The Charleston Law Review and the Riley Institute present the 13th Annual Law & Society Symposium
Sexual Abuse and Sex Trafficking:
Protecting Children, Supporting Victims, and Seeking Justice
This year’s symposium will bring together leading experts in law, medicine, academia, and advocacy to discuss the complexities and nuance of sexual abuse and exploitation law. Speakers and panelists will navigate new developments in the law, procedural issues in criminal and civil cases, as well as robust conversations related to advocacy, reformation, and legislative efforts at a national and state level.
Friday, February 5, 2021
8:30 am to 5:30 pm
Virtual Broadcast
REGISTER HERE
Approved for 7.33 hours of CLE Credit
CLICK HERE TO VIEW/PRINT EVENT SCHEDULE
Questions? Email Jessica Carroll at jlcarroll@charlestonlaw.edu
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KEYNOTE SPEAKER
MARCI A. HAMILTON, JD
The Emergence of Children’s Civil Rights
Ms. Hamilton is the Founder, CEO, and Legal Director of CHILD USA, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit academic think tank dedicated to interdisciplinary, evidence-based research to improve laws and public policy to end child abuse and neglect. She is also the Fels Institute of Government Professor of Practice and a Resident Senior Fellow in the Program for Research on Religion at the University of Pennsylvania. Before moving to Penn, Professor Hamilton held the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University.
Prof. Hamilton is the leading expert on clergy sex abuse and child sex abuse statutes of limitation (“SOL”). She has been invited to testify and advise legislators in every state where significant SOL reform has occurred. She is the author of Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children (Cambridge University Press), which advocates for the elimination of child sex abuse statutes of limitations. She has filed countless pro bono amicus briefs for the protection of children at the United States Supreme Court and the state supreme courts. She is also the co-author of Children and the Law (Carolina Academic Press 2017).
DISTINGUISHED SPEAKERS

Kristen M. Gibbons Feden, JD
Presenting: Criminal Justice in the #MeToo Era: The Cosby Prosecution
Kristen is widely regarded as one of the Nation’s leading litigators in the field of sexual abuse. She has proven herself to be fearless when fighting for survivors against high profile offenders and large institutions. Christened by the New York Times as “The Prosecutor Who Stared Down Bill Cosby,” Kristen is internationally recognized as a leading litigator in the #MeToo Movement. Nationally acclaimed as a fierce litigator, Kristen has represented numerous sexual abuse survivors in their pursuit of civil justice and received a multitude of awards for her tireless work with the most vulnerable survivors, many of whom were in their darkest moments when they sought her out.

Elizabeth J. Letourneau, PhD
Presenting: Juvenile Registration is a Failed Policy that Must Go
Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau is a Professor in the Department of Mental Health, and Director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. For more than 30 years, she has developed, evaluated, and implemented policies and practices that aim to prevent the onset of sexual offending. Dr. Letourneau has led dozens of research projects resulting in more than 80 scientific publications. These publications establish an empirical basis for perpetration prevention efforts that work. In addition, Dr. Letourneau has helped develop and evaluate state and national sex crime policies. Her research on juvenile sex offender registration established the inefficacy and harmfulness of such policies and was influential in several U.S. state supreme court cases and in U.S. state legislatures that revised their registration policies. For this work, Dr. Letourneau was awarded the inaugural Faculty Practice Award in 2017 by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Check out her 2017 TED Talk
8:30 – 9:00 WELCOME AND OPENING REMARKS
9:00 – 9:40 KEYNOTE: THE EMERGENCE OF CHILDREN’S CIVIL RIGHTS
Presented by: Marci A. Hamilton
9:50 – 10:30 CHANGING LAWS TO SUPPORT SURVIVORS