Keeping Her Address Confidential

Given that most abusive men continue to search for and abuse their prior partners, for a battered woman to be safe, she has to be able to *282 keep any new address confidential. Perhaps the most important addresses which must be kept confidential are those of battered women's shelters. Every woman and child who stays at the shelter is put in jeopardy if the shelter's location is compromised.

Some states have statutes in their domestic violence codes or elsewhere which mandate that courts keep the address of any battered women's shelter confidential. [FN72] Other states require [FN73] or allow courts [FN74] to keep the victim's address confidential. Some courts rely on general provisions permitting them to order any other relief that is just to permit battered women to keep their addresses or that of shelters from public scrutiny. California's code has provisions for omitting the applicant's address, place of residence, school, employment, or the applicant's child's place of school or child care. [FN75]

Federal law requires every domestic violence shelter that receives federal money to have confidentiality provisions, provisions which include keeping the address confidential. The Family Violence Prevention and Services Act [FN76] provides that the address will not be made public to anyone except upon written authorization from the persons responsible for operating the facility. [FN77] A similar provision protects any domestic violence shelter receiving Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) [FN78] funding. Courts have not always protected this confidentiality. [FN79] Some judges believe that a husband or father has an absolute right to know the address of his wife or children, even if release of a shelter's address may result in the termination of federal or state funding to domestic violence programs in the state. [FN80]

*283 Not only must the shelter's location be kept confidential, but also the woman's own new address, and possibly her place of school, employment, her children's places of child care and/or school, and any health-care facility where she or her children go. However, courts have often failed to protect the victim's address, even when their own state's law require them to do so. A survey of courts in three counties in Massachusetts, where the judges have no discretion to not impound the address of a petitioner seeking protection under the state's domestic violence act, found that the judges ordered impoundment for only 4 percent of the women who requested this relief, and in only 6 percent of the cases where the woman made clear in the pleadings that she had left her home to avoid the abuse. [FN81]

While states often have provisions in their domestic violence codes to restrict or prevent disclosure of the victim's address, many other statutes and court practices encourage or even require disclosure of the very address which the victim must keep confidential for her security.

The Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act notice requirements, which will be discussed in a later section, create serious obstacles to many victims. When an abuser misuses the system to gain access to his victim's address, the court should require him to fully pay for the victim to move to a new, nondisclosed address of at least comparable value, including her new security deposit and any necessary costs to break the existing lease.

[FN72]. See, e.g., MASS. GEN. L. ch. 209A, § 8 (West Supp. 1995); 23 PA. CONS. STAT. ANN. § 6112 (West Supp. 1995).

[FN73]. See MASS. GEN. L. ch. 209A, § 8 (West Supp. 1995) (requiring courts to "impound the plaintiff's address by excluding same from the complaint and from all other court documents that are available for public inspection, and shall ensure that the address is kept confidential from the defendant and the defendant's attorney" at the plaintiff's request).

[FN74]. Tex. Fam. Code Ann. § 71.111 (West Supp. 1994).

[FN75]. Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 545 (West Supp. 1995).

[FN76]. Pub. L. No. 98-457, Tit. III, §§ 302-313 (West Supp. 1995) (codified as reauthorized and amended at 42 U.S.C. §§ 10401-10413 (West Supp. 1995)).

[FN77]. 42 U.S.C. § 10402(a)(2)(E) (West Supp. 1995).

[FN78]. 42 U.S.C. § 10601-10607 (West Supp. 1995).

[FN79]. The National Center on Women and Family Law authored and distributed free to every state domestic violence coalition two editions of a manual entitled PROTECTING CONFIDENTIALITY OF VICTIM-COUNSELOR COMMUNICATIONS, by Lynne A. Marks & Susan H. Rauch (1993) [hereinafter CONFIDENTIALITY MANUAL], in response to the numerous inquiries that the Center gets each year from domestic violence programs seeking to keep their records confidential or to free staff who are in jail for failing to produce shelter records, provide the shelter's address, or produce names of residents.

[FN80]. Based upon the many cases where the National Center on Women and Family Law has been consulted.

[FN81]. RUTH I. ABRAMS & JOHN M. GREANEY, REPORT OF THE GENDER BIAS STUDY OF THE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT, COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS 86 (1989).