public defender | gets kids out of cages | can guess your taylor swift era | she/her
Nov 22 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Before my current career, I was a rape crisis counselor and a victim-witness advocate, both on a professional and volunteer basis, for nearly a decade. I met hundreds of women who experienced a sexual assault. Only ONE was assaulted in a public restroom, and….
She was not assaulted by someone who was trans or someone who was pretending to be trans. She was assaulted by a man who forcibly entered the restroom.
Sep 2 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Not for nothing, but I’ve found that a lot of issues with clients getting upset when I tell them about the evidence can be avoided by not making whether they “did it” or not a part of the relationship at all. You really don’t have to do that for many cases.
I usually don’t ask a client for their version of “what happened” early on. If they volunteer it, I’m all ears. But otherwise, I get to know them and what’s important to them, explain the system to them, explain how I work, and try to set expectations for what will happen next.
Sep 8, 2023 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
I think the final straw, the thing that really made me a prison abolitionist once and for all, was spending a summer working near and repeatedly running into the person who sexually assaulted me six years prior. 🧵
Prior to that summer I had spent years working out what it would mean to have some sort of justice. I’d filed a police report, I’d gone through an institutional process, I’d started talking publicly about what happened (though without naming him.) And none of it worked.
Mar 26, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
My take is this is actually not necessarily a bad cross and may well be a very good one. This video cherry-picked five or six moments of what was probably an hours long cross to make it look like all she did was gush over the witness. But even here….
She gets the witness to commit to answers, and she clearly gets her to let her guard down— she’s LAUGHING! We also don’t get to see how the answers in this compilation pay off later, like whether in these moments she’s established things that build her theory of case.
Aug 27, 2021 • 31 tweets • 7 min read
As a woman, a survivor of sexual assault, and a defense attorney, I’m not building a “brand.” I do this work to stand between human beings and a violent system that is hell-bent on painting them as inhuman, irredeemable, and without worth. If that makes me soulless....🧵
To get a few things out of the way-- this is probably a take I would have agreed with a decade or so ago. I get the knee-jerk response. But this argument lacks nuance & specifically penalizes women for doing the same work that men do. In doing so, it is misogynistic in itself.
Mar 29, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I had no idea this is happening to @feliciasonmez. It’s infuriating. Something similar happened to me at one of my first jobs out of college. After I spoke up about my experience, I was taken off everything sexual/domestic violence related, which made up most of my duties. 1/
It felt like a punishment. And worst of all, it was a punishment for something someone else had done to me. It was, like so many of my experiences after speaking up, its own trauma, in some ways worse than the initial trauma I spoke up about. 2/
Jan 8, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Betsy DeVos remains trash. 🤷🏻♀️
Resigning because she cannot stand for someone inciting violence, as if excusing universities from their responsibilities to students who experience sexual harassment is not violence in and of itself.
Oct 20, 2020 • 40 tweets • 6 min read
I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk about this and whether I should talk about this—but I want to share some thoughts, I guess about the bar exam and institutional betrayal.
I started thinking about this because the reaction I had to the “waiting for bar results” part of the process was objectively outsized. I was quiet-ish about the extent of it, even to those closest to me, but the waiting period was the worst my mental health has been for years.
Sep 7, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
A lot of people who have never once seemed to care about victims of sexual violence care a lot about us all of a sudden about us because Jacob Blake had a warrant out on a sexual violence charge. Here are thoughts, from someone who has both been victimized & worked with victims:
Do you know what is absolutely awful for people who experience gender-based violence? The thought that if you call the police for help, someone might end up hurt or killed.
Jul 10, 2020 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
Virginia Bar Applicants have shared stories about how ongoing issues with the bar exam will impact them. I'm going to share and amplify those in this thread.
But before I do that, please consider signing our petition for diploma privilege! As you'll see as I share these stories, students are really struggling. Diploma privilege is the safe, equitable solution.
My sense is that a lot of practicing attorneys and legal academics have no idea just how bad the bar exam situation is for 2020 graduates right now. I want to share a bit about what's going on for me and my peers right now.
I want to be clear that my purpose here is not to whine or look for sympathy (though I suspect there will be folks who come along in the comments to misunderstand me as doing that!) It's to shed light on something that I think is seriously impacting people but going unnoticed.
May 15, 2020 • 30 tweets • 5 min read
Inspired by some conversations I've seen going around, I want to compile in this thread several sexual assault/harassment scenarios that seem to be acceptable under the new Title IX rule:
A few general disclaimers––
I am not an attorney, but I Know Things about some laws, and Title IX is the law I probably know the most things about.
May 7, 2020 • 45 tweets • 7 min read
Mkay, my hottest take of the century: All of the publications touting Betsy DeVos's Title IX rule as a victory the accused must not have read the reg. It is an absolute disaster for accused students–– particularly those who lack financial resources. Here are some thoughts:
I wasn't sure whether to write about this (and decided to tweet, rather than formally writing) because I don't want to take away from the fact that this regulation has the most severe and negative impact on complainants. It is a sexist, icky, unfair rule that harms survivors.
Feb 25, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I've been trying to figure out why the Weinstein verdict has been making me feel queasy instead of vindicated. I think it's because I keep remembering the survivors I worked with after a prosecution or campus adjudication ended. Here's what that can look like:
These systems of "accountability" are sold to survivors of sexual assault as the ultimate Closure. Justice. The Solution to the Horrible Thing that Happened. So many of them feel like they are drowning in trauma and pain, and they cling to this like a life preserver.
Dec 27, 2019 • 27 tweets • 4 min read
There is a problem we need to talk about. Survivors of sexual & domestic violence are doing something incredible: They’re speaking up.
But when they do, their abusers are using the legal system to punish them. And we're not protecting them.
This is a thread about that.
The best term I’ve found to describe what’s happening here is "Procedural Abuse."
Procedural abuse happens when an abuser misuses legal or administrative systems to maintain power and control over a survivor.
Dec 13, 2019 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Law student/ baby lawyer tip for building a professional wardrobe:
Find one item from one brand that you love that comes in a bunch of patterns and colors. Try on in store to find your size in that item. Set alerts for that item in your size on Poshmark, Ebay, and ThredUp. 1/
You get fantastic items that you know will work for you at a teeeeny fraction of retail price. AND consignment is good for the environment. (Making my closet more sustainable has been one of my recent projects.) 2/
Dec 10, 2018 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
I trust others will come along to share about how the Pence rule can be damaging. But it's got me thinking about a rule I prefer, which I'm now dubbing the "Tom" rule: how men can monitor their behavior to make sure their female colleagues feel safe.
I worked at a job in my earl(ier) 20's where the nature of our work was dangerous, & I often had to close down late at night with a male colleague, Tom. He was super thoughtful about making sure I didn't feel threatened by him or others while we were closing down alone.
Sep 19, 2018 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
Hi Sara! I don't know you, and I don't hold this tweet against you. But I'm going t o use it as an example because think it gives us a chance to have an important conversation about something a lot of folks miss when we talk about sexual violence.
In many ways, the person who raped me was (and I imagine probably is) a good man. He was undeniably sharp, an incredibly talented musician, and he absolutely doted on his mom in a truly admirable way.
