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Meg Groth
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Rebecca Buchanan
Hi, this is Rebecca Buchanan, host of New Books Network, New Books and Biography. And today I'm here with Meg Groth, who's the author of not if I Can Help It. Meg, thanks for being here with me today.
Meg Groth
My pleasure.
Rebecca Buchanan
Could you start out by talking, giving a little brief overview of the book, what the book's about, and maybe how it came to why you decided to write this book.
Meg Groth
I always intended to write about my cases because while I was doing them, if ever I spoke to anybody about them, people were often disbelieving that that was kind of the things that were happening in court. And so I thought when I had a minute, which took me quite some time to have a minute, because it's very labor intensive work, that I would write about it and try and educate people, but also to inspire people about the kinds of clients that I had and the problems that people face and how they do it and maybe to enrage people to some extent and engage them. And so that was the purpose of my book. And I wrote it purposely so that it's easily accessible to everyone. Each chapter is really a story about one of my cases, basically. And I also give kind of tips, I think, on how to be a good lawyer and just have an understanding of what victims of domestic violence and the poor deal with in life and in family court.
Rebecca Buchanan
So you were for the majority. This sort of takes place with the beginning of your practice and the beginning of what you did. And you were a legal aid lawyer. So can you talk a little bit about what that means, what a legal aid lawyer does, what your job entailed so that people kind of know? Because you talk about that in the book as well.
Meg Groth
Yes, well, I went to law school with the intention of trying to being a lawyer that people could afford. And legal aid doesn't charge low income people. And that was what I wanted to do. And so legal aid is a federal federally funded program, started with Lyndon Johnson in the Great Society where he was trying to have a war against poverty to give, you know, in criminal cases, people have the right to a lawyer if they're facing imprisonment, but in civil cases you do not. And so it's some funding from the federal government which hopefully will stay in place. I know it is being cut along with everything else. But to represent in certain kinds of civil cases, and family law is one of those cases. And it varies from state to state and county to county in terms of the funding that's afforded it, because states also give some funding to it, usually to represent people who are low income without charge in important cases. Of course, there's not enough legal aid attorneys, there's not enough funding. So it's a limited ability to do that. Only certain people get the job, you know, get, get to have the representation. But so it was a big. It's a burden for a lawyer too, because it's hard to turn people down, which is why I worked, why it took me so long to write the book, because I didn't get to it until, you know, until my 80th year. Actually, but anyway, we won't talk about that.
Rebecca Buchanan
So yeah, you, you wrote this book about cases at the beginning of your time in, in practice. And so can you talk about even getting to that point where you became a lawyer? You did not become a lawyer. Right. You didn't go right out of high school to college to become a lawyer. So you have this sort of interesting journey to law.
Meg Groth
Yeah, I was a late bloomer for sure. My husband I married after high school. I felt lucky to be out of high school. I quit. I was always cutting class and had no interest in pursuing further education. At the time. We were hippies, had a daughter right away and we were just living without electricity, running water. We were doing that purposely, living the good life. I had a series of terrible low paying jobs that I was very bad at. At one point, after a particularly catastrophic incident at a sock factory that I caused, my mother said, you know, you're going to be working in soft factories all your life if you don't go to college. And I realized that I probably couldn't even work in soft factories after the problem I caused there accidentally. So I started to go to college and I was going very slowly because my daughter was diagnosed with diabetes when she was five. So it took me a very long time and I didn't really graduate until I was 37. But before that, while I was taking the courses, I was very interested in psychology and thought I would pursue that if I ever got my degree from college. But one night, about 3 o' clock in the morning and seeing the book, we got a banging on the door, woke us up and there was a young woman, very battered, clearly battered, wearing like a nightgown, no shoes, had run through the forest. We lived in the woods, our nearest neighbor quite far away, and she had been staying with them, they were on vacation actually, but she was staying with them, hiding from her abusive boyfriend. And she was, had a nursing infant with her and he had somehow found where she was and had driven up there, had broken down the door with a hatchet, had beaten her, had grabbed the baby and had fled. And she told me that and she was, you know, hysterical. We brought her in, tried to calm her, tried to, you know, and she said that the police, that she had called the police when he was breaking in the door and they said they would come, but when they asked if she knew who it was and she said it was her ex boyfriend and they said, oh, well, that's a domestic, we don't do domestic. I thought that that must have been some Mistaken conversation. And I called and that was the same response that I got. Now, this was in the late seven. This is in the mid-70s, sometime in the-70s. And then I. Next day I called a lawyer who told me, well, it's custody. It's her word against his. As far as the abuse, it's his kid too. It's very expensive. And I just thought, you know, it just came to me how horrible things were. She was very poor. And I just thought, if I get through, if I ever graduate college, I'm going to become a lawyer and I'm going to represent people like her. Calls her Lily in the book. And that was my vow to myself. And I. I stuck to it.
