Honoring: Ellen Domph, Deborah Tuerkheimer, Louis Fogel, and the Goodman Theatre

Family Innocence Benefit

Sunday, September 21, 2014

The Family Defense Center’s

To Protect Children, Defend Families

Welcome to the Family Innocence Benefit for the Family Defense Center!

The Family Defense Center has so much to celebrate this year, and we thank you for joining us in the celebration. This year’s honorees demonstrate the variety of avenues through which we can work to advance a single cause: protecting children by defending families. Our honorees have made contributions in the realms of direct legal representation and advocacy, legal scholarship, Board and committee involvement, pro bono representation, and theatre. Through these diverse avenues, each honoree has notably joined our effort to promote child welfare by protecting and defending families.

Our 2014 Family Defender, Attorney Ellen Domph, exemplifies the highest ideals of the legal profession. Her tireless, passionate and highly skilled defense of families has made it possible for loving parents to protect their right to raise their own children without the unjust intervention of the State. In focusing on family innocence this year, Ms. Domph’s exemplary work as lead trial counsel in the celebrated In re: Yohan K. case led to a landmark appellate victory, one that we celebrate tonight.

Our 2014 Family Defense Scholar, Professor Deborah Tuerkheimer, is an outstanding example of the difference legal scholarship can make in giving voice to the marginalized. As Prof. Tuerkheimer discovered the widespread injustice and error in so many “Shaken Baby Syndrome” prosecutions, her passion for truth inspired her to dig deeper, culminating in the publication of her book, Flawed Convictions: Shaken Baby Syndrome and the Inertia of Justice. Now widely recognized as the leading academic legal scholar on the topic, Prof. Tuerkheimer’s work has helped exonerate wrongly accused families and shaped public discourse.

This year, the Family Defense Center also honors a dear friend and dedicated supporter of our mission: Louis Fogel. Mr. Fogel’s professional achievements and community service commitments speak for themselves: he has supported the FDC and worked to defend families as a Board member, committee chair, and individual pro bono attorney, as well as playing a key role in growing and developing FDC’s pro bono program. Finally, we honor Goodman Theatre for promoting community awareness of the child welfare system through the production of the play Luna Gale. Goodman Theatre demonstrates the positive role that excellent theatre can play, not only educating the public but even shaping public opinion for the better.

The Family Defense Center was founded in 2005. In less than a decade, the Center has become one of the most powerful protectors of children and defenders of families in Illinois. The Center has been extremely fortunate to have partners in its work, including our stellar honorees. We count each of you here today as a partner in this incredibly important work. We are honored to co-chair this year’s benefit and we hope you enjoy the evening. Thank you for your support of the Family Defense Center. Together we can advance justice in the child welfare system and achieve even greater future victories for children and families.

Daniel Edelman & Fran Kravitz Tom & Mary Broderick

1

Cocktail Reception and Award Ceremony

4:00–5:00 p.m. Reception

Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres

Silent auction including original pieces by painter and muralist Alejandro Romero

Entertainment by pianist William Wallin

5:15–5:45 p.m. Program and Award Ceremony

Community and Professional Service Award Louis Fogel

Community Awareness Award Goodman Theatre

Family Defense Scholar Award Professor Deborah Tuerkheimer

Family Defender Award Ellen Domph

5:45–6:15 p.m. iPad Raffle, Live Auction and Fund-A-Need

Policy Advocacy Fund Jim Miller, Auctioneer

6:15–6:45 p.m. Silent Auction

6:15 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Cocktails, Dessert, Coffee

7:30 p.m. Benefit Conclusion

2

Dear Friends of the Family Defense Center,

We have had a spectacular year at the Family Defense Center and we have so much to celebrate as we look back on our recent work defending innocent families. Even so, more than a few people have wondered out loud, “why are we focusing on such serious topics as wrongful convictions and wrongful separation of families accused of shaken baby syndrome at a festive annual benefit?”

The reason is simple: we are proud of our work to exonerate wrongly accused family members, including work since 2013 in the very challenging area of family defense of parents accused of so-called “shaken baby syndrome." We’re also proud to have been able to bring together so many people who have dedicated themselves to the cause of justice in this area for decades. This work is both complex and important. We know of no better way to prove that point than by holding a party that recognizes the huge contributions of so many people to that work, starting with our two honorees Ellen Domph, our 2014 Family Defender, and Deborah Tuerkheimer, our 2014 Family Defense Scholar.

At the same time, we want to recognize the contributions of people who have helped build a community of support for the Family Defense Center and its mission. That’s why we are celebrating the outstanding contribution of Louis Fogel as both an excellent member of our Board of Directors and stellar contributor to the success of our highly regarded Pro Bono Legal Services Program. It is also why we celebrate and congratulate the Goodman Theatre for its work this winter in giving public attention to the treatment of families in the child welfare system.

We always hope that our friends and guests come away from our benefit more than just well fed and entertained. An event like our benefit is meant to be more than a party—it’s a networking opportunity for everyone who believes in our motto, “To protect children, defend families." It is also a chance, we hope, to get inspired for the work that remains ahead of us.

Please join with me in the hearty congratulations we are giving to our honorees. I look forward to working with you on the mission we share: advocating justice for families in the child welfare system.

Diane L. Redleaf Founder and Executive Director

Thank you and I hope you enjoy tonight’s program!

September 21, 2014

3

Family Defense Center

Family Innocence Benefit Program Book

Table of Contents

Event Co-Chairs: Daniel Edelman and Fran Kravitz; Mary and Tom Broderick ...............................................................................4

Honorary Co-Chairs: Dorothy Roberts, Christopher Sullivan, Carolyn Kubitschek, Karl Dennis, and Anita Weinberg .................................5

Mistress of Ceremonies: Laura Washington .........................................................8

Meet this Evening’s Artists: William Wallin, Pianist and Alejandro Romero, Painter ..............................9

Community and Professional Service Recognition: Louis Fogel ........................10

Community Awareness Award: Goodman Theatre ............................................14

Meet Family Defender Ellen Domph .................................................................16

Meet Family Defense Scholar Deborah Tuerkheimer ........................................24

Flawed Convictions: Review by George Barry of Prof. Tuerkheimer's book ........30

Why Family Defenders Care About SBS Innocence ..........................................35

The FDC's Recent Work Exonerating Innocent Family Members in Medically

Complex Cases ...........................................................................................36

Wisconsin Innocence Project Leading National Efforts to Expose Flaws

in the SBS/AHT Hypothesis.......................................................................38

Tributes to Our Honorees and Congratulations from our Supporters .....................................................................................39

Acknowledgements: Foundations for Major Annual Support ............................52

Acknowledgements: Family Defense Center Supporters and Event Sponsors .....52

Acknowledgements: Auction Donors .................................................................53

Acknowledgements: Board of Directors .............................................................54

Acknowledgements: Benefit Hosts, Planning Committee, Volunteers ...............55

Family Defense Center Staff ..............................................................................55

4

Event Co-Chairs: Daniel Edelman and Fran Kravitz; Mary and Tom Broderick

Daniel eDelman anD Fran Kravitz: Daniel Edelman is a Partner at Edelman, Combs, Latturner, & Goodwin, L.L.C. He is a 1976 graduate, with Honors, from the University of Chicago Law School. He received his B.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago, with Honors, in 1973. At Edelman, Combs, Latturner & Goodwin, he leads complex consumer litigation, with specific focus on class action lawsuits. With over twenty published works, Dan is a widely recognized scholar in his field, one who is frequently asked to testify in front of appropriate committees and organizations, including the Federal Trade Commission and the Illinois General Assembly. Dan is also very active in the legal community, including as an early and very effective supporter of the mission of the Family Defense Center.

Fran Kravitz is a Career Consultant with the American Chemical Society. She received her B.S. in Biology from the Northern Illinois University in 1976, and went on to receive her Masters of Science degree in Chemistry from Roosevelt University in 1988. Her life is full of public and professional service, the most recent of which was with the American Chemical Society, a congressional group that represents chemists all across the United States. She is active in West Suburban Temple Har Zion. She and Dan live in St. Charles, Illinois and are the proud parents of one son.

mary anD tom BroDericK: Mary Broderick is the founder and President of Clearview Research, a marketing research firm based in Rosemont, Illinois, with a branch office in Orlando, Florida. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a B.S. in Marketing. Outside of her work with Clearview Research, Mary has been involved with the Family Defense Center almost since its inception. She served as the President of the Board of Directors between 2007 and 2009. She has continued to coordinate the FDC’s auction at its annual benefits since 2009. In 2014, her work was instrumental in responding successfully to S.B. 2798, a bill that would have had the legislative effect of overturning the FDC's landmark victory in In re Yohan K. A vigilant advocate for parents who are wrongly accused in head injury cases, Ms. Broderick agreed to co-chair this year’s event due to her unsurpassed

5

commitment to justice for families in these types of cases. Though never formally accused of abuse or neglect, in 2003, Ms. Broderick’s own family was torn apart for 43 days. This tragic separation occurred after Ryan, at age four months, was purported to have a chronic subdural hematoma, allegedly due to shaking, but which was later shown not to have been present at all.

Tom Broderick, husband of Mary Broderick, is a park supervisor at Brooks Park with the Chicago Park District where he manages a wide range of programs for children and families. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Parks and Recreation at Western Illinois University in 1992. Tom and Mary live with their three children in northwest Chicago and they are active in their children’s school, St. Thecla. The are very proud volleyball, basketball, and soccer parents.

Honorary Co-Chairs: Dorothy Roberts, Christopher Sullivan, Carolyn Kubitschek, Karl Dennis, and Anita Weinberg

Dorothy roBerts, Ph.D. is the University of Pennsylvania’s fourteenth Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor. An acclaimed scholar of race, gender and the law, she is also the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology. Her appointment at Penn is shared between the School of Law where she is the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, and the Department of Sociology in the School of Arts and Sciences. A prolific writer and researcher, she is the author or co-author of several books and has published over 70 articles and essays in books and journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal and the Stanford Law Review. Dorothy has done pioneering research in the areas of race, class and gender, highlighting especially the ways in which social policy is biased against poor, minority pregnant women and mothers. She is one of the nation’s foremost academic legal scholars on issues regarding the child welfare system and is the award-winning author of Shattered Bonds, The Color of Child Welfare. Dorothy is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School and serves as one of the Family Defense Center’s Champion Board Members. She is also the academic sponsor for the organization’s Mothers’ Defense Project. Dorothy was the Family Defense Center’s honoree for the 2009 Family Defender Award at its first annual benefit.

6

carolyn KuBitscheK’s precedent-setting legal work is a major reason that there is a Family Defense Center. Her brilliant and winning legal theories in the 1994 case Valmonte v. Bane (challenging child abuse registries and the lack of due process in the state of New York) were instrumental to our victory in the Illinois class action suit Dupuy v. Samuels. Dupuy, started in 1997, took 13 years to conclude and resulted in sweeping changes in the child protection investigations and appeal system in Illinois. Carolyn’s 2004 victory in the New York Court of Appeals in Nicholson v. Scoppetta set the precedent that domestic violence victims possess constitutional rights to care for their children. Carolyn is the only lawyer to argue before the Supreme Court on behalf of children and family rights in a child abuse investigation in the past 21 years, as she did in March 2011 in Camreta/Alford v. Greene. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, during the oral argument in Camreta, prefaced one of his questions to her with the observation, “You are well-versed in this area of law.”

Carolyn was a music major at Oberlin and is an accomplished pianist. After graduating from the University of Chicago Law School, she met her now-husband and law partner David Lansner when she worked at Mobilization for Youth (MFY) Legal Services. They formed their own law firm 15 years later, Lansner & Kubitschek. Carolyn was a clinical law professor at Hofstra University from 1985-1990, and has been an adjunct professor at Cardozo Law School since 2003. In August 2013, Ms. Kubitschek became Of Counsel to the FDC and appeared on our behalf in the Pennsylvania case D.M. v. Berks. Carolyn was the Family Defense Center’s honoree for the 2011 Family Defender Award.

christoPher sullivan, m.D. is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon who directs the Pediatric Orthopedics and Scoliosis Program at the University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital. He joined the surgery faculty at the University of Chicago in 1989, following residencies and further training in internal medicine, pediatric orthopedics and general orthopedics in Texas, Illinois and California.

Chris attended college at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and attended medical school at UCLA while remaining on active duty. While at UCLA, he also earned a Master’s Degree in public health, focusing on epidemiology.

An outstanding teacher and clinician, Chris has developed an expertise in child abuse and bone fractures through research, writing, and expert testimony in juvenile court and DCFS proceedings. Courts have frequently relied on his testimony, finding his opinions more persuasive than the contrary testimony of other child abuse specialists in several Center cases. Among these cases is In re Yohan K., a recent precedential appellate court decision in which Chris, along with Dr. David Frim of Comer Children’s Hospital and Dr. Patrick Barnes of Stanford University, were found to have presented persuasive testimony that Yohan’s medical conditions caused his injuries, and the “constellation of injuries” present did not provide sufficient evidence of non-accidental trauma. Chris was the Family Defense Center’s honoree for the 2010 Family Defender Award.

