From Violence and Victimization to Voice and Validation: Incorporating Therapeutic Jurisprudence in a Children's Law Clinic

Authors

Carolyn S. Salisbury, University of Miami Children & Youth Law Clinic

First Page

623

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This article discusses our Clinic's Voice Project and examines the application of Therapeutic Jurisprudence principles to the group of foster children who created the Trapped mural: girls who are victims of abuse and who are committed to psychiatric facilities. In their self-expression, an overwhelming number of the girls focused on their experiences of being sexually abused and feeling re-victimized within the psychiatric and legal systems. Unfortunately, "[u]nlike most victims of other sexualized violence, the victims of child sexual abuse have had little or no voice, creating a literal as well as figurative absence of narrative about the harm." In this article, I include the voices of the girls who created the "Trapped" mural and summarize our Voice Project's findings on how the girls' experiences in the child welfare system impacted them. The girls conveyed the trauma of three dimensions of rape that they experienced-the trauma of being sexually abused, the re-traumatization of forced psychiatric treatment, and the further re-traumatization of being rendered voiceless in the legal system that controlled their psychiatric commitment and every aspect of their lives. In incorporating the girls' voices and perspectives in this article, I am heeding Professor Perlin's challenge to those who engage in Therapeutic Jurisprudence work: "It is essential that Therapeutic Jurisprudence incorporate the viewpoints and perspectives of the eventual consumers of mental health services-those who involuntarily and voluntarily enter the mental health system .... The next generation of [T]herapeutic [J]urisprudence scholarship must incorporate these perspectives." Indeed, it is critical for client voices to be incorporated in Therapeutic Jurisprudence scholarship so that client communities can contribute their own perspectives on the therapeutic and anti-therapeutic effects of legal rules and practices that they have experienced. After summarizing the girls' perspectives, this article examines how application of Therapeutic Jurisprudence principles can avoid foster children viewing the law as the girls in the Voice Project viewed it-as a violent field of rape. The article addresses the two core principles of TJ that were desperately sought by the girls: voice and validation. The article discusses how our Clinic students provided voice and validation for a girl in the psychiatric facility who was a client of the Clinic and what we learned about the benefits of applying Therapeutic Jurisprudence principles through legal representation. Additionally, the article examines how our Clinic successfully utilized Therapeutic Jurisprudence arguments in our legal advocacy before the Florida Supreme Court to further our law reform effort to ensure that all foster children receive meaningful due process when facing commitment to psychiatric facilities. Finally, the article addresses the pedagogical value of incorporating Therapeutic Jurisprudence in clinical legal education and encourages clinicians to establish Voice Projects within their law schools to enable students and clients to transform the law's potential for violence into the law's potential for healing.

Recommended Citation

Carolyn S. Salisbury, From Violence and Victimization to Voice and Validation: Incorporating Therapeutic Jurisprudence in a Children's Law Clinic, 17 St. Thomas L. Rev. 623 (2005).
Available at: https://scholarship.stu.edu/stlr/vol17/iss3/10