Toward a Trauma-Informed Courtroom: Practices for Justice with Compassion

• Ceili Corey, Women and Gender Studies, University of Delaware

• Angela Hattery, Women and Gender Studies, University of Delaware

This paper focuses on the trauma-informed practices, or lack thereof, situated within the Protection from Abuse (PFA) hearings in Delaware’s New Castle County Family Court. While trauma-informed care is becoming more widely used across services situated within the Family Court system, the application within the courtroom is often symbolic rather than substantial. Drawing from a six-month process of observing PFA trials, this project examines how court actors either enforce or ignore core trauma-informed values such as emotional safety, procedural transparency, and survivor empowerment. Observations reveal that while some commissioners demonstrate clear empathy and make adjustments in their courtroom to make the trial comfortable for litigants, others rely on legal formality and efficiency in ways that can retraumatize survivors. Practices like failing to explain outcomes and restricting survivor testimony reinforce power imbalances and emotional harm. At the same time, practices such as pausing a hearing, validating a survivor’s trauma, and offering flexibility have meaningful impacts on fairness and safety. By focusing on how trauma-informed practices appear, or fall short, in real legal settings, this paper argues that trauma-informed courts require more than just training or policy recommendations; they need structural change and an unwavering commitment to centering survivor experience throughout the judicial process.