7

Karl Dennis is a youth worker, a teacher, and a cultivator of strengths. His profound reputation is based on a fundamental principle which he brought to life and seeded; that children can best be served in their families, in their communities; that the assets and strengths of their situation are best known to those closest to the child. He retired as the Executive Director of Kaleidoscope, Inc., a non-profit community-based childcare agency in Chicago, where he provided leadership and vision for 27 years. Under Karl’s direction, Kaleidoscope became nationally recognized as one of the top five child serving agencies in the country. He is one of the country’s leading experts and pioneers of community-based care for the “hardest to serve children and families,” including WrapAround services, therapeutic foster care, pediatric AIDS care, independent living and long-term intensive family preservation services. He has helped orchestrate many state and private initiatives to return children from out-of-state placements, and has provided direct services to thousands of children and their families.

Karl’s first book, Everything is Normal Until Proved Otherwise, was written in collaboration with Dr. Ira Lourie, a noted child psychiatrist. The book is a series of stories about the children and families that Karl has worked with over the years coupled with commentary by Dr. Lourie. Written for parents and professionals, the book provides WrapAround guidance on the effectiveness of the process when people use creativity and compassion in the delivery of services. Karl was the Family Defense Center's 2012 Family Defender honoree.

anita WeinBerg, J.D., M.S.W., one of the Family Defense Center’s founding board members, has been a clinical law professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law since 1998. Prof. Weinberg established and directs Loyola’s innovative Legislation and Policy Clinic and the Policy Institute within the Civitas ChildLaw Center. She is also the Director of the Lead Safe Housing Initiatives. Prior to joining the faculty at Loyola, she was the policy director for the DCFS Office of the Inspector General; she worked for several years with the Children’s Rights Project of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago; and she represented children at the Office of the Cook County Public Guardian. She is a graduate of Columbia University School of Social Work and Loyola University Chicago School of Law. A gifted policy advocate and teacher, Prof. Weinberg has led countless major child welfare policy and education initiatives to protect family rights in the child welfare system. Anita was the Family Defense Center's 2013 Family Defender honoree.

8

laura Washington has been an award-winning columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times since 2001. She is also a political analyst for WLS-TV, the ABC-owned station in Chicago. She is a regular commentator on National Public Radio and Chicago Public Radio and previously wrote a column for the Chicago Tribune.

In 2010, she served as President of the Woods Fund following many years of service on the board of the Fund. From 2003 to 2009, she served as the Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor at DePaul University. She edited The Chicago Reporter, a nationally recognized investigative monthly specializing in racial issues and urban affairs, from 1990 to 2001, and also served as its publisher from 1994 to 2001. From 1987 to 1990, she was a producer for the

investigative unit at CBS-2/Chicago. In 1985, Ms. Washington was appointed deputy press secretary to Mayor Harold Washington (no relation), Chicago’s first black mayor.

Ms. Washington has been quoted in Time and Newsweek magazines, The New York Times, and appeared on NBC Nightly News and The Lehrer News Hour. She has received more than two dozen local and national awards for her work, including two Chicago Emmys, the Peter Lisagor Award, the Studs Terkel Award for Community Journalism and the Ohio State Award for broadcast journalism. Newsweek magazine named her one of the nation’s “100 People to Watch” in the 21st Century. Newsweek said: “her style of investigative journalism has made (the Reporter) a powerful and award-winning voice.” In 1999, the Chicago Community Trust awarded her a Community Service Fellowship “for exemplary service, commitment and leadership in individuals from the nonprofit sector.” In addition to her community service for the Woods Fund of Chicago, she has been the board secretary for The Field Museum and has chaired the board of the Neighborhood Writing Alliance.

Ms. Washington earned bachelor and master degrees in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she has also taught and lectured.

Ms. Washington has been the Mistress of Ceremonies at each and every Family Defense Center benefit, returning by acclamation. We are very grateful for her leadership in making our program meaningful and memorable.

Mistress of Ceremonies: Laura Washington

9

Pianist William Wallin is a retired attorney who worked in many offices for the State of Illinois, beginning with the Attorney General’s Office. He then focused his efforts on programs providing rehabilitation for disabled workers and that provided services to make it possible for disabled persons to remain in their homes. He returned to the piano after retiring; he had studied for about ten years as a child. He plays occasionally for his church and other organizations. He currently studies with Dr. Svetlana Belsky (www.svetlanabelsky.com), director of piano studies at the University of Chicago. He also regularly attends Sonata, an adult piano camp in Old Bennington, Vermont (www.sonatina.com).

Meet this Evening’s Artists

William Wallin

No artist captures human emotion better than Alejandro Romero, whose vibrant artwork graces our invitation. Mr. Romero has generously donated his work for our invitation and for tonight’s auction.

Alejandro Romero, one of the best-known Hispanic visual artists in the United States, was born and educated in Mexico. He moved to Chicago in 1975 and has adorned our city with murals, posters, and conventional paintings. Mr. Romero’s work can also be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Museum of Mexican Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as the Museum of Modern Latin American Art in Washington, D.C., the Museum of the Print in Mexico City, and the Hermitage in Leningrad, Russia.

Alejandro Romero

10

Louis Fogel, Community and Professional Service Recognition

It isn’t every day that the Family Defense Center honors a person who holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry as well as a law degree and who spends most of his professional attention on intellectual property litigation. Before describing how a patent litigator like Louis Fogel came to deserve the Family Defense Center’s special recognition, however, it is worth giving Louis some credit for his educational achievements and accomplishments in his “day job.”

Louis grew up in Minneapolis, and stayed in Minnesota for college, receiving a B.A. in Chemistry, with Honors, from Hamline University in 1994. He earned a Master of Science Degree in Chemistry, in 1997, from the University of Wisconsin and went on to get his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 2000. Louis stayed at the University of Chicago to earn a second graduate degree, a Juris Doctor degree, from the University of Chicago Law School in 2003.

After completing law school, Louis began his legal career in intellectual property litigation at Sidley Austin, then joined Ropes & Gray’s Chicago office in January of 2010. In April of 2014, Louis became a partner at Jenner & Block. In all of these positions with leading Chicago law firms, Louis has seen patent cases through all stages of litigation, in technology areas including pharmaceuticals, medical devices, consumer electronics and biochemistry. In 2013, Louis received the “Rising Star” award by the Illinois Super Lawyers, which is awarded based on peer recognition.

The Family Defense Center is not the only organization that Louis finds time to support, despite his busy litigation schedule and family life. Louis is a Board Member of the Illinois Chess Association and the Beth Emet Synagogue in Evanston, and he recently joined the board of the Newberry Hillel at the University of

Chicago. Louis also takes time to serve as a volunteer coach with his sons’ sports teams, including two basketball teams, a baseball team and a soccer team, all in the past year alone.

Louis is married to Tamar Karsh-Fogel, and they are parents to three boys, Alex (age 12), Jonah (age 10) and Zachary (age 5). It was through Tamar’s work as an associate at Katten Muchin Rosenman in 2001 that Louis was introduced to Diane Redleaf and the FDC’s first board president, Briggitte (“B.B.”) Carlson, who was one of the three incorporators of the FDC in 2005.

Why Louis Fogel Is Receiving the Professional and Community Service Award From The Family Defense Center

When the Family Defense Center began its pro bono program in 2008, Louis Fogel was one of the first attorneys who offered to help seek opportunities in Chicago law firms, opening the doors to his then-firm Sidley Austin. He convinced the leadership of the firm

Louis Fogel

11

to consider our less-than-popular accused parent clients as worthy of the firm’s resources. Through this effort, he led the way to the involvement of several very active Sidley lawyers in our program. Scott Kramer was one of those enthusiastic Sidley Austin pro bono attorneys, as was Erin Kelly. Scott soon became a board member, and Erin led a team that won a domestic violence mother’s case for the FDC, which was later featured in Litigation Magazine. As Scott has commented about Louis’s role in enlisting him to pro bono service with the FDC:

Taking on a pro bono case for the Family Defense Center was one of the pinnacle moments of my formative years as an associate as Sidley Austin LLP. Without the tireless efforts of Louis Fogel, I never would have received this amazing opportunity. Due to Louis' dedication to the Family Defense Center's mission, he was able to bring these deeply personal and life changing cases to a private law firm with the resources and skills to truly make a difference in the lives of affected families in the Chicagoland area and beyond.

The FDC approached Louis about joining the board, and Louis began his service in 2009. When he left Sidley Austin in 2010 and became a senior associate at Ropes and Gray, Louis quickly enlisted his peers at his new law firm to provide pro bono representation for FDC clients and provide other support (including providing meeting space for the agency’s 2010 annual meeting). Shortly after the inception of the pro bono program, Louis helped to open doors. That role wasn’t limited to the firms Louis worked at: as a true advocate for the FDC and its clients, Louis spread the word about the excellent work of the FDC to colleagues, friends and neighbors. Louis took his role both seriously and in good humor, and despite a killer litigation schedule, he never stopped actively advocating for the FDC.

Once a member of the board, Louis soon became Treasurer (when Michael O’Connor assumed the role of President of the Board), in 2009. Louis’ attention

to the fiscal and programmatic well-being of the FDC was unparalleled. In late 2012, when Helene Snyder replaced Michael O’Connor as FDC Board President and Michael returned to the post of Treasurer, Louis didn’t miss a beat: he promptly agreed to serve with Jenner & Block Partner Michael Brody as co-chair of the very important Program Committee of the FDC. In that capacity, he guides the board’s review of the FDC’s policies and practices regarding case acceptance, sliding scale fees, legal ethics, staffing and technological infrastructure.

Louis’ role as an ambassador for the FDC extended to taking on pro bono cases himself, including several very challenging cases. In fact, Louis became known as a lawyer the FDC could turn to in cases that were hard to place with the pro bono network of law firms. True to form, Louis accepted these assignments graciously and worked hard for these clients despite the difficulties the cases presented. He has even represented one of these FDC clients more than once.

In 2010, Louis represented a grandmother, Kathie

Louis and his sons seeing the sights in Chicago

12

F., whose was indicated for environmental neglect due to poverty. Kathie was caring for her three special needs grandchildren as their guardian and she could not maintain employment outside the home due to the near-constant medical appointments the children needed. Despite the fact that Kathie was a loving grandmother, the DCFS investigator indicated Kathie after visiting her home following a hotline call, claiming the home lacked heat; she had delayed making electric bill payments; she faced foreclosure; and her home was in a state of disarray. DCFS urged Kathie to walk away from her home—advice that, if followed, would have made the family both homeless and destitute. The FDC helped Kathie access utility services for low-income people and connected her with Louis through the Center’s pro bono program. Louis then represented her at an Administrative Hearing. With Louis’ excellent representation, the Administrative Law Judge concluded that Kathie’s home did not present a risk to the children and praised the loving care Kathie had given them. Louis’ successful representation eliminated the indicated finding and enabled Kathie to continue to care for the children.

This was not the only time that Louis stepped forward to help Kathie and her children, however. Kathie’s home was ruined by a heavy flood in 2011. Kathie put up blocks to prevent the children from accessing the damaged parts of the home as well as the parts that were under reconstruction. After being informed by the Streamwood Police Department that her home was uninhabitable, Kathie moved her grandchildren to a safe home in Texas with family, and then vacated the premises herself. They only returned after the successful upgrade of their home to meet the safety code requirements. Despite her best efforts, DCFS still indicated Kathie for Allegation #77—Inadequate Shelter.

Louis represented Kathie at the Administrative Hearing, where he argued that Kathie had done everything in her power to provide adequate shelter for her grandchildren. Despite this evidence, the Administrative Law Judge ruled that Kathie’s home had been a fire hazard at the time she had lived there with the children, and therefore, her home presented a significant risk of harm towards them. Unfortunately, the evidentiary findings the judge made were difficult to overcome despite Louis’ best efforts, and the indicated finding was sustained.

A second FDC client whom Louis represented proved even more challenging, because a legal argument the Center thought could be made in the case proved to be unavailable after further research. In this case, Louis tried to protect a mother who had been indicated for letting her boyfriend, who had a criminal history, have contact with her children by picking them up from school. The Circuit Court of Cook County had previously been notified of the relationship between Louis’ client and her boyfriend, and our client reported her belief that the previous court proceedings had “cleared” her boyfriend to have short-term contacts with her children. Unfortunately, we were unable to prove this clearance, and a finding was sustained against the client even though her children were not

Louis and his wife Tamar

13

harmed by the boyfriend.

The third client that Louis helped was more successful, and involved one of the FDC’s clients, Amanda T., who had been featured in our program video in 2013. After the Center successfully reunited Amanda with her son after a long ordeal, Amanda had a second encounter with DCFS investigators when her 10-year-old son was left home alone due to a misunderstanding between Amanda and her father as to her father’s babysitting responsibilities. Louis coordinated representation by the Ropes & Gray team of Meredith Dykstra and David Nordsieck, who were able to persuade the judge that Amanda had not been responsible for inadequate supervision due to this misunderstanding. Because of Louis’ help, Amanda was able to put this frightening encounter with DCFS behind her.

Louis’ multifaceted service to the FDC and to its client community and his commitment to justice for families in the child welfare system, including clients who face a deck stacked against them, is unparalleled. Louis completes his work with humility, grace, and patience. As an all-around fine human being, Louis would no doubt deserve an award just for being a pleasure to work with. But, as a person who has given stellar service to the FDC board, its pro bono program, its program committee and its clients, Louis richly deserves the Family Defense Center’s 2014 Community and Professional Service Award.

