Friday, December 09, 2011 

When Liz Cutter finished her week in Kazakhstan training prosecutors on domestic violence cases, she noticed Nadezha Gladyr had tears in her eyes.

"She realized that what she had dreamed came true,” Cutter said of the woman who founded the first battered women’s center in Kazkhstan.

“Maybe now there will be prosecution of serious offenders.”

Cutter, an assistant Hennepin County Attorney, was invited to join Rose Park, a lawyer with Advocates for Human Rights in Minneapolis and Cheryl Thomas, the founder of the Advocates Women’s Program in training prosecutors in Almaty, Kazakhstan on Nov. 14 and 15. They arrived three days earlier and began meeting with representatives from the Kazakhstan Ministry of Justice, the United Nations Women’s Program and Podrugi, Gladyr’s organization. Nadezhda has spent 20 years working on domestic violence. 

Kazakhstan, formerly part of the Soviet Union, signed the 2006 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Two years ago, Kazakhstan’s enacted its first domestic violence law providing for civil orders for protection.

Unlike the United States, the Central Asia countries have a public/private criminal justice system. Low-level crimes, and even medium-level crimes such as an assault that results in a broken jaw, have to be prosecuted by the victim, Cutter said. Domestic abuse usually falls into the low or medium level category, and while medium cases can be prosecuted by public prosecutors, that rarely happens. 

That means that the victim must pay for an attorney to file the charges, find a way to get his or her witnesses to appear and handle the dozens of other details that, in this country, are handled by professional investigators, lawyers and victim advocates paid by taxpayer dollars, Cutter said.

After all that work, the court may dismiss the case if the defendant reports that he has reconciled with the victim. Cutter learned that orders for protection last only 10 days and then the burden is on the victim to ask for a 30-day extension.

Thomas, who had worked in Kazakhstan before, told Cutter she would witness a dramatic shift by the 23 prosecutors in their view of domestic violence at the end of the training.

“I was skeptical,” Cutter said. "But Cheryl was absolutely right. Prosecutors who could not identify domestic violence at the beginning were looking to their law for new and creative ways to protect the victims and hold the offenders accountable.”

The group emphasized the seriousness of domestic violence, the dynamics of a domestic violence relationship, and domestic violence’s high costs to society, according to Cutter. 

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said he supports attorneys from the office sharing their expertise overseas. Al Harris and Paul Scoggin, for example, spent time in Kosovo helping that new nation establish a justice system:

“It broadens the attorney’s world and you work better if you see how other people live. It’s what I’ve seen with teaching. You improve your work when you have to articulate what you do and why you do it. I think it’s a wonderful opportunity and I’m sure Liz did us proud.”

 As a result of the trip, Cutter will seek ways to implement best practices from other states in dealing with domestic violence and work to increase public awareness of the dynamics and effects of domestic abuse in Hennepin County. 

“The attitudes of the prosecutors at the beginning of the training are not uncommon.  Well-informed, caring citizens everywhere do not understand the damaging dynamics involved in domestic violence and the far-reaching effects of domestic violence on our society.

“This is one of the most rewarding professional experiences I have had. I would definitely do it again.”