APRI Highlights - Summer 2004

NCPCA Celebrates Successes and Welcomes New Leader

Mary Leary joins APRI after several years of prosecuting family violence and sexual assault cases in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and as an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C.

Victor Vieth joined the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse in 1997 and was appointed director of the program in September 1999. In June of this year he moved to Minnesota to direct APRI’s newest child abuse program—the National Child Protection Training Center on the campus of Winona State University.

During his tenure, the NCPCA recorded many accomplishments:

• We went from training less than 4,000 professionals a year to as many as 14,000.
  
  
• We completed the third edition of the manual Investigation and Prosecution of Child Abuse as well as numerous book chapters, law review articles and other scholarly works.
  
  
• We drafted seven ethical principles that served as our guidepost and that were replicated in a number of prosecutor offices and child advocacy centers across the country.
  
  
• We boldly announced the goal of establishing 25 state-run forensic interview training programs by the close of the decade, and then watched Finding Words flags unfurl in 11 states.
  
  
• We drafted and will soon publish a bold but practical plan to literally end child abuse in the United States over the course of a century.

Many of the men and women responsible for our accomplishments will continue to serve the cause of children through their work with the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse, under its new director, Mary Leary.