Rebecca Buchanan
So. Yes. So the book. Oh, no, you're good. The book talks about, you know, so you have these. You talk about dealing with cases of abuse, domestic violence, some family. So I'm interested. I mean, we can talk about some of those cases. But I'd also like to know what was it like for you, like, thinking about writing this. Did you have an idea of what cases you wanted to talk about? Are there certain people that kind of stuck with you that you really wanted to represent here? Can you talk a little bit about some of those?
Meg Groth
That's an interesting thing. Actually, I was a little bit haphazard. I mean, my intention initially, and maybe I'll live long enough to do it, was to write three books. I have a giant folder full of cases and I just started arbitrarily writing some of them, as, you know, at different points that just came to mind. So it really wasn't well perceived. But I wanted to do the early years. First. I was in legal aid altogether for 13 years altogether. And then I went into private practice, which basically just took my legal aid clients with me. I sort of ended up being a private practice legal aid attorney is what I did for the remainder of my career. But there were different stages and different things happening. I ran for judge at one point and did various things. Fights for law to change. And so I had this idea of three different ones. Well, I was doing early cases, and I did write up some that were especially memorable to me in terms of the clients. But. But I could have written, you know, I have hundreds, so I. I could have written many others. Even about that little period of time. Caseload was very, very large. You know, I was the only person doing it. And the people are there and they need help, so, you know, you just have to keep doing it.
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah. One of the things I noticed was, I mean, and you Talk about this even towards the end of the book, but that many of the things you talk about have not changed much in like 40 plus years. And so can you talk a little bit about that? Like writing this, doing this work, what it's like to continue to see these patterns and, and for you. And even like, I don't know if there's anything in the. For you for writing this book. You're hoping some. There's some change or just sort of shining a light on it, but that idea that we continue to see similar patterns of violence and abuse.
Meg Groth
Yeah, I do hope it is my hope that somehow the book could be well read enough that it would initiate some change, that it would be an agent of change. I began in the early. I went to law school in 1980, graduated in 83. So it was the early 80s. The protection from Abuse act, which was the first state to pass, that was Pennsylvania, hadn't passed quite yet when Lily came to my door that said that victims of domestic violence. There was a special law to protect victims of domestic violence, because before that there was no such thing. And when people would get arrested, if they got arrested, which was very rare, they would just be sent home waiting for a trial or something. There was no idea about the domestic issue. And when they finally passed those laws across the state, different states, family law, by the way, is different in every state. So when we try and make changes, we have to do that in every state because they vary to great degree. But because of the Protection from Abuse act, that police officer could not have said, we're not coming. However, there was nothing that required that he came in a timely fashion. There was nothing that required that if he came in and the abuser had already left, that he would try and pursue. There was nothing that said that he, if the abuser was there, that he would necessarily be able to figure out what had actually happened. Because the woman is hysterical, the guy's very calm, and he's usually saying something like, she's crazy. I was just trying to kind of calm her down. I had to hold her down. She goes nuts, things like that. And the police are oftentimes very unable to distinguish for some reason. And sometimes they threaten to arrest both people. So that usually stops things. So although they, you know, there is a law now, and in some jurisdictions it's very well followed, and in others it is not, but it's still a great problem. And then when you get to court, there is the problem of convincing judges. Now, if you come in, if a victim comes in with Obvious abuses or like clear medical evidence of severe injury, you're going to get a protection order. But if without those things, it's often. It's not necessarily that easy. Judges are like, well, we would have left if this was happening. They don't understand all the impediments to leaving. They just question the women. Often I had one judge who was insisting that it was not true because she couldn't remember how many times he had punched her. And in terms of getting victims ready for trial, they often have spent years trying to forget everything that's happening. So they're not easy cases. And they vary from state to state, depending. There's things like what you need to have, what makes you eligible to get a protection order. In some places, it's very limited. You have to have been injured. In some places you have to be injured or in reasonable fear of serious physical injury. That has to be imminent. And some