Shownotes
Wendy Green’s chat with Meg Groff on Boomer Banter is a must-listen for anyone who thinks that their time for making a difference has passed. Meg's journey from a 37-year-old law student to an impactful attorney is nothing short of inspiring.
As she shares her experiences of helping people escape domestic violence situations, she sheds light on the gaps in our legal system—especially regarding child safety in custody arrangements. The episode also touches on the myths surrounding domestic violence, such as the idea that it's a private matter or that only certain demographics experience it.
Through laughter and serious discourse, Meg’s passion shines through, making it clear that she’s not just a lawyer; she’s a warrior for justice. Her advocacy for Kayden's Law highlights the necessity of systemic changes to protect children from dangerous custody scenarios.
This episode serves as a rallying cry for activism at any age, encouraging all of us to keep fighting for what’s right, no matter when we start. Meg’s story proves that it’s never too late to make an impact—and that every voice matters in the fight for justice.
Takeaways:
- Meg Groff is an advocate for justice, and at 82-years-old she is still championing laws to protect children in custody disputes.
- Her journey from being a struggling student to saving lives is truly inspiring and motivating.
- Domestic violence is a serious societal issue that needs more awareness and understanding, not dismissive attitudes.
- It is Never Too Late to make a difference. You can find ways to get involved.
Links referenced in this episode:
- meggroff.com
- National Family Violence Law Center
- National Safe Parents Organization
- Kayden's Law, officially known as the Keeping Children Safe from Family Violence Act
- Wellness Wednesday with Sally Duplantier
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Transcripts
Hello and welcome to Boomer Banter. My name is Wendy Green and I am your host.
And every week on Boomer Banter, we talk about the challenges, the changes and the possibilities that come with this season of life.
And I have to start off today by saying I am so grateful that this big winter storm that they were talking about here in South Carolina over the weekend turned out to not be as bad as they thought. And we still have power. And so I'm excited about bringing you this conversation today.
And the conversation today, I believe, will inspire you, challenge you, and maybe even enrage you a little, but in the best possible way. My guest is Meg grof.
She's an 82 year old attorney who didn't even start law school until she was 37, and then she spent 35 years saving the lives of domestic violence survivors. She's the author of an amazing book called not if I Can Help It. It's a powerful memoir that was just published on her 82nd birthday.
And Meg is still fighting. She's now championing cadence law across the country to protect children in dangerous custody situations.
If you've ever thought it's too late for you to make a real difference, Meg's story will prove you wrong. So let's welcome Meg Groff to Boomer Banter. Hi, Meg.
Meg Groff:Hello.
Wendy Green:I am so excited about bringing your story to my audience because it's such a powerful story. And I'd like you.
Yeah, I'd like you to start at the beginning with that moment when you were 37, you'd finally graduated from college and you told your mother you wanted to go to law school, but you thought you were too old. So what happened then?
Meg Groff:Yes, I had decided I wanted to go to law school because I had come in contact with the victim of domestic violence in a terrible, a terrible case. And I realized how much need there was for attorneys who could be affordable and who would be dedicated to helping victims.
But by the time I got done College, I was 37. I had taken courses very slowly for various reasons, and I felt like I was too old.
And I told my mother that I had just, even though I had wanted to go to law school, when I finally graduated, I said, you know, it takes. Law school is a three year program. I'll be 40 by the time I graduate. I'm just too old. And my mother said she acted like she agreed with me.
She said, you're right. And three, you're 37, and three years you'll be 40. But, you know, in three years, you'll be 40 one way or the other. You might as well be a lawyer.
And that seemed very logical to me. So that's what I did.
Wendy Green:What a brilliant mom.
Meg Groff:Good for her.
That advice was very helpful to me throughout, not just for me, but when I dealt with many, many women who had been in abusive situations, sometimes for very long periods of time, who had. Who had never been able to pursue anything that they wanted to do, and who felt that it was too late.
And I quoted my mother, and it worked every time. I'm responsible for many, many graduate degrees, successful careers. It was great advice for everyone.
Wendy Green:Thank you, Mom. She was ahead of her time, I think, to tell you that.
Meg Groff:Yes.
Wendy Green:So.
And in your book, you mentioned that you and your husband were intentionally poor hippies, and you and your daughter was diagnosed with diabetes at age 5. So the decision to go to law school must have felt like, even, like more of a challenge. So what made you. What gave you the courage to do that?
