The Office for Victims of Crime’s Legal Assistance for Crime Victims Initiative is collaborating with the National Crime Victim Law Institute to host a three-part webinar series designed to enhance the ability of attorneys to provide effective legal representation of child-victims regarding their rights in criminal cases. The series will be co-presented by NCVLI attorneys and mental health experts.

The first session will include an overview of effective representation of child-victims as well as the neurobiology of trauma and its unique impact on child-victims. Building on these lessons, presenters will preview some strategies to help facilitate effective communication with clients who are child-victims, which will be addressed in detail in the second webinar. Registering today will register you for this first webinar in the series.

Dates for the subsequent sessions will be released shortly. In the second session, presenters will detail concrete strategies for effectively communicating with and representing child-victims across the age spectrum. The final session will be a discussion, open to those who participated in the first two trainings, to further share ideas about how to better and more effectively represent child-victims. 

OVC’s Training and Technical Assistance Center (OVC TTAC) provides training to support professional development, enhance services to the community, and expand outreach to underserved victims of crime.

This webinar may be eligible for CLE Credit; check with you local bar association regarding requirements.

Register Here

Series Facilitator:
Meg Garvin, M.A., J.D.
Ms. Garvin is the executive director of the National Crime Victim Law Institute and a clinical professor of law at Lewis & Clark Law School. Ms. Garvin is recognized as a leading expert on victims’ rights, regularly testifying for Congress and state legislatures. In 2014, she was appointed to the Victims Advisory Group of the United States Sentencing Commission and during 2013-2014 she served on the Victim Services Subcommittee, of the Response Systems to Adult Sexual Assault Crime Panel of the United States Department of Defense. She has served as a Board member of Oregon’s Citizens’ Crime Commission and of the National Organization of Victim Assistance, and as an Advisory Board Member for the Red Lodge Legal Services Program. She has also served as co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section Victims Committee, co-chair of the Oregon Attorney General’s Crime Victims’ Rights Task Force, and as a member of the Legislative & Public Policy Committee of the Oregon Attorney General’s Sexual Assault Task Force. Prior to joining NCVLI, Ms. Garvin practiced law in Minneapolis, Minnesota and clerked for the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. She received her bachelor of arts degree from the University of Puget Sound, her master of arts degree in communication studies from the University of Iowa, and her J.D. from the University of Minnesota, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif.

Series Presenters:
Rebecca S.T. Khalil, J.D.
Ms. Khalil is a staff attorney with NCVLI where she directed its Safeguarding Child-Victims’ Rights Initiative from 2010-2012. At NCVLI, Ms. Khalil researches victims’ rights laws and policies across the United States, drafts amicus briefs, provides technical legal assistance to attorneys and advocates nationwide, and creates and presents online and in-person trainings and webinars on a variety of victims’ rights topics. In 2015, Ms. Khalil was nominated for the General George C. Marshall Public Leadership Award. Before joining NCVLI, Ms. Khalil was a litigation associate with Baker & Hostetler LLP in New York City, where she worked on a number of complex commercial and business litigations, including trade secret, securities, and contract cases, as well as white collar criminal defense, governmental and quasi-governmental matters, and corporate investigations. During law school, she was an extern with the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Jose, California. Ms. Khalil holds a B.A. in History from Seattle University and earned her J.D. from Stanford Law School, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif.

Jerry Yager, Psy.D.
Dr. Yager has more than 30 years of experience in the assessment and treatment of neglected, abused and traumatized children. He joined the Denver Children’s Advocacy Center (DCAC) in 2011 to pursue his passion of educating professionals who work with children about the impact of abuse and neglect on the developing brain. As director of training, Dr. Yager leads DCAC’s far-reaching initiative to provide training and consultation to the professionals who work with traumatized children in many different capacities—therapists, social workers, educators, foster/adoptive parents, law enforcement officers, investigators and victim advocates—to help them understand the often difficult behaviors of child abuse victims and learn to provide appropriate and effective interventions that ameliorate rather than exacerbate the trauma. Dr. Yager and his training team conduct workshops and provide individual and organizational consultation throughout Colorado and nationally. Dr. Yager is a ChildTrauma fellow with the ChildTrauma Academy. In addition to supporting DCAC’s therapists with consultation on challenging cases, he maintains a small clinical caseload. Before joining DCAC, Dr. Yager was the Executive Director of the Denver Children’s Home for nine years. He has served as president of the Colorado Association of Families and Children’s Agencies (CAFCA), was a member of the Governors Child Care Licensing Advisory Committee and Colorado’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Systems Redesign Committee, and also served on the Kempe Children’s Center Perpetration Prevention Study Group.

As part of the Legal Assistance for Crime Victims: An OVC Capacity Building Initiative, OVC TTAC and the National Crime Victim Law Institute are working collaboratively to expand the availability of pro bono and no-cost legal assistance for victims of crime nationally.  Part of that collaboration includes developing and delivering a series of webinar trainings.  This webinar is one in the series. Visit www.ovcttac.org to learn more. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in the webinar are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the Office for Victims of Crime or OVC TTAC.