The Fogel family

14

Thr Goodman Theatre has been internationally recognized for its artists, productions and programs since its founding in 1925 by William O. Goodman and his family in memory of their son, Kenneth Sawyer Goodman. The Goodman is a major cultural, educational and economic pillar in Chicago. Named the nation’s “Best Regional Theater” by Time magazine, the Goodman Theatre has garnered hundreds of awards for artistic achievement and community engagement, including Tony Awards and Pulitzer Prizes. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Robert Falls and Executive Director Roche Schulfer, Goodman Theatre’s priorities include new plays, reimagined classics, culturally specific work, musical theater and international collaborations. Over the past 30 years, the Goodman has produced more than 100 world or American premieres. Robert Falls’ productions of Death of a Salesman, Long Day’s Journey into Night and King Lear have been celebrated nationally and internationally, along with his artistic collaboration with actor Brian Dennehy. Diversity and inclusion are cornerstones of the Goodman’s mission: over the past two decades, one-third of Goodman productions (including 21 world premieres) have featured artists of color, and the Goodman was the first theater in the world to produce all 10 plays in August Wilson’s Twentieth-Century Cycle. The Latino Theatre Festival has been a celebration of Latino theater companies from Chicago and around the globe. Over the past two decades, the Goodman has produced 26 musical theater works, including 10 world premieres.

Each year the Goodman’s numerous education and community engagement programs serve thousands of individuals from the local community.

The Student Subscription Series gives 2,700 Chicago public high school students a year the opportunity to attend free matinee performances and post-show discussions with actors. This program provides copies of scripts, study guides, online resources and professional training seminars for teachers. Using Goodman productions as a springboard, dramatic integration weekend seminars instruct teachers from across Chicago and across disciplines on how to use the arts to teach everything from science to English to history.

Each summer, the General Theatre Studies program engages 14- to 19-year-old students from across Chicagoland in an intensive six-week theater training program, culminating in an original devised performance by the participants. Young women in their junior year of high school are eligible for the Cindy Bandle Young Critics program, a joint venture of the Goodman and the Association for Women Journalists, which provides training in theater criticism, mentoring from professional journalists and opportunities to interview stage stars like Carla Gugino and Brian Dennehy. The theater's internship program provides hands-on training for students, graduates and young professionals interested in careers in professional theater. Past participants in Goodman

Goodman Theatre, Community Awareness Award For promotion of community awareness of the flaws and biases inherent in the child welfare system through their pro-duction of the play Luna Gale

The Goodman Theatre in Chicago, IL

15

programs stay involved through the Youth Arts Council, acting as ambassadors for theater in their communities and schools.

CONTEXT events engage the local community in conversations and interactive experiences that both illuminate the productions and act as catalysts for deeper exploration. The Goodman's newest program, GeNarrations, is a writing workshop for senior citizens. These six-week sessions are presented in collaboration with the City of Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services and other community-based organizations.

Goodman Theatre’s leadership includes the distinguished members of the Artistic Collective: Brian Dennehy, Rebecca Gilman, Henry Godinez, Steve Scott, Chuck Smith, Regina Taylor, Henry Wishcamper and Mary Zimmerman. As each brings their own unique perspectives to the Goodman, this remarkable group of people is a core element of the theater's worldwide reputation for artistic excellence, leadership and diversity. The Chairman of Goodman Theatre’s Board of Trustees is Ruth Ann M. Gillis and Sherry John is President of the Women’s Board.

Why the Family Defense Center is recognizing the Goodman Theatre with the 2014 Community Awareness Award:

The Goodman Theatre presented the world premiere of the play Luna Gale in its 2013-2014 season. This was a first-ever event in child welfare history, for the play presents an exceptionally powerful example of the complexity of child protection intervention in families—a topic rarely if ever presented on the stage. The outstanding production of this world-premiere play sympathetically portrays families at the same time as it gives a realistic assessment of the challenges families and child welfare systems face.

We all want to protect children but we want our social service systems to strengthen children and families, too. Luna Gale challenged our community to think about how children and families should be treated; it provided a deeper and realistic understanding of the importance of the child welfare system in caring for the children who will be tomorrow’s parents.

The Family Defense Center worked collaboratively with the Goodman Theatre to present the FDC's first-ever theater event on January 23, including through a post-play discussion on the night of our own sponsored event and in a community forum CONTEXT panel on February 3. Through this wonderful partnership, the Family Defense Center gained a greater audience for its own advocacy work.

The Goodman Theatre's commitment to making theater meaningful to the lives of the people in our community, including those whose stories have heretofore not been told, is exceptional and inspiring, making it the worthy recipient of the 2014 Community Awareness Award.

16

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” -Elie Wiesel

When we ask for support for our work at the Family Defense Center, the most frequent question we are asked is, “How do you know your clients aren’t guilty? How do you know that they haven’t, in fact, abused or neglected a child?” At the Center, we have developed many careful answers to this question, describing the intensive screening process we employ, all designed to convince a skeptical would-be supporter that we are on the side of the angels.

Unlike the Family Defense Center staff and board, Ellen Domph doesn’t screen her cases for proof of innocence. Nor would she consider doing so. No criminal defense lawyer should ever have a threshold criterion of innocence of wrongdoing when offering legal representation to potential clients. Ellen is first and foremost a criminal defense lawyer, even though her defense often extends into juvenile court child protection cases and DCFS investigations. She is the first to acknowledge and readily accept that not all of her clients are actually innocent. For Ellen and for criminal defense lawyers, the job of an ethical defense lawyer is to insist that the State prove guilt within the bounds of the law, in accordance with the burden of proof that rests on the State, not the defense. So the question, as Ellen would reframe it, is not “how does the Family Defense Center know the client is innocent?” but “what reliable and persuasive evidence does the State have to prove the client is guilty?”

A defender’s job is to assure that the State has the evidence to prove its case—a criminal defense

lawyer is the shield against the sword, constantly searching the State’s case for its flaws, shortcomings and overreaching accusations. And Ellen is a master of discovering those deficiencies, and turning them into gaping holes in the State’s case—holes so gaping that reasonable doubt that a crime has been committed becomes apparent to the State, the judge, and the jury. The clients who benefit from Ellen’s exquisitely refined development of the facts of her cases are not all innocent, but they are often much less culpable than the State first believed.

Indeed, Ellen is such a seasoned criminal defense attorney that when asked how on earth can she represents someone who is “guilty,” she candidly divulges that it is sometimes easier than defending the innocent. Often times, the falsely accused innocent clients are inexperienced with the criminal justice system; they are likely unaware of how their words can and will be used against them. They do not know the defenders’ adage, “if nobody talks, everybody walks”—many insisting that talking to the police will help to "straighten things out," all against Ellen’s advice. And because of their innocence, they do not fit well within our criminal justice system, where

Meet Family Defender Ellen Domph

Ellen Domph, Family Defender

By Diane L. Redleaf

17

prosecution conviction rates are well over 90%. It is neither just nor palatable for an innocent person to plead guilty in the interest of preserving as much of their liberty as they can, though sadly it is done too often.

The Family Defense Center isn’t honoring Ellen, however, for her decades-long work in exonerating innocent criminal defendants and for zealously representing all her clients—guilty or innocent. We are honoring Ellen for defending innocent, wrongly-accused clients and helping their families, regardless of the courtroom in which high stakes charges of child abuse are leveled against them. The Family Defense Center honors her for fighting, often as the lone voice and under intense pressure, for families’ rights to stay together and for avoiding findings of child abuse that are simply wrong. While it turns out that Ellen is an outstanding family defender in large measure because she is an excellent criminal defense attorney, most criminal defense attorneys haven’t devoted their honed legal skills to the murkier area of child welfare as Ellen has done. Ellen is more than willing to fight for families who face criminal and civil child abuse allegations at the same time, or to take on medically complex cases defending parents in the juvenile court even when no criminal charges have been levied. And without that willingness to object and put on a masterful fight in medically complex cases like In re Yohan K., the Family Defense Center could not have won several important victories that protected children by defending their innocent parents.

* * *

The first word that might come to mind about Ellen Domph, criminal defense lawyer, is “intense.” But the surprising first word out of Ellen’s mouth when she describes all the stages of her life, starting with her early childhood in Dayton, Ohio, is “happy.” I

learned just what a happy person Ellen was when I started writing this biography and interviewed Ellen in the juvenile court waiting room, where despite the acrimonious litigation, she revealed herself as a happy person. Ellen’s references to happiness throughout her career bubbled over as we extended my biographical interview of her to drinks at the Atwood Café. At every turn, Ellen describes herself as both happy and contented. For all the drama in the lives of her clients, and for all the intensity of the demands on Ellen’s time and talents, Ellen is a person who enjoys her life and who is loads of fun to be with.

By now, I have developed my own theory about family defenders: they come from remarkable and happy families. If my theory is wrong, Ellen isn’t the one to disprove it.

* * *

Ellen’s father, Philip Domph was born and raised in New York City. Her grandfather was a patent lawyer, but the crash of the stock exchange in 1929 caused him to lose everything he had accumulated. Her father, a brilliant man, known for his finesse in the stock market, had been studying geology in college and was forced to return home to help support the family. He never had the chance to return to school.

Ellen and her partner, John

18

He held many different jobs, from working in the shipyards during World War II and in electronics and army surplus companies and the post office. Her father provided a secure and loving home, placing family above all, encouraging his children to have no limits to their aspirations and achievements.

Ellen’s mother Mollie Padlow, a child of Russian immigrants who arrived in the US in 1913, had an even stronger independent streak. At the age of 18, Mollie moved to Chicago in the hope of becoming a journalist. But circumstance took her to Mt. Sinai Hospital where she studied nursing. Soon after she got her nursing degree, Mollie enlisted in the Army and became a lieutenant—a front-line Army nurse—in the Pacific during World War II, where she was awarded multiple medals. If Ellen has the personality of a

healing warrior, there is no doubt that she gets a lot of that empathic determination from her mother.

While in the Pacific, however, Mollie Padlow contracted a fatal anemia due to an anti-malarial medication. No cure was known and Mollie was shipped back to the US and hospitalized in one military hospital after another, for three years, where she was expected to die. As Ellen’s aunt Shirley tells the story, she went to see Mollie and she “looked dead,” but Shirley knew of a magical grape (the Scuppernong grape) that grew in North Carolina that could “cure” the anemia. Ellen’s Aunt Shirley got Mollie shipped to a veteran’s hospital at Swannanoa, North Carolina and Mollie lived on, which was especially fortunate for Ellen, given she had yet to be born.

Ellen’s parents had a storybook romance. Every winter, Phil went to Miami to visit an uncle who lived there. After the war, Mollie moved to Miami, working as a nurse, staying in a boarding house nearby and they were “fixed up” by the owner of the boarding house. They married after knowing each other for only six weeks. Soon after their marriage, the couple moved back to Chicago. Karen, Ellen’s older sister, was born in Chicago. Later the family moved to Dayton and Ellen was born.

The family then moved to New York for a while and eventually back to Dayton. In the third grade, Ellen’s family moved to a home in the outskirts of Dayton. Ellen has nothing but fond memories of her childhood years there. It was safe and there were children galore to play with. Ellen did well in school and had lots of pals. Her parents were devoted to the family, and inspired her to succeed in whatever she wanted to try.

Ellen excelled in both speech and gymnastics. A foreshadowing of her exemplary oral advocacy skills came in 8th grade, when Ellen won the Lucy May Wyatt speech contest for the entire Dayton area. In high school, Ellen was on the gymnastics team and Ellen and her sister Karen

19

was a cheerleader. Later, as a college student at Ohio State University (OSU), Ellen made the varsity gymnastics team. At each stage, she was happy, busy, and enjoyed herself immensely. She had many different groups of friends (a point about Ellen that hasn’t changed to this day—she seems to be friendly with loads of lawyers and an equal number of regular folks).

In college, Ellen majored in Philosophy, History, and Hebrew, spending her junior year abroad at Tel Aviv University. She spent several summers working in a kibbutz—a collective farm in the Negev desert. Ellen credits the adventure into kibbutz life to her longtime girlfriend Pam who was the first to bravely go there, raving on her return that the experience could not be missed. During her college years, Ellen traveled abroad where she performed in a water circus near London and traveled on a freighter from Athens to Barcelona. It was during these travels she met people from all walks of life. She learned to accept the differences in humanity, further strengthening her commitment to justice and equality, forged at home. As she approached her graduation from college, she decided against law school despite her father’s urging. At the time, she viewed law as a conventional profession and part of the “status quo.” Seeing herself as an activist, Ellen decided to get a Master’s in Social Work degree, returning to OSU for graduate school. Her M.S.W. program combined policy and clinical work. It also gave her a direct exposure to the legal system and to clients who would later become her clientele: her first practicum placement in graduate school was at the Training Institute of Central Ohio, a maximum security facility for male delinquents.

While working at the Training Institute, Ellen got creative and dramatic. She helped to direct a play at the institution and started a gymnastics program. The residents, Ellen’s clients, included a boy who had killed his mother’s abuser and there were many others Ellen

saw as victims of terrible circumstances and an unjust legal system. Feeling powerless to affect real, lasting change for these delinquent youth, the seed to pursue law, although still unbeknownst to Ellen, was planted.

After graduating with her M.S.W. degree in hand, Ellen moved to Chicago—the big city. She worked in a fundraising and policy position initially, but resigned after a few months. Always as independent and self-sufficient as she could be, she waited tables, which eventually helped put her through law school.

Having left her social work job, while working in well-known local restaurant, a co-worker and John Marshall law student, suggested she apply to John Marshall and she followed his advice. Once again, Ellen was happier than the typical law student reports; she simply “had a wonderful experience there.” Naturally, she did very well, as evidenced in part by her joining the Law Review (which is based on academic performance); and she was an Illinois Bar Foundation Research Fellow. She also worked as a research assistant for Professor Jack Ingram, now deceased, who specialized in insurance law, but was a defender of civil rights, and together they published two articles in Law Review journals, including one on the Constitutional right to govern one’s personal appearance, and the other on an employers’ duty to

Ellen's sister Karen (left), niece Melissa (middle), and Ellen (right)

20

accommodate the religious practices of an employee.

