Domestic Violence Victim Turned Law Professor
By Bill Spring
Sarah Buel, 50, is a lawyer, law professor and one of the nation's foremost experts on domestic violence. She's also an abuse survivor.
Growing up in the '50s and '60s, Buel wanted to be a champion for America's underdogs.
"I watched my mother struggling to raise five kids and her sister's two kids by herself, and I thought, 'I want to learn to speak up for people who don't have that voice.' "
Emulating her hero, TV lawyer Perry Mason, young Sarah defended her mother against anyone who tried to take advantage of her.
But somewhere along the line, Buel lost the ability to speak up for herself. By her early 20s, she was trapped in a marriage to a controlling, abusive husband. It took much personal resolve and courage to reclaim her life. Ultimately, she rediscovered her own voice by sticking up for women who had lost theirs.
In 1974, Buel married her high-school sweetheart. They settled in New York City, but their happy relationship gradually deteriorated. Her husband's attitudes and actions turned disturbing.
"It started out as controlling behavior, and then excessive criticism, and jealousy," she says. Buel's husband forbade her to be anywhere near other men. At his insistence, she left college after a single semester, and quit several jobs where other men worked.
When Sarah became pregnant, the physical abuse began. "I was always led to believe it was something I had done," she explains. "I was raised in a family where the role modeling was that the woman's job is to be quiet, and not make waves."
Despite the abuse, she wanted to make the marriage work.
"My father left when I was 9," Buel remembers, "and I was determined that my son would have that Cleaver household." Part of what gave her hope was the fact that her husband was never abusive to their son, Jacey. "If he can be great with our son," she thought, "then it must be me."
It finally took the advice of a counselor to make her see the obvious. After a year of sessions, the counselor decided to take a step he rarely took with patients, and told her to get out of the increasingly dangerous relationship. "I really needed that wake-up call," she says.
In August 1977, Buel left and moved in with her mother in New Hampshire. After a few months on welfare, she landed a job with the state as a paralegal, earning just over $5,000 a year. She came face-to-face with countless women in abusive situations and committed to make a difference.
"We drafted the first abuse-prevention law in New Hampshire." The law allowed victims to petition the court for a restraining order without a lawyer and specified other ways of guaranteeing victim safety.
Between 1980 and 1987, Sarah lived in three states, working mostly pro-victim legal-aid jobs by day and earning her undergraduate degree by night, all while raising her son. She experienced the highs of helping women get out of violent situations, and the lows of mourning the deaths of women who could not get out in time. In 1987, she enrolled in Harvard Law School, cleaning houses to make ends meet. She earned her law degree in June 1990.
Less than a year out of law school, Buel became the supervisor of domestic violence prosecution in Norfolk County, Mass. Because victims and abusers frequently end up back together, she worked to reduce the adversarial relationship between the defense and the prosecution, concentrating on simply stopping the abuse. "We started doing some really innovative things in terms of rethinking the whole approach to prosecution," she explains.
She proceeded with a case even if the victim refused to testify or recanted earlier testimony out of fear. This was a revolutionary concept at the time because prevailing wisdom held that abuse cases could not be won without the victim's cooperation.
In 1996, Buel moved to Texas, where she became a clinical professor at the University of Texas School of Law. In 1997, she founded the school's successful domestic-violence clinic.
Today, Buel is an accomplished and sought-after public speaker and author, concentrating on getting the word out about legal protection of abuse victims. Although she wants to concentrate on her writing, she cannot resist heeding the call when a city, county or state needs someone to offer training on domestic violence programs, often without pay.
"I'll train anyone who'll listen," she says.
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