Paris, Tenn.–Assistant District Attorney Rebecca Griffey and paralegal Debbie Madden-Gray were presented with the 2017 Impact Award in Nashville by the Tennessee Commissioner for the Department of Human Services.
The award was presented to the two in recognition of them going above and beyond their normal job responsibilities to serve clients of the District Attorney’s Office in the 24th Judicial District. Outreach projects organized by Griffey and Madden-Gray include expungement clinics, teen pregnancy prevention, unemployment programs for defendants, and “No Blue Christmas”.
“Debbie and I both have a passion for helping people, and we both recognize that the people we encounter in our cases have underlying issues that resulted in them being in the situation they are in and ending up in court,” said Griffey. “If we can help solve the underlying issue, then hopefully we can prevent the same legal problems from reoccurring.” One issue that commonly results in individuals facing legal problems in court is unemployment. Both Griffey and Madden-Gray actively work on an ongoing basis to help defendants find and acquire jobs with felony-friendly employers.
Another issue, which can result in legal cases, is that of teen pregnancy. Griffey said, “Indeed, less than half of mothers who have a child before they are 18 years old graduate from high school, and less than 2 percent have a college degree by age 30, which impacts their ability to obtain employment and can, in turn, result in legal problems. The sons of teen parents are 13 percent more likely to end up in prison. Additionally, children born to teen parents are twice as likely to suffer abuse and neglect compared to children born to adult parents.”
Griffey said, “Both unemployment and abuse and neglect lead to the cases we see in court”. To tackle the issue of teen pregnancy, Griffey and Madden-Gray go into school systems in the district to present the “What’s the Rush?” program to middle and high school students.
“We educate teens about the financial consequences of having children by comparing the costs of purchasing necessary essentials for a child such as diapers and formula to the cost of social expenditures such as movie tickets, which typically are eliminated from the life of a teen parent,” said Griffey. The “What’s the Rush?” program also educates teens about child support – how child support is calculated and how it is collected. For example, the legal ramifications of not paying child support, including, but not limited to, jail sentences and driver’s license revocation, are explained to the teen program participants.
Griffey also sits on the Henry County Teen Pregnancy Prevention Council.
Another outreach activity that Griffey and Madden-Gray started last year, and are in the process of organizing again this year is the “No Blue Christmas” event whereby Christmas gifts are distributed to children from low-income or impoverished families, who are the subject of pending cases in the District Attorney’s Child Support Division and otherwise would receive very little or perhaps nothing at all for Christmas. “In the course of starting this annual event, we thought it would be great to incorporate non-custodial fathers, who want to build a relationship with their children or are active in their children’s lives and cannot afford to purchase a Christmas gift,” said Griffey. “We have cases with some fathers, who are struggling financially to comply with child support court orders, and, if they do manage to pay their monthly child support obligation, they don’t have enough money left over to buy a Christmas present for their child. This can sometimes lead to fathers shying away from their children around holiday times like Christmas when they do not have a gift or present to offer. It can also sometimes lead to children wondering if their father loves them if they don’t receive a Christmas present from him,” continued Griffey.
Instead of just distributing gifts directly to children in need, the District Attorney’s Office invites selected non-custodial fathers to attend a Christmas party with their children. Gifts are set up for the fathers to pick out for their child and wrap themselves, and, while the fathers are selecting and wrapping a gift, the children are entertained in a separate area with cookie-decorating and ornament-making activities, cupcakes and hot cocoa and even a surprise visit from Santa! The fathers present their gifts to their children onsite at the event.
Another practice that Griffey started this year is “Saturday Settlement Day”. She opens the office one Saturday each month to allow child support defendants, who are employed, to come to the office to resolve their case. “The last thing we want to do is to jeopardize someone’s job by requiring them to come to court in the middle of the work week. Without a job, they cannot support their children and it becomes a vicious cycle that does not benefit anyone involved,” said Griffey. Employers have even reached out to thank Griffey inasmuch as it minimizes disruption of their business when their employees do not miss work to attend court.
Other initiatives organized this year by Griffey and Madden-Gray included an expungement clinic and a veterans clinic. The expungement clinic assisted individuals in clearing old convictions from their record so they could better position themselves to get jobs, financially support their children and become productive members of the community. The veterans clinic focused on not only resolving legal issues confronting veterans in the community, but also making resources available to them to resolve underlying issues that led to their legal problems such as PTSD, unemployment and homelessness.
From left in photo: Tennessee DHS Commissioner Danielle Barnes, Paralegal Debbie Madden-Gray, DHS Assistant Commissioner Charles Bryson and Assistant District Attorney Rebecca Griffey.
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