Skadden Team Wins Landmark International Child Abduction Case for Sanctuary Client

JoJo Adler

At this year’s Above & Beyond Awards, Sanctuary is honoring a team from Skadden for securing an amazing and life-changing win for a Sanctuary client in a federal Hague Convention on International Child Abduction case.

At this year’s Above & Beyond Awards, Sanctuary for Families is excited to honor Betsy Hellmann, Counsel, International Litigation and Arbitration, and her team at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP with the Above & Beyond Pro Bono Award for the incredible efforts made on a case closed earlier this year. Betsy and associates Yunyi Chen, Joseph L. Choe, Matthew M. Jang, Spurthi Jonnalagadda, and Sonia Qin worked quickly and strategically with compassion and tenacity to secure an amazing and life-changing win for a Sanctuary client in a federal Hague Convention on International Child Abduction case.

The casework for which the Skadden team is being honored revolves around their representation of Morin Golan in a complicated Hague Convention on International Child Abduction (“Hague Convention”) case in the United States District Court, Eastern District of New York. The case began in 2018 when Morin’s sister, Narkis Golan, fled Italy with her then-two year old son to escape severe domestic violence perpetrated by her husband and the father of her child. Her husband filed a Hague Convention petition in the United States. The main issue in the case centered on whether the District Court should force Narkis’ son to return to Italy, despite the dangers there. Narkis and her pro bono team took the case all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which remanded the case to the District Court. You can read more about that case here.

In October 2022, while the case was still pending, Narkis suddenly passed away. With this new and heartbreaking development, the legal team had to re-strategize everything while grieving the loss of their client. It was during this difficult time that Betsy and her team were asked to represent Morin Golan, Narkis’ sister, who had immediately stepped in to care for her nephew after her sister’s passing. They got to work right away.

After the client’s death, the child’s father sought to use his status as the only surviving parent to rush the child to Italy with him. Betsy and her team used what little time they had to get up to speed on years of case history and prepare for a District Court appearance that was scheduled soon after Narkis’ death. The team faced a hostile judge who had ruled against the child’s mother several times in the course of the multi-year litigation. There was very little precedent to guide the team—and the Court—on handling a case with facts as unique as these were, so the Skadden team had to pave their way in these unusual circumstances.

The Skadden team received a number of discouraging decisions from the District Court during the 15 months it took to get a final decision, but they persevered. Never defeated and always hopeful, with each setback they strategized another avenue to try to obtain safety for Morin’s nephew. Ultimately, they persuaded the Court to deny the father’s petition to force the child’s return to Italy, showing that the risks posed to the child by a return to Italy did not simply disappear because of the death of his mother. If anything, there was more uncertainty about how the child would be safe if he were to be returned to Italy without the protection of his mother. The father did not appeal this decision, so the child is able to stay in the United States with his aunt, in a major win for the family.

Nicole Fidler, Senior Project Director and one of the Sanctuary attorneys working with the Skadden team on this case noted what a pleasure it was to work with Betsy.

“Betsy was incredibly collaborative and strategic. We had weekly strategy calls where Betsy always listened to everyone’s thoughts and advice, and then would brilliantly figure out where to go next in the case strategically. She was also a calming force for the team, remaining steadfast and resilient in the face of multiple judicial setbacks.” – Nicole Fidler, Sanctuary for Families

In talking about Betsy’s representation, Morin reflected that Betsy “put an incredible amount of heart into me, my nephew, and this case. She walked me through the most difficult time of my life.”

Betsy highlighted Skadden’s strong commitment to pro bono work “being as important as billable work; [it was] impressed from the start that you give the same level of service as that of billable clients.”

Betsy and her team did work beyond words to come out with a win for the client, and Sanctuary for Families could not be more honored to give the Above & Beyond Pro Bono Award to Betsy and her team.

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Join us at our Above & Beyond Awards Ceremony on October 8, 2024, as we honor Skadden’s outstanding pro bono work.

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Sanctuary Announces New Co-Chair of the Pro Bono Council

Sanctuary for Families

Sanctuary for Families’ PBC is excited to announce that, as of December 2020, Victoria Abraham, associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, is serving as PBC Co-Chair.

Sanctuary for Families’ PBC is excited to announce that, as of December 2020, Victoria Abraham, associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP,  is serving as PBC Co-Chair along with Sharon Barbour, associate at Cohen & Gresser, LLP, who has served as PBC Co-Chair since January 2019.

