Dorota Zabłudowska
Judge since 2002, District Court in Gdańsk
PiS member of parliament and former communist party member
Stanisław Piotrowicz said that judges should serve the state. I believe quite the opposite: both judges and the entire state apparatus should serve the citizen. This is enshrined in the Constitution.
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I wanted to be a legal advisor because I had always been interested in business but at the time the profession was not yet open to everyone. Without friends and family, it was simply impossible and the only bar training to which you could get admitted on the basis of merit was judicial training. I got in but I still thought I would become a legal advisor. The court always intimidated me with its formalism, a kind of weight on your shoulders. During my apprenticeship, I could not wait to get away from all that monumental grandiosity. It was like a theatre or a prison. It was not until I got involved in the lives of real people that I started to like it.
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Often when people come to court I ask them about their expectations. How do they see things? What would they like to achieve in the proceedings? There is no such obligation. However, if a woman who has been abused by her husband or partner comes to court, for example, and it turns out that she lives with his mother, then the situation is complicated. The abuse is there for all to see and the family knows about it but I am also aware of the fact that if I send him to prison then the woman loses the roof over her head. He would probably deserve what he gets but the family will curse her and blame her for what happened. Not because he behaved badly but because she went to the police and reported him. And that is why I give her options. We can, for example, impose community service instead of prison. If he does not want to do community service then he will get a prison sentence but then it is his fault and it is a relief for her because she is no longer res-ponsible for what happened. Also, it gives the man a chance to repair what he has done to some extent. Women in this situation might then say: “I prefer this solution” or “I prefer that solution”. Of course, I do not have to agree with her or implement it but if it is in the bounds of the law, why not? I think dialogue with the parties is extremely important. It is important that people are able to come to some sort of understanding, that people talk to each other.
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I was recently given one of the greatest compliments of my life from a sound engineer who said: “you know what, you’re a cool judge because I wouldn’t be afraid to come to you,” he added, “because you smile at people”. I would like the court to be a place where people trust that they will be helped, that they can file an application online without any problems, that they can find out about a case without any problems, a place without this sprawling mass of red tape that makes the institution so difficult for people to deal with.
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The state is there to serve the citizen, to protect the citizen, to ensure their safety, to guarantee their freedoms and respect their rights. Dare I say that out of all the items on that list, I am not sure that any of them are being fulfilled at the moment despite our constitutional obligations. When the President recently said that LGBT are not people but rather it is an ideology, I also looked to the Constitution because it is an extremely useful tool when you wish to check what public authorities are doing wrong. And we also have Article 37 which says that all citizens are equal before the law, and the public authorities have a duty to respect this equality. However, at the moment, instead of protecting minorities, these minorities are being devalued, are told that they are inferior or that they do no exist at all. The state should be for the people, not the people for the state.
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I have a case in which it seems there has been sexual abuse, something could well have happened and in fact there seems to be clear indications that something actually did happen. The child comes in and wants to talk. We even have a child-friendly ‘blue’ interview room but I do not have a chance to make friends with the child or establish any kind of understanding or give the child a chance to talk to me because I only have one appointment because you are only entitled to one.
