Deborah Epstein
Director, Professor of Law

     Professor Epstein has been teaching the Domestic Violence Clinic since 1993, and has spent almost 20 years working as an advocate for victims of family abuse. She co-chaired the recent design and implementation of the D.C. Superior Court's Domestic Violence Court, which has fundamentally restructured the way civil and criminal family abuse cases are handled. Specialized judges preside over all family law, civil protection order, and criminal cases involving domestic abuse; a multi-agency approach is employed to decrease the incidence of family violence and to improve litigants' access to crucial legal, medical, and social services. Untill 2000, Professor Epstein directed the court's new Domestic Violence Intake Center, a "one-stop shopping" center where victims can obtain assistance and advocacy in their civil and criminal court cases as well as crisis intervention counseling and support.

     Professor Epstein's publications in this area include: Effective Intervention in Domestic Violence Cases: Rethinking the Roles of Prosecutors, Judges, and the Court System, 11 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 3 (1999); Publicizing Private Violence: Restructuring the Justice System's Approach to Intimate Abuse, 1 Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law 127 (Summer 1999); D.C. Superior Court Domestic Violence Benchbook (1997); Domestic Violence, D.C. Practice Manual (forthcoming, 2000); Litigating CPO Cases: A Practice Manual (1995); and Fighting Domestic Violence in the Nation's Capital, 3 Georgetown Journal of Fighting Poverty 93 (Fall 1995). A more complete publications list is also available.

     Professor Epstein is a member of the D.C. Superior Court's Domestic Violence Coordinating Council, the D.C. Mayor's Commission on Violence Against Women, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Training Needs of Health Professionals to Respond to Family Violence, and the D.C. Domestic Violence Fatality Review Team, and has served as a Board Member of the D.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Matthew Fraidin
Co-Director, Visiting Professor of Law

     Matthew Fraidin, who previously visited the Domestic Violence Clinic in Spring 2007, is Director of the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law (UDC-DCSL) HIV/AIDS law clinic and Associate Professor of Law at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law. In addition to the HIV/AIDS clinic, Professor Fraidin also teaches Professional Responsibility and Disaster Law: Katrina and Beyond. Prior to joining UDC-DCSL, Professor Fraidin served as Legal Director of The Children's Law Center in Washington, DC, Supervising Attorney at The Legal Aid Society of DC, and Associate Counsel to Vice President Al Gore.

      Professor Fraidin frequently addresses local and national groups about family law, lawyering skills, and clinical legal education. An expert in the areas of kinship care, child custody, and child abuse and neglect, Professor Fraidin has testified before the U.S. Senate and the D.C. Council about a variety of proposed legislation. Professor Fraidin has been interviewed on several Washington, DC-area radio and television programs and regularly is quoted in newspaper articles on the subjects of child abuse and neglect and family law.

Rachel Camp
Visiting Associate Professor of Law

Prior to visiting in Georgetown’s Domestic Violence Clinic, Professor Camp was on faculty at the University of Baltimore School of Law’s Family Law Clinic as a Clinical Teaching Fellow.  While at UB, Professor Camp supervised law students representing clients in family law cases and domestic violence civil protection order hearings, and co-taught a weekly seminar on lawyering and litigation skills.  Additionally, Professor Camp integrated into the existing Family Law Clinic curriculum a community legal education component, and has supervised law students on community education projects ranging from a workshop on domestic violence organized at a local Mosque, a project on a new Maryland law that affords rental housing protections to domestic violence survivors, and a program on teen dating violence at a local middle school.  Professor Camp’s co-authored article on integrating community legal education into clinical programs will be published in 2012 in the Clinical Law Review.  Professor Camp’s scholarship also explores the intersection of child welfare and mental health services, and school responses to teen dating violence.  Her article A Mistreated Epidemic:  State and Federal Failure to Adequately Regulate Psychotropic Medications Prescribed to Children in Foster Care, 83 Temple Law Review 369 (2011), explores the epidemic rates at which children in foster care are prescribed psychotropic medications. 

Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Baltimore, Professor Camp practiced law in Oregon as an Assistant Attorney General with the Oregon Department of Justice. While there, she served as counsel for a variety of state agencies, including the Department of Human Services in matters involving child abuse and neglect.  Prior to her employment at the Oregon Department of Justice, Professor Camp was a staff attorney at the Maryland Disability Law Center representing patients at a maximum-security state psychiatric hospital in civil and administrative matters. 

Margo Lindauer
Teaching Fellow     

    Margo is a teaching fellow with the Domestic Violence Clinic at the Georgetown University Law Center. Margo has worked with survivors of domestic violence in formal and informal capacities since graduating from Wellesley College, where she began to cultivate her commitment to women’s’ rights and advocacy. After graduating from college, Margo worked as the Latino Outreach coordinator at a small homeless service agency in North Carolina. In that capacity, she worked with homeless, non- English speaking families and their children, many of whom were single parent families due to domestic violence. As a law student at Northeastern University School of Law, Margo participated in her school’s Poverty law Clinic as well as its Domestic Violence clinic. Margo recently completed a teaching fellowship at Suffolk University Law School’s Juvenile Justice Center.  As a juvenile justice fellow, Margo supervised students in Boston Juvenile Court, taught a handful of full-length classes, and supervised students on a policy project related to the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services.  In the spring of 2009, Margo worked with Suffolk’s Child Advocacy clinic as a clinical teaching fellow. In that capacity, she supervised students, covered students’ cases after they graduated, and assisted the main professor for the clinic in drafting a series of policy initiatives related to college tuition waiver eligibility for youth in state custody. Prior to her position at Suffolk, Margo  was a staff attorney at Casa Myrna Vazquez, Inc., a not for profit domestic violence agency in Boston. Margo handled restraining order cases, managed a case load of long-term family law cases, and assisted the legal team in maintaining their state-wide helpline. In addition, Margo was part of Massachusetts’ Children and Family Law Panel where she accepted state appointed abuse and neglect cases. Margo is fluent in Spanish.

Esther Sollenberger
Executive Assistant

B.A. in Sociology and Anthropology, Franklin & Marshall College

Esther Sollenberger is the Executive Assistant for both the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic and the Domestic Violence Clinic, where she manages the day-to-day operations of both.  Her work for the clinics includes referral and docket monitoring for the Domestic Violence Clinic, planning the annual fact finding trips for the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic, and providing financial and administrative support for both. 

 

Revised January 11, 2012 (LdL)