Accessing Justice for Survivors of Domestic and
Sexual Violence with Disabilities

This session will provide a general overview of the issues that prevent successful outcomes for survivors of sexual violence with disabilities in the criminal and civil legal systems. It will provide strategies and tools for participants to support survivors with disabilities that impede their access to justice. This session is geared toward attorneys with moderate knowledge of crime victims’ rights.

Robin Runge is the Director of the Commission on Domestic Violence at the American Bar Association. As Director, she manages all aspects of Commission programming with the mission of improving access to justice for domestic violence victims by mobilizing the legal profession, including: fundraising; budget management; staff recruitment and management; program development; and policy development. Ms. Runge speaks nationally, provides trainings, and writes articles on various aspects of the legal response to domestic violence, including the employment rights of domestic violence victims. The Commission collaborates with other national, statewide, regional, and local bar associations, legal aid organizations, and violence against women programs to provide technical assistance and training to attorneys representing domestic violence victims, including the development of programming, legal research, and publications.

Ms. Runge has been a domestic violence victim advocate for fifteen years. She practiced employment law for five years with a focus on women’s rights in employment, specifically the Family and Medical Leave Act, Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and employment protections for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. Ms. Runge is a nationally-recognized expert on the employment rights of victims and speaks and provides trainings regularly on these issues. She has co-authored several articles on employment law and domestic violence, and has worked on state and federal legislation providing job-guaranteed leave from work, unemployment insurance, and anti-discrimination in employment for domestic violence and sexual assault victims.

Previously, Ms. Runge was Deputy Director and Coordinator of the Program on Women’s Employment Rights (POWER) at the D.C. Employment Justice Center and the coordinator of the Domestic Violence and Employment Project at the Employment Law Center, Legal Aid Society of San Francisco. In these capacities, she was responsible for the development and supervision of the legal, policy, and public education components of each program, including supervising legal clinics, supervising attorneys providing legal representation to low income women, and conducting trainings on these issues for domestic violence victims, advocates, policy-makers, attorneys, and human resource managers. In 1997, Ms. Runge was the first George Washington University Law School graduate to receive one of fourteen Equal Justice Fellowships from Equal Justice Works (formerly the National Association for Public Interest Law) to create the Domestic Violence and Employment Project at the Legal Aid Society of San Francisco – one of the first programs in the country devoted exclusively to advocating for the employment rights of domestic violence victims. In 2000, Ms. Runge was a public policy attorney for the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence in its Washington, D.C. office.

Ms. Runge currently serves on the advisory boards of the Corporate Alliance to End Partner Violence (CAEPV) and the Women’s Information Network. In 2006, she was also appointed to the Washington, D.C. Mayor’s Commission on Women and joined the board of the District Alliance for Safe Housing (DASH). From 2001-2005, she was a member of the board of directors of Women Empowered Against Violence (WEAVE), a non-profit agency providing legal, counseling, and economic literacy support to domestic violence victims in Washington, D.C. and co-chair of the board in 2005. She has also served on the board of the California Alliance Against Domestic Violence (1998-2000) and as co-chair of its Public Policy and Research Committee (1998-2000). Ms. Runge is currently an Associate Professorial Lecturer in Law at The George Washington University Law School, where she teaches Public Interest Lawyering, and an Adjunct Professor at The American University Washington College of Law, where she teaches Domestic Violence Law.

Ms. Runge is a member of the California Bar and District of Columbia Bar. She graduated from The George Washington University Law School, where she received the West Publishing Award for Clinical Achievement in Family Law and the Baer Award for Individual Excellence. She received her B.A. in History and French, cum laude, from Wellesley College. Ms. Runge is from Collinsville, Illinois, outside of St. Louis, Missouri.

In 2008, Catherine Carroll co-founded the Sexual Violence Law Center, where she currently serves as Executive Director. From 2002 to 2008, Ms. Carroll was the Legal Director of the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs (WCSAP), where she provided legal training and consultation to the legal community in Washington state on improving its response to sexual violence. She has created numerous legal resource materials, including an attorney practice manual, and has been a lecturer at the University of Washington School of Law, where she co-taught a course on Sexual Violence and the Law. Ms. Carroll has partnered with the American Bar Association Commission on Domestic Violence to create standards of practice for lawyers representing survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking in civil protection order cases. Prior to her work at WCSAP, she was the Director of Legal Services at STAND! Against Domestic Violence in Contra Costa County, California.

Ms. Carroll began her career as a crisis line counselor for battered women. She then went on to become a restraining order clinic volunteer and to attend law school at New College School of Law in San Francisco. Over the past fifteen years, Ms. Carroll has worked with abused women who are incarcerated; the California Coalition for Battered Women in Prison; the California Alliance Against Domestic Violence; and the Bay Area Women Against Rape and WOMAN INC in San Francisco. Formerly, she worked as a staff attorney at the Support Network for Battered Women, in Mountain View, California, where she focused on criminal advocacy for battered women and at the Family Violence Law Center, in Berkeley, California, where she represented battered women in family law matters. Ms. Carroll is licensed to practice law in California and Washington.

This conference is supported by Grant No. 2008-DD-BX-K001 awarded by the Office for Victims of Crime, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.