For Legal & Institutional Professionals
Domestic violence shows up in nearly every contested custody case. Most practitioners were never trained to see it.
That gap has consequences for the children it puts at risk, for protective parents, and for the professionals making these decisions.
BPH provides the expertise that fills that gap: expert witness testimony, professional training, program evaluation, and policy consulting grounded in public health science, danger assessment methodology, and two decades of frontline experience. If you are an attorney, a guardian ad litem, a judicial officer, an agency professional, or a policymaker working in this terrain, you are in the right place.
Qualifications
The record, at a glance.
- Credentials
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MPH, Health Education and Promotion — Utah State University, 2023
Certified Danger Assessor, Campbell Danger Assessment — Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, 2024
Credentialed DV Advocate — Utah Domestic Violence Coalition, 2020
- Experience
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Founder, Bateman Public Health — 2020
State Founder and Chair, Stop Abuse Campaign Utah — 2016–2021
Graduate Researcher, University of Utah Gender-Based Violence Consortium — 2022–2023
- Policy and Systems
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DV Fatality Review Committee — Utah CCJJ, 2021–present
Co-Chair, Children’s Subcommittee — Utah DV Advisory Council, 2017–2020
Public Policy Engagement Committee — Utah DV Coalition, 2023–present
Championed and passed Utah legislation: evidence of abuse as first consideration under the best interests of the child standard, and abuse as a mandatory consideration in parent-time scheduling — Utah Code §§ 81-9-204(3)(a), 81-9-206(3)
Contributed to Utah H.C.R. 10 (2017): statewide resolution directing all Utah state agencies to incorporate adverse childhood experiences science — passed unanimously, signed by the governor
For Attorneys and Legal Professionals
Expert witness testimony and analysis in domestic violence and child custody cases.
When coercive control, post-separation abuse, or child safety is at issue in a custody proceeding, the fact-finder needs more than a lay account — they need a framework. BPH provides expert witness testimony and written expert reports that give the trier of fact the analytical structure to evaluate what they are seeing.
Expert reports cover: the dynamics and behavioral patterns of domestic violence and coercive control; danger assessment findings using validated instruments; post-separation abuse and litigation abuse; child exposure to domestic violence and its documented developmental impact; and rebuttal analysis of custody evaluations that have failed to identify or adequately weight abuse.
BPH’s methodology draws from the peer-reviewed literature — Stark on coercive control, Johnson’s perpetrator typology research, the Campbell Danger Assessment science, and the APSAC Guidelines on child maltreatment — and is grounded in public health frameworks for harm and risk analysis.
One condition applies. Expert witness work functions best — and produces the strongest outcomes for clients — when the retaining attorney is actively managing its deployment in the case: understanding what the expert can and cannot establish, taking the expert’s analysis seriously in case strategy, following the client’s lead on their own safety and priorities, and being prepared to use the testimony to educate the court and challenge frameworks that don’t hold up under scrutiny. That is the kind of collaboration BPH is built for.
This is a client protection measure. Expert testimony that isn’t deployed effectively doesn’t just underperform — it harms the people it was meant to support.
Whether you are evaluating BPH for a case you are building or responding to a client who has already found us, the pathway is the same.
To discuss a specific case and determine whether the fit is there, use the link below.
Discuss a caseWhat does a domestic violence expert witness do in a custody case?
A domestic violence expert witness provides the court with a framework for evaluating evidence it may not have the training to assess independently. In custody proceedings involving domestic violence or coercive control, an expert can offer analysis of perpetrator behavioral patterns, danger assessment findings, the impact of abuse on children and protective parents, and — when a custody evaluation has been completed — rebuttal analysis identifying whether the evaluation correctly identified and weighted the relevant dynamics. The expert’s role is not to advocate for a party but to provide the trier of fact with the analytical tools to reach an accurate conclusion.
For Courts, Agencies, and Institutions
Training designed for the professionals making the decisions — not the survivors living them.
Most domestic violence training available to legal and institutional professionals was developed for a different audience. Shelter-based curricula and general trauma-informed frameworks are valuable in their original contexts. They were not designed to speak to a judge assessing credibility, an attorney building a coercive control argument, or a DCFS worker evaluating an allegation in a contested custody case.
BPH training was. Every curriculum is developed for the specific professional context it serves — the language, the failure modes, the decision points, and the liability landscape of that audience.
