Hi, Liam here. As the New Year approaches it is natural to reflect on the previous year. For me, and I believe for the whole Rockwood team, it was another year filled with many positives, such as the wonderful people we met and conferences we attended. However, the most exciting news is that Stephanie, our Research Assistant, gave birth to a beautiful and healthy girl. Congratulations to Stephanie, Trevor and big sister Sadie. Although we miss you at the office, Steph, we are all very happy for your new addition.
We attended a number of excellent conferences this year. The IATSO conference was held in Berlin, Germany, in September and was, as usual, excellent. Michael Miner’s presentation on Attachment was very interesting, as was Karl Hanson’s keynote on Internet offenders. The ATSA conference was held in Denver, Colorado, in October and provided some thought provoking plenary speakers, sessions, and posters. Beside the opportunity to see many friends I don’t get to see often enough, I was especially pleased to see our friends from Singapore and Japan at ATSA. I presented our latest iteration of our view on empathy (slides are available for free download on the “Downloads” page on this website) and had a wonderful audience who engaged in some interesting discussions.
Bill and I also delivered trainings in Hamburg after the IATSO conference and Calgary before the ATSA conference. The quality of the people we met at both of those trainings was very high in terms of their knowledge of the area and their commitment to their work. It was a real pleasure to have been to both of those places and to work with such nice people. After the training in Calgary, Bill headed off to Canmore, Alberta, to do some hiking and I visited my friend in Edmonton, Alberta, where I had lived many years ago. Finally, Bill recently went to Chile for a conference in Santiago.
I recently realized that Bill and I have now conducted trainings on every continent on Earth except Antarctica. Anyone know of a treatment program in Antarctica that needs some assistance? Are there treatment programs for sexually offending penguins? If not, we would be willing to start one. Work is continuing on our set of manuals for sexual offender treatment programs for adult males (regular program, preparatory program, deniers program, and a theory manual). They will be available for purchase soon. Our work with the St. Lawrence Youth Association continues to be rewarding, with Matt’s clinical supervision and with the juvenile offender intervention manual being nearly complete.
We are already starting to fill in our plans for 2013, including preparing research projects for presentation at conferences and booking training events. Look for Bill and Liam at the following conferences: The National Adolescent Perpetrator Network conference in Portland Oregon, April 8-10, 2013, and the New York State chapter of ATSA’s conference in Albany, NY, May 20-22, 2013.