Victoria succeeds Louisa Irving, who served as Co-Chair of the PBC from January 2018 to October 2020.  We are very grateful for Louisa’s outstanding dedication and leadership over the past two years.

About the PBC

The PBC was formed in 2003 as the Associate’s Committee, later changed to the Pro Bono Council and currently known as the PBC, with the goal of bringing together young professionals committed to supporting and promoting the work of Sanctuary through active community engagement, pro bono projects, and client-centered events. The PBC currently has approximately 25 active members. Each fall, the PBC hosts the Above and Beyond benefit, an event that supports the Legal Center by honoring the pro bono lawyers and other volunteers who have worked on behalf of Sanctuary’s clients during the past year. This year’s Above & Beyond event raised over $200,000 in support of the Legal Center.

Introducing Victoria

Victoria has been passionate about gender equality and gender-based violence since college. She first learned about Sanctuary while at Harvard Law School during a class on sex equality taught by feminist scholar and activist Catharine MacKinnon. After graduating and joining Skadden as an associate in the Mergers and Acquisitions group, she connected with Sanctuary and became part of the PBC in 2016.

Victoria studied journalism and Canadian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and it was her experiences working at a radio station in Gulu, Uganda after graduating that inspired her to pursue a law degree.

“Working and living in Uganda made me realize that I wanted to have a more substantive understanding of how the law shapes society,” she recounts. “In my reporting, I came across situations where it seemed like Ugandan women and girls seemed to not be able to enjoy the same rights of citizenship as Ugandan men and the law seemed essential for understanding why that was the case.” Through her work at the radio station reporting on various aspects of life in Gulu, Uganda, Victoria realized that she was not satisfied with only telling someone’s story but that she also wanted to have tangible, lasting positive impacts on people’s lives. Her experience in Gulu inspired Victoria to spend her 1L summer at the Women’s Legal Centre in Cape Town, South Africa, where she had the opportunity to work on a class action case on the denial of Anti-Retroviral treatment to women working in the sex industry.

She has continued to passionately pursue this goal through her pro bono work, where her focus is predominantly on immigration matters. Her fluency in Russian enables her to work with LGBTQ asylum seekers and Violence Against Women Act clients from Russia and former Soviet Union countries.

“Working with pro bono clients is very rewarding because you get to help an extremely strong person who has gone through a lot. It’s so rewarding to build relationships with clients and give them a chance to make their life what they want it to be.” — Victoria.

Victoria also brings new insight to her pro bono work through her background in journalism, as demonstrated by her empathetic approach to interviewing clients and crafting compelling stories that are true to their experiences.

An active member of the PBC, Victoria served as Co-chair of the Above and Beyond Gala for the past two years and is eager to take on this new leadership role. Her goals for her time as PBC Co-chair include positioning the PBC as an anti-racist arm of Sanctuary and increasing the council’s diversity. She also hopes to increase membership engagement across the board. Ultimately, she wants the PBC to be a vibrant, constructive community that showcases all of Sanctuary’s invaluable work.

Please join us in welcoming Victoria as PBC Co-chair!

Skadden Attorneys Help Client Secure Dismissal with Prejudice in Contentious Hague Petition Abduction Case

Victoria O. Abraham

At this year’s Above & Beyond Awards and Benefit, Sanctuary is honoring a team of attorneys from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP for their dedicated and powerful advocacy on behalf of their client, “Jocelyn Brown” throughout a contentious and complex international abduction case. 

Victoria O. Abraham is an associate in the Mergers & Acquisitions group at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP and a co-chair of the Above & Beyond Committee on Sanctuary’s Pro Bono Council.

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At this year’s Above & Beyond Pro Bono Achievement Awards and Benefit, Sanctuary for Families is honoring a team of attorneys from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP for their dedicated and powerful advocacy on behalf of their client, “Jocelyn Brown” throughout a contentious and complex international abduction  case.  We are pleased to honor this incredible team consisting of former associates Erin Simmons and Donna Farag, partners Lea Haber Kuck and Pat Rideout, and associates Mackenzie Newman, Christina Pryor, Maria da Silva, Chris Fredmonski, Tamar Lisbona, Caitlyn Cheleden, Joshua Atkinson, Molly Brien, Belinda Huang, Grace Jun and Pippa Hyde.

