APRI Highlights - Summer 2002

National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse

Victor Vieth, Director

NCPCA’s five-day course, Investigation and Prosecution of Child Abuse: Equal Justice for Children, will be presented twice over the summer months—in Indianapolis, Indiana, the week of August 12-16, and in Lincoln, Nebraska the week of September 23-27. The comprehensive course provides investigators and prosecutors the skills necessary to effectively combat cases of child physical abuse, sexual abuse and neglect. No matter your experience or skill level, you will leave the course with new information and new strategies for effectively handling these cases. Topics addressed at the conferences will include:

• Dynamics of victimization and child development
• Interviewing child witnesses and preparing them for court
• Memory and suggestibility
• Opening statements and closing arguments
• Medical evidence in physical and sexual abuse
• The recanting victim and non-offending parent
• Jury selection
• Child abduction
• Pre-trial motions
• Cross-examination of defendants and character witnesses
• Use and misuse of expert witnesses
• Child hearsay evidence
• Ethics
• Confronting child abuse in rural communities
• Physical and scientific evidence in child abuse cases
• Computers and the sexual exploitation of children
• Juvenile sex offenders
• Family violence and child abuse

The conference will also include tracks on social service issues, forensics and abusive head trauma. This course fills up quickly so to ensure a spot, please register early. For a brochure or further information, please call us at (703) 549-4253 or send an e-mail to ncpca@ndaa-apri.org. Because we know that these cases are more successfully handled when investigated and prosecuted as part of a multi-disciplinary team, we offer a discount if you attend the conference with other members of your local multi-disciplinary team.

Former vice president and agriculture secretary Henry Wallace once noted “life is worth living if that life is worthily lived.” No profession is a higher calling than protecting the children of our nation. To this end, Investigation and Prosecution of Child Abuse: Equal Justice for Children provides the tools for the worthily lived life of a child protection professional.