states have very expansive definitions because domestic violence is not always just physical. There's a great. All kinds of coercive control goes into it. And so some states are very good about that. And then there's the question of how long an order you're going to get. In some places, the expectation is six months, which is nowhere near long enough. And in some places, there's a couple places where you can get a lifetime order. So everything varies so much, and then there's the protections you can get. They also vary from state to state. Some are very limited, and then some they're very expansive and really helpful to people. So there has been change, but there still needs to be more change. Some of the thing about protection from obese is just attitudes and understanding of domestic violence on the part of judges and on the part of people that are informing judges in general about how to make decisions. Custody law, I think in some ways has gotten worse because in the early 80s, there was still kind of an idea that men were working out, working, doing important things, and women were in the home taking care of children. So it was easier than actually to get custody for the woman who was almost always the primary caretaker. But now that's not the case. And there's great father's rights groups, very big. And there's, as I mentioned in the book, it's very difficult. It's much easier for a man to show that he's a good parent because not much is expected of men. So when they do something, and some men are very good parents, but when they do something, they're given a great deal of credit. Women are supposed to be doing everything and doing it well. And if they don't, in any instance they're given, you know, they are very much discredited. And judges are often impressed when a man wants custody. And so. And the thing is that abusers often will file for custody. It's a way of trying to maintain control and to get control back. If they get custody, oftentimes, you know, the victim will return to them. So there's a very more recent issue of that. Like there's factors in every state, there's factors for judges to follow to have as guidelines in terms of deciding what's in the best interest of children. And what I've been working on now with a number of organizations and advocates across the country is trying to have those factors give priority to the safety of the child because it's always supposed to be the best interest of the child, but it isn't. You know, the factors go to things like, you know, how do the parents get along with each other? Which is very negative for a protective parent who's trying to protect against an abuser because how they get along with each other, she's the one not getting along. You know, how well they have a united front, you know, so the abuser's like, I'm ready for a united front, you know, so I've said this many times that victims of domestic violence are the only victims who, if they have children with their assailants, are forced to have ongoing, consistent contact with them and are judged by how friendly they are when they're doing it. So in a lot of contested cases, the abuser wins custody, especially because judges really don't want to hear that there's a parent who is abusive. There's a great distaste for that that goes deep and makes them think, no, you're just saying that because you're trying to interfere with his rights. And we want the child's rights to be foremost. So if you look to see whether there has been abuse and what that effect would be and take that into consideration and have judges be educated. So there's amendments that we've called Cadence Law, which were put in place in Pennsylvania. A little girl, 7 year old, was murdered by her father while in his court ordered custody unsupervised, despite the fact that he was obviously an abusive, very abusive man. And so we named that after. We named the law after her. And we've been trying to see where my. We've been trying to enact it across, across all the states, which would require that the safety of the child be given priority, that past abuse be given serious consideration and that if it is found to be so, that there not be unsupervised contact, that judges be given training in the dynamics and realities of domestic violence, that people who give expert opinions have to actually have expertise, knowledge of domestic violence. And that some of the kinds of remedies that they have, these things where they say the child doesn't want to be with the parents. If we're going to have reconciliation counseling, like the child and the parent who is abuser will have counseling together until the child realizes that he or she shouldn't be feeling the way they do. So that's what I've been working on now. And it's one of the things that I do talk about in the book, in the last chapter about things that need to be done, but things are bad. There was a study, a 15 year study just ended in 2023, that trying to think, where is that? I have nothing about where did it. Where they found that with close to 1,000 children who had been murdered by a parent in these circumstances. And that was just ones that they could find reported. There's no database, so it's really a serious problem. And suicide too. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for children ages 10 to 18. And oftentimes it is because of the situations they were placed in.
