By Matthew Gambino • Posted October 17, 2012

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput has appointed veteran prosecutors to lead the Archdiocesan Review Board, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced Oct. 17.

Former Philadelphia prosecutor Robert Spinelli is the new chair of the board and former Philadelphia First Assistant District Attorney Arnold Gordon is the vice chair. Both men have served on the board since June 2011.

The Archdiocesan Review Board was established in 2003 to assess allegations of sexual abuse and violations of the Archdiocese’s Standards of Ministerial Behavior and Boundaries, in accord with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People and the Essential Norms.

[hotblock]

The archbishop has also appointed Christine Campbell, a nurse and the Trauma Program manager at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, and Father Stephen Leva, pastor of St. Timothy Parish in Philadelphia to fill the seats vacated by Dr. Ana Maria Catanzaro and Msgr. Thomas Owens, who recently completed their terms of service on the board.

“The work of the Archdiocesan Review Board is critical to our efforts to protect children and young people,” said Archbishop Chaput. “Our Archdiocese is privileged to benefit from the talent of its members, each of whom serves with dedication and passion. I’m grateful to Dr. Ana Maria Catanzaro and Msgr. Thomas Owens for their extraordinary service during a very difficult time in the life of our local Church.”

The board is a confidential advisory committee to the archbishop and makes recommendations to him regarding suitability of clergy for ministry. It also assists in the continual review of archdiocesan policies and procedures related to matters of ministerial conduct with minors.

Through analysis of each case it considers, the board assists the archbishop in ensuring that no priest with a substantiated allegation of sexual abuse of a minor will serve in active ministry. The board also ensures that all allegations of sexual abuse of minors are first reported to law enforcement.

The 12-member board is comprised of psychologists, social workers, educators, retired law enforcement agents, health care professionals, parents and one pastor. Each is appointed to serve a four-year or five-year term, which is renewable.

Archbishop Chaput said he was confident that Spinelli and Gordon “have the right mix of leadership skills, professional background, and energy to serve as chair and vice chair. Lastly, I’m pleased that Father Steve Leva and Christine Campbell have agreed to serve on the Review Board. It’s a position that will demand much of their time and talent and I know they have the expertise necessary to make positive, impactful contributions to the board’s work.”

Biographical information for all members appear below.

 

Archdiocesan Review Board Members
as of October 2012

Michael Boyle
Michael Boyle currently serves as the first program director at the Philadelphia Sexual Assault Response Center, which was established to provide assistance to sexual assault victims in need of independent, victim-centered evidence recovery efforts. A 30-year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department, Boyle attained the rank of lieutenant and served for 14 years as the commanding officer in the Child Abuse Unit, where he was responsible for administrative oversight of a collaborative investigative process that included child welfare authorities, medical professionals and forensic interviewers working on approximately 1,700 reported cases of child abuse or neglect each year.

Christine Campbell
Christine Campbell is the trauma program manager at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, the SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) coordinator at Crozer-Chester Medical Center as well as the SANE nurse for the Philadelphia Sexual Assault Response Center. She obtained her SANE training in September 2002. She holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing, a master’s degree in forensic medicine and SANE certifications. She was formerly the director of the Clinical Forensic Examiner Program at Abington Memorial Hospital. She has trained nurses throughout Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware, Philadelphia and Berks counties and has participated in the Philadelphia Sexual Assault Advisory Committee, Montgomery County Sexual Task Force and the Montgomery County Human Trafficking Task Force. Campbell provides lectures and on-going training to various medical providers in the areas of adult and child sexual assault.

Stacey Ginesin
Stacey Ginesin is a clinical psychologist with nearly 15 years of experience working with sexual offenders in Atlanta, San Francisco and Philadelphia in research, outpatient and prison settings.  She was instrumental in the development of the TAP program, an outpatient sex offender treatment program in Philadelphia and served as the program director until 2010. In that capacity Ginesin provided treatment, conducted evaluations and risk assessments and supervised other clinicians. She has worked closely with the court systems in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties. In addition to her work with offenders, Ginesin has worked with sexual abuse victims and their families. She has been a member of the Pennsylvania Sexual Offender Assessment Board since 2008 and is the Eastern Pennsylvania area representative for the Mid-Atlantic chapter of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers.

Arnold Gordon
A prosecutor with 40 years of experience in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Department of Justice, Arnold Gordon most recently served as First Assistant District Attorney in Philadelphia. He previously served as chief of the D.A.’s Homicide, Felony Waiver, and Municipal Court Units. As a special attorney in the Justice Department’s organized crime section, Gordon played a major role in the investigation and subsequent conviction in one of the most significant racketeering cases in U.S. history.