While in law school, Ellen was a 711 intern at the Public Defender’s Office at the Criminal Court at 26th and California. There, her supervisors included three lawyers who eventually rose in the judicial ranks. This position exposed Ellen to the real practice of criminal law, and when she graduated, she didn’t think twice about her career goals.

Like many criminal defense lawyers, Ellen started practicing law after graduation by simply sharing space with practicing criminal lawyers. Two of her mentors were Paul Bradley, who had previously graduated from John Marshall Law School, and Robert Bailey, an Ivy-League educated lawyer who had started his career in the Justice Department as prosecutor in Washington. Between lawyers with very different styles, Ellen gained both oral and written skills that the best criminal lawyer needs. Paul remains the best cross-examiner Ellen has ever observed and Robert the best legal writer. Both offered sage advice how to navigate the knotty world of criminal defense.

In 1982, Paul Bradley introduced Ellen not just to the law but to an important other figure in her life: John Guenther. Ellen recalls first talking to John at O’Rourkes, a famous Chicago pub known for its literary and legendary clientele and its decor of wall-to-wall pictures of Irish poets. It was right after Ellen's first murder case. After Bradley convinced her that John could be an interesting person to know because he was an inventor, a sailor and a pilot, she decided to go out with him. Ellen beams when talking about all of John’s qualities, including his creativity reflected in the beautiful home he designed and built for her and his inventions, particularly his latest creation—a safer car seat for children.

In 1991, Ellen had the privilege of becoming a member of the Federal Defender panel for appointed lawyers. As a panel lawyer, Ellen appreciates the challenge of defending clients in difficult cases, against difficult

odds, and is honored to be part of the Federal Defender program, working among the most talented defense lawyers. She loves the federal practice, but she also enjoys the variety of cases she handles throughout Chicago and collar counties.

Ellen is very close to her sister and her nieces Sarah and Melissa. Ellen enjoys as much family life as she possibly can with her nieces and close friends. She still travels frequently, and enjoys the cultural life in Chicago, attending theater and opera as much as she can.

Beside “happy,” another word that works to describe Ellen is “successful.” I was surprised to learn that she had won every single “shaken baby syndrome” trial she had handled until she was the trial counsel in In re Yohan K. But at the Family Defense Center, we count In re Yohan K. as the victory Ellen was compelled to lose to set the stage for a more sweeping victory on appeal. SBS cases are notoriously hard to win, as Prof. Deborah Tuerkheimer’s book discusses. But Ellen saw In re Yohan K as a case the she knew she should win from the start. She say she usually knows when she will lose, and she knew that Yohan’s case was not a case she should have lost. The reason—every doctor

John and Ellen shortly after they met

21

on the State’s side of the case couldn’t defend an abuse position under her tough questioning. While the resources of the prosecution seemed stacked against the family in the trial court, the appellate court was able to dispassionately review the record that Ellen had amassed (and Melissa Staas had briefed) to reach the conclusion that there wasn’t evidence of child abuse against the parents, and a “constellation of injuries” could not substitute for proof that each injury (subdural hematoma, retinal hemorrhages, and an alleged fracture) was due to abuse.

While she is happy, content, and successful, Ellen acknowledges that she sometimes does feel embattled, as she did during the In re Yohan K trial. She feels she is battling ignorance at times. Victories in cases in which she wins acquittal or a “no abuse” finding are sweet and joyous, but there is a tragic undertone: in even the biggest victories, Ellen cannot restore lost months or years of liberty and cannot give back to the parents the months and years of life with their children in their own homes. Often she is haunted by the fact that the damaged families are left to attempt to rebuild their shattered lives and heal the wounds inflicted on them by a sometimes fractured system.

* * *

I got my own first opportunity to work with Ellen closely just a few months ago. I had known Ellen, however, for nearly 15 years because she had befriended a neighbor whose daughter, then age 5, had been brought to the attention of DCFS. Referred to me by Bruce Boyer at Loyola ChildLaw Program, Ellen’s advocacy for her neighbor went far beyond the level of involvement of all but the rarest of neighbors. Despite the difficulties of the case as it unfolded, Ellen was consistently kind and supportive to her neighbor, trying her best to get her the legal and social work supports she needed in order to continue her relationship with her daughter.

Because of this early connection, Ellen joined our list

of a half-dozen solo criminal defense lawyers to whom we refer clients when they need a criminal lawyer. I’ve never handled a criminal case, and I have learned the hard way not to venture into this complex area of law without a more experienced hand to guide me. Because Ellen’s practice was primarily in an area in which our office does not tread, our opportunities to work together were limited.

This separation of our spheres started to unravel in June 2010. Ellen’s client had been left with a juvenile court finding of abuse in 2002 even though the alleged victim had retracted her allegations well before the juvenile court case began. In 2003, however, a jury saw it differently, and Ellen secured an acquittal in criminal court. Even though the juvenile court case had long been closed and the victim had recanted seven years before, DCFS “indicated” him for creating a “risk of injury” just by living in the home. Even though there was no new allegation of wrongdoing, he was forced to leave his home. Exonerating him from the new DCFS charges became essential to enable him to live with his family. The spheres of our work and Ellen’s were moving closer together. With a lot of help from Ellen, our staff attorney Allegra Cira Fischer succeeded in exonerating him, enabling him to reunite with his family.

Shortly thereafter, Yohan’s parents contacted the Family Defense Center, seeking representation in juvenile court. The case was extremely complex medically and our resources were too strained to take on a case that involved subdural bleeding, retinal hemorrhaging and alleged fractures, even though the parents’ story was very sympathetic to us. By this time, we were aware that Ellen had experience with alleged “shaken baby” cases, however, and we referred the clients to her and other counsel with similar expertise. Melissa Staas, who had been developing expertise in head injury cases through several juvenile court and administrative hearings in which she successfully exonerated parents, kept in touch with

22

Ellen. Melissa watched some of the trial that spread over months and eventually included testimony by 11 doctors in a half-dozen different areas of medicine.

My memory of my own agreement to take on the Yohan K case on appeal is clouded, but Melissa Staas, who eventually became the lead appellate attorney in the case, assures me that that agreement had been broached early on in Ellen’s representation of Yohan's parents. By then, Melissa had been tapped for several webinars and a national training at the National Association of Counsel for Children’s Annual Conference on medically complex cases. It made sense for me to agree that Yohan's case would provide an excellent opportunity to put Melissa's developing knowledge to use in a potentially important appellate case. I also had only a barest inkling of the complexity of the factual record Ellen had masterfully amassed in the case.

This agreement looked like a moot point after the juvenile court returned Yohan and his sister home. The court had decided that Yohan had been abused but the question of who perpetrated this abuse could not be determined. The abuse finding was clearly difficult to swallow (because it was wrong), but the high cost of an appellate case and the risk of undoing the order that returned the children home made an appeal risky. The parents were prepared to let their deadline for appeal expire. But the choice of appealing the case was forced upon them when the Office of Public Guardian filed an appeal, nominally on behalf of Yohan and his sister, seeking to return the children to DCFS custody and remove them from their parents once again.

Melissa did a superb job of briefing the complex medical evidence in the case. But it was Ellen who had done all the work over nearly two years to develop the factual record, by critically undermining each and every one of the State’s eight medical experts and masterfully presenting the well-supported alternative explanations (differential diagnosis) of Yohan’s

conditions through the three medical experts who testified on behalf of the parents. As a solo attorney up against three opponents (the State’s Attorney, guardian ad litem and DCFS) who aggressively sought to have the court determine Yohan was abused, Ellen’s stamina, persistence, and constant quick thinking—borne of careful thought about every piece of evidence for and against her clients—were the reasons the case could be won on appeal. Ellen’s defense of Yohan’s parents is a testament to the importance of excellent lawyering to the pursuit of justice. While Deborah Tuerkheimer documents the injustice that can come from inadequate defense counsel, Ellen’s work in the Yohan case illuminates the opposing point: where excellent legal counsel are able to present cases to the very best of their ability, and persevere, justice can triumph and important precedents can be created.

After In re Yohan K., other high stakes cases have come to the Family Defense Center that have required Ellen’s assistance. Recently, the FDC made the unusual decision to take on a role in a criminal case, in which Ellen is the lead attorney. The case is likely to go to trial this winter, giving Melissa Staas her first jury trial experience under Ellen’s expert guidance. Part of the reason the Center agreed to accept a case outside our wheelhouse is that all the training on jury trials in the world cannot replace the opportunity to sit next to Ellen Domph as she cross-examines witnesses or methodically lays out the facts in summation.

Until April, 2014, however, Melissa was getting all the direct opportunities to work with Ellen and I was getting only the indirect supervisor’s reports. That changed abruptly when I agreed to represent a mother in a long-pending medically complex juvenile court case that went to trial in August. The case involved parents whose older child suddenly died of what turned out to be a medical condition and whose younger child had been placed in foster care. I had been involved with the case for several years, but only on the administrative aspects of DCFS's

23

handling of services for the family. In January 2014, however, the father hired Ellen to represent him the upcoming juvenile court trial, and in March, 2104, the mother’s former counsel withdrew from the representation he had been providing since 2011. With the case initially set for trial in June, the mother, whom I had been assisting to get appropriate services, was suddenly without any representation at all. She and the father, along with Ellen, started to lobby me to take on the case for trial. I agreed.

Working with Ellen was a rare opportunity to work alongside and learn a few new tricks of the trade from a pro. There wasn’t a sentence in the lengthy expert reports that Ellen didn’t pore over, analyze and question until she was satisfied that she understood the cause, other potential causes, how the State might present the point, and how the fact might be used to mount the larger defense of the client. Along the way, I was cautioned more than once not to give away anything. For once in my own long career, I became the “Jeff” to Ellen’s “Mutt”—the person that the opposing counsel called first when they wanted something. I wasn’t used to being quite so circumspect about every word I uttered to opposing counsel. And I wasn’t used to working quite as hard on a case with a person who was every bit as experienced as I am.

As we toiled in courthouse waiting rooms, took court breaks, or drove out to DuPage Juvenile Court together, Ellen and I had a running dialogue about the respective roles of the criminal defense attorney and the civil litigator in child protection cases. I like to think she has learned a bit from me about child protection cases in which criminal court defense thinking isn’t at the forefront of the considerations that have to be managed. I certainly have learned a great

deal about how to better represent clients who face serious criminal charges. The clients of the Family Defense Center are the beneficiaries of the on-the-job training that working with Ellen has provided to both Melissa Staas and me.

As this biography is going to print, Ellen and Melissa are busily preparing for a training they are doing at the Public Defender’s office on Shaken Baby Syndrome defense. I’m in the throes of withdrawal from daily contact with Ellen in the DuPage County juvenile court case when Ellen’s cheery and energetic voice is heard emanating from Melissa’s office. She has become almost a fixture in the Center’s offices, a virtual staff member, and unquestionably a mentor. She makes us proud to be defenders. She is happy to be a lawyer defending families, and she inspires us to continue to press on in the glorious fight for justice that we are now joined in together.

An indomitable legal team: FDC staff attorney, Melissa Staas (middle), 2014 Family Defender Ellen Domph (middle), and FDC Executive Director Diane Redleaf (right) at the FDC offices.

24

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

-William Butler Yeats

Professor Deborah Tuerkheimer is an unlikely hero in the national shaken baby syndrome (SBS) innocence movement. But by now, she is widely recognized as the leading academic legal scholar to address the gross and epidemic injustice of shaken baby syndrome prosecutions that became increasingly prevalent in the 1990s. She has documented, through painstaking research, that an unacceptably high number of SBS criminal convictions rest on a fatal combination of flawed science, simplistic but appealing explanations that prevail over more complex truths, overly zealous prosecutors, inadequate defense counsel with insufficient resources to respond to claims that falsely purport to be based on unassailable science, and a court system that values finality over accuracy of results.

To hear Professor Tuerkheimer tell of how she became the preeminent voice of reason about this contentious topic, it simply seems as though she couldn’t stop herself until she got the job done. One article led to another and she couldn’t help but dig deeper and deeper into the complex legal and medical quagmire she had stumbled upon. Deborah Tuerkheimer is, first and foremost, a feminist legal scholar, a former sex crimes prosecutor whose central academic interests have focused on domestic violence and rape laws. How then did she become a brilliant voice for the wrongly-accused caregivers, the criminal defendants who find themselves in jails and prisons, and the parents in the child welfare system who are losing their children because of shaken baby syndrome claims?

As Deborah Tuerkheimer tells her own biography, the answer is that the stories she tells about the cases she encountered involving wrongly-accused caregivers were so powerful and so important that she had no choice but to bring them to light. She also had no choice but to analyze these cases closely and pursue the consequences of that analysis to their conclusion. Like an artist who views herself as a mere instrument for the work she brings forth, Deborah Tuerkheimer has a gift for letting the story of misplaced prosecutions tell itself. At the same time, she brings to bear on that story a compelling combination of passion and dispassion to the subject: passionate conviction about the truth; dispassion in being utterly objective, reasonable, analytical, and thorough in the way she approaches the task of investigating her subject—flawed shaken baby syndrome convictions. Her version of “passionate intensity” (in the words of William Butler Yeats) is the same quality of all the best scholars and advocates. She does not cling in desperation to a false belief, but she applies careful historical research, science, and psychological and legal analysis to the question of what went wrong in so many cases in which innocent people have been jailed and torn from their families.