Meg Groff:It wasn't really courage. It was just determination. And I've always been a good student, but I hated. I hated school when I, you know, I gradually.
I got through high school, but I cut so many classes. It was a miracle that I got through because I just found it very boring and everything. And I never.
I vowed never to go back to school, but I was so incompetent at the little jobs that I tried to do to make any money at all, that I thought, you know, I better go to college. But the law school came from this experience with a victim of domestic violence.
And realizing the need and thinking that I could do it, I didn't think it took courage. It just, you know, it was just something I decided to do and that needed to be done.
And when I thought that something needs to be done, I always try to do it.
Wendy Green:Oh, well, yes, there's no doubt about that. Because you also say, Meg, you never took a vacation in, like, 35 years. Is that right?
Meg Groff:Correct. That is true.
Wendy Green:How. How could you never have taken a break? I mean, what. What kept you constantly focused on these survivors?
Meg Groff:Well, you know, I was asked that question recently. Somebody said, didn't you, you know, suffer burnout? And I think the cases that I handled had the opposite effect on me.
They sort of like, instead of burnout, they kind of put a fire under me. You know, there was no time to stop. There was nobody else to do it, and there it needed to be done. There were so many things.
It was, you know, there really were lives at stake. So you don't take a Vacation when someone's life is at stake.
Wendy Green:It's amazing.
That's amazing because each case that you write about in this book, it's heartbreaking until finally, most of the time, when you told your story about. It's not too late. You.
Meg Groff:You.
Wendy Green:You know, most of the time they found a way back. Some of them never did because of the violence. So I want. So that takes me to the. The whole, you know, restraining order thing.
I mean, we hear about that all the time. And how. How effective is that really?
Meg Groff:I think that they are very effective in most circumstances. You know, there are some people who are. If someone's determined to kill you, they often will kill themselves afterwards.
You know, you could get a letter from God and it wouldn't change what they did. But for most abusers, it is very effective. Most abusers don't really think they're doing anything particularly wrong.
You know, they feel justified in their actions. And the protection order tells them that the court thinks otherwise and also tells them that they all have repercussions if they do it again.
And typically they don't have repercussions. So, you know, I think it's. It is usually a tremendous deterrent.
Wendy Green:Because I, you know, I hear on the news when I watch these days, which isn't often, but I hear on the news about people who had a restraining order, and they still go in and they killed their girlfriend or they kill their spouse, and it's horrible. It's just horrible. So I wondered if that didn't inflame people more than be a protection.
Meg Groff:You know, it is a concern on some. In some cases. But, you know, I have seen it to be a deterrent most of the time. If. Yeah, I have always seen it to be a deterrent, you know, but there.
But I did get a protection order against. For a client who got murdered by her husband afterwards. So it does happen. But.
But I think that a person who is going to be killed by an abuser is going to be killed whether they get the protection order or not. The protection order is going to keep them from being killed from 99% of the abusers, and that 1% will do it regardless.
So it's not the protection order itself, I think, that is causing the problem.
Wendy Green:Okay.
Meg Groff:The only thing that, in many cases it's. The only thing that will get the police to assist is the fact that there is a court order that a judge tells them to do it.
Just the victim coin doesn't always cause any result. You know, it needs to have that order in place. But it really depends. It depends on the length of the orders. All states have different laws.
Family law is a state by state thing.
Wendy Green:Oh, is that right? Okay.
Meg Groff:And some states have very good protection order laws, and some of them have very poor ones. So that varies. It varies in terms of how long it can be. Like in Pennsylvania, we finally got it up to three years. That took a lot of legislating.
It started at one, then it went to 18 months. Now it's three years. A three year order. In New Jersey, you can get a lifetime order.
Wendy Green:Oh, really?
Meg Groff:It always seemed to me that that's what you should get.
And there's some states where you can get it's six months, and then you come back in to see if a jud decides that you need another six months or something, so. And also what gets you a protection order? Some states recognize all the different kinds of domestic violence. Not all of them are physical.
Their intimidation, their control in many various ways, stalking, threats. And some states recognize all of those things so that when they're happening to a victim, they can get protection.
Other states, you really need to have the physical violence and all the other kinds of violence that are happening don't count to get in order. So it varies a great deal.
Wendy Green:So you were definitely passionate about helping the women that came to see you.
