment. The victim responded that yes, indeed, she would need a display of a CC or TTY or similar translation [e.g. Real Time Closed Captioning; see update info, below] of the words spoken during the proceeding.

The court bizarrely responded to the request with an offer of an ASL translation. Unbelievably, the court offered only to provide a translation to a language that the victim did not read or speak. Since any court typist could provide a proper CC or TTY or like translation, and the need could be accommodated with common equipment already in the Superior Court building, the refusal to accommodate is baffling [see update information, below]. Conversely, ASL translation requires a specially trained translator, usually but not always readily available - and it was, again, a language not spoken by the victim. It was something like offering a Polish translation to someone who only spoke French and Spanish.

The hearing impairment was well known and understood to the perpetrator(s) whom the victim was seeking the protection of the court from.

The California Superior Court in San Francisco, being informed of the victim's need and refusing to accommodate it, further allowed the entry of testimony in the procedure without the knowledge or awareness of the victim. This is what is known as secret testimony, here permitted by the court and then used to adjudicate the proceeding to the victim's detriment. Indeed, gavel in the air about to be banged, the judge cited the victim's failure to "respond" to the claims of that secret testimony, then banged the gavel before the victim could draw a breath of despair and confusion.

Only later, after leaving the court, did the victim learn that secret testimony had been entered in the proceeding; learned from a friend and witness in the courtroom. The victim learned only that the testimony was entered, that the perpetrator had been "lying like a rug", as the witness reported it. "I knew you couldn't hear that part of it" went on the witness, "and I knew enough to know for a fact that it was all just one lie after another".

The witness did not restate the substance of the reportedly perjurious testimony to the victim, claiming not to remember. The victim suspected that the witness didn't want to restate the reportedly perjurious claims to spare the victim any additional hurt it might cause. The victim never learned what the reportedly perjurious, secret testimony contained. [During later interview, that same witness again claimed not to remember the specific details, only recognition of the falsity of it. Indeed, the personal doctors of that witness asked their patient to undergo testing for Alzheimer's not long afterward.]

The perpetrations of violence upon the victim continued unabated.

[UPDATE: Several months after the original publication of this story by Firewire News, readers of Firewire News began reporting new information. Apparently, the jury summonses that they were receiving began to offer "Real Time Closed Captioning" as an available accommodation for prospective jurors. It is not known if this new accommodation for jurors was also extended to petitioners and other litigants and, if so, whether it was in direct response to this tragic case or publication of it by Firewire News.]