Wendy Murphy (born August 13, 1961) is a lawyer specializing in child abuse and interpersonal violence.
Education
Murphy received a BA from Boston College in 1983 and became a Juris Doctor from New England Law Boston in 1987.
Career
Murphy began her career as a prosecutor in Middlesex County, handling legal cases related to child abuse and sex crime. Then, she switched to her private practice to focus on violence against women and children. Murphy is an adjunct professor of sexual violence law at New England Law Boston. Murphy was a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School from 2002 to 2003. Earlier, she taught Reproductive Rights and Technologies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the founder and director of the Victim Advocacy & Research Group, which is a volunteer legal advocacy organization that, since 1992, has provided free legal services to victims in the criminal justice system.
She successfully sued both Princeton University and Harvard Law School for violating Title IX regulations “by mishandling sexual assault complaints.”
Of the case against Harvard Law School, she writes: “The case began when Harvard Law School hired me as a consultant in early 2010, in connection with a Title IX matter. When I pointed out to Harvard officials that their policies were noncompliant, and they refused to fix them, I filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights in which I identified numerous substantive and procedural violations of Title IX that were then in place in the law school’s policy.”With co-counsel John Williams, she sued Yale University on behalf of Susan Daria Landino (formerly Burhans). This was another Title IX case and the first Jackson v Birmingham case filed by a higher education administrator rather than a sports coach.
When serial child rapist Wayne Chapman was to be released from jail, she represented his victims to keep him in jail. She filed an appeal with the Supreme Judicial Court asking for an emergency injunction preventing his release.
According to author Stuart Taylor, Jr., she is also a supporter of the "guilty-until-proven-innocent" principle in the American judicial system. She was quoted as saying, "I'm really tired of people suggesting that you're somehow un-American if you don't respect the presumption of innocence because you know what that sounds like to a victim? Presumption: You're a liar."