And I'd love to hear one of the stories about somebody that you said, it's not too late, and how they took that to heart and went on from their domestic violence.
Meg Groff:Yeah, I had one case where the woman, she went not she went to college, she got a master's and she got a PhD.
Wendy Green:Oh, wow.
Meg Groff:Yes. In order to do that, we had to win the custody case, we had to win the protection from abuse case. We had.
I had to get a relocation case so she could go to a different state, so she could afford to go to school because she had to be able to live with her family. We had to do many, many things, but we plotted and planned and all those things were successful. And she became a very successful professional person.
Wendy Green:So that's probably a little more than most lawyers would follow up with a client, don't you think?
Meg Groff:Yeah, well, I also was representing victims of not only domestic violence victims, but poor people in family law matters because I worked for legal aid for the first 12 years. And when I opened my own practice, I just kept being a legal aid lawyer.
And, you know, I just kept representing people who, if they didn't have money, I didn't charge them. And so, you know, poverty is an Added burden in terms of the situation. So there was always more things to do than a typical lawyer had to do.
Wendy Green:Yeah. It sounds like you were coach and counselor as well.
I have to ask about something shocking that you mentioned and that's a 15 year study that found almost 1,000 children murdered by a parent during court ordered custody visits.
Meg Groff:Yes. Yes. How does that happen during separation and divorce? Judges. That's, that's the reason that I'm involved in this campaign for Kayden's Law.
Kayden's Law are custody law amendments named after a seven year old child in my Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where I am from, who was murdered by her father. She was bludgeoned to death by her very dangerous father when she was in his unsupervised court ordered custody.
Despite a long hearing that described all of his violent proclivities. She was ordered to be in his custody every other weekend and he murdered her. And so the law is named after her.
And what it does is says see sort of back up for a minute. Almost every, all states have these factors for judges to consider because the judges have great discretion.
But there's factors that they have to sort of look at to consider how they should make a custody order. And the factors vary from state to state.
But what we want to have in Kayden's Law is that there be a one factor that prioritizes against all others that is more important than any other and that is the safety of the child. Child custody is supposed to be based on the best interest of children. But there are all these myths about what the best interest of children is.
And there's this very firm belief in our society that it is important for children to have ongoing, consistent contact with both parents. That's like very major.
And many states have not only one, but two factors that involve how well the parents get along and penalize a parent who doesn't get along with the other one. Are they communicating? Are they on the same wavelength? Well, victims of domestic violence don't like to communicate with their assailants, of course.
So they do poorly on those, on those things.
They don't agree oftentimes with what the abuser thinks is best for the children because the abuser oftentimes in these cases with abusers, they're not interested in the best interest of children themselves. They are filing for custody in order to have continued control.
They don't want to lose the control they had when the people were stuck in their homes. Right. Judges don't understand. When judges see a father fighting for custody, they give him great credit.
They don't realize they don't understand the dynamics of domestic violence. And they're like, oh, this is important. Anybody that stands in his way is a bad parent.
And so they don't want to believe that parents are abusive, especially fathers. They don't want to believe it. And so they refuse to believe it and, and give it little, little weight.
Even though domestic violence is like usually, or some form of, it is usually one of the kind of factors. Sometimes it's just part of a factor, you know, it should be a priority factor. The child's safety should be weighted above all others.
And if it is found that there is abuse, a parent is abusive, then there should be either supervised visitation by a legitimate supervisor, qualified supervisor, or no visitation, if that's appropriate. And the only time we ever, almost the only time we ever see that is when they're penalizing a mother for trying to protect the child.
When the mother has said that the father is abusive, when the child says that the father is abusive. Judges often blame the mother for the child saying that, saying that she has brainwashed him, she's alienating him away from the other parent.
And they often take the child away from the parent who's trying to protect.
So children are sent into these situations and they are often, you know, they are murdered or they are just emotionally and, you know, physically abused in so many ways, you know, and it stays with them.
Wendy Green:Oh, I mean, yeah, I don't want to go into the details of some of the stories in your book because I want people to read it, "Not if I can help it", but you know, some of the stories about what the children witnessed or what they still had to do around the father, or in fact, one father who had killed the wife still wanted the children to come visit him in jail, which was unbelievable. So, so why is there resistance? I mean, it seems so logical to have a law to protect the children.
What is the resistance in implementing this in all the states?
Meg Groff:It really is a lack of understanding on the part of judges and people who are making these kinds of decisions. The experts, they don't have an understanding of domestic violence.
