Agenda

8:30 a.m.

Welcome & Introductions

8:45 a.m.

Victim and Perpetrator Behavior
Using video, interactive exercises, brief lectures, and group discussion, this segment will help participants to impact of violence on adult and child victims, including protection and restoration requirements.

10 a.m.

Break

10:15 a.m.

Fact Finding: How to Get the Right Information
This segment focuses on skills in gathering and processing factual information to assist in fact finding in civil protection order and related cases.

12 noon

Lunch on your own

1:30 p.m.

Creating a Coordinated Systems Response
This segment focuses on how the court, practitioners and stakeholders can build a process to improve information sharing, collaboration, service coordination and effective responses for families.

2:45 p.m.

Break

3 p.m.

Enhancing Access to Justice in Cases Involving Domestic Violence
This segment focuses on strategies in advancing access to justice for courts and communities.

4:15 p.m.

Wrap up, evaluation

Hon. Mary Madden

Mary Madden practiced family law exclusively for close to 20 years before joining the family court bench in 2008.  She has served on both Minnesota’s Second and Fourth Judicial District’s family courts.  She is currently the lead judicial officer on the Fourth District’s Family Court Enhancement Project, a four-year demonstration project funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women, as well as the District’s Mentor Court grant received in 2017. Judge Madden is a former president of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, Minnesota Chapter Board of Directors.  She has served as a member of the Minnesota State Early Case Management/Early Neutral Evaluation Steering Committee and the Custody Dialogue Group whose work preceded the passage of the new custody and parenting time best interest factors in Minn. Stat. § 518.17 in 2015. 

Darren Mitchell

Darren Mitchell is a consultant on domestic violence and other violence against women issues, with a focus on child custody and domestic violence, firearms and domestic violence, interstate child custody, protection order issuance and enforcement, and full faith and credit. Since 2000, he has trained judges, attorneys, advocates, and other professionals across the country and has published several articles on these topics. 

His consulting clients include the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence (for which he served as Interim Executive Director), the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, the Center for Court Innovation, the Legal Resource Center on Violence Against Women, the Battered Women’s Justice Project, and other national and state organizations. From 2005-2016, Mr. Mitchell was Co-Executive Director of the Legal Resource Center, a national nonprofit that provides training and technical assistance to attorneys and others who assist survivors of domestic violence in complex interstate custody cases. From 2001 to 2004, Mr. Mitchell managed the National Center on Full Faith and Credit (NCFFC), a Washington, D.C.-based national training and technical assistance project of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Prior to that, he was a staff attorney with the NCFFC, a consumer advocate, a litigator in private practice, and a clerk to a federal district court judge. Mr. Mitchell is a graduate of Stanford Law School (J.D. 1995), Harvard University (A.M. 2001), and UCLA (B.S. 1988).

Jennifer Arsenian, JD

Jennifer Arsenian has worked in the field of domestic violence for more than 20 years and is currently a senior program manager for the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ), where she manages the Comprehensive Training and Technical Assistance to Judges on Domestic Violence, Judicial Engagement Network, and Model Code on Custody, Visitation, and Domestic Violence projects. She also serves as faculty for judicial trainings through the National Judicial Institute on Domestic Violence. She most recently was the policy manager for the Alabama Coalition Against Rape and a consultant providing training and technical assistance on domestic violence to the Administrative Office of Courts. Prior to that, Ms. Arsenian was the legal director for the Alabama Coalition Against Domestic Violence for more than 16 years. As legal director, she was responsible for the development of policy initiatives, training materials, and technical assistance for statewide programs. During law school, Ms. Arsenian worked as a summer law clerk for Judge Pamela Baschab, Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. In 2002, Ms. Arsenian was awarded the Circuit Court Judges Association Scholarship and, in 2003, was awarded the National Women’s Lawyers Association Law Student Award. In September 2006, she was admitted to the Alabama State Bar. Ms. Arsenian received her BA in political science from Auburn University, her MS in justice and public safety from Auburn University at Montgomery, and her JD from Cumberland School of Law.