New York's Newsboys is a lively historical account of Charles Loring Brace's founding and development of the Children's Aid Society to combat a newly emerging social problem, youth homelessness, during the nineteenth century. Poor children slept on the docks, pilfered, and peddled cheap wares to survive, activities which frequently landed them in prison-like juvenile asylums. Brace offered a radical alternative, the Newsboys' Lodging House. From there he launched a network of additional programs, each respecting his clients' free will, contrasting with the policing interventions favored by other reformers. Over four decades Brace built a comprehensive child welfare agency which sought to alleviate suffering, prevent delinquency, and divert children from a life of poverty. Using primary documents and analysis of over 700 original CAS case records, New York's Newsboys offers a new way to look at the foundational roots of social work and child welfare in the United States. In this book, Karen Staller argues that the significance of this chapter in history to the profession, the city of New York, and the country has been under appreciated.

St. Mary County is a small rural midwestern enclave with a unique approach to handling accusations of child sexual abuse. Hoping to spare children the trauma of lengthy court appearances and probing interrogations, St. Mary's professionals strive to obtain confessions from accused sex offenders rather than ask the victim to bear the burden of proof.

Treating this county as a critical case study, scholars from a variety of fields come together to analyze this community's unique approach. They address relevant case law, innovative treatments for both victim and offender, and the social history of child sexual abuse as a national policy concern. They cover legal burdens and scientific methods, prosecutors and protocol, the interrogation of victims and suspects, the use of expert witnesses, defense strategies, and practice wisdom in videotaping. In addition, they examine the unfolding drama of a single legal case from incidence to conviction.

The result is a fascinating dialogue that confronts the unique complexities of child sexual abuse for readers on all sides of the issue. Introducing a model that makes enormous headway in the pursuit of justice, fairness, and trauma treatment, this interdisciplinary text is an indispensible tool for all communities seeking redress.