In December of 2018, a team of attorneys from Skadden took on the representation of Jocelyn Brown (“Ms. Brown”), a mother of three young children, in a case brought by her husband and the children’s father under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (the “Hague Convention”) in the Eastern District of New York. The Hague Convention is an international treaty that provides a mechanism for addressing international child abductions. Under the Hague Convention, if a child is removed without consent from a Hague Convention signatory country to another Hague Convention signatory country, the left-behind parent can file an action in the court system of the country where the children have been removed to.  In this case, Ms. Brown had fled from the U.K. to New York with her three children to escape the domestic violence perpetrated by her husband.  The children’s father initiated an action in United States District Court, Eastern District of New York demanding the return of the children to the U.K.

Due to the nature of the relief sought, the Skadden team worked tirelessly to defend Ms. Brown from the “abduction” allegations brought against her by her husband.  Hague Convention cases are required by law to move quickly through the system and so immediately after Sanctuary contacted Skadden about representing Ms. Brown, the team had to hit the ground running. Under an extremely expedited timeframe, the Skadden team appeared in Court to respond to allegations that Ms. Brown and her family had evaded service. The team also answered the Hague Petition, propounded and responded to discovery requests, engaged a forensic psychologist to interview Ms. Brown and the children and to prepare a report documenting the effects of the domestic violence on the family, and ultimately prepared the case for trial in federal court.

“We had a team of attorneys who pulled together to work under demanding timeframes over the holidays to respond to the Hague Petition that was filed against the client,” said former associate Erin Simmons.  “Our team leveraged a wealth of experience and worked around the clock to achieve the best possible outcome for the client and her family.”

According to Erin, Sanctuary’s resources and connections were invaluable in helping the Skadden team prepare for trial:

“Sanctuary is a leading nonprofit in Hague representations for domestic violence survivors and they have significant expertise in this practice area.  Sanctuary connected us with the pro bono team from Paul Weiss, also working on a Hague Convention case in the E.D.N.Y, who was instrumental in helping our team navigate the representation.  Sanctuary also connected us with a forensic psychologist willing to perform the evaluations under the expedited timeframe set by the federal court.  That connection made a tremendous difference in our ability to defend our client.”

“The Hague Convention as drafted and implemented does not provide adequate protection for primary caretaker parents—typically mothers—who come to the United States to protect themselves and their children from dangerous domestic violence perpetrated against them by the left-behind parent,” said Sanctuary Pro Bono Director Nicole Fidler.  “For that reason, the expedited nature of the cases, and the high stakes, Hague litigation can be very challenging and I am deeply grateful for our dedicated Hague Convention partner law firms, like Skadden, who take this challenge on without question.  The work Skadden did on behalf of Ms. Brown was off the charts.” 

The Skadden team benefited directly from partner Lea Haber Kuck’s international legal experience and partner Pat Rideout’s trial experience as well as invaluable contributions from associates Mackenzie Newman, Christina Pryor, Maria da Silva, Chris Fredmonski, Tamar Lisbona and Caitlyn Cheleden and former associates Erin Simmons and Donna Farag, who approached the enormous task of litigating a federal case in three months with confidence and enthusiasm.

On the eve of trial, the Skadden team suggested a mediation and ultimately brokered a favorable settlement that secured the dismissal of the case with prejudice, which means that the case cannot be re-filed,  allowing Ms. Brown to remain with her children in New York subject to modest access terms for the children’s father. The settlement also provided for a dismissal with prejudice of a family court case that was pending in the U.K.

Mackenzie Newman said,

“Working with the kids was very rewarding. They were the ones who the whole case was about.”

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Join us at our Above & Beyond celebration on November 12, 2019, at the RUMI Event Space, 229 W 28th St, New York, NY as we honor the outstanding pro bono work by the team from Skadden.  You can buy tickets here. 

If you can’t join us, but would like to support Sanctuary for Family’s work, please consider making an Above & Beyond donation here.

Skadden Arps Team Secures Asylum Status for FGM Survivor and Helps her Build a New Life in the U.S.

Todd Schmid

At this year’s Above & Beyond Pro Bono Achievement Awards and Benefit, we’re honoring a team from Skadden Arps for their dedicated pro bono work on behalf of an asylum seeker from Guinea. Read to learn more.

Todd Schmid is Legal Counsel at HSBC Bank and member of Sanctuary’s PBC.

