Complex Trauma in Criminal Mitigation: Conceptualizing Harm Through a Developmental Perspective

Many criminal defendants have suffered complex trauma that must be explicated through presentence reports by mitigation experts. This seminar, presented by attorney Mark Silver, will focus on major approaches to conceptualize the harm that many of our clients have suffered in childhood through the ACE criteria and a developmental perspective focusing on the effects of abuse and neglect. The seminar will also consider how these matters are assessed in a psychosocial evaluation and major psychopathology that results from complex trauma.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify the ACE criteria in the context of complex trauma
2. Acquire a developmental perspective of abuse and neglect in the context of complex trauma
3. Recognize how psychosocial evaluations of criminal defendants by mitigation experts consider complex trauma
4. Examine the major areas of psychopathology that result from complex trauma, and why attorneys must understand them