Family Lawyer, Chrissy Leontios, featured as the special guest on Divorce Well, a renowned Canadian Family Law podcast hosted by Christina Vinters, a Family Mediator, Author, and former Divorce Lawyer | 15-minute read or 27-minute podcast
Christina Vinters (Host):
You are listening to Divorce Well, the podcast for navigating a healthy and efficient separation. I’m your host, Christina Vinters, a chartered family mediator, author, and a former divorce lawyer on a mission to inspire and facilitate healthy family transitions.
We’ve all heard the stories about the divorce battle but that is not the only story and it doesn’t have to be your experience. Together, we will explore the many tools and services available to help you divorce well.
Today I’m talking to Chrissy Leontios, a multiple award-winning family lawyer in Australia who specialises in representing victims in domestic violence cases.
I need to provide a trigger warning before we continue. We’re going to be talking about situations which may be very upsetting for some listeners. Domestic violence is still being experienced so it is an issue that I would like to address. If this episode will be hard for you to hear, please stop listening now. Unfortunately, we had some internet issues connecting between Canada and Australia, so I apologise about the drastic sound variations. Chrissy provides very important information, though. So, I decided to release the recording despite the sound challenges. Here we go. Chrissy welcome today to the Divorce Well podcast.
Chrissy Leontios:
Thank you so much for having me, it’s a real pleasure.
Christina Vinters:
Yeah. So, tell us a little bit about yourself and what it means to specialise in domestic violence and family law?
Chrissy Leontios:
I’m a family lawyer, a family and domestic violence lawyer and I operate my own law firm called CLEON Legal & Mediation Services. We launched about four and a half years ago because I saw a niche in the market that wasn’t being met, to specialise in domestic violence in family law, and particularly taking a feminist approach, and an approach that really acknowledges that domestic violence is a significant problem in family law matters, and a matter that needs to focus on the needs of women.
I started this law firm because I really wanted to do things differently in the family law profession. I think all lawyers working in family law do understand and do work within the space of domestic violence, but I wanted to bring something much deeper and work in the domestic violence space using a specialist lens.
I have got extensive training in domestic violence and I’ve researched this area as well. What I do differently is I really screen for domestic violence and I make it a key area of my work when I’m meeting with clients for family law matters or domestic violence matters. There’s a lot of evidence which tell us about what are certain risk factors and when a person is being subjected to certain types of behaviours, or incidents, such as an act of strangulation, or an attempt of choking, or an act of choking. A recent separation increases acrimony. This can put a person, particularly a woman, at a higher risk.
Having this sort of training really helps me prepare and develop a really good case narrative for my client going through the Family Court; an understanding the different dynamics of domestic violence as well. And understanding that domestic violence isn’t just physical violence, and really recognising the impact that it has on children whether or not children are being exposed to it directly or indirectly. That’s the approach that I take, I really create a space for my clients that’s trauma informed, that recognises that trauma may be affecting their memory, and may be affect the way they recall their story, and then in turn impacts on the way they deliver their instructions and the way they can give evidence. So I create a space for clients to feel safe, for me to be able to obtain all the necessary information I can in order to construct a case that, ultimately, will protect my client as the parent, and the children.
Christina Vinters:
Okay so with all of that training, you have a really nuanced understanding of what people who have experienced domestic violence need, in order to be able to be successful in their transition. Before we go on, though, why don’t we talk about what exactly encompasses domestic violence when we’re talking about that today. It is quite a broad term and there’s of course violence that goes across spectrums. You mentioned some sort of extreme ones, strangulation. Are you including, for example, controlling behaviour, financially controlling behaviour, verbal abuse? Tell us a little bit about what you include in the term “domestic violence”.
Chrissy Leontios:
When I use the term “domestic violence,” I also like to include domestic and family violence as well because that takes on a much broader definition and it can include, for example, our indigenous populations as well. A wider definition of families. So it may not just be spousal abuse between husband and wife or partner and partner. It can include other people in the family who’s in the violence as well.
