Wynona Ward: Road Warrior for Justice
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December 18, 2006
Wynona Ward drives her Ford Explorer, an "office on wheels," for thousands of miles over Vermont back roads each year, to reach even the most geographically isolated families that suffer from domestic abuse. Her work weaves together strands of her life—she was raised in a four-room shack on a dirt road outside a
Vermont village with an abusive father and no support system to help stop the abuse; as an adult she and her husband earned a living driving long-haul semi trucks together. Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy has lauded Ward as "a true champion" for the way her organization Have Justice Will Travel is "serving women and children throughout the state of Vermont," calling it "a shining example for grassroots domestic violence assistance on a national level. "I have met this extraordinary women many times," Leahy said, "and I have never failed to be inspired and humbled by her dramatic personal story and her venture into a nontraditional career." When she was 18, Wynona married her junior high school sweetheart Harold Ward. After attending college for two years, she dropped out and helped Harold start a trucking business. Together they hauled refrigerated freight across the U.S. and Canada in a black Diamond Reo 18-wheeler with airbrushed murals on the side of the cab. Wynona drove during the daytime using the CB radio handle "Daybreak" and Harold drove at night as "Black Cat." After 15 years they had wracked up nearly a million miles. Ward's life took a fateful turn after six years on the road when she received a message on her pager to call home. She learned that her father had abused a three-year-old niece. This opened up a discussion between Ward and her sisters about their family's history of abuse. Ward led the effort to prosecute their father for abusing the little girl. He spent a few days in jail but his case eventually was dropped because the child was considered too young to testify. Between bouts of unemployment, Ward's father had worked in the local copper mines and granite quarries. He was an alcoholic who physically and sexually abused his wife, daughters, and other village children. At an early age Ward said she was given the role of oldest child and could only watch as her father abused her mother. If they noticed the abuse, the Ward's neighbors on their quiet country road looked the other way; her family did the same if they heard screams coming from the neighbors—a fairly typical response to domestic violence. "When I grew up in poverty on a rural back road in Vermont, family violence was a common occurrence," Ward recalls. Six years later the same young girl reported being raped by Ward's brother. He was convicted of rape but requested an early parole because of bad health. Ward knew now that she wanted to be a different kind of road warrior—one who broke the isolation of families like her own to stop the ongoing generational cycle of abuse. She mounted a grassroots and media campaign against the Department of Corrections to get her brother's parole revoked, and she succeeded. "The day came when another child in my family had been abused," Ward said. "It was at that point in time when I realized that to stop the generational cycle of abuse, I needed to become a lawyer." "When my mother asked the minister for help, he reminded her that marriage was for better or for worse 'til death do you part'," Ward said. "The local doctor treated her bruises and other injuries, but didn't ask where they came from. If my mother had chosed to use the legal system, she would have been told that a man's home was his castle - we do not interfere there. But little did they know that castles was like a prison for my mother and her children." Ward spent the last two years of her truck-driving career earning an undergraduate degree from Vermont College's adult education program, doing her school work in the back of the truck cab. She entered Vermont Law School at the age of 44. While in law school, Ward struggled to memorize the material she needed to pass the Vermont Bar exam. She searched through her childhood medical records and discovered that she was admitted to the hospital at 14 months for head trauma, and suspects that her father is to blame. Ward found time to work on domestic violence cases at a free legal clinic during her last year of law school studies. It was here that her idea for Have Justice Will Travel was born. She noticed that many abused women failed to follow through after getting restraining orders against their husbands. "I realized that these women needed transportation, in-home consultations, and legal representation," she said. In 1998 Ward graduated from law school and started Have Justice Will Travel (HJWT) to address the fact that victims of domestic violence in rural areas, particularly battered women, often do not have a phone or transportation necessary to get help. They also may find it difficult to trust legal and social service providers. There were more than 625,000 intimate partner victimizations in the United States in 2004, and, on average, more than three women a day were murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in the U.S., according to a report just released by the U.S. Department of Justice. In Vermont, more than half of all murders in the past decade were related to domestic violence, according to the Vermont Fatality Review Commission. "I am a life-long Vermonter and after having driven a tractor-trailer unit for over 15 years throughout the county, I'm convinced that Vermont is one of the most beautiful places to live," Ward said. "However, for low-income Vermonters living on rural, isolated back roads that can become impassable from snow and mud, this setting is devastating. "Many of the victims of domestic abuse in these areas don't have a telephone or