And that's why the Kayden'slaw amendments include, besides prioritizing the safety of the child, evidence based training for judges and their personnel so that they understand the kinds of abuse, the impact, the bias that they have, and restricting expert testimony to people who have real experience and expertise dealing with domestic violence and not permitting children who say they are afraid of and have been abused by a parent, that not forcing them into counseling with those parents, as if the problem is just that the child is being recalcitrant. Children are sometimes punished for saying that their parent is abusive, they're being disrespectful.
You know, we do have a society that still allows you to really to beat your children. You know, you're just not allowed to cause permanent injury or death or something like that, but you really are allowed. And that's a factor, too.
Children don't have the same kinds of rights that adults have in terms of protecting their personhood.
Wendy Green:So some of the reluctance then would be the cost to train these judges. Right.
They don't want to spend the money to train them and probably resistance on particularly the older judges to say, we already know what we're doing. We don't need any more training.
Meg Groff:Right. Judges don't want to be trained.
In fact, in Pennsylvania, my state, it's against the Pennsylvania constitution for there to be an order from the courts that judges be trained.
Wendy Green:It's against the constitution of Pennsylvania to.
Meg Groff:Have an order that requires judges to be trained. They're like a separate body and they're their own thing, and they can choose to train themselves, but you can't. Yes.
So our Kayden's law, which we did pass, doesn't have that provision, you know, and Kayden's law has. Has passed in like 10 states, but a lot of them have only parts of it or other parts of it.
But it's still an improvement on what we often find in which there's really very little protection for children.
Wendy Green:So how's it working in Pennsylvania? What are. What if we're not training the judges? What are. What are their protections?
Meg Groff:It's the problem. They see the law and they know that they have to do certain things. They have to put certain things on the record.
I retired from court work in:But last year I went to court because there was a very bad case and the woman could not afford a lawyer, couldn't get one from legal aid and needed a lawyer. And I could not believe the state of the record as it was. It was just.
And the father was so abusive, so incredibly clearly abusive, not just in the family, but outside the family. He had like four arrests for. What's it called when you were like have road rage. He. He burned down some.
Some small building that he put when he had a fight with somebody. You know, he was like super dangerous person. And this judge Minimized. This was like, well, that happened five years ago.
And, yeah, he does have these little exchanges on the road. He should stop doing that. He just took it and took a dislike to the mother, who was very traumatized person. She definitely was not.
You know, the client I would have picked in terms of making the great, greatest impression. She was total. She had PTSD to a great extent. But in terms of the father and the mother, to me, there was absolutely no choice.
You know, I mean, she loved these children.
Wendy Green:Yeah.
Meg Groff:And he was determined to have them so that, one, he wouldn't have to pay support, and two, just to further punish her because he knew how much she loved them and how worried she was about them when they were in his care. And this judge was able to find every possible before I got involved in the case. And there was actually an agency willing to do an appeal.
But he had been very clever in his order, and judges have great discretion. So he called her a liar and said she couldn't be. He couldn't believe her. And he minimized the father. And the.
The organization decided that it was too dangerous an appeal to do, because if you lost it, it would be bad, you know, so they had contacted me, and I went into court. This judge knew me, hadn't seen me for a while, but he knew me. And that. That made all the difference.
But that shouldn't have to make all the difference. Yeah, the fact that he knew me and he knew that I, you know, I would appeal him and that I would do various things, and he just.
He didn't want to act the way he had been acting. But, I mean, that can't be the solution. So I would say that it works. You know, everything works in increments.
Wendy Green:Yes.
Meg Groff:We can't get everyone. We really do need to train judges. You know, we can't skip that step. Yeah.
Wendy Green:So, Meg, you. You did this for 35 years, you retired, and then you had this.
All these stories to share, but you decided not to publish your memoir until you were 82. So what. What was the delay?
Meg Groff:That it wasn't. Yeah, it wasn't that I decided not to. It's just that I always thought, you know, what I would tell people about one of my cases.
It would be almost disbelieving. You know, that's happening.
Wendy Green:Exactly.
Meg Groff:You know, the people would come to me with these stories, and I would say, this is the state of the case that I'm going to go into court about. And. And people would be disbelieving. And I thought, you know, someday I Have to write a book about this. But I would just as soon as I had.
I always said soon as I had a minute. And unfortunately, I didn't have a minute until I was.
