Okay, so get ready for bed with me while I talk about how I’ve been able to afford everything recently in terms of like the legal stuff. As many of you may know, I’ve been involved in several different legal situations as a result of my ex partners tomorrow, from restraining orders to criminal cases to school cases. I’ve had to file several different things and I’ve had to have attorneys for. But as someone who grew up middle class and still is middle class, I get a lot of questions as to how I’m able to afford that. Also, just before I go into anything, tell my girlies who are in situation where their abuser uses their money as a weapon, please know that you’re not alone. And it’s actually a lot more common than you think. And I’m not even speaking for personal experience, I’m speaking from what I’ve literally heard from hundreds of people. People using their money to silence you, people using their money to hire expensive attorneys and act like they’re better than you. Like a bunch of different examples that I’ve heard from other people, not even things that I live through, family court, civil courts, etcetera.
Every county and state is legally required to have resource centers for domestic violence victims. Most of said resource centers have attorneys with them. So when I was back home in New York, it was called Day 1, and it was used for teenagers who have been victims of internet partner violence. They had attorneys there who represented teenagers and people who are between the ages of 14 and 24 who were experiencing, as I said in my partner, violence as an adult, which is recently I moved at a state and no longer reside in New York and reside in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has what’s called pcadv, which is Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence. On that website, you can search up your county and it will tell you where your local resource center is.
I’ve gotten literally like four out of five of my attorneys from those kind of places, school related and Title 9. There are Title 9 attorneys. So people who literally like their whole practice is all about Title 9, but like they’re expensive. So I didn’t do that. What I did do, however, was I hired a Title 9 expert, which was someone who her entire career is just related to Title 9. She has to do any kind of law practice and do anything like that. She studies and lives, breathe, eats Title 9. And she was able to read my opening statement, my closing statement, the evidence, like look over everything. She was able to help me in my attorney. Like she basically helped us do the actual like hard work. I will say I got a discount on mine because of the fact that I have a podcast and my podcast is all about this. So she saw my advocacy work and she cut my rate in half. But you can make a payment plan. We usually, and it’s not that cheap, but it’s also better when it’s a payment plan.
Lawsuits and criminal court. So I don’t know who needs to hear this, but an attorney cannot decide whether or not you’re pressing charges on somebody. You and your attorney can make a report and then the report is given to the da and the da decides whether or not to press charges.
So, yeah, but lawsuits, one thing you see a lot in survivors who participate in the Metoo movement is people getting hit with defamation lawsuits. And my entire duration of like, I think I’ve been doing this for 5,6 years now. I’ve been threatened. I wanna say like 10 times. And I’ve had a lawyer since the very first one. But I do pay this attorney like a regular attorney, hourly, etc. However, what I wanna remind you all, get a government job. So I work at a hospital and the hospital that I work at, part of your benefits is legal aid and consultation. So they don’t pay for all of my attorney fee, but they do pay for some of it because I work at a hospital. And especially when something like this, like, hello, come on.
I haven’t had to use that attorney yet, thank you, Jesus. But I did hire one recently as a result of some things going on, just in case I do have to use it. And like I said, he’s hourly, but I do get a discount because of the fact that I work at a hospital. And I also just, I work enough to be able to do it.
Also, some attorneys do work on contingency fees, sliding scales. Again, I just happen to get lucky with pretty much all of mine, so I haven’t had to have this problem. I’m sure defendants in this case are paying like hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s none of my business, not my problem.
But yeah, I just want to come on here and talk about this a little bit because I get a lot of questions in regard to how I’m able to afford it, so I figured I’d answer that. I hope none of you ever need this information, but if you do, I hope it helped.