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At this year’s Above & Beyond Pro Bono Achievement Awards and Benefit, Sanctuary for Families is honoring a team from Skadden Arps for their dedicated pro bono work on behalf of an asylum seeker from Guinea.  The Skadden team includes Mariam Adamashvili, Avelina Burbridge, Sarah D. Kalin, Ana Maria Pearce, Sarah R. Ridel, Victoria Smallwood, and Gabrielle E. Wolf.

Aimée

Picture this: a group of women huddled nervously but hopefully around a desk counter at a quiet government building on the fringes of New York City, awaiting a decision that would directly impact the life of one, and would ultimately affect the lives of every woman in the room.

When Aimée received the news that she had been granted asylum in the United States, she grew weak in the knees, falling back into the arms of her legal team. It was an emotional and powerful moment. It was the culmination of the hard work of a dedicated team of attorneys and legal staff at Skadden Arps and the consistent determination of their ever-brave and motivated client, Aimée (not her real name), a woman from Guinea, all with the incredible support of Sanctuary for Families over the course of two years.

Female Genital Muilation

Aimée, as a child, endured female genital mutilation or cutting (“FGM/C”), and other domestic abuse, in her home country, Guinea, where the practice has deep family and sociocultural roots and is often considered a rite of passage, despite the immediate complications and long-term physical, sexual and psychological consequences that so often result. “It is often viewed as a way to control a woman’s desire, as a way to inhibit her freedom,” noted Gabrielle Wolf, Director at Innisfree M&A Incorporated and a former Skadden attorney.

Guinea formally banned FGM/C in the 1960s but still has the second highest rate in the world, with virtually no enforcement or cases brought to trial. International political recognition of the problem is a key step forward, as the human rights issue rarely attracts the public attention it deserves, let alone political resolve.

The United Nations, the World Health Organization and many other international and national government organizations fully recognize this practice as a violation of the human rights of girls and women, reflecting deep inequality between the sexes, and an extreme form of discrimination against women. However, there are many ongoing challenges to building an effective on-the-ground public health and advocacy response, and the practice has far from disappeared in many countries, including Guinea.

Sanctuary Turns to Skadden Arps

When Aimée came to Sanctuary for Families, they quickly discovered that the original asylum application she had filed was patchy and did not adequately detail the abuse she had suffered as both a child and an adult.   Sanctuary turned  to Skadden Arps to prepare a more robust application on her behalf. The firm quickly assembled a team of attorneys and legal assistants, who began working to understand Aimée’s case and to fortify her application in an ever-evolving political and legal environment. Representing Aimée was not without its challenges. Skadden attorney Sarah Kalin explained:

“Asylum work is not our day job, so trying to remain abreast as laws, policies, even as the sentiments of these agencies were changing day to day quickly became more of a full-time job than we expected.”

The women who endure FGM/C often lack the political voice to share their stories. “But for Aimée, working with a talented group of dedicated women, who not only met with her on legal matters but often accompanied her to medical and other appointments, was empowering,” said Skadden attorney Avelina Burbridge.  In reflecting upon her team, Aimée shared:

“These wonderful and brave women lawyers have spared no effort to get me where I am today.”

Yet the women who had the chance to represent her felt that Aimée inspired them, too. Sarah Kalin shared:

“She is not unlike each of us: she’s about our age; she’s smart and educated, but she just happened to grow up in a different part of the world. To see how she made her way to the U.S., without speaking the language, without much in the way of support; to witness her story evolve and watch her integrate into American society, always with the support of Sanctuary, and to really build a life for herself is inspiring. She is a real asset to American society.”

Looking Toward the Future

The team still stays in touch with Aimée today, and with Sanctuary’s talented support, they have watched her confidence soar, as she improves her English skills and receives robust job training to further her aspirations to pursue a career in health services. Recently, she obtained a Home Health Aid Certificate and graduated from Sanctuary’s Economic Empowerment Program.

“I’ve regained the humanity, the self-confidence, and the appetite for life that I thought I’d lost forever. Today I have a good head on my shoulders and find fulfillment in the unconditional love of my son. If there exists an American dream, mine is my encounter with Sanctuary for Families.”

– Aimée

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Join us at our Above & Beyond celebration on November 13, 2018, at the RUMI Event Space, 229 W 28th St, New York, NY as we honor Skadden Arps’ outstanding pro bono work.  You can buy tickets here. 

If you can’t join us, but would like to support Sanctuary for Family’s work, please consider making an Above & Beyond donation here.