Director of Counseling Retires After Remarkable Career

Director of Counseling Retires After Remarkable Career

Peggy Luft counseled thousands of domestic violence survivors and advocated for systems to help them

Peggy’s Leading Role in the Movement

Peggy was instrumental in two landmark achievements.  The Illinois Domestic Violence Act of 1982 was the first.

“I realized the police departments and the court system was really failing victims,” said Peggy, “so, with like-minded community activists around town, we figured out there needed to be some legislative action.”

Peggy worked with a statewide coalition and successfully lobbied the Illinois state legislature to pass this act, which allowed victims of domestic violence to pursue orders of protection against their abusers.

Passing the law was an important step, but not enough.

“For two years, the court system didn’t do much of anything for victims,” explained Peggy, “so we put together a plan to create a specialized court to prosecute domestic violence cases.”

In 1984, thanks to Peggy and other likeminded leaders, the first domestic violence court in the nation was established, in downtown Chicago.

Today, at this court and at others in the Chicago area, domestic violence victims, advocates, and attorneys gather to seek justice.

Peggy at Life Span

Peggy was a counselor at a community organization in Uptown sponsored by Hull House before joining Life Span in 2002.

“Denice (Wolf Markham, Life Span’s Executive Director) asked me to join to develop the counseling program at Life Span as she had developed the legal program,” says Peggy.

So Peggy grew the counseling program, building out the Life Span vision of free legal and counseling services together in one place for victims of domestic violence.

From providing 16,000 hours of services to clients in 2002 to over 25,000 hours today, Life Span grew during Peggy’s tenure.

Beyond the numbers, Life Span’s quality of counseling grew under Peggy’s leadership; drawing on her years of experience with domestic violence survivors, she grew Life Span’s counseling program to serve children of victims, to serve clients in multiple languages.  She served as a mentor to staff as she built a strong counseling team.

Despite a lifetime of accomplishment, Peggy gives all the credit to her co-workers.  She also strongly believes in the strength of survivors.  “I had a client say to me once ‘You’ve saved thousands of people…’  And that’s really not true.  I haven’t saved anybody.  But I’ve helped many people save themselves.”