Professor Breger Publishes Chapter in ‘Human Trafficking’

Professor Melissa Breger recently published the chapter "Trauma In Sex-Trafficked Children" in HUMAN TRAFFICKING: EMERGING LEGAL ISSUES AND APPLICATIONS (Lawyers & Judges Publishing Company, Inc., 2017), drawing from her scholarship and expertise in human trafficking and family law issues.

Building upon her 2016 West Virginia Law Review article, "Healing Sex-Trafficked Children: A Domestic Family Law Approach to an International Epidemic," Professor Breger argued in the chapter that practitioners and judges should consider alternative rehabilitation services within their jurisdictions for children who have been sexually enslaved. She proposed that until resources and infrastructure exist for specialized services, sex-trafficked children should be placed in the foster care system, preferably therapeutic foster homes. Explaining further, Professor Breger wrote that these children have experienced poignantly similar traumas as other vulnerable children — survivors of sexual abuse or family violence — who benefit from therapeutic foster care placement.

Albany Law School President and Dean Alicia Ouellette wrote the book's foreword. Nicole (Lyke) Campion ’17 and Bryanne Perlanski ’16 also wrote chapters in the book.

Professor Breger's current courses at Albany Law include Children and the Law; Criminal Procedure: Investigation (4^th, 5^th & 6^th A); Domestic Violence Seminar; Evidence; Family Law; and Gender and the Law. Over the past year, she has delivered several presentations, including: "Implicit Gender Bias and a Culture of Domestic Violence" at Boston University; as a panelist at the Human Trafficking: An Upstate Perspective CLE at Albany Law School; at a CLE for the Office of Attorneys for Children — Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department; and "How the Legal System Has the Potential to Change a Culture of Domestic Violence" at an interdisciplinary conference at the University at Buffalo School of Law.

She is a co-author of NEW YORK LAW OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, a two-volume treatise, and has published numerous law review articles regarding issues of family law, gender and social justice in law reviews and journals such as NYU Review of Law & Social Change, Law and Psychology, The University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform,South Carolina Law Review, and Indiana International and Comparative Law Review.

Professor Breger joined the Albany Law School faculty in 2002. Prior to launching her teaching career at the University of Michigan Law School, she dedicated her career to children, women and families, with her formative years practicing in New York City in a number of capacities.

She earned her B.S. at University of Illinois and her J.D. at University of Michigan Law School.