Wendy Green:Yeah, you never took a vacation.
Meg Groff:You didn't. You were. So, yes, I didn't have a minute until the pandemic, and then I had it. I have actually.
I always thought I'd write more than one book because I have many, many stories. And I've tried not to write a book that is just depressing and frightening.
You know, I have tried to write a book that is very accessible to the public that is funny because there is humor in everything that is inspiring, you know, that is entertaining, but also, yes, enraging, as you said. I want it also to be enraging and to make people feel activated, to take. Take a stand on their own in whatever way. In whatever way you can.
Wendy Green:So that was going to be my next question. What do you want people to take away from this book?
Meg Groff:I want them to have an understanding of domestic violence so that they can not share in the myths that are so prevalent. I want them to meet some of my clients, some of whom were, you know, heroes in my. To me. And I feel. And I want.
I wanted to have people know about them and to recognize the kind of strength and courage that victims of domestic violence have survivors. And I want them. Yeah, I want them to think, you know, what can I do to help with this? Or what can I do to stop not helping with this sometimes?
Wendy Green:Question. Yeah. So what can people do?
Meg Groff:Well, people can get involved in their communities in whatever ways. A number of people who read my book told me that they had volunteered at our local.
At the local women's shelter, and those places always need volunteers, that they had talked about it in place in.
In the community, that they had recognized the signs of it on someone and had approached that person and said, you know, if you need help at any time, I can try my. In whatever way I can, that I can. I can help, try and help you. I can try and be some sort of service to you.
Donate, if you have the money to the cause and send letters, write letter, send.
Call your Congress people to talk about, be aware of the different efforts that there are to protect victims, such as Kayden's Law, which we are trying to pass in every state in the union. So every state needs people saying, yes, we've heard about this law, these amendments, and we want them to be passed in our state.
Some states that have passed Kayden's Law have not called it Kayden's Law.
Wendy Green:I was going to ask you about that.
Meg Groff:They have named it after other children who have been murdered because there is no state where there has not been a child who has been murdered in circumstances. Yeah, yeah.
Wendy Green:So are you involved in this effort countrywide?
Meg Groff:I am involved. I. One of the ways that I'm involved is in helping to draft legislation. You know, when the issues about how should we do the wording?
There's always, you know, there's. You're always fighting with father's rights groups and various other people who don't want things to change.
And so there's back and forth on what you can. You can always have the perfect writing, but trying to make sure that.
That what you are saying in that statute is going to be protective and not have loopholes and things like that. So I use my legal advice.
Wendy Green:So fathers rights groups, I mean, they wouldn't support abuser, would they? Fathers rights groups.
Meg Groff:You know, most custody cases do not show up in court, and they don't show up in court because most fathers and mothers are. Their primary interest is the welfare of their children. The best interest of the children is their interest. And they can.
Even though they're not getting along with each other, even though they're getting a divorce, even though they're separating or whatever, they can still agree that what is best for the children, they can still work it out. So they don't show up in court. The people who show up in court, a high percentage of them have an abuser on one side.
Yeah, unfortunately, it's typically the male. 98% of that.
They show up in greater numbers in court, in family court, because, you know, they're fighting about something that they could have agreed on but can't agree on because. Because the best interest of the children is not necessarily. It's not their priority. Have you ever.
Wendy Green:Have you ever represented a man where the wife was the abuser?
Meg Groff:Yes. Yeah, I have. There was. I have. I specifically, there was a case, very strong case, where the guy was a really good person.
And of course, if I showed up in court representing a man who's in custody, they would win because everyone knew that I was never the kind of lawyer who came into court one day saying one thing and the next day saying something else. I never did that ever in the decades that I worked. And people knew it.
Wendy Green:Yeah.
Meg Groff:And so when I spoke, when I gave an opinion, they knew that that was my real opinion, and they knew it was not based on my earning great deal of money because of it or whatever. And that helped. But Yeah, I had. I had a very. A very important case with a man, and I have represented men in custody cases.
One of the men that I represent. The custody case is in the book. It didn't involve abuse on either side, but it was a question of custody and poverty. And it's in the book.
Wendy Green:So that is one of the things that does come up, according to your book, is the poverty. Can the mother afford to take care of the children? And again, it's the judge's discretion. Right.
The judge can then say, well, you know, you don't really have a stable job, or you don't have a place to live, or, you know.
