People at the Moore Center

Director

Elizabeth J. Letourneau, PhD, is the director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse and a professor in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. For more than 30 years she has conducted research involving the evaluation of clinical practice and legal policy related to adult and adolescent sexual offending. Specifically, she has developed and/or evaluated assessment tools for juvenile and adult sexual interest in children and sexual recidivism risk.

Dr. Letourneau has contributed substantively to the literature on treatment of sexual offenders, including leading the largest randomized controlled trial evaluating an intervention for youth who have sexually offended. She has served as primary investigator on six studies evaluating adult and adolescent sex crime policies, findings of which have been presented internationally (e.g., to INTERPOL), nationally to U.S. Department of Justice Agencies (e.g., U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), cited in federal and state court cases including three state supreme court cases and provided as testimony to state and federal policy makers. She has served as president for the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abuse, the largest international member organization that focuses on the prevention of sexual abuse and sound policy and practice with people who have offended or at risk to do so.

As the inaugural director of the Moore Center, a research and policy center focused on the prevention of sexual abuse, she has turned her focus to the primary prevention of child sexual abuse. She currently heads three research studies that focus on developing primary prevention interventions targeting at-risk populations for child sexual abuse.

Postdoctoral Fellows

• Ian McPhail, PhD
• Evelyn Thorne, PhD
• Allyn Walker, PhD

Scientific Advisory Board Members 

Our Scientific Advisory Board members help identify knowledge gaps and prioritize areas where Center resources can achieve the greatest impact. We are so grateful for their service. 

• Karen Baker, director of the National Violence Resource Center 

• Esther Deblinger, co-director, Child Abuse Research Education and Service Institute  

• David Finkelhor, director, Crimes Against Children Research Center 

• Andrea Gielen, former director, Center for Injury Research and Policy  

• James A. Mercy, acting director, Division of Violence Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention 

• Michael Seto, director of Forensic Rehabilitation Research, Royal Ottawa Health Care Group