To better assist victims’ rights attorneys and advocates working with child-victims of crime, NCVLI publishes Bulletins that are intended to provide critical analysis on important topics relating to the rights of child-victims.  Read the newest Bulletin, What Practitioners Need to Know About Traumatic Stress, on the Safeguarding Child-Victims’ Rights Initiative page.

In federal court in North Carolina, defendant, the mother of a minor victim, pled guilty to possessing and distributing images of her child’s sexual abuse and is awaiting sentencing. At the same time, defendant and the child-victim’s father are in state court custody proceedings regarding the child, where defendant moved to have the state custody court order a psychiatric evaluation of the child. NCVLI provided legal technical assistance to both the federal prosecutor and the child-victim’s attorney to oppose the psychiatric evaluation.

On June 9, 2020, NCVLI, along with 25 additional nonprofit organizations, participated as co-amici in the case of Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Eric Rogers. Led by the Women’s Law Project and AEquitas, these organizations joined in to ensure Pennsylvania’s Rape Shield Law protects all victims’ prior sexual history, specifically that it does not permit the introduction of evidence of a complainant’s criminal record for prostitution-related offenses.

You can help shield victims who would experience trauma by securing the use of alternate means of testifying before the accused.  In this training, we will discuss the standard articulated by the Supreme Court in Maryland v. Craig for allowing alternate testimony in the form of closed circuit television, and provide a general overview of the law so that you may be better positioned to seek testimonial protections for victims.