The Center for Child Policy Hits the Road in August with New Issues in Brief

The National Crimes Against Children Conference, held August 6th – 10th and sponsored by the Dallas Children’s Advocacy Center is in its 35th year. The conference continues to attract more than 5,000 professionals from law enforcement, child advocacy and allied fields to spend 5 days in Dallas, filled with keynote addresses, workshops and exhibits. Dr. Janet Rosenzweig, a Senior Policy Analyst at the Child Maltreatment Policy Resource Center was invited to present two workshops, ‘What everyone Working in Child Sexual Abuse Should Know about Human Sexuality’ and ‘Beyond Pedophilia: Preventing the Risks Ephebophiles and Hebephiles Present to Older Kids and Teens’. Given the release of our Issues in Brief publication last month, Dr. Rosenzweig modified her second presentation to include a section summarizing our research into the legal and social issues that converged to make juvenile registration mandatory. She presented the clinical research of the past twenty years showing the treatability of juveniles with problematic or illegal sexual behaviors; the low recidivism rates; and the harm juvenile registration has been proven to cause to individuals, families, and communities. Rosenzweig presented this workshop twice, reaching almost 1,000 conference participants. Copies of our brief were very well received!

The National Sexual Assault Conference, sponsored by ValorUS, was held in San Francisco, CA August 22nd - 24th. On August 23rd, Dr. Rosenzweig presented a summary of our findings on the clinical, social, and legal issues surrounding the issue of juveniles on sex offender registries to a very engaged audience! The audience skewed younger than that of Dallas, and many of the professionals in the audience were particularly struck by the description of the social context in the 1990’s and early 2000’s which led to the federal mandate for states to place juveniles on registries.

Understanding how we got here is a key step in working to modify the policy; to that end, Rosenzweig left the audience with a list of ‘calls to action’ to facilitate change in their communities. You can find that list on page 6 of the brief.

If interested in a conference keynote, workshop, or presentation in your community, please contact info@cmprc.org