It has been quite concerning to DV advocates that Judges in Family Court are only asked to have 7 hours of DV training when they have lives in their hands and important decisions in their rulings that require more than 7 hours of training. They also don’t have to take a pre-test or a post-test to ensure they learned anything during the 7 hours that they attended the training. In other words – they can listen to their iPods, jot down notes on cases, read over cases, etc. There is NO accountability to show that they have learned anything.
Those of us who work in the field of Domestic Violence have to be certified and those professionals who have licenses and certain certifications, must have a required number of CEU’s to show continued competency. Yet judges who have the highest and most important position in providing safety to victims and children – have no accountability for anything when it comes to DV training, CEU’s, passing tests to show education on subject matter of domestic violence, etc.
I think this is a shame and disgraceful. I will go on to say that it is also very scary for those who enter into a family courtroom and have a judge sitting there who came from bankruptcy court, traffic court, or whatever other court and was transfered to family court. No training necessary for cases involving life and death matters.
What do you think? Lets change this sham and make a law that requires family court judges who sit over domestic violence cases to be trained like all other professionals who work in the field of DV.