driver's license, and the nearest neighbor may be miles away. Ten percent of Vermont residents live below the federal poverty line. This geographic isolation and poverty is matched by poor education and social inequality which can make it especially difficult for women and children in abusive situations." Instead of asking women to seek services in distant towns, Ward starting driving to meeting them where they lived. "It is very difficult for women to come forward when they have been abused," she notes. " They feel ashamed of what has happened to them. When they try to reach out from the isolation that they live in, I can go and sit in their kitchens where they’re comfortable and talk with them as a peer." Ward and other HJWT staff members head out in their own four-wheel-drive cars, equipped as offices on wheels with cell phones, laptop computers, portable files, and printers, so they can meet with clients at or near their homes to assess their needs and make referrals for other services. By meeting their clients in a secure and comfortable place, like at home or nearby, they can put them at ease, speaking a language they understand. "In the 1980s it became clear to psychiatrists that victims and survivors of domestic abuse suffered from the same post-traumatic stress symptoms as shell-shocked veterans of Vietnam and other wars," says Ward. "Today, survivors of chronic domestic abuse are compared to concentration camp survivors, political prisoners, or hostages. Symptoms include anxiety reactions, nightmares, denial, and disassociation." Rural Vermont has few attorneys who address domestic violence. HJWT provides free legal representation for relief from abuse hearings, parentage and divorce actions, child visitations, and child custody and child support hearings. Understanding that simply ensuring safety is not enough to end the generational cycle of abuse, HJWT's social services help clients understand the root causes of abuse and leave their abuser by achieving economic independence and greater self-esteem through emotional and financial self-sufficiency. These services include several Women in Transition (WIT) Life Skills and Mentoring groups where members can network among themselves and receive training, support, and mentoring in abuse coping skills. Led by former victims, these groups educate women about the cycle of abuse, the effect of domestic violence on children, generational abuse, and theories of power and control. It also covers practical training like money management, budgeting, job skills, parenting, and building healthy relationships. "We are also doing more and more representation of children who have been pulled out of their homes because they have been abused, or they have been labeled unmanageable," said Kathryn Kennedy, an attorney who serves two Vermont counties from HJWT's Chelsea office and is HJWT's associate director. "Stopping the generational cycle of abuse is the goal of everything we do at HJWT," Ward said. "I truly believe that we will not stop street violence, we will not stop school violence until we stop violence in the home, and to stop violence in the home we must stop the generational cycle of abuse." Ward was elected an Ashoka Fellow in 2000. HJWT has grown steadily and now has an annual budget of $1 million and staff in four offices serving 11 of Vermont's 14 counties. "When I started HJWT at my kitchen table in 1998, I couldn't have dreamed that it would be the organization it is just eight years later," Ward said. "We now have a staff of 15 dedicated professionals, volunteers, and interns.  "For 15 years, Harold and I were over-the-road truck drivers. Now what I do is combine the three things that I know best: trucking, the law, and family violence."
Since 1998, more than 1,960 children, women, and several men have received the entire spectrum of HJWT services, Ward said. "The best measure of the effectiveness of our multiservice model is that few women—only about 10 percent of the women served—have returned to their batterers or entered into other abusive relationships." "But HJWT receives hundreds of telephone calls each year from those seeking legal assistance with family court matters, which we cannot fully represent as a result of our already heavy caseload," Ward noted. She has prepared a draft plan to replicate HJWT around the country, and is pursuing ways to move HJWT toward sustainable funding. "It's not finding clients that is difficult, because they find us and there are far too many for us to represent," Kennedy said. "It is keeping our offices going with funding so that we can continue to support everyone who calls. We try to give everybody advice over the phone or help with paperwork, and to help with what we can—but we turn so many away for representation." HJWT has just established an office to serve the most remote northern sector of Vermont that abuts New Hampshire and Canada, an area known as the Northeast Kingdom where about 14 percent of the population lives below the federal poverty level. Women in this region face a daunting set of obstacles when trying to leave abusive relationships, including isolated living conditions and severely restricted resources for victims of domestic and sexual abuse combined with accepted gender roles, poverty, unemployment, and limited literacy, Ward said. "We have expanded our services and engaged in a strategic planning process to set the stage for helping many more survivors escape the generational cycle of abuse," Ward said. "I would like to see Have Justice Will Travel go beyond Vermont and spread to other rural areas in America. HWJT is truly the story of one woman helping another, who helps another, who helps another. We are making a huge difference in the lives of these women and children." Contact: Have Justice-Will Travel, Inc. Toll Free: 877-496-8100 Read more stories on this topic:
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