SAARNA Meet and Greet

SAARNA will be on Thursday, August 28th, 2025, from 6 to 7 PM, in the main conference hall. 

Failed policies: US sex offenders registration, public notification, and civil commitment

Elizabeth Letourneau

Sex offender registration and notification are failed policies. My research and that of virtually all others who publish in this space find that sex offender registration and notification laws fail to improve community safety in any way. Instead, these policies make it diffi­cult for ex-offenders to find and maintain housing, employment, and pro-social positive relationships – the three keys to successful community re-entry following prison. These barriers may increase the likelihood that registrants will commit new crimes in service of meeting basic needs. Registration and notification policies fail in part because they are based on misunderstandings about sex crimes, including that people with sex crime convictions present a high and homogenous risk of sexual recidivism on an immutable trajectory towards more and more severe offending that is undeterred by time free of offending or by age of the individual. The published literature on adult-focused registration and notification most often documents no imipact of these policies on sexual recidivism. The published literature on youth-focused registration and notification without exception fails to find any public safety effect and instead finds severe harms to the children subjected to these policies. Ancillary studies indicate that these policies exert unintended consequences that put the public at greater risk, such as more sex offenses being pled down to non-sex offenses to avoid the onerous consequences of the registry, and lower conviction rates for those cases that were not pled down but went forward to trial as sex crime cases. Rather than wasting resources on costly, harmful policies governments could instead implement evidence-based interventions known to decrease the risk of violent recidivism and interventions known to prevent initial offenses from happening in the first place.

Elizabeth J. Letourneau, PhD is the endowed Moore Family Professor with Tenure in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where she established MOORE, a center focused on child sexual abuse prevention. Her disciplinary training is in clinical psychology, and she has led a program of research, policy, and practice efforts focused on the prevention of child sexual abuse for 37 years. This work has informed more than 150 publications, appeared in dozens of media outlets including TEDMED and The New York Times Magazine, and attracted more than $30 million in federal, foundation, and philanthropic funding. She currently advises or has previously advised the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, European Commission, Google, Meta, National Academy of Sciences, World Bank and International Finance Corporation, among other governments, corporations, and civil society organizations. Her research has influenced state and federal laws and been cited in five U.S. state supreme court cases and the U.S. Revised Model Penal Code. Her policy and advocacy efforts were instrumental in achieving annual federal funding to the CDC in support of child sexual abuse prevention research; to date, US$13.5 million has been appropriated to the CDC in support of nine outcome evaluations of child sexual abuse prevention programs across the country. She is past president of ATSA and a recipient of the ATSA Significant Lifetime Achievement Award.

Sexual violence in civil conflict: An overview of Africa's response

Furaha Joy Sekai Saungweme & Megan Cistully

Conflict-related sexual violence has devastating and harmful effects on survivors’ physical, sexual, reproductive, and mental health, and destroys the social fabric of communities. Lack of respect for international law, arms proliferation, political interests, economic and national security factors are but some of the underlying layers of civil conflict and which invariably result in systemic and widespread sexual violence of women as a strategy.

Sexual violence has been recorded in many armed conflicts across Africa. Our workshop will focus on case studies from in Sierra Leone, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Central African Republic (CAR) and Ethiopia. UN reports and international courts have provided clarity as to how sexual violence may constitute an instrument, tool or weapon of war. “When acts of sexual violence are linked to a military or political objective and intended to serve a strategic aim of the conflict, they amount to the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.”

We will highlight the following.

• Due to conflict, supportive social networks usually weaken or collapse
• Forced displacement/forced recruitment/forced labour
• Absence of social services such as medical, legal, law enforcement.
• Breakdown of infrastructure

We will expound on the general barriers to justice

• Local courts are located far from many rural communities
• Court fees are beyond the means of poor civilians.
• Stigmatization

Proposed workshop methodology

Introduction

• Overview
• Code of conduct (listening to and respecting others’ views, possibility of leaving the room if not comfortable, etc.)