Meet Professor Deborah Tuerkheimer, A Scholar of Sound Convictions

By Diane L. Redleaf

Family Defense Scholar, Professor Deborah Tuerkheimer

25

Deborah Tuerkheimer’s work is leading the way to a new consensus that many shaken baby syndrome prosecutions rest on flawed science, outdated practices, and misplaced policies. The double meaning in the title of her book, Flawed Convictions: Shaken Baby Syndrome and the Inertia of Injustice, is obviously intentional. In the world of child welfare and in the world of criminal law, nothing is so dangerous as a passionate but flawed conviction that a parent or caretaker is guilty of a heinous act of child abuse. Deborah Tuerkheimer is at the forefront of dispelling the flawed convictions about Shaken Baby Syndrome in the medical and legal worlds and in the public mind.

* * *

Deborah Tuerkheimer comes by legal scholarship and legal practice naturally. She is the daughter of a law professor, Frank Tuerkheimer, who teaches criminal law and procedure, evidence, and trial practice in addition to having his own law practice. Her mother, Barbara, also an attorney, has worked in the Wisconsin Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division. Deborah’s family now mirrors the one she grew up in: she is the family’s legal scholar while her husband is a prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago. They have two sons.

In 1970, Deborah’s parents moved to Madison, where Deborah grew up. [Coincidentally, the national SBS Innocence Fellow, Kate Judson, is now housed within the University of Wisconsin/Madison Law School and will be working with a new project devoted to SBS exoneration next year (see p. 38)]. She has one brother, Alan, also a lawyer, who is two years her junior. As she and Alan grew up, they were imbued with an interest in social justice. Deborah always wanted to work to make the world a better place and she was fortunate in having role models who made it possible for her to believe she could succeed.

No one would be surprised to learn that Deborah

did very well in school, attending college at Harvard University where she graduated with honors. She majored in psychology, which she found fascinating. She was interested in pursuing psychology as a career; she researched and wrote about play therapy and considered becoming a child psychologist. Deborah’s interest in psychology becomes evident in the exquisite details she provides of the compelling psycho-emotional dynamics of shaken baby syndrome cases and the complicated psychological reasons SBS has become so entrenched within the justice system as a preferred explanation. An interest in issues of justice prevailed, however, and as graduation approached, Deborah decided to apply to law school rather than pursue graduate work in psychology.

Deborah was accepted at the law school that is best known for producing legal scholars: Yale. After her law school acceptance, however, Deborah decided to take some time off before starting law school in 1993. She moved to Colorado and worked in a bookstore. Colorado proved to be an idyllic break from school and allowed her time for two of her avid interests: reading and skiing.

Informed by her time in Colorado and love for nature, when she entered law school, Deborah considered pursuing an interest in environmental law. After her first year of law school, she worked that summer for the National Wildlife Fund. A law school class with Prof. Reva Siegel, a pioneer in feminist jurisprudence, changed Deborah’s perspective on the law and her practice plans. In Deborah’s words, “Prof. Siegel gave me an entirely new perspective on the law as a reflection of particular biases, interests, and normative commitments, many of which serve to disadvantage the vulnerable and relatively powerless among us.”

Deborah put her interest in women’s rights into practice during the summer between her second year and third year of law school. She worked out an unusual split summer employment plan: she worked

26

for both the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. Between the two offices, she was quickly finding her own niche as a specialist in domestic violence and sexual assault—an interest that was so strong that it eventually led her into academia so that she could write, think, and teach about these subjects for a broader community.

After law school, Deborah clerked for Justice Jay Rabinowitz on the Alaska Supreme Court. This clerkship was another formative experience, as Justice Rabinowitz was an “iconic judge” who was very progressive and scholarly in interpreting the Alaska constitution to expand rights in areas in which the United State Constitution had been interpreted more restrictively.

After her clerkship, Deborah decided to return to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office to practice full time. There, she continued to carve out her own niche involving crimes against women and girls. She became an office expert on domestic violence and was able to work on behalf of her office on implementing major anti-stalking legislation.

While a prosecutor, Deborah also handled child abuse cases. It was in that capacity that she first encountered shaken baby syndrome as a basis for the criminal prosecution of a caregiver. At the time, she didn’t give much critical thought to the underlying scientific basis for the belief that a particular set of medical findings can only be produced through violent shaking. Like virtually all prosecutors at the time (the late 1990s), there seemed to be no reason to doubt the medical experts who proclaimed that subdural hematomas (bleeding under the dura of the brain), retinal hemorrhage, and brain swelling (i.e., the classic “triad”) could only have been caused by violent shaking by the very last person who touched the baby. But a single reported decision eventually piqued Deborah’s interest in questioning that very assumption.

Reflecting on her experience at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, Deborah notes several features of the office that made it a good fit for her. The head of the office, Robert Morganthau, was a person who ran the office in a principled, not political, way. He gave autonomy to attorneys in the office to manage their own cases without interference from the top. And he gave attorneys like Deborah freedom to pursue their interests in areas like domestic violence. Moreover, the office was a perfect setting in which to amass high-level trial experience and gain trial skills very quickly, which gave Deborah a wealth of knowledge to draw on when she subsequently began her teaching career.

What the office did not afford her, however, was any spare time to think and write. Eventually, Deborah’s desire to write about the law and think about it more deeply took over and she applied for teaching positions. With her stellar academic credentials, coupled with her five years of prosecutorial experience in a respected district attorney’s office, Deborah was offered an assistant professor position at University of Maine Law School, where she began teaching in 2002. She stayed in Maine until 2009, when DePaul Law School hired her for a professorship. She remained at DePaul for five years, before moving to Northwestern University Law School as Professor of Law in July of 2014.

* * *

I first heard Deborah Tuerkheimer’s name from our first (2009) Family Defender honoree, Professor Dorothy Roberts, who was recommending to me other academics who might have an interest in the work of the Family Defense Center. Dorothy Roberts is someone Deborah and I consider to be one of our heroes. But I now realize that it must have been quite early in Prof. Tuerkheimer’s tenure at DePaul when Dorothy mentioned her as an “up and coming” scholar who did interesting work that jived with our

27

own. Only in preparing this biography did I realize that Deborah hadn’t been in Chicago for long before I heard about her. But Deborah and I did not actually meet until January 2013.

The occasion of our meeting gave me a much richer flavor of the work Deborah Tuerkheimer does in her role as a feminist scholar. She was the faculty adviser for Law Students for Reproductive Justice, and LSRJ was hosting a Midwest Conference at DePaul Law School. The theme of the conference was on the reproductive right to parent, and Prof. Tuerkheimer gave a talk that preceded mine. Her talk highlighted the law and practice issues involved in the deprivation of basic rights for pregnant women, violence perpetrated against them, and the legal system’s response. I wish I kept my notes of her talk, because it was both scholarly and powerful. Deborah introduced me as the next speaker and was her typical gracious, appreciative, and complimentary self. I immediately regretted that I had not pressed to involve her in our Mother’s Defense Project sooner. (In my defense, I know that Deborah was so engrossed in work on her book for the past two years that my efforts

to engage her in more of our work would have been politely declined anway!). I was grateful to have this opportunity to discover our mutual interests at long last. Once the connections between Deborah’s scholarship and our own agency’s work had been discovered, however, there has been no turning back. There is no doubt that Deborah will continue to be a scholarly voice we heed and a person we turn to for years to come to help us think about legal problems and solutions.

* * *

“How did you get interested in shaken baby syndrome?” I asked Deborah when

we met to prepare this biography. After all, the topic isn’t one toward which a former prosecutor who

focuses on feminist jurisprudence would necessarily gravitate. The answer surprised me: it was a single case that had a result that intrigued her and piqued her curiosity. In 2008, Audrey Edmonds, who had been convicted of first degree reckless homicide due to “classic” SBS triad-based prosecution in 1996, had her conviction overturned on appeal. Deborah learned of the decision and thought it was especially interesting—either the appellate court got it wrong, or there were very important implications for other prosecutions if the appellate court was right. Until then, Deborah had not seriously questioned the medical experts who claimed shaking was the “sole” possible cause of the common cases in which the triad (or sometimes even just one or two parts of the triad) of symptoms appear. Deborah had been considering the issue of finality of convictions, and the evolution of medical science posed an interesting challenge to the usual assumptions about how final a conviction should be when she came upon the Edmonds decision.

Deborah started thinking more about the special challenges that SBS prosecutions posed for the finality

Professor Tuerkheimer at work in her office

28

of prosecutions. She started writing. Writing led to her first publication on the subject, which proved to be a seminal work. Entitled “The Next Innocence Project: Shaken Baby Syndrome and the Criminal Courts” and published in Washington University Law Review in August 2009, Deborah’s article gained a great deal of attention, positive and negative, from lawyers, doctors, and scholars. Deborah also wrote an Op-Ed piece entitled “Anatomy of a Missed Diagnosis” that was printed in the New York Times on September 20, 2010. Between the law review article and the New York Times piece, Deborah started both a flurry of discussion and a backlash. More and more cases came to her attention. Labeled a “denialist,” Deborah was compelled to fight back on the only and best terms she had: her analytical power channeled into her pen (or word processor). For over two years, her response was being formulated. And in April 2014, that response was released for the public to read: Flawed Convictions: Shaken Baby Syndrome and the

Inertia of Injustice (published by Oxford University Press).

In the intervening time between Deborah’s first article and her book, a great deal has changed. Dozens of news and feature stories, including from the national press, have highlighted the unstable foundation on which shaken baby syndrome prosecutions have rested, including the false assumption that the last person who was with the child must have been responsible for that child’s symptoms. As much as any single person could be responsible for the shift in public understanding, Deborah Tuerkheimer has changed the general understanding of the flaws in Shaken Baby Syndrome cases by examining under a microscope the ways in which the justice system has made tragic mistakes.

“Is the issue of false convictions for shaken baby syndrome a feminist issue?” I wondered aloud when I met with Deborah to prepare this biography. “How does this interest mesh with your interests in feminist jurisprudence?” Deborah answers that she is convinced there is a connection, because the commonly accused caregiver in a triad-only SBS case is a female day care provider, who is providing care so that a mother can work outside the home. She believes that social anxiety about women in the workplace and uneasiness about the lack of maternal care can feed into society’s readiness to demonize the person who is alleged to have shaken a baby. So while the subject of SBS convictions isn’t a mainstream one for her as a feminist legal scholar, she does see a tie between her decades-long interest in advancing the position of women in our legal system and in securing fair treatment of women in our justice system. The majority of the prosecutions for SBS that Deborah has reviewed have involved female caregivers who are not the biological parent of the child allegedly shaken.

Legal decisions help to forge any new consensus, but legal scholarship like Deborah’s is the background

Professor Tuerkheimer with research assistant

29

that informs enlightened judicial opinion. A new consensus is emerging, even though innocent caregivers continue to be imprisoned based on the flawed science that had been presented at their trials.

This past spring, Jennifer Del Prete, a day caregiver who had been in prison for 12 years and whose case is profiled extensively in Deborah’s book, won a finding by the federal district court in Chicago of “actual innocence,” because, in the words of the judge, she was convicted based on a diagnosis that had become “highly suspect.” Given what we now know, the judge continued, a diagnosis of SBS is arguably “more an article of faith than a proposition of science.” Jennifer was released from prison on April 30, 2014, though it remains unclear if she will be retried. Among the only public appearances Jennifer has made since her release was coming to Deborah’s first book talk, and we are delighted that she is also coming to our annual benefit this year.

“It is heartbreaking that so many people—hundreds—remain in prison because of erroneous medical testimony that shaking is the only possible cause of a child’s symptoms,” Deborah notes. At the same time, she remains an optimist that the growing skepticism about equating SBS and the triad of symptoms is becoming mainstream. Together with the Family Defense Center, the Innocence Project and Innocence Network, and hundreds of lawyers, doctors, and parent advocates, Deborah Tuerkheimer has diagnosed the problem of flawed convictions, and with great care, has prescribed the proper treatment.

At the Family Defense Center, we are forever grateful that a former prosecutor and feminist scholar has decided to turn her dispassionate attention to exoneration of wrongly-accused caregivers in SBS cases. Professor Deborah Tuerkheimer richly deserves the 2014 Family Defense Scholar award.

I was wrongly convicted of SBS in Boise, Idaho . . . my family and myself have been living a nightmare. Still to this day we have more questions than answers, however wanted to say how thankful we are that Professor Deborah Tuerkheimer wrote the book titled “Flawed Convictions.” It takes courage to stand up to a broken system and show that the government has gotten it wrong. Her book has

opened my eyes and shown me legal ways in an easy to read format, so that one day soon my family will have justice. It has also shown me that I’m not alone in this fight. Thank you!

I also wanted to mention two people who have been instrumental in my fight for justice. Sue Luttner from California who has a SBS blog and Susan C. Anthony who wrote the book titled “SHAKEN What To Do If You’re Wrongly Accused.” Both these remarkable women deserve recognition for the time

and effort they have spent supporting the wrongfully convicted of SBS.

As I write this letter from my prison cell, I want you all to know that if not for your hard work, many others would be wearing the shoes I’m now forced to wear. My fight will not stop after my conviction is thrown out, as this tragic event and the loss of my baby girl in a weird way has given me purpose to

fight against wrongful convictions of SBS.

