Staca Shehan
Vice President, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
Staca Shehan joined the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) in 1999 and is the Vice President of the Analytical Services Division. She is responsible for policy decisions and overall operations within the Division including oversight of the Child Sex Trafficking Team and Sex Offender Tracking Team. In this role, she helps create and manage the division’s budget; conducts print, radio and television interviews about issues relating to child sex trafficking, noncompliant registered sex offenders, internet crimes against children, and attempted abductions of children; and provides training sessions and presentations to the public, private industry, other nonprofit organizations and law enforcement agencies.
In 2011 Ms. Shehan spearheaded the creation of a dedicated Child Sex Trafficking Team at NCMEC to respond to the increased need for technical assistance and analysis in cases involving child sex trafficking. This team of analysts provides support to law enforcement agencies who are working to identify and recover children victimized through sex trafficking and successfully prosecute those individuals involved in trafficking children. These unique resources include analysis of potential suspect names or aliases, unique tattoos, link analysis about child sex trafficking victims/potential victims, telephone numbers, addresses and/or online postings.
In 2017 Ms. Shehan was selected as one of twenty-one representative members on the National Advisory Committee on Sex Trafficking of Children and Youth in the United States. The Committee will advise the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General on practical and general policies concerning improvements to the Nation’s response to the sex trafficking of children and youth in the United States. She has also written several articles on behalf of NCMEC regarding child sex trafficking and child missing from care. Such publications were featured in the ‘United States Attorneys’ USA Bulletin, Vol. 65, No. 6’ and by the OJP Diagnostic Center.
During her career at NCMEC Ms. Shehan also developed and implemented the Sex Offender Tracking Team. This includes the creation of procedures and protocols used by analysts to provide technical assistance to law enforcement in support of their efforts to locate noncompliant sex offenders. During this process, she worked closely with NCMEC programmers to outline the creation of the Sex Offender Case Management system. This system allows analysts to track offenders and compare their geographic locations to open and unsolved child abductions, attempted abductions, and incidents of child sexual exploitation.
Ms. Shehan holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from La Salle University with a minor in Criminal Justice and Certificates in Executive Leadership and High-Performance Leadership from Cornell University.
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