Rebecca Buchanan
And one thing about your book that I thought I really appreciated was that you, it isn't just like, here's this case, here's this case, here's this case. You also give insight into how sort of family court works. Like family court is different. People have this idea of what court is like or what practicing law is like. Can you kind of give us an insight into dealing with like child protective services and what, what it means to be poor and try and deal with legal issues. Like you talk about just even getting someplace, you know, having to pay to take the bus somewhere, that kind of thing, or even having to negotiate with judges. So yeah, can you talk a little bit about that too? Like it isn't just like, let's try and go to court and take care of this. It's all these other sort of circumstances that you have to navigate to in order to whether it's get protection or get away from an abuser or get your children away from someone.
Meg Groth
Yeah, it's, it's, there's a lot of things involved. It's, it's not a simple thing at all. And people are always saying, why didn't you leave? You know, why didn't she leave. And there's, you know, there's so many reasons why people don't leave. I mean, I often say to people and they say that, I say, well, look, if I told you that today you're just going to go home and leave, you know, is that something that would be easy for you to do? Let's not say that there's somebody threatening to kill you if you try and leave. We won't. We'll leave that out. Just how easy would that be to say, you know, today you're just going to go and are you going to be able to take the children that would be absconding with the children that would look bad in court? You know, so there's so many different things that happen. And of course, people, you know, a lot of times, I mean, victims love the abuser. They just want him to stop abusing them. You know, they often take the blame themselves, think that they're doing something wrong, which is what they're being told. And there's great dangers in leaving. Many of the murders of victims take place around the time of leaving because, you know, so it's, and then there is the issue of children and how that's going to happen and how the law is going to consider it happening. And also sometimes, well, there's a lot of things. And poverty, of course, is an added burden to anyone. They never took that into consideration in court. As a legal aid lawyer, I was often a chauffeur because people didn't have, it was a big county and they didn't have a way to get to court. And there's just those kinds of really practical issues that take place. But, and most, most poor people are going to court without lawyers, you know, because there's just not enough of them.
Rebecca Buchanan
Well, and you also mentioned too in the book that sometimes people are told they don't need a lawyer. Right. And I think that's a big thing. And, and something that's important that comes through that so many times, whether it is somebody being well meaning or if it's someone just trying to make sure that they don't have representation. Like you have one case, I think you talked about where you were not even there for that case and you just became someone's lawyer because she needed a lawyer. Right.
Meg Groth
Yeah, that happened. I'm sure it happened more than once.
Rebecca Buchanan
But that, yeah, but that idea that people don't even know that they are entitled to a lawyer and that they should like having a lawyer doesn't mean you necessarily did anything wrong. Right. Having A lawyer can help you to navigate really complicated situations.
Meg Groth
Well, you know, in Child Protective Services, which is a whole different issue. But, you know, in some places, I mean, they're there to protect children, but in many places, when you're poor, you're treated very differently. And neglect is more of a reason that children are taken into foster care, neglect, quote, unquote, than abuse is because actually, in our country, we are allowed to abuse our children. You know, as long as you're not causing some kind of severe injury.
Rebecca Buchanan
You.
Meg Groth
Can kind of be abusive. You're allowed to hit your children, you're allowed to punish them. We come from a tradition of that initially in our country, men could abuse, could beat their wives and children to discipline them, to chastise them for not behaving correctly. And that's still kind of an idea. So really well to do. Families often have tremendous abuse happening and nobody's intervening, but when there's poverty issues, they're seen as being neglectful. And I often was in court with a whole pile of different lawyers from Child Protective Services. And there was me and there was this and that. And I would think if half the money that was being spent for this day could be given to the parents, we could have solved some of the problems. But that's what I would say. There's a great many problems that people face. And certainly I think most people know they need a lawyer, but they just. If they can't afford it, they can't afford it. Lawyers are very expensive. And that's why I just ended up not making. Doing it basically for free. My goal was to have. When I went into private practice, my goal was to have, like, sort of half of my clients pay and half of my clients not, you know, be the ones if they couldn't afford it. If they couldn't afford it, they wouldn't pay. Of course, I was known for this. So everybody beat a path to my door. Plus, I was a good lawyer. And my. My book, I attempt to give tips on how to be a good lawyer because you don't really learn it in law school. But anyway, that, you know, my husband teases me sometimes and would say, like, you know, next time I'm marrying a lawyer. And I say, well, next time I'm marrying a lawyer.