-Excerpts from letter from Jeffrey B.

August 27, 2014

30

The primary message of Professor Deborah Tuerkheimer in her engrossing new book, Flawed Convictions: Shaken Baby Syndrome and Inertia of Injustice, is straight-forward, but frightening. Over a period of years—primarily 1990 to 2005---people were convicted of shaken baby syndrome homicides based exclusively on scientific evidence that has since been discredited. The discredited science was that a “triad” of medical findings in the examination of an infant who had suddenly lapsed into unconsciousness or death—subdural hematoma, retinal hemorrhaging, and brain swelling—could only result from severe acceleration and deceleration forces characteristic of a high speed automobile accident (whiplash) or violent shaking by an adult. The people convicted were caregivers who had had control of babies at the time they lapsed into neurological crisis. These individuals continue to languish in state penitentiaries across the country or they live their lives outside of prison under the horrible cloud of a criminal homicide conviction.

While in theory a trial by a jury that has to be persuaded unanimously of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt would appear to afford significant protection to an accused defendant, in Flawed Convictions, Professor Tuerkheimer discusses factors which rendered that protection largely illusory for those accused of SBS homicide in “triad-only” prosecutions.

There are three factors that explain the difficulty the defense has in overcoming triad-only prosecutions. At the most basic level, the purported scientific certainty that the triad could only result from violent shaking by the adult present at the time the child’s neurological crisis occurred disarmed defendants from offering any possible statements in their own defense. If a

defendant made the simple exculpatory statement that she (most are defendants are female) did not know why the child lapsed into unconsciousness or death, but that she, the defendant, unequivocally denied shaking the infant, it was argued that the defendant must be lying because the science was certain that there had to have been shaking.

On a psychological level, defendants were victimized by the jury’s need to “mitigate the tragedy” by doing “justice for the baby.” There was the potential for everyone, except the accused defendant, to feel somewhat better about the death of an innocent child if the perpetrator could be identified and punished; prosecutors capitalized on that potential.

Flawed Convictions: A flawless piece of legal research and analysis on a crucially important issue Review by George Barry of Deborah Tuerkheimer’s Flawed Convictions: Shaken Baby Syndrome and the Inertia of Injustice

Reviewer George Barry with his daughter, FDC board member Kathleen Barry

31

Also important was the fact that, while the prosecution in the triad-only cases claimed to have a single narrative that definitively explained what happened to the victim (that he was violently shaken to death by the defendant) and medical experts to testify (erroneously as it turned out) to the scientific validity of that theory, even a properly presented defense typically had no single explanation. At best, the defense was left only with a set of possible explanations. While any of those possible explanations may in theory have been plausible enough to create reasonable doubt and thereby secure acquittal, in the real world, as Professor Tuerkheimer points out, defendants are not routinely acquitted due to the burden of proof. In the real world, when the trial presents a single prosecution narrative versus a defense based on an “amalgam of possibilities,” the single prosecution narrative usually wins out. The prosecution of these triad-only SBS cases took advantage of “the particular power that scientific explanations can have over juries.” Unfortunately, in these cases, that scientific explanation was fundamentally erroneous.

Defense counsel are often not up to the job in these high stakes cases. Flawed Convictions stands as a stark reminder of the fact that the presumption of innocence and the high burden of proof to convict at trial can be frittered away by inadequate defense counsel. The defense of most of these cases should have proceeded, by cross examination of prosecution medical experts and presentation of opposing defense experts, to question whether any crime had in fact occurred, or whether the child’s neurological crisis was instead the result of other causes than violent shaking. Instead, in most of the cases discussed in the book, defense counsel virtually conceded that the baby had been shaken to death, but tried to thrash around for some explanation as to why their client, the last adult on the scene, was not the person who did the shaking. This book is all about the tragic consequences of that approach to these cases by defense lawyers who failed, for lack of energy or lack of budget, to “engage

the (faulty) science” that was being testified to by prosecution medical experts.

Confessions do not confirm guilt. Professor Tuerkheimer also has a sobering message for those who would like to think that that this particular type of flawed conviction is perhaps not so wide-spread, given that a large number of those convicted of SBS homicide in triad-only prosecutions did in fact “confess” or plead guilty. The book details why no fair minded person should take any comfort from the fact that there were confessions or guilty pleas in some of these SBS homicide cases, as both confessions and guilty pleas are extremely suspect because of the emotional vulnerability of these defendants and because of the way in which these cases were handled by police and prosecutors.

Post-conviction process is unavailing for many of the wrongly convicted. Flawed Convictions explains that in theory the criminal law establishes a very high burden of proof for the state to obtain a conviction. Once the trial has occurred and the conviction has been obtained, the criminal law is exacting as to what must be established by the convicted defendant to obtain a reversal on direct appeal and even more so as to what is required to vacate a conviction in collateral proceedings which ordinarily occur in federal court. These heavy burdens on the convicted defendant are in furtherance of the great interest that the law has in establishing the finality of criminal convictions. Neither the direct appeal of convictions nor the collateral proceedings to have criminal convictions vacated make any special provision for cases that are based on evidence that has been scientifically discredited since the trial, as in SBS triad-only cases. The fact that the weight of all medical authority may have accepted the triad as “pathognomonic” of violent shaking seven or eight years ago, but no longer does so today, is arguably new evidence, but not indisputably so. In addition, whether or not the erosion of the scientific basis for the triad-only cases is new evidence,

32

it can generally only help a convicted defendant if this could not have been discovered with the exercise of reasonable due diligence at the time of trial. The more recent the conviction, the more difficult this burden can be for incarcerated defendants.

Flawed Convictions tells how the post-conviction appellate process and the process for obtaining collateral relief are hamstrung by traditional legal rules and ill-equipped to deal with convictions that resulted from extremely definitive scientific testimony by medical experts that was not challenged at trial, even though that science later turned out to be faulty. The book points out the irony of how the post-conviction prospects of those convicted exclusively on the basis of this bad SBS science suffer for lack of a scientific proof of innocence, such as DNA, which the public and the appellate courts have now become accustomed to accepting.

Since the existing post-conviction processes in either direct appeal or collateral proceedings will not provide relief in many of these cases—and where they do, it may only be after great delay—Flawed Convictions forces all of its readers to confront the fact that some special review processes will be required specifically for those convicted of SBS homicides in triad only prosecutions, unless the system is ready to abandon a certain unknown number of factually innocent caregivers to lives in prison or under the shadow of erroneous SBS homicide convictions. In other words, Flawed Convictions makes a compelling case for why there is—RIGHT NOW—a desperate need for prosecutors to review old cases to identify and rescue wrongfully convicted SBS defendants.

Over the course of the 1970’s and 80's, the presence of three medical findings taken together—the triad of subdural hematoma, retinal hemorrhage, and brain swelling—came to be mistakenly understood by the medical profession as definitive proof that the infant or toddler had been subjected to the severe acceleration

and deceleration forces characteristic of either a high-speed automobile accident (whiplash) or an adult violently shaking the child. The medical profession also believed, again mistakenly, that the observable manifestation of the triad, which was the child lapsing into unconsciousness or death, would occur immediately after the felonious shaking. This was the key to identifying the responsible adult. Diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome based on the presence of the triad therefore became a diagnosis of causation and the basis for identifying the perpetrator---first among the nation’s doctors and then, especially in the period 1990-2005, in the nation’s criminal courts. In effect, when the triad of medical findings was present in a seriously injured or deceased infant or toddler, doctors were willing to testify that the baby must have been violently shaken and that the adult who was with the baby when his neurological crisis occurred must have been responsible. Prosecutors were eager to argue that there was nothing left to say in that person’s defense.

The fact of the matter is that careful scientists should never have viewed the triad as unambiguous proof that the afflicted child had been the victim of violent shaking by the adult who was with the child at the time he became unconscious. Professor Tuerkheimer explains how the fundamental but erroneous idea that the triad was “pathognomonic” of violent shaking was a distortion of the idea first hypothesized in 1971 by Dr. Norman Guthkelch, a British pediatric neurosurgeon. Dr. Guthkelch never suggested that the triad was pathognomonic of shaking---that only shaking (or whiplash as from an automobile accident) could cause the triad. Furthermore, if the elements of the triad were caused by shaking in a particular case, Dr. Guthkelch never said that the shaking would have to have been violent to a degree that any reasonable person would have recognized it as abusive. On the contrary, Dr. Guthkelch’s work was meant as an admonition to parents who engaged in mild shaking that they would perhaps have thought of as disciplinary in nature, but certainly not as abusive.

33

Finally, Dr. Guthkelch never suggested that the triad was proof that shaking of any degree—violent or mild—had been perpetrated by the last adult present with the child when he became unconscious. In other words, prosecutions for SBS homicides based exclusively on the presence of the triad were from the beginning a very illogical and unscientific distortion of Dr. Guthkelch’s work.

Though “triad-only” prosecutions and convictions of SBS homicide cases began to mount around the United States, medical research and writing on the significance of the triad fortunately did not come to a halt. Most significantly, in medical journal articles published in 2001, Dr. Jennian Geddes wrote that the triad could result from the deprivation of oxygen to parts of the child’s brain and supporting structures. This was diametrically opposed to the theory of the triad-only prosecutions, which was that damage could only have resulted from the tearing that would have resulted from shaking or whiplash. Since there were (and are) a multitude of medical conditions or events (e.g. stroke) that could result in oxygen deprivation, the fact that the triad was present could only prove shaking if all of the other possible causes could be excluded. This required an exacting exercise of differential diagnosis based on an intensive analysis of the particular child’s entire medical history from birth.

Unfortunately, the doctors testifying as medical experts for the prosecution and the lawyers prosecuting

and defending these cases even after Dr. Geddes’ 2001 work appear not to have been paying attention. The doctors were often willing to conclude that “in this case” the triad was the result of shaking without recognizing any intellectual obligation to explain why the other potential causes should all be excluded. The defense lawyers were often unwilling or intellectually or economically unable to “engage the science” sufficiently to develop the potent line of defense that lay in all of the other possible causes of the triad, either through cross examination of the prosecution’s

medical expert or through opposing medical testimony. The bottom line is that the Geddes papers that should have ended “triad-only” prosecutions in 2001 while putting a new emphasis on differential diagnosis, simply did not do so.

It was not until 2008 that the tide started to turn in the criminal justice system. In that year, the Wisconsin appellate court granted a new trial to Audrey Edmunds who had been convicted in 1996 of an SBS homicide for which she was still incarcerated. The basis for granting the new trial was that a group of medical experts testifying in support of Audrey Edmunds’ petition made it clear in testimony before

a Wisconsin trial judge in 2007 that, as a result of ongoing medical research, the scientific understanding of SBS and whether and how it related to the triad had changed dramatically since 1996. In particular, the medical experts in support of Edmunds’ petition testified that there were now differential diagnoses, other than violent shaking, that could explain the triad and that there could no longer be any certainty that the child’s neurological crisis necessarily had to follow

immediately upon the child having been subjected to trauma—that there was the possibility of a lucid interval. The Wisconsin appellate court found these key changes in medical learning over the years between 1996 and 2007 to be new evidence that entitled Edmunds to a new trial. The prosecutors later declined to re-try the case, demonstrating the impossibility of proving Edmunds guilty beyond a reasonable doubt based on the weight of medical authority in 2008.

In the following year, 2009, the American Academy of Pediatrics adopted “abusive head trauma” in place of “shaken baby syndrome” as its label for a condition characterized by the presence of the triad of medical findings. Shaking was retained as one, but just one, of the possible causes of the triad. This appeared to be an explicit recognition in the official literature of the AAP that the triad could not be thought of as pathognomonic of the infant or toddler having been violently shaken. The combination of Audrey Edmunds’ conviction being vacated by the Wisconsin appellate court in 2008 and the concept of “shaken baby syndrome” being pushed into subsidiary status by AAP in 2009 should have marked the end of further triad-only SBS homicide prosecutions of caregivers who maintained their innocence. Unfortunately, as Professor Tuerkheimer explains, such prosecutions did not end. Some prosecutors continued to file triad-only SBS homicide charges that put caregivers in peril of very lengthy prison terms. These cases have resulted in “lopsided” guilty pleas by caregivers who could not risk being separated from their families for decades and who therefore opted for a conviction on a lesser charge carrying a short prison term or no prison term at all.

For the legal profession, this book should be an occasion for intensive soul-searching on the question of why the criminal justice system was surrendered so completely to a grossly over-simplified and distorted medical theory. For the medical profession, this book should be an occasion for intensive soul-searching on the question of whether doctors operate under the same standard of care in formulating opinions that are elements of the legal process of committing someone to the penitentiary for the rest of their lives as they do in formulating opinions that control the future course of treatment of their patients. For readers with only a citizen’s non-professional interest---neither lawyer nor doctor---this book should and hopefully will provoke a crisis of conscience at what the criminal justice system has done in the name of the “people.”

34

What is the Family Defense Center’s “position” on shaken baby syndrome or “abusive head trauma” (as it has been renamed following criticism)? Do we believe there is “no such thing” as SBS? Are we defending parents and caregivers who violently shake children? Do we contend that violent shaking cannot cause injury of a child?

The first answer is that the Family Defense Center does not condone the mistreatment of any child, including shaking with intent to harm, in anger or by an out-of-control caregiver. The behavior of shaking can be abusive and we do not claim otherwise.