But, domestic and family violence certainly includes violence other than physical violence. And now, the evidence is clear that perpetrators are getting a lot smarter with their use of violence and they know that giving a person a black eye, for example, could be really clear direct evidence of domestic violence so they’re using other ways to control, other ways to have power and control over the victim or the aggrieved person.
Domestic and family violence might be financial control, it includes cutting off a person’s ability to access finances or paying only a small amount per week. I’ve had a woman that had children, she was only paid six dollars a week to buy food for her and the children.
It includes creating a house that is on edge and you’re walking on egg shells and the house is instilled with fear. And that person, the perpetrator, may not be using violence but it may behaviour that is making someone feel uncomfortable in their own home.
And verbal abuse, it’s putting a person down. Swearing at them. Isolating a person from their friends and family. Not allowing them to go out. Jealousy, using jealousy, accusing a person of cheating. Emotional abuse as well, making people feel terrible about themselves or gaslighting them where they start to feel, “oh maybe I’m making it up, maybe I’m imagining it, maybe it’s my fault”. So it’s deflecting and causing that person to think, “oh my goodness I’m going crazy, I’m the person to blame.” He’s not actually using the violence.
Then of course we can’t ignore the impact that it has on children as well. Children being exposed to the violence. Whether or not it’s physical or not and indirectly or not, children picking up on it as well. Or, using the children as weapons. Using the child, if you don’t do “X” for me, I will take the child and not return the child after we separate. Or using the court system, as well. That systematic abuse to get back at a person for leaving the family home. If a mother leaves with the child or the children, for safety the father will then apply for a recovery order to get the mother and child back. Normally that’s done to punish and if the woman has been the person that hasn’t had access to the funds, and he has (I’m using gender roles here), he’s the person that’s had all the money. He can obtain the legal advice and the legal representation. In this example, she doesn’t have control of any of the money and it is difficult for her to access the necessary help, legal help. Or through making false allegations to child safety services and to the police. Making allegations, for example, that “she’s not fit to look after the children”.
Christina Vinters:
Now when someone is looking at leaving a frightening situation like this, what sort of things should they be thinking about? What tips do you have for creating a good safety plan?
Chrissy Leontios:
I think we need to acknowledge, very early on, and evidence tells us, that separation is the most dangerous time for a woman and children. It’s the time that’s a risk factor, so it’s a very dangerous time. So it’s not something that’s easy for somebody just to say to a person in a relationship, “why don’t you just leave him or her?” It’s never that simple.
Leaving a relationship is very dangerous and it does take a lot of planning. I always recommend my clients to connect with specialist domestic violence services or a women’s service for example, for a woman, because they can help them come up with a plan to leave safely. I always, during this process when I’m speaking to a client, and often I get clients that haven’t yet left the relationship. They’re living in the relationship, there are children, they want to leave but they know themselves how dangerous it is. I always remind my client, at this point, that you’re the expert of your life and you’ve lived in this home. You understand the perpetrator. To date, you’ve kept yourself safe because you’ve been able to manage their behaviour. You understand the cycle of violence. I always say to my client, “you know the situation better than anyone, tap into your intuition about the matter that’s really important.”
There are some practical things, could be for example, not to leave whilst that person is home. To consider making a plan that makes you leave when he (I use the term “he”), is not home. Because, as I said, separation can be the most dangerous time. A good safety plan would mean that you’ve got the ability to source alternative accommodation or you’ve looked into some emergency shelters. So, obviously accommodation is very important.
Also to ensure that when you leave, you take your social security paperwork. In Australia it’s your Centrelink material. So that’s your ability to get money from the government. Passports and ID documents. ID documents of the children as well because they can be very difficult to get once you leave if the other person is holding that information. Obviously, some money. There are some banks in Australia that I know do offer some emergency money if you are experiencing domestic violence, and making some enquiries as to if there’s any money available for you to get during an emergency. And also speaking to domestic violence organisations because they could be aware of banks that have emergency funds available for when you’re leaving.
