JUDITH ROBERTS:
Recovering Hope
By Kylie Blanchard, Clearwater Communications
“I get a front row seat to miracles every day. We have a lot of people
who have transformed their lives,” says Judith Roberts, founder of
Bismarck’s Hope Manor sober living homes.
It was Roberts own path of alcoholism and recovery, as well as
witnessing the impact of alcoholism and addiction in her work as
a criminal defense attorney, that led her to opening Hope Manor
and providing a safe place for women and men to discover hope and
success in recovery. “I am a recovering alcoholic myself, and one of
the biggest aspects of recovery is helping others,” she says. “You don’t
get to keep it unless you give it away.”
Law to Leader
Roberts was a teacher at Bismarck High School when she discovered
her love for law, and teaching courses that included criminal law,
Native American studies, and government piqued her interest in
attending law school. “I always wanted to go on to law school, but I
just didn’t think it was an option,” she notes. “But there was a point
that I thought ‘I just need to act.’”
She took the LSAT, began applying to law schools, and started at the
University of North Dakota (UND) School of Law in 2001, with the
intention of focusing her studies on policy making. “I didn’t intend
to practice law, but I got into law school and discovered UND’s great
Indian Law Program.”
This led to her first job with Dakota Plains Legal Services in South
Dakota, where she worked as a defense attorney on the Standing
Rock, Rosebud, and Pine Ridge Reservations, practicing in tribal,
state, and federal court. However, she was also battling her own
alcoholism. “I didn’t have my first drink until I was 28, but in law
school, it crossed that line,” says Roberts.
In 2009, she got into recovery, and in 2012, she moved back to North
Dakota to work as a public defender. “I provided public defense for
all of McKenzie County during the height of the oil boom. I was
inundated with clients and work,” she continues. “What I was seeing
was, had it not been for drugs or alcohol, 95 percent of my clients
would not have been in the court system.”
She says the county prosecutor at that time, Ari Johnson, was very
willing to work on plea agreements for her clients. Often, if the client
pled guilty and went to a facility to get help, it would count as time
served. “My clients desperately wanted help. Locking up someone
with alcoholism doesn’t help; it’s a revolving door,” Roberts says.
“We would start looking for a place for a client and every place was
booked or, if there was room, they wouldn’t have the right insurance
and couldn’t go.”
In 2013, Roberts attended a conference and heard a speaker named
Karl Moris talking about sober living homes in southern California.
“We had nothing like this in North Dakota,” she says.
After expressing interest in learning more about the program, she
was invited to California to see the homes in action. “I stayed in
the women’s home and, as a lawyer, I researched and interviewed
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