Rebecca Buchanan
So are there stories? I mean, you have so many stories in this book and some do not end well and others do. Are there any, like, is there a story or two that you want to. For listeners want to, you know, talk about or highlight that is particularly memorable.
Meg Groth
For you Well, I think there's one in the book where I, I represented a young, young woman who had been raped on the street when she was 13. And she was a very, very naive, religious family, black, and she was raped on the street, and they never reported it. They were afraid. They didn't know how the authorities would be. They had just recently come from the south and had bad experiences there. And so the girl was sent to her grandparents who lived in, in the south to have the child. And then they were going to put the child up for adoption. But when the baby was born, a little girl, the grandparents decided to keep her. But like 13, 12 years later, the grandmother, she was a great grandmother of the child, became ill with cancer and great grandfather was old and they just really couldn't take care of her anymore. So she was sent back home to live with her mother and her grandparents. And my client came right about this time explaining to me that her daughter had returned. It was traumatic for everyone because she, for her, the child was like a child of rape. And for the child, it was like she didn't know her mother, but she had reconciled to it. She was a lovely person, and she had come to feel that her daughter was a victim and needed her mother's love, a mother's love. But then the abuser saw them, and she didn't lie about that. It was her child. And the abuser saw her, saw the child, who was almost 13, almost the same age as the mother when he raped her. And he decided that he was going to sue for his parental rights. And as unbelievable as that seems, it was doable. In fact, there are some states where there are certain crimes that if you commit, you can't get custody, but you have to have been convicted of them. And that's, you know, often most crimes that happen in terms of families, nobody's even arrested, let alone convicted. And so. And he was never convicted. Anyway, he filed and the judge thought that, you know, he had no real concerns about it. You know, he was ups. He was upset when I said the word rape in court. He was like, was he convicted? And no, he wasn't. Even though it was obviously statutory rape. She was 13. But anyway, I, in that case, I basically threatened. I basically made it clear to the judge that I was going to appeal his ruling if he did not, if he made a ruling that was. Gave this guy any kind of unsupervised custody at all. And I talk in that chapter about the importance of sort of standing up to judges, because I always tried to educate judges and make them afraid. I did my best to do those two things. And anyway, so he finally realized that I was determined. And although it wasn't clear for sure that I would win, I was determined that nobody. This was not going to happen. And my determination was such that the judge ended up just giving him, gave him like an hour or something like that once a week under the supervision of her pastor. And I was enraged about it, but she was sure that that would be safe for the child. And in fact, uh, he never pursued it. He wasn't interested in that. So it, so it was a happy ending. And she was such a lovely client. She and her daughter sent me letter every year on the anniversary of the hearing. So she's very memorable to me.
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah, you know, you know, you do this work, you talk about this. I mean, there's one point in the book where you talk about kind of being called out and threatened at a take back the night conference, you know, event. So what, what do you do? I guess, like your suggestions for people or in general, like, what do you do to take care of yourself, right. Mentally, emotionally when you're doing this kind of work? Right. For. For people who might want to practice that kind of law, for people who are involved in domestic violence work in any kind of way, shape or form. How'd you take care of yourself?
Meg Groth
You know, I might not be the best advisor on that because I just took the position. I just took the position that I was going to protect my client. And I know that I often was in danger. When I opened my office, there was at that time somebody who was absolutely threatening to kill me. I had to tell prospective secretaries who came and there was two that were, you know, I was ready to hire. But when I said, like, you know, this is happening, they understand. We decided they would rather be secretary to someone else. My person I hired and said like she was, you know, she didn't. She was all in. So we made a very good team. But I, you know, throughout, there were many. There were times when I didn't know. I remember one time going to court and I had arranged to have my client not go. But I really thought he. Because I really thought that he would kill her on steps. And I really didn't know if he would kill me, you know, but I, I just decided that, you know, I think I said it my book in one of the things that, you know, we have to live with ourselves whether we live or die. So I'm probably not the best for giving advice about that. But there are people who could give advice on that?
