Her Why

Kharimah Dessow knew she wanted to help people. She just didn’t know quite how yet. A single mother of three and survivor of domestic violence, Dessow was searching for a way to support those experiencing the same trauma she did, knowing the stigma that surrounded it. 

Then a friend who was in law school, Carolyn Sutherland, introduced the idea of doing so as a lawyer.

“I don’t want to do that, I want to help people,” Dessow remembers responding, not knowing her friend was describing public interest law. Sutherland kept pushing, and Dessow finally came around. She enrolled at Joseph F. Rice School of Law to focus on children’s law and explore the factors that can affect families.

“When you’re looking at families who are dealing with trauma and dealing with abuse, a lot of those things come with other issues,” Dessow says. “It was interesting to me to learn more about that and see how, from a legal perspective, things could be approached from a different way, whether it be legislatively or how we treat people who come into courtrooms. 

“Are there other services that you could offer to survivors? The emphasis being on holistic services you could provide to both survivors and perpetrators, so it prevents the cyclical effect. Because so often it is, both on the side of the survivor and the perpetrator of violence.” 

During this time Dessow identified “heroes and sheroes” she wanted to connect with. One was Patricia Ravenhorst, now general counsel for the South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. 

“When I ended my time with legal services, I met her working at a small general practice firm in Sumter County,” Dessow says. “She, at the time, was working with the local YWCA and seeking to connect that agency with an attorney who was trauma-informed and could help survivors.”

It was a great fit. She provided legal safety planning to victims and their families who were served by the YWCA. These sessions would help them seek orders of protection, understand their options for divorce or generally hammer out a plan for their safety. After a year, Dessow joined the coalition as a staff attorney. 

“That was a very new experience and so interesting, so educational for me, because coalition work is a completely different concept that I’d never been exposed to before,” she says. Dessow was a technical legal assistant to domestic violence and sexual assault agencies throughout the state, and presented CLEs and other trainings on how best to work with survivors from a trauma-informed perspective. 

“There’s still a need for survivors to really feel centered and heard,” Dessow says, “and if it’s not done well, you risk retraumatizing the victim. You’re bringing additional harm. Even though they’re a survivor, and even though you have a judgment about what they should or shouldn’t do, or decisions they should make, they still have that right to autonomy that every other person has about their life.”

Still, Dessow felt she could do more, so she decided to make a shift into opening her own practice and prosecuting domestic violence cases for Richland County. “I think there’s value in my lived experience, and I really did miss the ability to be able to directly serve and to advocate and be able to really help people tell their story,” she says. 

It’s why Dessow founded The Paraclete Law Center, focused on domestic litigation. “Everyone who comes in is in the worst stage of their life. I often refer out to different counsels and other support systems—and make certain that you have friends and family who you’re able to lean on,” she says. “But you add in a layer of trauma and add in safety concerns, add in a sexual assault to that, that’s not something that anyone is prepared for. We want to be able to help them move forward in confidence and move on to the next stage of their lives.” 

Dessow hopes to continue expanding the law center. She recently hired a second attorney—her daughter, Lauren Waklatsi. “She was a middle schooler when I was in law school,” Dessow says, remembering how Lauren would listen in while she played an audio version of Understanding Criminal Law during car rides to school.  

Looking back now, Dessow knows law was the right path. 

“The work that I do is challenging, but it’s very rewarding. I know my why,” she says. “It’s important that you have people who really care, who understand that the work we’re doing plays one of the largest roles in our society in terms of helping families move on and parent in safe and healthy ways, making certain that children have the tools and resources and the examples that they need to thrive and become productive citizens.”