But the question “what is your position on SBS?” doesn’t really ask if we believe shaking can amount to child abuse. Indeed, we do think shaking can be abusive and we do not represent parents who had admitted they violently shook a child. At the Family Defense Center, we have the luxury of doing merits assessments of our cases, so that a parent who was genuinely abusive would not get through our doors for representation.

So what is the issue? The question “do you believe in SBS” is a question about symptoms and their causes—a question that demonstrates some of the complexity of the issues involved in the SBS area. There is ample research that calls into question the likelihood that shaking alone can cause many of the injuries that are attributed to shaking (Keith A. Findley, Patrick D. Barnes, David A. Moran & Waney Squier, Shaken Baby Syndrome, Abusive Head Trauma, and Actual Innocence: Getting It Right, 12 Hous. J. Health L. & Policy 209 (2012)). At the Family Defense Center, we do not claim that shaking can never cause serious injury to a child’s brain or eyes. But the causal link does not work in reverse: just because a child has symptoms that have been associated with shaking , that does not mean that we can infer shaking is always the cause.

It is well-known fallacy of logic—post hoc ergo propter hoc—to conclude from any result that we know the cause. Innocent people are in prison and many families are separated by the child welfare system because of the fallacious view that, because we believe we know the symptoms of shaking, we conclude that shaking is the cause.

The Family Defense Center provides only civil legal representation, meaning that the we do not represent convicted SBS defendants. We do, however, represent dozens of family members, including parents who are registered as guilty of child abuse because of the same fallacious assumptions used to wrongly convict criminal defendants. Several of our most celebrated cases, including In re Yohan K., have challenged the flawed logic behind juvenile court findings that are the non-criminal equivalent of the wrongful convictions on which Professor Tuerkheimer’s work focuses. Indeed, the FDC sees itself as a “child welfare” adjunct to the work of the innocence network advocates, working to apply the best thinking and research currently used to exonerate wrongly accused criminal defendants to the even-more prevalent area of child protection investigations.

Why Family Defenders Care about SBS Innocence

35

36

This year’s event showcases the Family Defense Center’s work on a specific issue: defending innocent families facing “shaken baby syndrome” allegations. Since 2013, we have been working closely with the Innocence Project's SBS Fellow, Kate Judson, based at the University of Wisconsin Law School. We have led the way in several major projects in our own area of expertise—child protection law and policy—that are starting to level the playing field for wrongly accused parents and caregivers.

Our recent successes and accomplishments in this area of work alone include:

On June 19, 2013, we won the landmark decision In re Yohan K. case. Please read our Summer 2013 newsletter (Issue #15 online at www.familydefensecenter/newsletters) for details about this precedential Family Defense Center appellate decision that exonerated two innocent parents and affirmed their precious custodial rights to their children.

In July 2013, Melissa Staas, with Atlanta attorney Diana Rugh Johnson, presented at two national conferences sponsored by the American Bar

Association’s Children and the Law Project. The first was for parents’ and the second was for children’s attorneys. This training, which was a repeat of a similar presentation the same attorneys and Bruce Boyer of Loyola Law School’s Child Law Clinic had given at the National Association of Counsel for Children’s annual conference in 2012, was extremely well-received, concerning medically complex case defense in child protection proceedings.

This past spring, with the help of a coalition of medical experts, advocates, and affected parents, including this year’s Gala Co-Chair Mary Broderick, we succeeded in stopping the passage of a bill that would have legislatively overturned the victory we achieved in the In re Yohan K. case by shifting the burden of proof of innocence onto the parents and away from the State (S.B. 2798).

On March 14, 2014, we released our two-year long, 115 page report, drafted principally by George Barry, analyzing the Medical Ethics Concerns in Physical Child Abuse Cases. This report included nine recommendations for policy and practice measures that would address medical ethical concerns that have emerged in many of the medically complex cases we have handed. The report discussed five such cases in detail and outlined the applicable medical ethics principles at issue in each of these cases.

In September 2014, Melissa Staas and Ellen Domph led training for the Cook County Public Defender’s office on head injury case defense, focusing in significant part on the litigation underlying the In re Yohan K decision.

On September 20, 2014, working with the the SBS Fellow of the Innocence Project, we convened a Summit to discuss the recommendations for next steps

The Family Defense Center’s recent work on exonerating innocent family members in medically complex cases

Michelle W., pictured here with her son Jacob, has become a tireless advocate for families involved in medically complex child welfare cases.

37

for action to prevent wrongful allegations SBS, starting with the recommendations in Prof. Deborah Tuerkheimer’s masterpiece, Flawed Convictions: Shaken Baby Syndrome and the Inertia of Injustice. (Please see pp. 30-34 for an excellent review of the book by George Barry).

We have also represented well over a dozen clients who have faced wrongful allegations of physical child abuse based on incorrect assumptions about causation of their child’s medical condition(s). For example, in the Spring of 2013, the office had nine medically complex cases pending at one time (of a total caseload of 50-60 cases). Because of the similarity of these cases, including that many of them originated at a single hospital, we started meeting with the affected clients to plan additional advocacy by parents for parents (an effort that helped to organize the later legislative effort in 2014).

In 2015, we anticipate presenting workshops for the Illinois Parent Attorney Network on the legal issues in medically complex cases (especially SBS cases) in the child protection arena.

So far in 2013 and 2014, in every single case in which we have provided significant legal assessment and advocacy, we have successfully exonerated the parents from the abuse charges against them and/or been successful in keeping or restoring custody of children to at least one parent. We hope to continue our outstanding track record of success in exonerating innocent family members. This success is dependent upon the combined efforts of medical and legal experts, with the assistance and advice of many colleagues whose work informs our own.

E.Z. came to the attention of hospital staff due to injuries his mother couldn't exlpain. The FDC was able to exonerate her after she stood up to undue pressure to implicate someone else.

38

The Wisconsin Innocence Project (“WIP”), a clinical program of the University of Wisconsin Law School, has been litigating SBS/AHT cases since 2006. The WIP Program is a leader in the field, both in litigation and in academic writings on the subject of the problematic nature of the science and the law’s reliance on the flawed science leading to wrongful convictions. Since the high-profile exoneration of Audrey Edmunds, the first person whose conviction was overturned based on the new scientific challenges to SBS (and whose case became the occasion for our honoree Prof. Deborah Tuerkheimer to start to delve into the legal and medical issues involved, see biography at p. 24), WIP has become an international resource, receiving requests for legal assistance involving SBS convictions from around the globe.

Over the past two years, WIP has worked with the Kate Judson, the Innocence Network’s Shaken Baby Syndrome Litigation Fellow, to create:

• A framework for an organized approach to litigating SBS/AHT cases;

• A universal understanding of the scientific underpinnings (or lack thereof) of the SBS/AHT diagnosis;

• A network of lawyers and doctors and other experts concerned about justice for persons wrongly-convicted in SBS/AHT-based criminal complaints;

• A database of medical and legal resources for challenging SBS/AHT convictions; and

• Expert referrals for practitioners and family members involved in SBS/AHT defense.

In recent months, WIP has started to create a unique center, as an adjunct to the Wisconsin Innocence Project, to address the pressing issues raised by the reliance of the legal system on flawed science, such as SBS/AHT, to prosecute and convict individuals, some of whom are innocent. This new center—The Center for Reliability in Forensic Science, Medicine and Law—will provide an organized structure for critically assessing the science and law in science-dependent cases, beginning with the misuse of science and medicine in SBS/AHT cases.

The need for such a Center is acute and ongoing. As envisioned, the Center will be the home for the ongoing work by the Innocence Network’s SBS Litigation Fellow (Kate Judson) after 2014. Kate will continue to prepare for post-conviction proceedings; develop strategies for cross-examination; assist in the selection and preparation of experts; draft motions related to scientific evidence, advocate for clients in the courtroom; and train lawyers and law students. She also will continue to maintain an extensive database of materials related to SBS/AHT defense that includes motions, transcripts, research, and expert resources. Kate will continue to consult with attorneys and experts, within and outside of the Innocence Network, on a wide variety of SBS/AHT cases.

The University of Wisconsin Law School’s new Center for Reliability in Forensic Science, Medicine and Law is seeking support to maintain and expand the work of the SBS Litigation Fellow. Please join WIP in providing a unique and outstanding service to those wrongfully accused of Shaken Baby Syndrome/Abusive Head Trauma.

For more information or to make a donation, please contact Kate Judson at Katherine.judson@wisc.edu.

Wisconsin’s Innocence Project is leading national efforts to expose flaws in the SBS/AHT hypothesis

39

We share your commitment to community.McDermott Will & Emery proudly partners with the Family Defense Center to help advance the rights of children and families in the child welfare system. We are honored to support its important work.

Boston Brussels Chicago Düsseldorf Frankfurt Houston London Los Angeles Miami Milan Munich New York Orange County Paris Rome Seoul Silicon Valley Washington, D.C.

Strategic alliance with MWE China Law Offices (Shanghai)

McDermott Will & Emery conducts its practice through separate legal entities in each of the countries where it has offices. This communication may be considered attorney advertising. Previous results are not a guarantee of future outcome.

www.mwe.com

40

41

The Family Defense

Centerand its advocacy on behalf of families

Baker & McKenzie is proud to support

42

AT L A N TA C H I C AG O D E L A W A R E I N D I A N A L O S A N G E L E S M I C H I G A N M I N N E A P O L I S O H I O W A S H I N G TO N, D. C .

Barnes & Thornburg is proud to salute The Family Defense Center and tonight’s honorees. Your important work on behalf of families leaves us speechless.

btlaw.com

T H E S I D L E Y A U S T I N F O U N D AT I O N

IS PROUD TO SUPPORT

The Family Defense Center

The Sidley Austin Foundation is funded solely by Sidley Austin LLP, an international law firm, to further the firm’s commitment to the community and to public service.

AND CONGR ATUL ATES

Ellen Domph,

Deborah Tuerkheimer,

Louis Fogel

AND

The Goodman Theater

43

North America Europe Asia winston.com

North America Europe Asia winston.com

Winston & Strawn is proud to supportThe Family Defense Center and its 2014 Family Innocence Benefit, and we applaud this evening’s honorees

www.drinkerbiddle.com

california | delaware | illinois | new jersey

new york | pennsylvania | washington dc | wisconsin

Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP. A Delaware limited liability partnership.

Drinker Biddle is proud to support the

Family Defense Center’sSixth Annual Benefit.

Congratulations to all of this year’s honorees.

LW.com

The Family Defense Center

in its mission to advocate justice for families in the child welfare system.

Latham & Watkins is proud to support

44

Congratulations to Deborah Tuerkheimerand Ellen Domph from the faculty of the Loyola Civitas ChildLaw Center, for your recognition by the FDC, your distinguished service to children and families, and your critical contributions to our understanding of TBI and improvement of our court systems’ efforts to safeguard the welfare of vulnerable children. Well done to you both!

                                        

 

  

Miller Shakman & Beem LLP is proud to support 

The Family Defense Center   

Miller Shakman & Beem LLP 180 N. LaSalle St., Suite 3600

Chicago, IL 60601 www.millershakman.com

312.263.3700

Edelman Combs and Latturner is pleased to support the

gorundbreaking legal advocacy of the Family Defense Center.

Congratulations to Diane, Melissa, Angela, Sara, the other staff of the

Center and all the honorees.

Daniel Edelman

Cathleen Combs

Jim Latturner

45

CONGRATULATIONS ELLEN DOMPH!

You are a formidable and fearless advocate for your clients.

Your brilliance as a trial attorney, coupled with your passionate commitment to those you

represent, is an inspiration to all.

I am so happy that you are being honored for your ground-breaking work with the Family

Defense Center.

You take on the toughest battles, and you win.

You are your Mother’s daughter. Mollie is so proud.

Your friend,

Cindy Giacchetti

Congratulations to the honorees and to

the Family Defense Center,

for changing the way things are done.

Lansner & Kubitschek

New York, NY

Heartfelt congratulations dear Ellen! What a wonderful and well-deserved honor. We consider ourselves lucky to be your friend and so proud of you today and always. A true testament to you recognizing your passion and relentless commitment to your clients, a passion we have had the pleasure of witnessing time and time again.

Much love,Shelley and Richard HarrisLexie, Elana and Seth, too!

To our dear friend, Ellen Domph,

Congratulations on receiving this honorable award, recognizing your dedication and commitment to defending innocent families. We are very proud!

The Ellison Family

Rabobank is proud to support the Family Defense Center and

congratulates Ellen Domph, Deborah Tuerkheimer, Louis Fogel,

and the Goodman Theatre.

46

DEBORAH TUERKHEIMER represents a rare breed of individuals—a dedicated scholar and teacher whose stature and accomplishments already make her a major player in the legal academy but who—personally and professionally exemplifies the “mensch” factor. I was privileged to be Deb’s colleague for several years, during which time we became close personal friends. I can say from my many conversations with Deb over the years that she is someone whose emotional intelligence matches her intellectual capacity, and whose passion for her scholarship and other professional work is exceeded only by her love for her own family. One day she can be the subject of an interview for a major television news program and the next she is on the beach enjoying the last days of summer with her two young sons. Deb approaches every activity in which she is involved with a sense of complete self-investment. Her passion is evident in all that she does, including her latest book, FLAWED CONVICTIONS, which was written with tender loving care and great introspection at every step of the process. Her ability to navigate her own family life and her career, including the public service aspects of her role as an academic involved in high impact scholarship, makes her a particularly compelling role model for other professionals. In conclusion, I wish Deb a hearty congratulations on this well deserved honor, and also extend congratulations to the Family Defense Center on such an appropriate selection for the Family Defense Scholar.