Some other things are, if you are thinking about leaving, in today’s technology everything is so traceable through the internet. So, be aware of if you’re checking alternative accommodation online, or if you’re searching the terms “how to leave an abusive relationship,” be mindful about the other party. A person, the perpetrator, could find that in the search history, so delete your search history or even better if you could search it a public space such as a library. Because if you do delete your internet browsing history, that may cause the other person to have even more suspicion as well so that’s the sort of thing that you need to think of and I’ve seen that in my work. A client was being criticised and controlled: “why are you deleting the internet history, what are you hiding?” So that causes the perpetrator to be on high alert. Something is up. So, get somebody else to do that searching for you, or if you can get some time out to go to a library or to use a public computer, that would be great just to ensure extra safety. So there’s some practical tips.
Every case is different. Definitely speak to domestic violence services, the police services, there are a number of hotlines here in Australia, I’m not sure in Canada. But there are a number of free services that can help you and help women, and men as well who are going through the violence and that have children. Like I said, it’s the most dangerous time so you need to be on high alert. But it is a dangerous time for you to leave. So, that’s why putting in a plan in advance, if you can, is a much safer option. And also letting family and friends know, just so when something happens, you’ve got other people that are aware of where you’re going or what you’re doing as well. It means people obviously that you trust and people that aren’t going to breach your trust and tell the person that you’re leaving.
Christina Vinters:
Now going back to the internet safety that you were talking about and the traceability of things, do you have any recommendations for how people should be gathering evidence that they’re going to be taking in with them?
Chrissy Leontios:
So, a lot of clients are able to write, I recommend writing some notes of when things have happened. As I’ve spoken about it before, perpetrators are getting much more clever now and they’re not just giving black eyes anymore. They’re recognising: “oh no a black eye could be evidence”. So, a abuse is controlling, it’s insidious, that the eye can’t see, and it’s done privately. Something I recommend for my clients is writing a diary of things that occur as close to the time as possible. Just so later on there can’t be criticisms of your memory failing you, etc. But this is, again, a safety issue. It may be too unsafe to write those down in a notepad in your handbag, for example, the level of control may be that the perpetrator goes through all your belongings. That’s a practical consideration. Something that another client used that worked really well was that she set up an email account that nobody else knew about, put a password no one could guess and she would just email herself and her mother, email diary notes of things that occurred and she would delete accessing that Gmail account. This evidence she sent to her mother meant that her mum was then able to give evidence to say “at this time I received this email from my daughter,” as well.
Christina Vinters:
Wow, there’s an incredible amount of planning and coordination that, things people need to think about to be able to prepare properly and safely.
Chrissy Leontios:
Yeah, it’s a double-edged sword. You could write a diary but then the perpetrator could find that as well. You can send yourself some emails but you need to be aware of your internet safety. Just talking about evidence, something that I think is a really practical point and something I hadn’t thought about, but a person who works in IT, told me about this. He understands the work that I do. All my clients have separated and ninety-nine percent of my clients have been in a history of domestic violence. Ordinarily the Orders that I get from my clients are that my clients have sole custody of the children and the fathers generally only spend supervised time, with the children. So, one way to try and get over the claim that our client, isn’t facilitating a relationship with the Other Party or the Other Party is missing out, is for our clients to send regular email photographs of the children or child once they’ve separated.
I thought this was a nice idea for the Other Party to still be kept involved with the children and it’s safe as well as the father’s receiving the photographs. However, there are now apps that can tell you the direct coordinates of where that photo was taken, and their location is found through an app. It’s something that you can download from the internet and tell that person where that photo was taken, or where you’re living, or in the area of where you’re living and that’s information that’s revealing for the person in danger.
So, the way to get around that, I’ve been told by trusty IT sources is, if you’re going to send a photo post-separation you don’t want your address to be shared and to be discovered through a photograph, is to screenshot that photo and then send it off to the person. I didn’t think about that, I’m not an IT person, my partner told me that “wow, that could really compromise someone’s safety.” Eighty percent of my clients are in hiding from the other parent.
Christina Vinters:
Ok, so a screenshot of a photo does not contain that location information. Now, having been through an experience like this would really affect someone’s self-esteem and even their sense of reality, so when one is trying to get back into a healthy state of mind, what are some of the recommendations you have? And also for helping identify the behaviours that they experienced. Do you have a recommendation on how to get clarity on that pattern and the types of behaviours, so that they can have a more accurate sense of what’s actually happening?