Bebe Kivitz
Bebe Kivitz is a former prosecutor and former Chief of the Child Abuse Unit in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office. Kivitz also has extensive experience in private practice where she has handled a broad range of litigation matters including civil rights, medical malpractice, toxic tort, corporate investigations, internal disciplinary proceedings, personal injury, employment, and commercial disputes. She specializes in abuse litigation and continues to represent assault victims. Kivitz has served on the board of directors of Philadelphia Children’s Alliance since 2000, a non-profit organization that collaborates with law enforcement, child welfare and medical professionals, and conducts state of the art forensic interviews of child abuse victims. She is also a member of Brandeis Law Society, and has served on its Executive Committee since 2010.

Janet Shaw Lemoine
A member of the Pennsylvania Bar, Janet Shaw Lemoine is a former victim advocate and trainer with 16 years of experience in Philadelphia and across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Most recently, she served as the director of the Victim/Witness Training and Networking Project funded through the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency and administered by the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association. Her responsibilities included training, trouble-shooting and networking statewide with both system-based victim/witness coordinators as well as community based agencies. She previously served as director of Northwest Victim Services, the first community based comprehensive victim service agency in Philadelphia. Prior to her work with victims, Lemoine served as a secondary school teacher with the Philadelphia School District. She has a master’s degree from Villanova University and a law degree from the Delaware Law School of Widener University.

Father Stephen Leva
Father Stephen Leva serves as pastor of St. Timothy Parish in the Mayfair section of Philadelphia. He is a native Philadelphian, growing up in Olney and attending St. Helena Elementary School and Cardinal Dougherty High School. He attended St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia, St. Pius X Seminary in Erlanger, Ky., and Mount St. Mary’s College and Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md. He was ordained in 1988 in Arlington, Va., for the Diocese of Arlington and served as a priest in that diocese for 17 years. Father Leva returned home to Philadelphia and was incardinated into the Archdiocese in 2008. His first assignment in the Archdiocese was as parochial vicar at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Doylestown.

Richmond Parsons
A nationally recognized trainer with more than 20 years of experience in law enforcement, probation and parole, Richmond Parsons currently serves as deputy chief of Offender Services in the Montgomery County Adult Probation and Parole Department. He has conducted trainings for local, state and national probation and parole agencies on topics such as computer search and seizure, sex offender management and leadership. He currently serves as the chairman of the Montgomery County Sex Offender Task Force and works with the Montgomery County Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. He is also a member of the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Probation and secretary of the Mid-Atlantic chapter of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers.

Laura Rogers
Laura Rogers served as the director of the Center for Litigation Training and Community Practice Management and the Deputy Director of the Criminal Law Division of the Navy’s Office of the Judge Advocate General, where she served as the Navy’s expert on military justice issues. She also acted as legal advisor on the operations of the Sexual Assault Prevention Training Program. In 2006, she was appointed by President George W. Bush as the founding director of the Department of Justice’s Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking (SMART) office, where she was responsible for the implementation of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. Prior to her work with the federal government, Rogers founded and served as director of the National Institute for Training Child Abuse Professionals, where she trained prosecutors, medical and law enforcement professionals, forensic interviewers, therapists and protective service workers on a range of topics related to child sexual and physical abuse. She is a former prosecutor from San Diego County where she specialized in child homicide and child sexual molestation prosecutions.

Robert L. Sadoff
Dr. Robert Sadoff is currently clinical professor of forensic psychiatry and director of the Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship Program at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught since 1972. He is the author of over 100 articles and 10 books on issues in forensic psychiatry. He has examined over 10,000 individuals charged with crimes during the past 50 years and has testified for both prosecution and defense in over 20 states and several federal jurisdictions. He is the recipient of numerous national and international awards and has lectured in almost every state and in 12 countries of the world.

Anne Shenberger
Anne Shenberger is executive director of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA)/Youth Advocates Inc. She served for over 20 years as the Southeast Regional Director of Pennsylvania’s Office of Children, Youth and Families. In that role, she was responsible for the investigation of allegations of child abuse in foster and adoptive homes, group homes, residential facilities and day care centers. She has a master’s degree in social work from Bryn Mawr College and is a licensed social worker in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In addition to the Archdiocesan Review Board, she serves on the board of directors of several other nonprofit agencies in the Philadelphia area.

Robert Spinelli
A former prosecutor with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, Spinelli is now a partner at the law firm Kelley Jasons McGowan Spinelli Hanna & Reber. Spinelli specializes in representing companies involved in mass tort litigation. He has extensive experience in overall claims management for companies involved in hundreds of thousands of claims nationwide. In addition to organizing and participating in numerous legal seminars on mass tort litigation across the country, Spinelli has lectured on medico-legal issues at the Thomas Jefferson University School of Medicine and Temple University.