Thank you to all who attended the 2019 New York City Babies and Toddlers Trauma Investigations Conference and made it a huge success! I hope that you have returned to your jurisdictions with new knowledge and a refreshed perspective on baby and toddler fatality investigations.
Your feedback on the conference is important to forming and improving future trainings. Please email your comments to Jetrouveroy@BaT-U.org.
For information on CME credits, please contact Janette Baxter at janette.baxter@nychhc.org.
For information on CLE credits, please contact Debbie Peskin at Debbie.peskin@nypti.org.
Please stay tuned to www.BaT-U.org for upcoming events. Please contact me if you are interested in BaT training for your particular agency or area of practice.
Thank you!
Leigh
P. Leigh Bishop
President & Founder
Babies and Toddlers, Inc.
Dr. Cindy W. Christian, MD
Cindy W. Christian, M.D. holds Anthony A. Latini endowed Chair in the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at The University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Christian serves as Assistant Dean in the Program for Diversity and Inclusion at the Perelman School of Medicine, supporting students in their community volunteer activities. Dr. Christian completed her pediatric residency and child abuse pediatrics fellowship at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she has spent her career. For more than two decades, she directed the child protection program at CHOP. She is a faculty director of the Field Center for Children’s Policy, Practice and Research at The University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Christian is a past Chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect, and past chair of the sub-board on Child Abuse and Neglect for the American Board of Pediatrics. From 2010-2015, Dr. Christian served as the first medical director for the Philadelphia Department of Human Services, leading the development of policies and strategies to improve the health of Philadelphia’s dependent children. Dr. Christian has written and lectured extensively on topics related to all forms of child maltreatment.
Dr. Mark A. Mittler, MD
Mark A. Mittler, MD is the co-director of The Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Cohen Children's Medical Center of Northwell Health. A New York native, Dr. Mittler completed his undergraduate and medical education at the University of Rochester. His neurosurgical residency and chief residency were completed at Brown University, and his fellowship in Pediatric Neurosurgery at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. Dr. Mittler is a Clinical Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. He is board certified in Neurological Surgery and Pediatric Neurological Surgery. Dr. Mittler serves as the Director of Neurosurgery Quality Assurance of the Northwell Health Department of Neurosurgery. He is the Neurosurgery Liaison for the region's largest American College of Surgeons verified Pediatric Level 1 Trauma Center at Cohen Children's Medical Center. In addition to his expertise in brain and spinal injury, Dr. Mittler's clinical interests span the spectrum of pediatric neurosurgical disorders--including brain and spinal cord tumors, craniosynostosis, hydrocephalus, Chiari malformations, and minimally invasive neurosurgical techniques.
The Honorable Arthur J. Cooperman
Arthur J. Cooperman served as a State Supreme Court Justice in Queens from 1983-2009. He conducted approximately 500 trials during that time. Previously, he had been a NYC Civil Court Judge from 1980-1982. He had been a member of the NYS Assembly from 1969-1979 and was chairman of its Judiciary Committee for three years. He served as a first lieutenant in the US Army Signal Corps from 1955-1957. He received an LLB from the NYU School of Law in 1960 and a BA from its University College in 1955.
David L. Taub
David L. Taub is a partner in the New York office of McDermott Will & Emery LLP, the international law firm. David is head of the firm’s Financial Institutions Advisory Practice and is a member of the Firm’s Management Committee. His practice focuses on three core areas: derivatives and financial products, distressed municipal credits and FinTech/blockchain. David is a magna cum laude graduate of Brown University (1981), where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa and a graduate of Berkeley Law - - the University of California (1984).
Dr. Christopher Spencer Greeley, MD, MS
Christopher Greeley is Chief of the Section of Public Health and Primary Care at Texas Children’s Hospital. He is Professor and Vice-Chair for Community Health in the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine. He received his medical degree from the University of Virginia in 1992 and complete internship and residency in pediatrics at Vanderbilt University. He received a Masters in Clinical Research from the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, with a special concentration on Comparative Effectiveness Research. He is board certified in General Pediatrics as well as Child Abuse Pediatrics, and is a member of the AMA and the AAP. He also served on the Board of Directors of Prevent Child Abuse America from 2005-2014 and was Chair for 2009-2013. He is the immediate past-president of the Ray E. Helfer Society; the international society for physicians working in the field of child maltreatment. In 2017 he was appointed chair of the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Task Force for Texas. He was elected to the American Pediatric Society in 2017.
