Weil, Gotshal, and Freshfields Team Secures Multiple Victories for Survivor of Religious Sect and Her Children

Francesca L. Fulchignoni

At this year’s Above & Beyond Awards, Sanctuary will honor a Weil, Gotshal, and Freshfields team for their work representing a mother in federal court for several years in the face of repeated threats by her ex-husband and his associates and the kidnappings of her children. 

At this year’s Above & Beyond Awards, Sanctuary for Families is pleased to honor Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s Timothy Howard, Xiaoxi Tu, and Nate Montalto, and Weil Gotshal & Manges’ Steven A. Reiss, Adam C. Hemlock, Rachel Crosswell, Selma Haveric, and Liz Klinger for their team’s work representing a mother in federal court for several years, in the face of repeated threats by her ex-husband and his associates and the kidnappings of her children. 

Rachel[1] is the daughter of the founder of an extremist religious sect and the mother of six beautiful children. The group exerts severe psychological and physical control over its members, practices child marriage, engages in an atypical form of dress for women, and has adopted unusually restrictive religious practices in diet and religious study. Women are confined entirely to the domestic sphere and excluded entirely from decision-making. Members, including children, are punished harshly for the slightest infraction by sleep deprivation, false imprisonment, and many forms of psychological and physical abuse. These practices have led to repeated run-ins with child welfare authorities, prompting the group to flee the United States to reside in Canada, Mexico, and Guatemala. When sect leaders ordered the marriage of Rachel’s 13-year-old daughter and retaliated against Rachel when she opposed it, she made a daring and dangerous escape with her children and fled to the United States.

Rachel obtained a temporary custody order and order of protection in Brooklyn Family Court, but it was far from over; the children’s father filed a petition under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (the “Hague Convention”) and claimed jurisdiction should be Guatemala, where the sect had previously settled. With this set of very difficult circumstances, the Weil Gotshal team jumped in to help.  After extensive trial preparation and many court appearances, and strategic motion practice, the Hague Convention case was dismissed with prejudice.  But before that happened, just as Rachel and her children were beginning to enjoy a settled life in Brooklyn, they experienced a new traumatic event:  the sect lured away her eldest two children from a location in northern New York where they were on a sleep away trip, and spirited them across the border and later into Mexico.  Rachel was devastated.  Fortunately, the FBI, working closely with Mexican law enforcement, was able to locate the children and return them to New York, where it charged seven individual members of the sect with kidnapping.  The team then represented Rachel as a witness in the criminal federal cases that stemmed from the kidnapping.

It was a complex task because of the multiple aspects of the Hague Convention case and the federal criminal case along with the custody case in family court.  The team worked diligently to ensure that one piece of testimony would not contradict or harm one of the other proceedings while supporting their traumatized client.  This presented a very big learning curve for everyone on the case, but the team was up to the challenge, forging a strong relationship of trust with Rachel.  During the intensive fact gathering and witness preparation, many meetings were had with the legal team at Rachel’s dining room table.  The team also helped Rachel with important safety planning and safety measures for her and her children, including getting Rachel a new cellphone and helping her move several times to avoid detection. The team worked especially hard to ensure that Rachel was comfortable with her testimony and that she was able to tell her story in her own voice, as she actually experienced it.  The legal team strove to hear what Rachel wanted and do what she wished for, empowering this extraordinarily resilient woman who had been in situations of extreme control her entire life.

All of Rachel’s children’s kidnappers were convicted of child abduction and other federal crimes and are serving significant sentences in prison.  The dismissal of the Hague Convention case secured by the Weil team enabled the Brooklyn Family Court judge to move forward with the custody and order of protection cases, eventually granting Rachel the longest order of protection possible (5 years) and sole custody of all of her children.  Today, Rachel and her children are happily ensconced in their supportive Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, where therapeutic support and local generosity has helped them recover from their ordeal and flourish in their new lives.

[1]           Names have been changed.

Join us at our Above & Beyond Awards Ceremony on October 25, 2023, as we honor Weil, Gotshal, and Freshfields’ outstanding pro bono work.