-Roberta Rosenthal Kwall

Deborah Tuerkheimer’s writings on SBS and AHT have been pathbreaking. They take a hard and honest look at the issues that increasingly divide doctors and challenge the legal system’s ability to adapt to the changing medical and scientific evidence upon which the legal system is increasingly dependent.

She paints a picture of a medical diagnosis in disarray and a legal system that is not equipped to respond well to the shifts in medical science and describes an institutional response that lags behind the science—or worse, defiantly resists the evolution of the science, and indeed to some extent exercises a corrupting effect on the science. The result is an arbitrary distribution of justice marked more by institutional inertia and a quest for finality than a commitment to fairness and reliability.

The interests of both medicine and law demand that those steeped in both fields step back, take a deep breath, and openly engage in critical self-evaluation about SBS and abusive head trauma. We in the innocence community thank Deb Tuerkheimer for her work, which marks an important start down that path. The health of children and their families, and the promise of justice in our courts, depend on traveling down that path.

-Keith Findley and Barry Scheck

Congratulations, Deborah Tuerkheimer! Thanks for your brave and brilliant work for

justice for families.

-Dorothy Roberts

Deborah Tuerkheimer has defined a new era in the history of shaken baby syndrome. She has combined clear analysis and careful

scholarship with true tales of injustice, pushing the debate forward not only in the academic arena but also in the popular press.

-Sue Luttner

Congratulations to Deb Tuerkheimer on her receipt of this prestigious and well-deserved honor from the Family Defense Center. Deb’s work models the very best tradition of committed, courageous scholarship. Her work is that rare blend: thoughtful and thorough as well as impassioned and powerful. Her scholarship presents complex scientific knowledge with clarity, and draws together multiple strands of science, social science and law into a lucid and elegant argument for the correction of injustice and the reform of flawed institutions. I am proud to call Deb a friend and colleague.

-Susan Bandes

Congratulations, Deb! Deborah Tuerkheimer’s new book on shaken baby syndrome is characteristic of her work in general: it is extremely thorough, precise in its arguments, and thought provoking from start to finish. Whether she is writing on criminal law and procedure, legal theory, or feminist jurisprudence, her scholarship combines academic rigor with a distinctive voice and perspective. Her book stands out for its combination of real-life stories with insights into science, medicine, and the reality of cognitive biases. The result is a profound look at the divergence between developments in science and developments in law. This honor is well-deserved.

-Andrew Gold

Deborah Tuerkheimer is a true vanguard, able to push boundaries within an irreproachable context of reason and logic – I namecheck her work on SBS/AHT at least once a

day. And I am incredibly fortunate to have Ellen as a mentor and friend.

Her tenacity in the courtroom is surpassed only by her compassion

for her clients. A tremendous “thank you” to Ellen and Deb for the

immeasurable contributions each has made to protect the rights of the

innocent!

-Melissa Staas

48

Congratulations, Louis Fogel!

Best wishes, Keith, Birdy, Nathan and Aaron Holzmueller

Congratulations, Louis, on this award recognizing your leadership in advancing

the cause of justice for families. Well-deserved!

-Debra Aron Manheim and Larry Manheim

The world depends on acts of

kindness to thrive.

(based on Ethics of the Sages)

For your contributions to making our world a better place, we congratulate Louis Fogel on receiving the Pro Bono and Community

Service Award.

Rabbi Andrea London

Cantor Luck

David Graham, President of the Beth Emet Board of Trustees

Bravo Louis! Michelle and Rob McAndrew

49

To the Honorees

Thanks for all that you do for our community.

Kimball and Karen Anderson

Dear Diane, Continue your wonderful work!

Vera Pless

Congratulations toEllen Domph

AndDeborah Teurkheimer

Mauk & O’Connor, LLP

Congratulations to the honorees and best wishes to the Family Defense Center.

I am proud to be a part of an organization that does so much to

help keep families together.

Helene Snyder

Congratulations, Louis. You are a good person and a good friend. The Family Defense Center is lucky to have you.

-Lisa SchoedelBravo Louis! Michelle and Rob McAndrew

50

We are proud to support the Family

Defense Center’s Family Innocence Benefit

and congratulate this evening’s honorees.

©2014 Ropes & Gray LLP

Lillig & Thorsness, Ltd.

Russell R. Custer, Jr.Attorney at Law

1900 Spring Road, Suite 200Oak Brook, IL 60523-1495Telephone: (630) 571-1900Fax: (630) 571-1042Email: rcuster@lilliglaw.com

Children's Law Group, LLC salutes this year's honorees:

Ellen Domph

Louis Fogel

Deborah Tuerkheimer

The Goodman Theatre

Congratulations to the Family Defense Center and the honorees!

51

Ajay Athavale

Amanda and Jeffrey Borneman

Karen Domph

Amy and Zach Ehrmantraut

Beverly Groudine

Carol Jansson

Matthew Kirsch

Jenny Kubitschek

Ina Marks

Carly McGarr

Louis Milot

Mary Morten

Carol and Steve Mullins

Nancy and Ted Otto

Thomas H. Peebles

Angela Peters

Additional Congratulations for Our Honorees

PROUDLY SUPPORTS

CHICAGO • BURR RIDGE • LINCOLNSHIRE 312.782.4244

WWW.GMRFAMILYLAW.COM

DIVORCE • CHILD CUSTODY • PARENTAGE PRENUPTIAL/POSTNUPTIAL AGREEMENTS • ADOPTION

Erika J. Raskopf

Florence Roisman

Leonard Rubinowitz

David Tobis

Barbara and Frank Tuerkheimer

52

Senior Counselor ($2,500 - $3,000)Vera Pless

Sidley Austin LLP

Winston & Strawn LLP

Counselor ($1,500 - $2,499)Beerman Pritikin Mirabelli Swerdlove LLP

Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP

Rabobank International

Sustainer ($1,000 - $1,499)BMO Harris Bank

Edelman Combs Latturner & Goodwin LLP

Latham & Watkins LLP

2014 Family Innocence Benefit SponsorsHero ($10,000)

Jenner & Block LLP (and its partners, Michael Brody, Louis Fogel, and Norman Hirsch)

Defender ($5,000 - $9,999)Baker & McKenzie LLP

Kirkland & Ellis LLP

McDermott Will & Emery LLP

Drs. Geraldine and Eugene Pergament

Advocate ($3,000 - $4,999)

Barnes & Thornburg LLP

The Family Defense Center Offers Hearfelt Appreciation to the Following Foundations for Major Annual Support

In addition to the above listed foundations, the Family Defense Center gratefully acknowledges the support of the Skadden Foundation/Joseph A. Flom Incubator Grant.

53

Denise A. and Scott Lazar

Deborah Pergament, Children's Law Group

Redleaf Family Foundation

Judy Wise and Sheldon Baskin

Friends ($500 - $999)Kathleen and Christopher Alexander

Kimball and Karen Anderson

Dentons US LLP

Forest Printing

Clare Golla, Bernstein Global Wealth Management

Goodman Theatre

Sara Mauk and Michael A. O'Connor

Michelle and Rob McAndrew, Atticus Recruiting

Miller, Shakman & Beem

Elizabeth Pitrof

Diane L. Redleaf

Dorothy Roberts

Ropes & Gray LLP

Helene Snyder

Tim and Jan Timmel

(Commitments reported in this program book were received by September 14, 2013)

Auction DonorsWe gratefully acknowledge the following donors to our auctions and raffles.

Karen and Mike Armstrong

Art Institute of Chicago

Mary Case-Gaskill

Chicago Architecture Foundation

Chicago Bears

Chicago Bulls

Chicago Cubs

Chicago Shakespeare Theater

Chicago Sinfonietta

Chuck E Cheese

Classic Cinemas

Cleise Brazilian Day Spa

ComedySportz Theatre

The Court Theatre

Ann Courter and Norman Hirsch

Dave & Busters

Amy and Kent Dean

The Dinner Detective Murder Mystery

Ellen Domph and John Guenther

Roger Dreher

East Bank Storage

Eileen Fisher

Eli's Cheesecake Bakery

Flavour Cooking School

Tamar and Louis Fogel

Bob Galhotra

Colleen Garlington

Gene Siskel Film Center

Goodman Theatre

Cynde Hansen

Jill Hazelbauer Von Der Ohe

Jan Hulstedt

Impact Networking

Kimbark Beverage Shoppe

Carolyn Kubitschek and David Lansner

Charles Kurland

Legoland Discovery Center

Lettuce Entertain You

Anatoly Libgober

Lucky Strike

Lyric Opera of Chicago

Lou Malnati's

TiShaunda and Michael McPherson

54

*Benefit Host/Planning Committee Member

Kathleen Barry*

William Binder

Patricia Jones Blessman*

Michael T. Brody

Louis Fogel

Colleen Garlington

Michael Koenigsberger*

Jonni Miklos*

Deborah Pergament*

Cynthia Stewart*

Karen Teigiser

Champion BoardProf. Annette Appell*

Brigitte Schmidt Bell*

Mary Kelly Broderick*

Prof. Susan Brooks*

Joan Colen

Catherine Combs

Ann Courter and Norman Hirsch*

Kent Dean*

David J. Lansner*

Lawrence Lansner

Elizabeth Larsen

James Latturner

Joy Leibman

Elizabeth Lewis*

Meg McDonald*

Christine M. Naper*

Edward Otto

Dr. Eugene Pergament

Vera Pless*

Andrew and Lynne Redleaf

Medieval Times

Mike Miller

Louis Milot

Sen. Julie Morrison

Museum of Contemporary Art

The Music Box Theatre

Music of the Baroque

Christine M. Naper

Oceanique

Old Town School of Folk Music

Michelle Paluch

Ofra Peled

Radio Flyer

Diane Redleaf

Alejandro Romero

Sandra Ross Salon

The Denis Savard Foundation

Shedd Aquarium

Helene Snyder

Melissa Staas

Statehouse Inn

Steppenwolf Theatre Company

Rick Strilky

Sunda New Asian

Mallory Thompson

Deborah Tuerkheimer

Urban Oasis

Wines for Humanity

Susan Wishnick and Allen Steinberg

Zanies Comedy Nite Club

Family Defense Center Board of DirectorsHelene Snyder, President

Michael A. O’Connor, Treasurer

Michael W. Weaver, Secretary

55

Dr. Paul and Rhoda Redleaf

Adele Saaf

Deborah Spector

Prof. Michael Wald

Elizabeth Warner

Benefit Hosts, Planning Committee, and VolunteersPatrick Blegen and Jodi Garvey

Prof. Douglas Baird

Zachary Bravos

Melissa Caballero

Mary Case Gaskill

Pam Crenshaw

Kent Dean

Michael Duval

Keith Findley

Ed Fox

Scott Frankel

Dr. Steven Gabaeff

Bob Galhotra

Cindy Giachetti

Amanda Graham

Kailey Grant

John Guenther

Charlene Hyra

Kate Judson

Sue Luttner

Louis Milot

Enrico Mirabelli

Maura Mitchell

Mary Morten

Tracy Palma

Stacey Platt

Maria Pulido

James Shapiro

Stefani Silberstein

Kathy and Jack Stockman

Rob Warden

Michelle and David Weidner

Susan Wishnick and Allen Steinberg

Event ServicesJohnny Gaskill, Event Management

Tracey Scruggs Yearwood, Video Producer

Family Defense Center StaffDiane L. Redleaf, Executive Director

Melissa L. Staas, Staff Attorney

Angela C. Inzano, Staff Attorney

Sara Gilloon, Staff Attorney

Diana Hansen, Operations Manager

Beatrice Radakovich, Administrator

Alejandra Ballesteros, Intake and

Administrative Assistant

Sara Block, Mothers' Defense Fellow

Skye Allen, Litigation Fellow

Reid Smith. PILI Fellow, courtesy of Winston & Strawn

Kailey Grant, Law ClerkCarolyn Kubitschek, Of Counsel, National Advocacy Project Consultant

Shawn Taylor, Treetop Consulting Media Relations Consultant

Phil Milsk, Government Relations Consultant

56

About The Family Defense Center

Winner of the first “Excellent Emerging Organization” award from the Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management.

The mission of the Family Defense Center is to advocate for justice for families in the child welfare system. Founded in 2005, it is a groundbreaking legal representation and advocacy organization. Its primary focus is preventing irreparable harm to families through the wrongful separation of children from their parents or the erroneous labeling of innocent family members as responsible for abuse or neglect.

Family Defense Center70 E Lake Street

Suite 1100Chicago, IL 60601

312-251-9800 (phone)312-251-9801 (fax)

www.familydefensecenter.org

Jenner & Block is proud to work with the Family Defense Center in its outstanding efforts to protect children and defend families.

Congratulations to our esteemed colleague and partner Louis Fogel for being honored with the center’s Community and Professional Service Award. You are a true advocate for the center and its mission.

We applaud this year’s other honorees for their contributions to helping families and improving the child welfare system.

CHICAGO | LOS ANGELES | NEW YORK | WASHINGTON, DC | JENNER.COM

353 N CLARK STREET, CHICAGO, IL 60654-3456 | 312 222-9350

Next year, the Family Defense Center will celebrate its 10th Anniversary!

A special anniversary Gala is already being planned for October 2015.

Stay tuned for next year and please join us for a celebration of ten years of protecting children by defending families.

70 E. Lake St, Suite 1100Chicago, IL 60601

312-251-9800www.familydefensecenter.org

Winner of the First Excellent Emerging Organization Award from the Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management

To Protect Children, Defend Families