Meg Groff:Yeah. Yeah. Often women are penalized for the fact that they have fled the abuse and the father is in the home.
And it's like, well, you know, he might have been abusive to you, but that doesn't mean he'll be abusive to the child. Not recognizing all the dynamics and effect of domestic violence on a child, even if they're not the actual personal victim of it.
But where I ran into the most problems with poverty was in dependency court, which is a little different than family court.
Wendy Green:What kind of court was that?
Meg Groff:Dependency. Child dependency.
Where child protective services organization in Bucks county was Bucks County Children and Youth Agency, Social services agency, where they step in when there's some accusation of abuse or neglect. I handle the neglect cases, not abuse. Because I.
If there was actual abuse and there was no, you know, the parent, neither parent was able to take care of the child, that was one thing. But when there was what they called neglect, they would take. You know, there's.
Across the country, child protective services organizations are often removed many, many children for, quote, unquote, neglect, which is really just a way of saying poverty. And that's the fight, you know, so much money is put into.
I've been in a courtroom where there was all these people there being paid to take children away from a loving parent because that parent just didn't have enough money. And that was all they were being accused of, was not having enough money. And I thought if half of these.
Just a little portion of the money that's being spent today was given to that parent, we could solve a lot of those problems. So some of the problems are societal. So there's a lot of that kind of abuse, which is a different type of abuse.
It's kind of a government abuse against poor people, people in terms of treating them as if they are abusers and, you know, abusive when they're really just poor. And so they don't have good housing or they don't have, you know, they can't afford. They can't afford things.
Wendy Green:Child care. They're. They're right. Which leads me back to the. You mentioned myths at one point. But the myths that prevail in our society of.
The myth that prevail in our society that, you know, only men are abusers or only poor people suffer abuse or, you know, what are some of these myths that get in the way of finding the best solution for the children and for the parents?
Meg Groff:Well, there's a lot. There's.
There's the belief that domestic violence is a private matter, not a social issue, that women are just as abusive as men, and domestic violence really is a gendered crime rooted in societal inequality between men and women. You know, we do have a long history in our country of a patriarchal setup that women lie about abuse. Really?
Women often hide abuse much, you know, they don't like to admit, you know, it's a difficult thing to admit, that someone who's supposed to love you is abusing you, that women are attracted to abusive men, or that it's not. If it was really that bad, she would have left sooner.
That he can be a good father even if he abuses his partner, that she provokes him, that it's important for children to have ongoing, consistent contact with both parents more than anything else. That domestic violence is a crime of passion and it's just a momentary loss of control.
We could forgive that, or that it's caused by bad people rather than being a reflection on the way that society deals with the issue. There's a lot of. A lot of myth.
Wendy Green:There's a lot of myths. And it's not just in the courts. It's in the population in general that people. People.
Meg Groff:Yes.
Wendy Green:Keep them going. Yeah.
Meg Groff:The courts reflect it.
Wendy Green:The courts reflect it. Yes. Yes.
Meg Groff:So.
Wendy Green:So what now? What. What's next for you?
And how can you encourage my listeners that they're not too old to advocate and make a difference for people that are caught in these binds?
Meg Groff:Well, I think you're not really. I mean, as long as you're able to think and you don't even really have to move too much. If you could.
If you can use the computer or the phone or whatever. You know, I think it's important always to be working towards issues of social justice in one way or the, you know, for some cause.
And there are so many causes that. So many injustices that are occurring, and we need to stand up to them. You know, when I was My mother used to teach a course on antisemitism.
And when I was about seven, I overheard her, she was talking to a group and she said that you must always speak out in the face of injustice.
And I thought it was the law, you know, I was seven, my mother said, and I think it's what started me because I thought, you know, if you have to speak out in the face of it, then you have to be aware of it, you have to see it. And so I became, I became vigilant that way to look for injustice so I could stand up to it.
And I think that you can keep doing that for as long as you live.
Wendy Green:Yeah, it can be scary.
I mean I, you know, I've done this too, but I can remember when my son was in high school and, and this girl that he was friends with kept saying her father was abusing her and she would come over and talk to me and I'd say, well, you know, we can report this or you can report this, but you know, if you do, they might remove you from the home. You need to be sure that you're telling me the truth. Right. So my, my myths, my guard was up, like is she just mad at her dad? Right?
Kids, teenagers say things. And finally one day she came to school day before a three day holiday, showed him bruises on her back.