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Francesca L. Fulchignoni is a practice area associate in Sullivan & Cromwell’s Criminal Defense and Investigations Group.

Weil, Gotshal & Manges Team Steers Survivor Through Complicated Hague Case

Amy Abramson

At this year’s Above & Beyond, Sanctuary honored a team from Weil for their dedicated pro bono representation of “Ms. B” to win a Hague Convention parental abduction case, ensuring that she and her daughter never have to return to her abusive husband.

At this year’s Above & Beyond Awards, Sanctuary for Families honored team from Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP (“Weil”) for their dedicated pro bono representation of “Ms. B” to win a Hague Convention parental abduction case ensuring that she and her daughter never have to return to her abusive husband. The team consisted of partners Susan Shin and Luna Barrington, counsel Richard Rothman and Robert Swenson, and associates Irisa Chen, Austen Green, Aaron Shaddy, Jack Nolan, Scott Christopher, Rachel Williams, Marie-Marie de Fays, and Maggie Hart.

Originally from Europe, Ms. B had been living in Morocco with her husband. Shortly after telling her husband she was pregnant with their daughter, the abuse started. While pregnant, Ms. B was subjected to physical and psychological abuse, regular threats, destruction of property, and rampant gaslighting. Her husband also kept cocaine in the house which her daughter once found. When Ms. B confronted him about the drugs, the abuse escalated.

After fleeing Morocco and her abusive husband, Ms. B came to New York with her daughter and was living with a friend. Her husband filed a Hague Convention case in the Southern District of New York against both Ms. B and the friend who housed her. If successful, her husband would have forced the return of his daughter to Morocco.

The Weil team jumped into action, creating a large team capable of skillfully managing this challenging and complex Hague Convention case. These cases are incredibly intense; the expedited timeline means that litigation happens quickly, and the stakes are high.

In order to win this case, the team had to prove that Ms. B and her daughter should not be returned to Morocco because doing so would place her daughter at grave risk of psychological or physical harm. The Weil team brilliantly and collaboratively strategized with psychological experts, Moroccan law experts, family law experts, and DV experts in Morocco and in the U.S. to shape the best possible litigation path to success.

They spent an enormous amount of time preparing their client for a grueling and traumatic four days on the witness stand and built a strong bond of trust with their client and her daughter. They supported Ms. B and her daughter both in and out of the courtroom.

The team dealt with a number of challenges, but ultimately Ms. B and the Weil team prevailed. After rounds of discovery fights and motion practice, they conducted a 12-day trial in January and February of 2021 and ultimately received a strong 96-page opinion denying the petition for the child’s return. Notably, the opinion was so strong that no appeal has been filed.

“Words will be never enough to describe my experience with this amazing team of lawyers.  They are not only extraordinary lawyers, but they lift me up and they are very sensitive human beings. Thank you, thank you, thank you a thousand times.” — B

Ms. B is deeply relieved that she can stay with her daughter in New York. She has become stronger throughout the trial process and is working towards becoming an advocate to help other DV survivors. The support of the Weil team has helped her to feel like she can be a support for others experiencing abuse as she did. The Weil team continues to provide Ms. B and her daughter with robust legal support as they establish their lives in the United States.

Thank you for joining us for our Above & Beyond Virtual Pro Bono Achievement Awards and Benefit and for being part of our growing community of survivors and advocates. If you missed the program, click here to view the video.

If you would like to support Sanctuary’s work, please consider making an Above & Beyond donation here.

Amy Abramson is a former Sanctuary staff member and current Senior Development Director at American Jewish Committee. She is a member of Sanctuary’s Pro Bono Council.

Weil Team Wins Major Victory for Incarcerated Survivor of Domestic Violence

Vanessa Gutierrez

At this year’s Above and Beyond Awards, Sanctuary is honoring the pro bono work of Richard Rothman, Senior Counsel at Weil, Gotshal and Manges and Co-Chair of the Incarcerated Gender Violence Survivors Initiative, Nigar Shaikh, formerly an Associate at Weil and currently Counsel at Everytown for Gun Safety, and Dori Y. Cohen, Associate at Weil, for their representation of “Amy,” an incarcerated survivor of severe domestic violence.