Rebecca Buchanan
So. So when you were writing this, did you. You say you have sort of a whole set of case files. Did, like. Did you just sort of read through those? Were you like, there are these certain ones that I do. You said it was sort of haphazard. But, like, was it, like, what kind of re. Yeah. What kind of research did you do to kind of, you know.
Meg Groth
Well, I've always been. I've always been a writer. I. I always have been a writer. And my. My sister reminded me that this was not my first memoir, that I had written one when I was eight. So. So that was just something that I felt comfortable doing. And it was helpful to me as a lawyer, because when I wrote briefs or when I was in court, I treated my cases like stories. I always treated them like stories. I thought rather than have. Most lawyers are very legalistic and everything, I would say, here's the story. This is a true story. This is what it is. And I found that that was very powerful and very successful to have people see that this is a living human thing. This is what's happening. And so I just thought, I'll write them up. But it's true that I did not really, because I thought I was going to write three, and maybe I will. I just kind of started by just picking cases that happened to come to mind that I thought that were happened during that period of time. So it really was not a recommended way, I suppose, for doing it, I think. I know maybe now I would pick other ones given, especially with the kinds of cases that maybe I didn't handle as much. I don't have in the book a case about this idea of women being accused of trying to alienate the child when the child says that he or she's been abused or when the parent says the other parent has abused. I don't have a case like that in the file, in the book. And there are. That's very, very prevalent today. And it did happen back then as well. So I'll do more next time.
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah, I mean, we could probably talk for a while, but I just want to. Like, my final kind of question is, is there anything that, like, the book is out now. People can get the book, but is there something you're working on right now or anything?
Meg Groth
Yes, I'm involved in this. I'm involved in this campaign. I'm involved in a campaign to improve custody laws with cadence law, and it has been successful so far in 10 states. Now, not all of them call it cadence law, because there's children being murdered in every state. So some of them have different children's names. But it's this group of this concept that should be added to factors that says that, you know, the most important thing is not that children have ongoing, consistent contact with both parents necessarily. You know, that's like an overriding belief in the law that it's important that it's in the best interest of children to have ongoing, consistent contact with both parents. And that is true when you have loving parents, but when you don't, if you have a person who is a molester for a parent, then no, it's not good to have ongoing, consistent contact. And we have to just look at who are these parents. And so the thing that's important is the safety of the child. Not that this preconceived idea about what is good for them. But we know first of all and foremost that the safety of the child is what is the most important thing. And then we can go from there and we look at what are the kinds of things that make you safe, and that's the way the factor should be. So I'm involved in a nationwide campaign about it because every state is different. And it's the let me see. The National Family Violence Law center at George Washington School of Law and the National Safe Parents Organization are in the forefront and just been going around agitating and trying to get legislators to care about this issue. So I think that's what my focus is at this time.
Rebecca Buchanan
Well, Meg, thank you so much for the work you do and thank you for talking with me on New Books Network about your memoir. Again, Meg Groff, who is the author of not if I Can Help it, thanks for being on New Books Network with me.
Meg Groth
Always my pleasure. Thank you so much.
Podcast Summary: New Books Network — Interview with Meg Groff on "Not If I Can Help It" (Rivertown Books, 2025)
Episode Overview
In this episode of New Books Network (aired November 12, 2025), host Rebecca Buchanan speaks with Meg Groff, veteran legal aid attorney and author of the memoir Not If I Can Help It. The conversation delves into Groff’s decades-long career representing survivors of domestic violence and the poor in family courts, the enduring systemic challenges facing clients and advocates, and her aim to ignite change and awareness through storytelling. Central themes include the realities of legal aid work, family and child custody law, and the personal toll and inspiration driving advocacy.
Complexity Beyond Courtroom Dramas:
Poverty and “Neglect”:
Lack of Representation: The absence of affordable legal counsel leaves poor clients extremely vulnerable.
The Case of the 13-year-old Rape Survivor (26:41–30:39)
For further information, Groff’s book and her legal insights provide not only moving personal accounts but also practical advice and a blueprint for reform—highly recommended for anyone concerned with justice, advocacy, and domestic violence law.