Dr. Greeley was the 2006 Ray E Helfer Award winner. The Ray E Helfer Award is an annual award jointly presented by The American Academy of Pediatrics and The National Alliance of Children’s Trust and Prevention Funds “to a distinguished pediatrician for his or her contribution to the prevention of child abuse and neglect.”
Dr. Brian J. Forbes
To know more about Dr. Brian J. Forbes
Download CV
Dr. Kristen Landi M.D.
Dr Landi completed medical school in the Bronx at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and her residency training in pathology at Yale. She returned to NYC for fellowship in pediatric pathology at NYU/Bellevue and joined the Medical Examiner’s office for additional fellowships in forensic pathology and forensic cardiac and neuropathology. She stayed with the medical examiner’s office, working in and the Bronx primarily. She has worked as a medical examiner for 16 years with special focus of pediatric forensic pathology serving on a number of city and national committees and societies focusing on sudden death of children and infants and child abuse deaths.
Lawrence Jay Braunstein
Lawrence Jay Braunstein is a partner in the law firm of Braunstein & Zuckerman, Esqs, in White Plains, New York. His practice includes the areas of Matrimonial and Family Law and related civil and criminal litigation. Since 1985 he has specifically focused his practice in the areas of child custody litigation and litigation involving allegations of child sexual abuse, physical abuse and abusive head trauma (shaken baby) in matrimonial, family and criminal cases.
He regularly lectures as an invited speaker, both nationally and internationally, in the areas of child sexual abuse, physical abuse and shaken baby, child custody litigation, expert witness testimony, courtroom psychology, trial procedures, and on various other criminal, family and matrimonial law topics to judges, attorneys, medical and mental health professionals, law enforcement personnel (State and Federal), prosecutors (State and Federal), and child protection service personnel.
Since 1999 he has served on the faculty of the New York City Police Department Sex Crimes and Child Abuse Investigation Course and, since 2014, on the faculty of the New York City Police Department Homicide Investigator Course. In 2004 he was the only defense attorney invited by the FBI to participate as a member of the working group to plan the International Online Child Sexual Victimization Symposium, and to present to both the working group and the Symposium. He has conducted hundreds of trainings with police departments across the county, with the FBI Behavioral Analysis Units, and with police agencies in England, Scotland, Wales, and South Africa.
He is presently an Adjunct Professor of Law at Hofstra University School of Law, Hempstead, New York. Since 2007 he has been named as one of the “Top Attorneys in the New York Metro Area” as published in the New York Times Magazine’s Super Lawyer Section, and one of the top Twenty-Five “Super Lawyers” in the Westchester County, New York, area. In 2014 he was rated “AV Preeminent” by the Martindale Hubbell Peer Review Ratings, indicating his high level of ethical standards and professional ability, generated from evaluations by other members of the bar and the judiciary in the United States and Canada. In 2018 he was included in Best Lawyers in America, and his firm was included in Best Law Firms in America.
More information can be obtained at his website, www.bzesqs.com
Dr. Vincent J. Palusci
Bellevue Hospital Frances L. Loeb Child Protection and Development Center, New York University School of Medicine
To know more about Dr. Vincent J. Palusci
Download Profile
Joelle Anne Moreno
Associate Dean & Professor of Law Joelle Anne Moreno is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Swarthmore College, and most importantly for a native New Yorker, Stuyvesant High School. Before beginning her academic career, she served as a federal prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice.
Professor Moreno is an experienced teacher of Evidence, Scientific and Forensic Evidence, Criminal Procedure, Criminal Law, Criminal Advocacy, and Alternative Dispute Resolution. Her research and scholarship focuses on scientific evidence and constitutional criminal justice issues and includes articles that have appeared in a range of legal, medical and scientific journals including Boston University, Florida, Ohio State, Arizona, Penn State, Tulane, Utah, and Akron law reviews, the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, and Pediatric Radiology. As a firm believer that academic work should have real world application, she has examined the public health impact of misusing scientific and medical evidence in the context of child abuse and vaccine refusal. She is a co-author of the Consensus Statement on Abusive Head Trauma in Infants and Young Children (2018) and the recipient of the 2018 Presidential Recognition Award from the Society for Pediatric Radiology. Over the past two decades, she has presented her work at legal, scientific and medical conferences around the world including programs held at Yale, Akron, Houston, William & Mary, Thomas Jefferson, Seton Hall, and Michigan State law schools; meetings of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the judges of the U.S. Court of Claims, the World Vaccine Congress, and the Queens District Attorney’s Office; and the American Medical Association, European Society for Paediatric Radiology, ISPCAN, the American Society for Pediatric Neuroradiology, Inter-CAP, the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome, and the Society for Pediatric Radiology. Professor Moreno also serves on the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ Multistate Essay Examination Drafting Committee and is a past chair of the AALS Evidence Section.