Vanessa Gutierrez is the 2018-2019 Tow Policy Advocacy Fellow at the Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services from John Jay College of Criminal Justice – CUNY.

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At this year’s Above and Beyond Awards, Sanctuary is honoring the pro bono work of Richard Rothman, Senior Counsel at Weil, Gotshal and Manges and Co-Chair of the Incarcerated Gender Violence Survivors Initiative, Nigar Shaikh, formerly an Associate at Weil and currently Counsel at Everytown for Gun Safety, and Dori Y. Cohen, Associate at Weil, for their representation of “Amy,” an incarcerated survivor of severe domestic violence.

Rich Rothman has long been a pro bono advocate for survivors of gender-based violence, primarily survivors of intimate partner violence and sex trafficking.  In 2017 Rich, in conjunction with Sanctuary Legal Director Dorchen Leidholdt, founded the Incarcerated Gender Violence Survivors Initiative (the “Initiative”)—a collaboration of professionals and survivors focused on three main goals:

  1. Representation on parole, clemency, and re-sentencing matters
  2. Systems-change advocacy to improve the rate of release for incarcerated survivors
  3. Education and training on issues related to the intersection of gender-based violence, trauma, and incarceration

Nigar Shaikh was an early member of the Initiative and was instrumental in helping the Initiative implement its three-fold strategy to assist survivors.

The Initiative strives to help survivors who have been in prison for many years.  As Rich points out,

“Many of these older convictions took place in an era where domestic violence and trauma weren’t really understood by many, but especially the criminal justice system.  The women we help are victims whose crimes are directly related to the abuse they suffered, which landed them in prison. These women pose no risk to society, and deserve to live their lives outside of prison.”

Amy was one of the Initiative’s first referrals. Like the vast majority of women in prison, Amy was a victim of horrific violence prior to her incarceration.  She grew up witnessing domestic violence perpetrated by her father against her mother and was so distraught by what she saw that she attempted suicide at the age of twelve. A year later she moved to a new school and started dating an older boy who preyed on her vulnerability. This marked the beginning of an eleven-year relationship during which Amy was subjected to increasingly violent and dangerous abuse, as well as psychological torture.  Her abuser threatened to kill her, her family, and her friends if she tried to leave him.  It was right after he threatened to kill Amy’s sister, who was visiting her, that Amy made the terrifying decision to flee.

Amy and her sister were hiding at their step-mother’s house for approximately six weeks before they began to fear that her abuser had found her.  During an argument with her step-mother and sister about how to stay safe now that she had been discovered, Amy’s relentless stress, terror, and untreated PTSD took over and, without conscious knowledge of what she was doing, Amy killed her step-mother, with whom she’d had a close, loving relationship. She was convicted in 1991 for murder in the second degree and sentenced to 25 years to life.

Amy was eligible for parole in 2015, but despite an impeccable record inside prison, a strong release plan, and deep remorse for the crime she committed, she was denied parole.  Instead of considering the many factors that warranted her release, the parole board focused solely on the severity of the crime, completely disregarding the governing statute, regulations, and case law.

Amy was referred to the Initiative for help preparing for her next parole interview in 2018. After his first meeting with Amy at Taconic Correctional Facility, Rich knew that the Initiative had to try to help her.  Soon after, he agreed to represent Amy and he recruited Nigar and Dori to complete Amy’s pro bono team.

Rich, Nigar, and Dori worked on updating and supplementing her parole packet. Understanding how important it would be to explain Amy’s extreme trauma and the effect it had on the commission of the crime, they hired a trauma expert to meet with Amy and deliver an expert report to the parole board. The team compassionately worked with Amy to prepare her for the parole board interview—an experience that is often incredibly re-traumatizing for many survivors.  With the expert support and guidance of Rich, Nigar, and Dori, Amy was finally, after more than 25 years in prison, granted parole in 2018.

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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 Richard, Nigar, and Dori’s 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.