Chrissy Leontios:
Absolutely. So many of the clients that I see have such low self-esteem and such low confidence because the violence that was used in that relationship may have included physical violence, but it may not. In those cases where there was no physical violence but there were other uses of violence such as emotional abuse and physiological abuse and gaslighting, those clients come out of those relationships with such low self-esteem thinking they’re hopeless, they’re useless, they’re ugly, they could never get a job, no one likes them because that’s the violence that was used to control them and to have power and control over them.
So, people are leaving these relationships without believing in themselves, without having any confidence and that’s really difficult and that can cause people to stay in these relationships as well. So, it’s never as easy as; “well why don’t they just leave the relationship?” One: that’s victim blaming. Two: it’s not understanding how controlled a person is that’s living in these relationships and how little confidence and self-esteem they have because of the use of violence putting them down. If you’re called everyday you’re an idiot, no one else will love you, no one will hire you, you’ll want to leave this relationship not believing in yourself and not having any self-esteem. That’s such a common problem and I have clients that then come to me when I’m giving them advice about what arrangements we can put in place for the children and what other options they have legally, clients often just don’t believe that that’s capable for them because they just don’t believe anything’s possible.
Gaslighting as well as I mentioned before can really cause a person to have a distorted sense of themselves or of the situation because gaslighting is emotional abuse that causes you to second guess yourself or second guess your perception. So, what we hear perpetrators say to our clients is “I didn’t do that, you made it up in your head.” So people start to really second guess themselves and their perception of what happened. So that’s really difficult when a person’s coming out of this relationship and then they need to recall the acts of domestic violence that have occurred to them or to the children in order for us then to do what we need to do as lawyers, to put together as evidence.
Some of the tools that I use is I always recommend my clients work with a domestic violence counsellor and the domestic violence service and their free services to work through what domestic violence is. And there are two different wheels that will really help you: one is called the Power and Control Wheel, and the other, the Cycle of Abuse Wheel and having the clients look at these wheels and talking the clients through these wheels can really help a client articulate what they’ve been through by looking at this visual tool, because it does outline all the different types of domestic violence, the different cycles of abuse that a perpetrator can use, so that can really help a person acknowledge the behaviours and actions that they were using.
That can be a really liberating experience and I’ve seen my clients’ eyes light up in the meeting room and I’ve used those tools as well in addition to me working holistically with their social worker and they go; “oh my gosh, this happened to me and I was just so numb to it.” It’s the trauma that makes people block it out and forget it, so they are very good practical tools for people to recognise what they’ve been through and recognise those behaviours.
Christina Vinters:
So, those visuals are probably available online, as they mentioned, but people could look up, so it’s the Power and Control Wheel, and the Cycle of Abuse Wheel. Yeah, so there they can actually see different types of abuse and then recognise that; “oh, that happened to me and maybe I didn’t even realise it was part of the abuse.”
Chrissy Leontios:
Absolutely and it can be a very confronting process for a client and one thing is that I need to be really trauma informed because this process can make a client become very upset and anxious so you need to take a client through it very gently. You need to be aware that it could cause your clients to become quite traumatised in the moment as well. But it’s also very liberating because they start to recognise that this is what’s happened to them and they’re working with a professional and they’re using a tool that’s internationally recognised (and which they are able to relate to). They start to realise, “wow, I wasn’t making this up, yes this did happen and I’m being validated. I’ve got this professional here that’s validating me. I’ve got these tools here and these are validating me.” So that’s really part of the process in helping people acknowledge and highlight what they’ve been through as well, and it’s important to take the client through that very gently.
But, it’s not enough for just the client to work with the professionals, I think taking a step further is giving the client advice too: don’t spend time with people that are going to minimise what you’ve been through and often they could be mutual friends or family members; don’t be around people that are going to make you feel guilty or responsible for leaving the relationship; don’t associate yourself with those people that are going to minimise the violence, they’ll say, “oh it only happened once, you can go back,” and make you feel guilty for the violence. It’s really important to associate yourself with positive people and people that want to build you up and give you that confidence, and want to empower you and want to see you better rather than people that just want you to be back in that relationship because it makes them feel comfortable.
