NCVLI/NAVRA Update: Specialized Training in Colorado on Serving Child-Victims
Twenty six lawyers, advocates, and law students from across the country signed up to attend Child-Victims: Providing Effective Rights Enforcement Representation at the University of Colorado in Boulder on May 31-June 1, 2012.
The multi-disciplinary group of attendees learned the basics of asserting and enforcing victims’ rights in criminal proceedings and focused extensively on the basic skills that can help them put their knowledge into practice after the training. The practical aspects of representing child-victims were emphasized, including how to file a Notice of Appearance and preserve a child-victim’s rights at the point an attorney enters a case, how to protect a child-victim’s identity and privacy rights in the context of court proceedings and subpoenas, how to make a successful showing of necessity for testimonial accommodations that can help protect child-victims, how to prepare a child-victim for testimony and being heard, how to seek appropriate protective orders and release conditions, when and how to start thinking about requesting restitution, and how to address and avoid some of the ethical issues that might arise when representing a child-victim of crime.
Dr. Jerry Yager, the Director of Training & Education at the Denver Children’s Advocacy Center, assisted participants in learning about children’s cognitive development and how trauma may impact a child-victim, and the group engaged in several interactive small-group and individual activities that provided an opportunity to practice some of the practical techniques learned during the course of the session.
In addition to sessions led by Meg Garvin, NCVLI’s Executive Director, and Rebecca Khalil, Director of NCVLI’s Safeguarding Child-Victims’ Rights Initiative, participants had the opportunity to learn from Lisa Teesch-Maguire, the Legal Director of the Rocky Mountain Victim Law Center, and Colene Flynn Robinson, an Associate Clinical Professor of Law (Juvenile and Family Law) at the University of Colorado Law School. Maggie Conboy, a Denver Deputy District Attorney, and Dr. Jane Cleveland, a Clinical and Forensic Psychologist, joined Lisa Teesch-Maguire in a panel discussion on the challenges and benefits of multi-disciplinary collaboration in the representation of child-victims in criminal proceedings.
NCVLI will be offering this two-day training once more on August 1-2, 2012 at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in Alexandria, Virginia. Click here for more information about NCVLI’s 2012 training opportunities.
