Australian and New Zealand Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abuse

William has been working in the field of wellbeing and psychology since 1998. Since joining Corrections Victoria in 2000, he worked as both a therapist and manager working primarily with sex offenders in the community and prisons in Victoria. After six years, William moved to the UK to work in Kings College London on a project looking at neurological factors and their contribution to the incidence of psychopathy and personality disorders in offenders.

Since returning to Australia in 2008 William has been involved in consultation and training to a variety of government and non-government agencies. The majority of the work has involved young and intellectually disabled clients presenting sexual and violent offending behaviour. During this time he also maintained a private practice working with forensic and non-forensic clients. Since April 2012 William has commenced work with Victoria Police being involved in training and consultation around the wellbeing of the members.

Melissa Braden is currently the Manager, Sex Offender Programs, Sex Offender Management Branch, Corrections Victoria. She is a qualified Social Worker and a member of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW). Melissa has predominantly worked in the field of corrections in both Queensland and Victoria for the past 15 years across operational, strategic planning and clinical areas. Melissa has specialised in the area of sexual offending over the past six years. This has involved working extensively in the areas of assessment, treatment and transitional service provision.

More recently, Melissa has focused on contributing to and establishing governance frameworks and national standards associated with the assessment and treatment of sexual offenders. Melissa is a member of the National Working Party for the Treatment and Management of Sex Offenders and is committed to ensuring a consistent national evidence based approach to working in this field. She is also proactive and passionate in providing high quality training and supervision for staff working in the field of sexual offending and has a well established professional network. Melissa promotes and works within a strengths based professional and personal framework and is skilled in the areas of executive coaching and professional supervision. Her areas of research interest include:- The Good Lives Model, Australian validation of the Static 99 and Child Exploitation Internet offending.

Jason is a registered psychologist working in private practice in Melbourne and has previously worked with Corrections Victoria, Sex Offender Programs, assessing and treating adult sexual offenders and providing training to a variety of agencies in the management and supervision of sexual offenders. In private practice, Jason continues to provide assessment and treatment services for sexual offenders, in addition to providing consultancy services to a range of Government and Non-Government agencies including the Australian Federal Police. Jason was also elected Chair of the Victorian Treatment Association (VOTA), and for the past 11 years held a variety of executive positions in the Association prior to the merger with ANZATSA.

Jess is a Forensic Psychologist and Senior Clinician at the NSW Pre-Trial Diversion of Offenders Program (Cedar Cottage). In this role, she works with parents who have sexually abused their child/children, nonoffending parents, children who have been sexually abused, and other family members. Prior to this, Jess worked at Juvenile Justice, primarily with young people who had sexually abused. Jess is a member of the APS College of Forensic Psychologists and is accredited through the NSW Commission for Children and Young People at Associate level to work with adults who have committed sexual offences.

Jess is particularly interested in exploring how clinical work with people who have sexually offended and people who have been sexually abused/assaulted can fit together.

Russell Pratt is a Principal Practitioner with the Children, Youth and Families Division of the Department of Human Services. Prior to this he was the manager and senior clinician of South Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault (SECASA) AWARE program for three years. He has also worked privately, mainly consulting and assessing on the areas of youth, sexually abusive behaviours, complex risk, trauma and family systems. Russell has worked for over 13 years in the field of sexual assault, both with victims/survivors and with youth exhibiting sexually problematic behaviours and sexually abusive behaviours. He is a past chairman of the Victorian Offender Treatment Association (VOTA) and a current board member of ANZATSA.

He was the recipient of the 2008 Creswick Foundation Fellowship in Child Development and Family Relationships. He has presented at over 20 national and international conferences in Australia, the United States and Europe, including at ANZATSA, ATSA, Monash University (Prato, Italy) and NAPN.

Amongst his clinical interests are complex systems, trauma treatment, families, sexually abusive behaviour treatment and supervision.

Armon Tamatea is currently the Senior Advisor (psychological research) for the Department of Corrections, and has worked extensively in the assessment and treatment of sexual and violent offenders. He contributed to the design and implementation of the High-Risk Personality Programme pilot - a violence prevention programme specifically designed for high-risk violent offenders diagnosed with psychopathy. Recent projects have included trialling a situational management approach to risk intervention regarding prisoner violence at New Zealand's only maximum security prison, an exploration of the experiences of men who leave gangs, a review of the Bicultural Therapy Model, as well as examining offence desistance issues with individuals on probation. His main clinical and research interests include establishing effective treatment for high-risk offenders with severe personality pathology and psychopathy, the role of culture in forensic settings, offender desistance, and 'manipulative' behaviour in correctional contexts.

Dale is the Programs Director of the NSW Pre-Trial Diversion of Offenders Program (Cedar Cottage) and New Street Adolescent Service which are NSW Department of Health treatment programs for parents and children who have sexually abused children. Dale has been Director of these services from the time of their commencement in 1989 and 1998 respectively. Prior to this he worked in a variety of child, adolescent and family mental health settings.

Dale’s professional training is in Social Work and Law. He has a particular interest in training and professional standards for people working with those who have sexually abused children. He participates in a number of government and professional associations, panels and committees as well as assisting some church groups review complaints concerning the conduct of clergy and church leaders.

Dale is a founding member of the Australia and New Zealand Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abuse (ANZATSA) and was President of this association from 2000 to 2004. Dale is also a member of the accreditation panel of the Child Sex Offender Counsellor Accreditation Scheme (CSOCAS) administered by the NSW Commission for Children and Young People.

Gwenda joined the School of Psychology at The University of Auckland in 2013 after previous appointments at Deakin University (Australia) and Victoria University of Wellington. She is a clinical psychologist and her research and clinical interests are in criminal justice/forensic psychology, with a focus on understanding and preventing sexual offending and strengths-based approaches to offender rehabilitation.

Gwenda is a past recipient of a MacDiarmid Young Scientists of the Year Award (Science and our Society) and Fulbright Senior Scholar award. In 2012 Gwenda was awarded the New Zealand Psychological Society Early Career Goddard Award - Applied Psychology in recognition of her early-career achievements in forensic psychology.

Brandon is a practice leader for STOP Adolescent Service in Christchurch and a team leader for the Nelson branch of STOP. STOP provides services for children through to adults who have engaged in concerning sexualized behaviour/harmful sexual behaviour across the South Island, New Zealand. Brandon has held clinical roles at STOP since 2001 and prior to this has worked with adolescents who had engaged in harmful sexual behaviour in support roles both within residential and community-based facilities, along with school counselling, Stopping Violence and Family Planning roles.

Brandon's professional training includes attaining a Master's Degree in Education with Certificate in Counselling (Dist.) from the University of Canterbury. This fostered a continuing passion for the use of strengths based constructivist approaches in therapy. Brandon is a member of the New Zealand Association of Counsellors.

Among his clinical interests are: the use of media to assist treatment; addressing client's misuse of technology to access sexually exploitative material; trauma and attachment informed interventions.