So he called and I called, you know, family services, they came to the school to talk to her and they mentioned my son's name. And so by the time they got to the parents house, the mother of course knew it was my son that said something and I that turned them in.
Oh, she was so mad. She called me and I said, you know what, I hope it's not true, but if it is, I hope you will do the right thing for your daughter.
But it was very scary, you know, because you just don't know what you're doing to a family, what you might be. You know, maybe there's a problem, but maybe there's not. It's sometimes really hard to get involved, to take that step.
Meg Groff:Yeah, I can understand what you're saying, but I think it's, it is actually when a child actually reports it, unless you feel that it's like a teenager who is very disturbed in some way, if you have reason to doubt them in other ways in their lives.
When a child reports it, it usually is a very brave thing to do, that they only report it to someone that they really trust and they really have no rights. So it is crucial to come up with some sort of way. And I say that like when people.
Oftentimes I have situations where someone flees and the family says, oh, you can stay with us for a couple weeks. Well, that's not enough time. Nobody can start a new life in a couple weeks.
You know, you have to be able, you have to be able to say, you can come and stay with us until. For as long as you need to stay. And not everybody can make that offer. So you might be making a different offer.
Wendy Green:And you can't make that offer to a teenager because then you like.
Meg Groff:Right. You can't do it. You can only report it to authorities. But I think you can report things anonymously, you know, agencies.
Wendy Green:That's what we meant to do.
Meg Groff:Yeah, they should have kept that. I think most states you can check with, you know, with their, like with the core line to see whether things can be kept anonymous.
But yeah, because usually they can. Usually the parent does not have access to the information about who made the.
Wendy Green:And that's the way it should have been.
Meg Groff:But unfortunately, I say child protective services agencies tend to be much more diligent in neglect cases than they are in abuse cases. Unless the family's poor. If the family's poor, they believe it right away. But if the family is not, they often don't.
And the child is in great danger because they've reported it. You're not supposed to report it. So it is a very difficult situation.
Wendy Green:Very scary.
Meg Groff:Yeah. They should try their best.
And if you think that there is an adult who is being in an abusive situation, you know, I would encourage them to have some sort of a safety plan.
Encourage the person to have a safety plan so that if they do have to flee or decide that they must flee or that they're ready to flee, that they have protective things in place so they can do that as safely as possible.
Wendy Green:Yeah.
So before, before I let you go, if you could go back and talk to that 37 year old that was thinking about going to law school, what would you say to her today?
Meg Groff:I'd say she made the right choice.
Wendy Green:Made the right choice and she is still making the right choices. Oh, Meg, I'm in awe of what you've done and, and all that you continue to do.
And thank you for sharing your story and, and the passion that you've had for these women. And you're, like you said, your unwavering commitment to justice.
You've, you've shown us and your clients that it's never too late to answer your calling. And I think that's awesome. So for Everyone listening? Meg's book is called "Not if I Can Help It". It's available now.
I strongly, strongly encourage you to read it. It's not always a pleasant read, but there are also very much success stories in there.
You can find on Meg's website, Meg Grof G r o f f.com the link to the publisher where you can get the book. You can also find it on Amazon and all the other booksellers.
So I encourage you to get the book and to find ways, whether it's, you know, women's shelters, domestic violence, whatever.
I'm going to share information in the show Notes about Kayden's Law, about the National Safe Parents Organization, about the National Family Violence Law Center. So if you are looking for ways to get involved, you know, those are some of the places that you can look.
And if you found this, how could you not find this a compelling story and that there's still work to be done? I hope that you will share this story with others and let's try and make a difference. So I think that's super important. So thank you, Meg.
I have one more thing before we go. I'm part of a group of women podcasters we call ourselves the Age Wise Collective. And I always like to share about somebody in the group.
And this is Sally Duplantier.
She has a website called Wellness Wednesdays and and she does webinars, not necessarily podcasts, but webinars with leading experts on how to stay healthy and well as we age. So just look for my zing life.com and you will find her Wellness Wednesday schedule there. So I would encourage you to do that.
And thanks for joining us today.
Meg Groff:Thank you for having me.
Wendy Green:I was just so hopeful that we would have power so we could do this. So thank you. And until next time, I hope you all keep living boldly, keep speaking up and keep making a difference.
My name is Wendy Green, reminding you that your best chapter might still be ahead of you. See you next week.
