Wynona Ward Will Travel to Aid Domestic Abuse Victims

Author: Greg Duggan

Growing up in a what she calls "a small town on a dirt road" in rural northern Vermont, Wynona Ward and her family had nowhere to go and little chance of finding help when her father abused her, her mother and her four siblings. Now, at the age of 52, Ward has become a major force in combating domestic abuse in Vermont. After becoming a lawyer, Ward founded and now heads "Have Justice - Will Travel" (HJWT), a non-profit organization dedicated to stopping abuse in the isolated areas of the state.

The organization provides legal and social services to women who have been abused, aiming to help these women and their children break away from oppressive situations. Since the creation of HJWT in 1998, Ward and the other HJWT lawyers have used trucks as offices, driving to meet clients at their homes. Equipped with cell phones, a laptop, a portable printer and files, the trucks allow the lawyers to access the hard-to-reach parts of Vermont. Because Ward's clients come from poorer, more rural areas, they often have difficulty leaving home, particularly during the snowy winters and muddy springs. Ward said that going to clients' homes allows her to "sit in their kitchens, where they're comfortable, and talk with them in a language they understand."

"In many circumstances," Ward pointed out, "the legal system is another abuser for the family. It happens without ... even meaning to, when a child has to testify or a rape victim has to testify - that alone is a very frightening situation." Understanding legal procedures lets the clients "feel protected and feel the court system is there to protect their rights" when they go to the trial and sit just feet away from their abuser.

After a woman frees herself from an abusive relationship, Ward continues to provide her with services to stabilize her new life. HJWT takes donations of food, furniture and clothes to help battered women begin life on their own. A Women in Transition Mentoring and Life Skills support group, in the words of Ward, "brings women together so that they can learn from each other, plus from speakers, what they need to become self-reliant on their own."

Because most of HJWT's clients cannot afford legal consultation, which costs, on average, $125 per hour in Vermont, Ward never charges her clients for her services. Instead, the organization receives its funding from grants, fellowships and private donations. Ward only pays herself about $25,000 each year and uses much of the money to hire other lawyers. Though she has no complaints about her own pay, Ward claims that she spends too much of her time writing grants and raising money, which makes it difficult for her to give as much time as she would like helping women to escape domestic violence.

While HJWT works to end singular cases of domestic abuse, it has the even wider goal of stopping the long-term problem of abuse that can cross generations. When an abused woman has children, Ward makes sure the mother tells her kids that abuse is not acceptable. The organization also branches out into local communities, visiting high schools and working with advocacy groups to instill the idea in teens and children that domestic abuse is not okay.

Despite all that she now does to curb domestic abuse, Ward did not grow up thinking of ways to reach out to other victims of domestic abuse like herself. She escaped her father's sexual abuse at the age of 18 when she married her boyfriend Harold Ward. Together, the couple ran a cross-country trucking outfit for 15 years.

Not until domestic abuse surfaced within her family once again did Ward consider doing something about it. When Ward's niece was three years old, Ward's father sexually abused the young girl, she said. Three years later, the girl was abused again, this time by Ward's brother., Ward explained. In both cases, the family pushed to prosecute.

According to Ward, her father never went to trial because prosecutors believed that the girl was too young to testify.

Ward's brother did face the courts however, and was found guilty of abusing his niece.

Talking about the difficulty of seeing her brother on trial, Ward explained, "I was very concerned about his welfare in that we had been buddies as young elementary-school children, but I also realized what the child was going through and knew that was my first concern." During the trial, Ward acted as a volunteer victim's advocate, speaking with the lawyer and then relaying information to her family in simpler terms.

This experience inspired Ward to attend law school. She earned her B.A. from Vermont College in 1995 by taking courses from a laptop while continuing to drive trucks. She received her law degree three years later from Vermont Law School. "I entered law school with the idea that I did want to get a legal education to help victims that were making their way through the justice system," said Ward. "I realized that I wanted to provide services for victims that were going through the legal system so that they could understand and not be frightened and traumatized by it." Such an attitude allowed Ward to establish HJWT. When the organization began, Ward was the sole laywer, receiving help from her husband in coordinating social services. Now, HJWT employs lawyers in Bennington and Brattleboro, as well as another for Washington and Lamoille counties. The organization has provided full service for 150 full-time clients since 1998 and has offered legal help over the phone to hundreds of call-in cases.

Even so, HJWT must still turn away many potential clients because of lack of time and money. Ward has been both locally and nationally recognized for her dedication in fighting domestic violence. She and HJWT have been featured on BBC Radio, in Ms. Magazine and on the cover of The Journal of the American Bar Association.

When asked how an organization like HJWT could have helped her own situation growing up, Ward responded, "My mother would have been able to get out. My mother would have been able to have help, from getting the food she needed to put on the table to getting shoes to put on our feet to having a roof over our heads - all the things that she was forced to depend on my father for." Because of Wynona Ward and HJWT, many women in Vermont now have the opportunity to escape those types of abusive relationships.