About CWAVusa
Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Alpharetta, GA, Children Without A Voice USA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to fighting child abuse in the United States.
The statistics on child abuse are staggering, sobering and should compel each of us to want to get involved. In the United States, a child is abused every ten seconds and, unlike cancer and many other diseases, abuse is a willful act and 100% preventable through education and law enforcement.
Every 6 hours, a child dies from abuse in this country. You need to be involved!
Children Without A Voice USA provides hospital parenting classes, pre-school and elementary classes on inappropriate touching, teen parenting classes and distributes free educational materials to shelters and other organizations on a national level. Our funding goes towards the printing of our educational materials.
Although CWAV is predominantly focused on preventing crimes against children in the United States , we do have an international presence with chapters in Brazil , Belgium , Uganda and Germany.
Our children are our future. Please help us break the cycle of abuse and end the violence.
Mission Statement
Children Without a Voice USA is dedicated to raising awareness and preventing crimes against children, child abuse and neglect through advocacy and education.
Vision Statement
Children Without a Voice USA seeks to become an organization of national scope. We will establish a presence in every state through a network of dedicated volunteers. Together, we will strive to reduce the number of children affected by violence, abuse and neglect through our focus on prevention, education and advocacy.
CWAVusa Staff
Founder & Executive Director
Lin Seahorn
Lin was the product of a broken and abusive home and as a result was entered into the foster system numerous times, having lived in the private and large group home setting. She has over 25 years of experience in marketing, sales, and management in the Telecom Industry both as a business owner and corporate executive trainer for a Fortune 100 company. She is a visionary and helped pioneer the retail cellular market in its infancy.
Today, she devotes all her energies to increasing awareness of crimes against children in the United States and in other countries. She has served on boards, headed up many fundraisers and drives and has been an active child advocate for over 25 years. Most of her work has been in fighting for tougher sentencing laws for child abusers and molestors. She currently resides with her husband in Alpharetta , Ga.
If you would like to read a recent featured story of Lin’s personal bio and why she founded Children Without a Voice USA, please visit: http://fostercareinamerica.com/2009/05/26/june-2009-face-of-a-foster-car...
Lin has presented her story and the mission of CWAV to numerous student and civic organizations. She is an accomplished public speaker and welcomes the opportunity to speak to groups that wish to learn more about child abuse & neglect in America and how CWAV is working on behalf of children.
Vice President
William A Mattson
BA, Business Management
University of Minnesota
USG Corporation
William ( Bill ) earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management from the University of Minnesota. He has been employed by Chicago-based USG Corporation for 19 years and is a Regional Manager. Bill ’s parents devoted their entire lives to children’s issues and mission work. His father, Arthur Mattson, was a founding member and instrumental in the development of a camp for kids in Mahtowa, MN. Bill’s mother, Avis, was a long time member of the executive board of Northwood Children’s home in Duluth, MN. Northwood is a non-profit agency that provides professional care, housing, education and treatment for children with emotional, behavioral, and learning disabilities. Bill has been active in volunteer work with children and the homeless for many years and hopes to carry on his parents’ legacy of caring for children through his involvement with CWAVusa.
Dr. Jordan Greenbaum, MD
Smith College, B.A., Psychology
Yale University, M.D.
Medical Director, Child Protection Center,
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
Dr. Jordan Greenbaum, a forensic pathologist, has been working in the field of child maltreatment for nine years and joined Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s Child Protection Center in 2006. She performs inpatient and outpatient medical evaluations of suspected victims of physical or sexual abuse and child neglect. Dr. Greenbaum has published articles on child abuse including Abusive Head Trauma and Shaken Baby Syndrome and has given numerous local, regional and national presentations to attorneys, law enforcement, child protection workers, medical personnel and mental health professionals. Training and education are important aspects of her work. She has memberships in many professional societies including the International Society for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN) and has served on numerous committees and boards including a term as President of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC).
Treasurer
Carrie Vruno
BA, University of Illinois
MBA, DePaul University
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Atlanta, GA
Carrie is a Certified Public Accountant and is a Senior Manager in the Private Company Services practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers' Atlanta, Georgia, office. She has over 13 years of experience auditing private and public companies in a variety of industries including manufacturing, retail and distribution, as well as many services' companies. She spent 8 years in the Chicago office, 3 years in the Memphis office and has been in the Atlanta office of PricewaterhouseCoopers for 2 years. Carrie has been active in the community in all the cities in which she has lived and previously served as executive Vice President for Special Kids & Families in Memphis, TN. She is passionate about children and trying to make it a safer place for them. She currently resides in Marietta, GA with her husband Vince and two children, Dominic age 4 and Isabella age 2.
Devin Hall
MAcc and BBA, Kansas State University
PricewaterhouseCoopers, Atlanta , Ga
Devin is a Certified Public Accountant and is a Director in the Federal Tax practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers' Atlanta , Georgia , office. He has over 12 years of experience performing tax services for a variety of multinational clients, including companies in the manufacturing, retail, pharmaceutical, financial services and entertainment industries. Devin has served as Chairman of the Leukemia Society's Annual Run for Leukemia fundraising event. He has served as an Ambassador for the United Way and is currently a member of the United Way 's Cole Society. Devin has also served as a classroom instructor for Junior Achievement. Devin and his wife Laura currently reside in Suwanee , Ga , with their daughters, Olivia age 6 and Leigha age 4.