Dr. Rebecca D. Folkerth
Dr. Folkerth is a Neuropathologist, an expert on the tissue changes seen in the brain of adults and children with neurologic disorders. For nearly 3 decades, she was in Boston, affiliated with Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she served as Director of Neuropathology. In 2016, Dr. Folkerth shifted her diagnostic focus to forensic neuropathology, at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in New York City. Over her career, she has been part of many research projects of public interest, including brain abnormalities in preterm infants, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and traumatic brain injury and CTE. Dr. Folkerth is the recipient of the Paci Award for Resident Teaching in Pathology, and of numerous awards for presentations of research and clinical diagnostic work at national scientific meetings in Neurology and Neuropathology. Invited appearances include the Jerzy Olszewski Guest Lecture (keynote of the Pediatric Neuropathology Symposium at the Canadian Association of Neuropathologists, 2004), the Saul R. Korey Lecturer (Patterns of Injury in the Pediatric Nervous System, at the American Association of Neuropathologists, 2018), as an expert on the Neil deGrasse Tyson StarTalk series, and at the Harvard Club of New York City at their annual Sherlock Holmes Birthday series on forensic topics.
Dr. John M. Leventhal
John M. Leventhal M.D is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine.
To know more about Dr. John M. Leventhal
Download Profile Download CV
Leigh Bishop
Leigh Bishop is the President and Founder of Babies and Toddlers, Inc., a non-profit organization that provides training to doctors, lawyers and law enforcement involved in the investigation of serious injuries and deaths of children under the age of 4 years. She served for more than 22 years as an Assistant District Attorney in Queens County, New York and for more than 5 years as the Chief of the first-of-its-kind Child Fatality Unit established by the Queens District Attorney’s Office in 2014. Leigh has investigated and prosecuted many types of violent crimes including homicide, rape, assault and robbery.
Leigh specializes in homicide and assault investigations and prosecutions involving babies and toddlers with Abusive Head Trauma and is nationally recognized as a resource on the relevant medical and legal issues. Leigh has developed investigative protocols for these cases and works closely with members of the New York City Police Department’s Homicide and Detective Squads, the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner, the Administration of Children’s Services and all major New York City Hospitals.
Leigh regularly lectures to local, regional, national and international legal and medical institutions, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, the National District Attorneys Association, the Innocence Project, the Association of Prosecution Attorneys, the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome, Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and the Kennedy Krieger Institute at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.
Leigh is a 1992 graduate from Rhodes College (Memphis, Tennessee) and she is a 1996 graduate from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law (Dallas, Texas). Leigh is originally from Birmingham, Alabama.
Sponsored by the Babies and Toddlers Inc. and NYU School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics. For more information, email lbishop@bat-u.org.
Shaken Science
The Washington Post
Read >
Mother’s Boyfriend is Charged with Beating 3-Year-Old Girl to death
The New York Times
Read >
‘Voodoo Mom’ Sentenced to 17 Years in Prison for Burning Daughter
New York Post
Read >
Nyquil-Addled Babysitter Who Let Tot Drown in Bucket gets 1-3 Years in Prison
New York Post
Read > || Read >
Babysitter Gets 11 Years for Child’s Shake Death
New York Post
Read >
Prosecutor Spotlight Article: Leigh Bishop
Association of Prosecuting Attorneys National Publication Lex Enfants
Read >
Leigh Bishop is the President and Founder of Babies and Toddlers, Inc., a non-profit organization that provides training to doctors, lawyers and law enforcement involved in the investigation of serious injuries and deaths of children under the age of 4 years. She served for more than 22 years as an Assistant District Attorney in Queens County, New York and for more than 5 years as the Chief of the first-of-its-kind Child Fatality Unit established by the Queens District Attorney’s Office in 2014. Leigh specializes in homicide and assault investigations and prosecutions involving babies and toddlers with Abusive Head Trauma and is nationally recognized as a resource on the relevant medical and legal issues. Leigh is a 1992 graduate from Rhodes College (Memphis, Tennessee) and she is a 1996 graduate from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law (Dallas, Texas). Leigh is originally from Birmingham, Alabama. Roll Tide!