1. Film/documentary: Congo Kinshasa: the hidden battlefield (film choice subject to change)
   1. Brainstorming on the issues touched upon in the film/documentary
2. Presentation
   1. The issue of sexual violence and international humanitarian law
   2. The African regional system.
   3. The Regional response

• Questions and discussion Break and informal discussion

1. Case studies
2. Based on the African regional responses to sexual violence in armed conflict is there a clearer direction as to who or which entities under international or national law is better placed to respond to atrocities? Which system is best suited to address the issue of reparations for survivors of sexual violence? Who should bring the claim? The victims or the State?
3. Introduction to the cases and questions
4. Group discussion (three groups)
5. Group report and discussion

Furaha Joy Sekai Saungweme is a lawyer, and the founder of Africa End Sexual Harassment Initiative (AESHI), a law reform and social movement project which seeks to create regional dialogue on sexual harassment for national impact and which calls for a Regional Law/Protocol on Sexual Harassment for Africa. She is a Georgetown Law LLM Alumni during which period she served as the LL.M. Advisor for the Georgetown Journal on International Law and developed her thesis, “Sexual Harassment in the Pan African Parliament” which she presented  at the White House (Eisenhower Executive Office Building) in April 2024 before the White House Gender Policy Council. Furaha-Joy is the Lead editor of the #Firstofitskind book Sexual Harassment and the Law in Africa: Country and Regional Perspectives. This groundbreaking publication led to an invite from Voice of America (VOA) Our Voices 638 to discuss the problem of sexual harassment in Africa as well as the book, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiZpzGgjYV0  

Furaha-Joy is Co-Director of the Gender Justice and Harassment Working Group at the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law, Co-Editor in Chief of the BCCE E-Journal and a Board Member of the FemIDEAS, Decolonizing Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Higher Education Project, based at the University of Westminster, United Kingdom. She has authored peer reviewed academic papers on gender, democracy and human rights in Africa and is an active member of notable international networks including International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) as well as the International Conference on Legislation and Law Reform (ILEGIS) which focuses on how laws are written in the United States and around the world at the international, national, and subnational levels.

Megan Cistulli is pursuing a Juris Doctor at the University of Chicago Law School and a Master of Business Administration at Booth School of Business. A summa cum laude graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, she later served as a postgraduate research fellow at Berkeley Law's Center on Comparative Equality & Anti-Discrimination Law. She co-authored a chapter in Sexual Harassment and the Law in Africa: Country and Regional Perspectives and consults for the Africa End Sexual Harassment Initiative. Driven by her passion for equity in education, she co-founded Technology & Entrepreneurship Ladder, Inc. in Nairobi, Kenya, to empower students and foster innovation.

Psychoanalysis in the Treatment of Sexual Offenders: An Outdated Concept or an Underestmated Potential?

Sonja Etzler & Julia Sauter

Psychoanalytic approaches in the treatment of sexual offenders have long been marginalized in favor of cognitive-behavioral interventions. However, is psychoanalysis truly outdated, or does it hold untapped potential in forensic settings? This keynote critically examines the role of psychodynamic concepts in offender treatment, addressing their relevance, effectiveness, and challenges.

We begin by presenting findings from both non-forensic clinical psychotherapy research and forensic applications. These findings provide a foundation for reviewing the challenges and potential benefits of psychodynamic approaches in offender treatment. We discuss how psychodynamic concepts could contribute to offenders’ clinical diagnostics and risk assessment. Additionally, we review results from the implementation of psychodynamic treatment in forensic settings. Finally, we discuss directions for integrating psychodynamic approaches into forensic treatment.

To illustrate the clinical utility of psychodynamic diagnostics, we will present a clinical case formulation in forensic treatment using Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnosis (OPD-3). This case will demonstrate how psychodynamic conceptualizations can contribute to a deeper understanding of offenders’ psychological structures, risk factors, and treatment needs. By integrating these perspectives, we argue for a reconsideration of psychoanalysis in forensic settings and explore its potential to complement existing treatment approaches for sexual offenders.

Sonja Etzler, Ph.D. is a Senior Psychologist at the University Medical Center Freiburg. She works in the field of psychotherapy with a particular focus on psychodynamic approaches. Her research interests lie in forensic psychology, psychological assessment, and clinical psychology, with a special emphasis on the role of personality in deviant and criminal behavior. She has published extensively on these topics, contributing to the scientific understanding of risk factors, diagnostic methodologies, and treatment approaches for individuals with forensic and clinical concerns.

Prof. Dr. Julia Sauter heads the Department of Legal Psychology at the University of Kassel (tenure-track professorship). After studying psychology in Heidelberg, she worked as a therapist in the forensic psychiatric system and as a research associate at Charité Berlin. Concurrently, she completed her doctorate at the University of Mainz and obtained her license as a psychological psychotherapist. Before being appointed to the University of Kassel, she headed the Therapeutic Outpatient Clinic in Cottbus, Germany.