Deborah Epstein
Co-Director, Professor of Law

Professor Epstein has directed the Domestic Violence Clinic since 1993, and has spent almost 30 years working as an advocate for victims of intimate partner abuse. She co-chaired the design and implementation of the D.C. Superior Court’s Domestic Violence Division, which 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. For the court’s first five years, Professor Epstein also directed the court’s newly-created Domestic Violence Intake Center, a one-stop center where survivors can obtain assistance and advocacy in their civil and criminal court cases as well as crisis intervention counseling and support.

Professor Epstein has served on the NFL Players’ Association Domestic Violence Commission, Chair of the DC Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board, on the Board of the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the House of Ruth, and as a member of the D.C. Superior Court’s Domestic Violence Coordinating Council and the D.C. Mayor’s Commission on Violence Against Women. She has trained hundreds of police officers, prosecutors, and judges around the country and internationally on domestic violence issues. In 2020, she recently was awarded the American Bar Association’s Margaret Brent Award for professional excellence in women lawyers. She serves on D.C.’s Judicial Nominations Commission, helping to select judges to serve on the local courts.

Professor Epstein’s publications in this area include: Loneliness and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Implications for Intimate Partner Violence Survivors, J. FAMILY VIOL. (2020); From Isolation to Connection: The Practices and Promise of Open Domestic Violence Shelters, J. INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE (2020); Discounting Women: Doubting Domestic Violence Survivors’ Credibility and Dismissing Their Experiences, 167 U. PENN. L.REV 339 (2019); Beyond the RCT: Integrating Rigor and Relevance to Evaluate the Outcomes of Domestic Violence Programs, 39 AM. J. EVALUATION (2018); LISTENING TO BATTERED WOMEN: A SURVIVOR-CENTERED APPROACH TO ADVOCACY, MENTAL HEALTH, AND JUSTICE (APA Press, 2008); The Victim-Informed Prosecution Project: A Quasi-Experimental Test of a Collaborative Model for Cases of Intimate Partner Violence, VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN (2009); Refocusing on Women: A New Direction for Policy and Research on Intimate Partner Violence, 20 J. INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE 479 (2005); Transforming Aggressive Prosecution Policies: Policies: Prioritizing Victims’ Long-Term Safety in the Prosecution of Domestic Violence Cases, 11 AM. J. GENDER, SOC. POLC’Y & LAW 465 (2003); Procedural Justice: Tempering the State’s Response to Domestic Violence, 43 WM. & MARY L.REV. 1843 (2002); and 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).

Rachel Camp
Co-Director, Professor from Practice

Rachel Camp is a Co-Director of the Domestic Violence Clinic and a Professor from Practice at Georgetown University Law Center. She joined Georgetown’s faculty in 2011 and became a co-director of the Domestic Violence Clinic (DVC) in 2013. Professor Camp has extensive experience teaching domestic violence law, lawyering and litigation skills, and about the art of teaching and supervision. She has represented, and has supervised law students representing, hundreds of survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) in civil protection order and family law cases, both at Georgetown and as a Clinical Teaching Fellow at the University of Baltimore School of Law. In addition to direct legal representation, Professor Camp has supervised law students on community education and systemic legal reform projects aimed at increasing access to justice for survivors. Professor Camp currently serves on the D.C. Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board and the Board of Directors of the D.C. Affordable Law Firm.

Professor Camp writes on clinical pedagogy and has published articles on a range of topics relating to best methods for teaching and supervising law students. Additionally, her scholarship explores the intersection of IPV, shame, and litigation. Pursuing Accountability for Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence: The Peril (and Utility?) of Shame, 98 Boston Univ. L. Rev. 1677 (2018), explores how formal and informal methods of shaming those who harm lead to counterproductive outcomes for reducing violence in intimate relationships. From Experiencing Abuse to Seeking Protection: Examining the Shame of Intimate Partner Violence, 13 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. 103 (2022), examines how shame can permeate a survivor’s experience with IPV on individual, social, and institutional levels. Professor Camp provides trainings to a range of audiences on shame, IPV, and trauma, including judges, legal practitioners, and non-lawyer professionals.

In addition to her work in the DVC, Professor Camp is the faculty director for the D.C. Affordable Law Firm LL.M. program.

Nicole Joseph
Teaching Fellow

Nicole is a Graduate Clinical Teaching Fellow with the Georgetown University Law Center Domestic Violence Clinic. Nicole’s background is in doing poverty law and domestic violence/sexual assault work as a staff attorney in legal aid. As part of her work, Nicole also tackled the broader arena of family law cases, representing survivors of abuse in divorce, custody, and civil protection order cases. Nicole recently began consulting as an expert for battered women in homicide cases. Prior to joining Georgetown’s DV Clinic, she taught as an adjunct professor at Northern Illinois University College of Law. Nicole is an alumna of the University of Michigan, and the University of Illinois College of Law. During her time at the UofI, Nicole served as the president of both the Family Law Society and the Women’s Law Society. She also serves as an alumni mentor to law students from the UofI College of Law. Nicole was a 2017 recipient of the Illinois Women’s Bar Foundation Scholarship. Nicole speaks Spanish conversationally, and spent three months living in Salamanca, Spain. She is licensed to practice in Illinois, Massachusetts, and D.C. In her free time, Nicole enjoys watching tennis, cooking, and traveling.

Myka Held
Teaching Fellow

Myka Held received a Bachelor’s Degree from Brandeis University in 2009 in Women’s and Gender Studies and American Studies, a Master’s Degree in Women’s and Gender Studies at Loyola University Chicago in 2012, and a Juris Doctor at Georgetown University Law Center in 2015. Throughout all of her education, she has focused her research, courses, and internships on gender-based violence.

Most recently, she was a Senior Staff Attorney at Legal Aid Chicago in the Children and Families Practice Group, where she specialized in sexual assault cases. Since she began at Legal Aid Chicago in 2016, she has been part of the Comprehensive Legal Assistance for Survivors Project (CLASP), which partners with rape crisis organizations to provide cohesive services to sexual assault survivors. Throughout her entire time at Legal Aid Chicago, she represented domestic violence and sexual assault survivors in civil protective order hearings, domestic relations, and education law cases. She regularly gave presentations to advocates, lawyers, and community members about the dynamics and legal issues present in sexual assault cases. Before Myka started at Legal Aid Chicago, she worked at SurvJustice, a now defunct national organization that represented sexual assault survivors in all types of legal cases, specializing in education issues. Myka joined the Domestic Violence Clinic in July 2023.

Anna Harty
Office Manager

Anna serves as the office manager for several programs at Georgetown Law. She handles the day-to-day administrative operations of the Domestic Violence Clinic, the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic, the Social Enterprise & Nonprofit Law Clinic, and the DC Affordable Law Firm LL.M. Fellowship Program. She graduated from Xavier University with a B.A. in Gender & Diversity Studies. As a Brueggeman Fellow at Xavier, Anna developed an independent study examining the role of gender in conflict resolution and traveled to Uganda to engage in related research. After graduating, Anna did a year of service through Jesuit Volunteer Corps and coordinated legal services for asylum seekers at YMCA International Services in Houston, TX.