Dr. Brian K. Payne, PhD
Chair and Professor, Criminal Justice
Georgia State University
Brian has written five books including Family Violence and Criminal Justice, Crime and Elder Abuse: An Integrated Perspective, and Crime in the Home Health Care Field. His books have been favorably reviewed by national outlets such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Criminal Justice Review, and AgeVenture News. Payne has also written more than 100 scholarly journal articles. He is the recipient of many awards including the Southern Criminal Justice Association’s Outstanding Educator Award and the Distinguished Scholar Award from Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Criminology. Payne is a former editor of the American Journal of Criminal Justice and a past guest editor of the Journal of Health and Human Services Administration. He is currently the vice president of the Southern Criminal Justice Association. He teaches courses related to family violence at Georgia State. Brian and his wife Kathleen live in Roswell, Georgia with their three children -- Chloe (age 9), Charles (age 6), and Claire (age 3).
CWAVusa Medical Advisory Board
Dr. Desmond Runyan is professor of social medicine of pediatrics and clinical professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina . He is the National Program Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. He completed his MD and a pediatric residency at the University of Minnesota and a doctorate in public health and the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at the University of North Carolina . He is board certified in pediatrics and in preventive medicine.
Dr. Runyan has researched child abuse for over 30 years and has published over one hundred research articles and book chapters. He co-founded a comprehensive child abuse center and organized the longest multi-site prospective study of the consequences of child abuse; LONGSCAN is now17 years old. He has worked with scholars in Egypt , India , the Philippines , Brazil , and Chile to increase child abuse knowledge among medical faculty internationally and with WHO to study child abuse epidemiology. He is a founding member of the Ray E. Helfer Society (an honorary organization of physicians working in the field of child abuse) and has been elected both to the Society for Pediatric Research and the American Pediatric Society. Dr. Runyan serves on many boards and committees including the Executive Council for the International Society for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.
Pediatrics, UCLA
Dr. Chadwick is an internationally renowned child advocate and researcher, having produced over 60 studies and publications on abuse and neglect over the past 40 years. He has received numerous awards and honors spanning his career and is founder of the Chadwick Center for Children and Families. His positions have included Senior Vice President and Director of several children’s hospitals, professor at San Diego University and the University of Utah school of medicine. He has served on executive boards of numerous international and national child abuse non-profit organizations, societies and associations and was founding member of the San Diego Community Child Abuse Council. He is an expert forensic witness in child abuse cases. Dr. Chadwick has received numerous government and private grants for his work and in 2002; The Center for Child Protection at Children’s Hospital-San Diego was renamed in honor of Dr. Chadwick. He still lectures today and is working on two books.
Pamela Rowse’s primary clinical background is in emergency medicine and critical care. In March of 1997, her 14 month old granddaughter, Kierra Ashlie Danielle Harrison died from shaken impact/abusive head trauma.
Since then, Pam has devoted all of her free time to child abuse, specifically SBS/AHT by educating clinical providers to recognize and affectively treat the victims of this horrific form of child abuse. In addition to prevention recognition and intervention, critical efforts have been invested in legal avenues to find justice for the victims of child abuse and their families.
Ms. Rowse has served on numerous state and national boards & committees as well as being an advisor to organizations such as Prevent Child Abuse America, The National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome, the Shaken Baby Alliance, National Shaken Baby Coalition, the Southern Nevada Area Health Education Center, Board of Trustees and the PCAN Statewide Committee & Advisory Board. She has also worked with Domestic Violence as well as numerous nursing organizations related to Healthcare responsibility for violence prevention, recognition and early intervention.
CWAVusa Advisory Board
Wendy is an adjunct professor at New England Law|Boston where she teaches a seminar on sexual violence and directs two projects she developed in conjunction with the school's Center for Law and Social Responsibility. The "Sexual Violence Legal News" project is an internet-based alert service that distributes appellate cases of interest, with editorial comment, related to child abuse and interpersonal violence. The "Judicial Language Project" uses socio-linguistic research to critique the language used in law and society to describe violence against women and children.
She was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School from 2002-2003 where her work focused on the status of women in their capacity as victims in the criminal justice system. Wendy previously taught "Reproductive Rights and Technologies" at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in 2002 served as the Mary Joe Frug Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at New England Law|Boston where she has taught courses in sexual violence, reproductive rights and technologies and constitutional criminal procedure.
Wendy is a trial and appellate attorney specializing in the representation of crime victims, women, children and victim service providers and is the founder and director of the Victim Advocacy & Research Group, a volunteer legal advocacy organization that has provided free legal services to victims and other third-parties in the criminal justice system since 1992. She sits on many boards and has served on the Massachusetts Governor’s Crime Commission and the Commission against Sexual and Domestic Violence.
She has worked for CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and CBS News as a legal analyst, and appears regularly on network and cable television. A columnist for The Daily Beast and Gatehouse News, and author of several chapters in consortium books, her first solo book, And Justice For Some, was published by Penguin/Sentinel in September 2007.
New York Times Best Selling Author
Speaker, Child Advocate
Ashley entered into the Florida foster care system at the tender age of three. Over the next nine years, she lived in 14 placements before being adopted at age 12. In 2007, She completed her undergrad degree with a double major in communications and drama with a double minor in Political Science and Psychology. Among her many national awards, she was one of 20 college students selected for the USA Today All-USA Academic Team, and was named one of GLAMOUR Magazine's Top Ten College Women. Six months after graduating from college, her memoir, "Three Little Words" became a New York Times Bestseller and has just recently been purchased to be adapted into a feature film. Ashley has appeared on Montel Williams, The Today Show, Good Morning America and other national and local television shows. She is currently maintaining a full calendar of speeches and workshops all across America . She has a passion to tell her story and share hope with other foster children and encourage adoption and permanency.