Bellevue Hospital Frances L. Loeb Child Protection and Development Center, New York University School of Medicine
To know more about Dr. Vincent J. Palusci, download his profile.
David L. Taub is a partner in the New York office of McDermott Will & Emery LLP, the international law firm. David is head of the firm’s Financial Institutions Advisory Practice and is a member of the Firm’s Management Committee. His practice focuses on three core areas: derivatives and financial products, distressed municipal credits and FinTech/blockchain. David is a magna cum laude graduate of Brown University (1981), where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa and a graduate of Berkeley Law – – the University of California (1984).
Associate Dean & Professor of Law Joelle Anne Moreno is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Swarthmore College, and most importantly for a native New Yorker, Stuyvesant High School. Before beginning her academic career, she served as a federal prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice.
Professor Moreno is an experienced teacher of Evidence, Scientific and Forensic Evidence, Criminal Procedure, Criminal Law, Criminal Advocacy, and Alternative Dispute Resolution. Her research and scholarship focuses on scientific evidence and constitutional criminal justice issues and includes articles that have appeared in a range of legal, medical and scientific journals including Boston University, Florida, Ohio State, Arizona, Penn State, Tulane, Utah, and Akron law reviews, the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, and Pediatric Radiology. As a firm believer that academic work should have real world application, she has examined the public health impact of misusing scientific and medical evidence in the context of child abuse and vaccine refusal. She is a co-author of the Consensus Statement on Abusive Head Trauma in Infants and Young Children (2018) and the recipient of the 2018 Presidential Recognition Award from the Society for Pediatric Radiology. Over the past two decades, she has presented her work at legal, scientific and medical conferences around the world including programs held at Yale, Akron, Houston, William & Mary, Thomas Jefferson, Seton Hall, and Michigan State law schools; meetings of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the judges of the U.S. Court of Claims, the World Vaccine Congress, and the Queens District Attorney’s Office; and the American Medical Association, European Society for Paediatric Radiology, ISPCAN, the American Society for Pediatric Neuroradiology, Inter-CAP, the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome, and the Society for Pediatric Radiology. Professor Moreno also serves on the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ Multistate Essay Examination Drafting Committee and is a past chair of the AALS Evidence Section.
Mark A. Mittler, MD is the co-director of The Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Cohen Children’s Medical Center of Northwell Health. A New York native, Dr. Mittler completed his undergraduate and medical education at the University of Rochester. His neurosurgical residency and chief residency were completed at Brown University, and his fellowship in Pediatric Neurosurgery at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Dr. Mittler is a Clinical Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. He is board certified in Neurological Surgery and Pediatric Neurological Surgery. Dr. Mittler serves as the Director of Neurosurgery Quality Assurance of the Northwell Health Department of Neurosurgery. He is the Neurosurgery Liaison for the region’s largest American College of Surgeons verified Pediatric Level 1 Trauma Center at Cohen Children’s Medical Center. In addition to his expertise in brain and spinal injury, Dr. Mittler’s clinical interests span the spectrum of pediatric neurosurgical disorders–including brain and spinal cord tumors, craniosynostosis, hydrocephalus, Chiari malformations, and minimally invasive neurosurgical techniques.
Arthur J. Cooperman served as a State Supreme Court Justice in Queens from 1983-2009. He conducted approximately 500 trials during that time. Previously, he had been a NYC Civil Court Judge from 1980-1982. He had been a member of the NYS Assembly from 1969-1979 and was chairman of its Judiciary Committee for three years. He served as a first lieutenant in the US Army Signal Corps from 1955-1957. He received an LLB from the NYU School of Law in 1960 and a BA from its University College in 1955.
Cindy W. Christian, M.D. holds Anthony A. Latini endowed Chair in the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at The University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Christian serves as Assistant Dean in the Program for Diversity and Inclusion at the Perelman School of Medicine, supporting students in their community volunteer activities. Dr. Christian completed her pediatric residency and child abuse pediatrics fellowship at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she has spent her career. For more than two decades, she directed the child protection program at CHOP. She is a faculty director of the Field Center for Children’s Policy, Practice and Research at The University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Christian is a past Chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect, and past chair of the sub-board on Child Abuse and Neglect for the American Board of Pediatrics. From 2010-2015, Dr. Christian served as the first medical director for the Philadelphia Department of Human Services, leading the development of policies and strategies to improve the health of Philadelphia’s dependent children. Dr. Christian has written and lectured extensively on topics related to all forms of child maltreatment.