Training contexts served: Family Courts & Judicial Officers. Law Enforcement. DCFS & Child Welfare. Adult Probation & Parole. Family Law Practitioners & Guardians ad Litem. DV Advocacy Organizations & Allied Professionals.
Topics include: Coercive control identification and documentation. Domestic violence dynamics in custody proceedings. Danger assessment as a practice tool. Post-separation and litigation abuse patterns. Trauma-informed credibility assessment. What expert testimony does and does not establish. Program and policy gap analysis.
Formats available: Keynote. Half-day. Full-day. Multi-session. Custom curricula for specific organizational needs.
Continuing education units are available upon request, depending on jurisdiction and licensing body.
BPH training has been delivered to law enforcement, DCFS, and court professionals in Carbon County, and to domestic violence advocates and shelter volunteers through CAPSA’s 40-hour DV training curriculum.
To inquire about training for your organization, use the link below.
Inquire about trainingWhat makes BPH training different from standard DV training for legal professionals?
Standard DV training for legal and institutional professionals is typically adapted from shelter-based or clinical curricula. It covers definitions, prevalence statistics, and general trauma responses. BPH training is built from the ground up for the decision-making contexts legal and institutional professionals actually inhabit: the credibility-assessment frameworks judges apply, the evidentiary standards attorneys work within, the mandatory reporting obligations DCFS workers navigate. The difference is not just topical. It is contextual — training that speaks to the professional’s actual role and the specific failure modes she is most likely to encounter in her practice.
For Program Leaders and Funders
Program evaluation that measures what standard metrics leave out.
For domestic violence programs, court-mandated intervention programs, and the agencies and funders that sustain them, BPH provides program evaluation grounded in public health methodology and frontline practice. Standard evaluation counts outputs: caseloads, contacts, completion rates. BPH evaluation tests whether those numbers actually mean what the program assumes they mean.
Evaluation engagements include: intake and disclosure-safety review, outcome and fidelity assessment for court-mandated intervention programs, gap analysis for DV-adjacent services, and evaluation designed to produce defensible program revisions and funding narratives that hold up to scrutiny.
To discuss an evaluation for your program, use the link below.
Discuss program evaluationWhat does survivor-centered program evaluation reveal that standard program evaluation misses?
Standard program evaluation measures what a program does — caseloads, contacts, services delivered, outcomes by the metrics the program itself defined. Survivor-centered program evaluation asks a different question: what does the program look like from inside the experience of the people it was built to serve? That question produces different data. A shelter that meets every intake metric may still be systematically failing survivors who cannot safely disclose abuse during an initial assessment. A court-mandated intervention program that reports high completion rates may be completing participants who have learned to perform compliance without any change in behavior or risk. Survivor-centered program evaluation surfaces those gaps and drives meaningful program revision, defensible policy recommendations, and funding narratives that hold up to scrutiny.
For Policymakers and Legislative Bodies
Policy and legislative consulting at the intersection of domestic violence, child welfare, and the legal system.
For legislators, legislative staff, state agencies, and advocacy coalitions, BPH offers policy and statutory consulting grounded in public health methodology and direct experience moving legislation through the process. A co-authored qualitative study on the experiences of domestic violence survivors and their children in Utah’s court system is in progress.
Current engagement areas include: best interests of the child statutory frameworks, coercive control integration in family court practice, danger assessment as a policy tool, and domestic violence fatality review systems.
If the scope fits, the conversation is worth having.
Explore policy consultingWhat does a domestic violence expert bring to policy and legislative work?
Most domestic violence policy is shaped by people who understand the problem in the abstract but have never had to apply a statute to a live case or watch a well-intended provision fail in practice. A domestic violence expert closes that gap. Policy consulting at BPH means translating what coercive control and post-separation abuse actually look like into language that legislators, agencies, and courts can act on: statutory definitions that capture the dynamic rather than isolated incidents, custody provisions that account for ongoing risk, and institutional protocols that hold up when a determined abuser tests them. It also means reviewing existing policy for the failure points that surface only once a case is moving. The work draws on direct experience championing and passing Utah legislation that established evidence of abuse as the first consideration under the best interests of the child standard, serving on a domestic violence fatality review committee, and advising state agencies, not on theory alone.
Clearer decisions. Safer outcomes. Stronger systems.