Really, it’s about shifting and being around different people that are going to say that violence was not right, you did not deserve that, you’re not to be blamed. Because otherwise it can be a very inconsistent experience. On the one hand, you’re working with professionals that are validating what you’ve been through, you’re working through identifying what the perpetrator did against you, but on the other hand you have family members or others who are meant to love you but that are saying “it wasn’t that bad, or give it another shot”. That’s the wrong advice people should be giving. You should be associating yourself with at that time. You need people that are going to build you up, and believe in you, and validate you, and support your decisions to leave an abusive and violent relationship.
Christina Vinters:
So, for somebody that’s in such a vulnerable position and needs some fairly specific professional assistance, how would you recommend that people go about choosing a lawyer who will be appropriate for them.
Chrissy Leontios:
A lawyer that understands domestic violence. Unfortunately, there are family lawyers that don’t understand domestic violence. Who may, inadvertently but not intentionally, will victim blame you, or minimise you, or say, “well it’s not that bad,” and just not give you the space to talk. Often lawyers really want to talk because we want to prove that we’re worth what we’re charging you. A good lawyer that needs to be advocating for you will give you the space to talk. It’s your story. We need to know the right questions to ask and that’s why it’s really important for lawyers to know what risk assessments to use, what screening tools. It’s our job to ask the right questions but we need to listen. You need a lawyer that’s going to listen and that’s going to give you the space and create a safe space for you to share your story. That is the most important thing.
I’ve had many clients transfer from other law firms and they said the big difference was I allowed them to talk, I created a safe space, I cared, I showed compassion, I didn’t pass judgement. I asked them difficult questions but we got better responses and I gave the client the space to think about what they’ve gone through, in order to get those instructions to prepare that evidence before. Because that’s what we need, we need to understand the different dynamics of DV, we need to understand the risks so we can make them informed of all of those risks. If we’re not asking the right questions and we’re not allowing the clients to give us their story in their own time, they’re missing out on critical evidence to give to the court.
Christina Vinters:
And it should go without saying but, just like you were saying before, the family members and friends shouldn’t be minimising the clients experience. You certainly wouldn’t want a lawyer to be minimising your experience.
Chrissy Leontios:
And we need to remember clients are coming to us with little to no self-esteem in these situations, and could be lacking in confidence. We need to build them up and we need to remind them and validate them. Your story is important. What you’ve got to say is important. Often clients are very nervous to come to a lawyer. It’s a scary thought, “I need to go speak to a lawyer.” You’ve just left a violent relationship, there are children involved, the client can feel so vulnerable. They need to acknowledge and understand that. Lawyers need to understand that it may take some time and if a client has difficulty in remembering events, or has difficulty being coherent about situations, that doesn’t mean that they’re not credible.
Christina Vinters:
Before we wrap up, do you have any final tips on self-care for people who are thinking of leaving a violent relationship?
Chrissy Leontios:
Be kind to yourself. You owe it to yourself. Believe in yourself. Dig deep and trust your intuition. Like I said earlier, you’ve been navigating really horrible and difficult times, you’ve managed to keep the children and yourself safe because you’ve been able to manage the situation so that takes a lot of smarts and that needs tapping into, your intuition. Knowing and trusting and believing in your decisions. Surrounding yourself with positive people. People that want you to win. You can have better and understand that, at the moment it may be quite difficult, but you will get further, there is a rainbow for you, it will be difficult, and you deserve that, you deserve the very best and it’s your fundamental human right to be safe, to feel safe, to feel valued, and to have people treat you with respect and kindness and not to use violence against you. Violence is never acceptable.
Christina Vinters:
Chrissy, this is such a difficult topic, but I really thank you for sharing all of this information with our listeners, and giving them the tips that they might need to really feel safe, and to create a plan to safely exit a really difficult relationship. So thank you.
Chrissy Leontios:
Thank you so much. It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you.
