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				Louisiana State Victim Assistance Academy
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				Merni Carter
				Post Office Box 77308 Baton Rouge, LA 70879 225-752-1296 (office) 225-751-8927 (fax) Email: mclcadv@aol.com
				Since 1996, Merni Carter has served as the Executive Director of the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence (LCADV), the state’s coalition of domestic violence programs, individuals, and supportive organizations concerned with ending domestic violence in Louisiana. Prior to that, she worked as a battered women’s advocate for thirteen years at the Project for Victims of Family Violence in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Ms Carter moved to Arkansas from her home state of Kansas where she worked in Child Protective Services for the Kansas Department of Social Services. Ms Carter received her BA degree in Sociology from St. Mary College in Xavier, Kansas in 1970 and her MA degree in Counseling from the University of Missouri in Kansas City in 1975. From 1985 through 1996, as Chairperson of the Domestic Violence Subcommittee of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Crime, appointed by then Gov. Bill Clinton, she guided efforts which resulted in Arkansas’ first and subsequent domestic violence legislation. She has served on Domestic Violence Coordinating Councils in both Arkansas and Louisiana, as well as on multiple committees, in both states, responsible for public and private systems response analysis related to safety for victims and accountability for perpetrators of domestic violence. In 1986, the Arkansas Coalition Against Domestic Violence presented Ms. Carter with a ‘Feminist Valor’ award for her successful efforts in protecting a battered woman from assault by her batterer as they both entered a Fayetteville courthouse. Ms. Carter received treatment in the E.R. for injuries resulting from that attack. In 1993, Ms. Carter received a commendation from President Bill Clinton for her decade of “outstanding work on this issue and for her chairmanship of the Domestic Violence Subcommittee which has been important to the efforts of Arkansas and the nation to find solutions to this serious problem”. In 1994, she was one of five women in the nation awarded the Turner Broadcasting Century of Women Achievement Award for her work in domestic violence. Beginning in 1996, as the sole employee of LCADV, Ms. Carter has taken the Coalition from a $40,000 annual operating budget to over $3,000,000; from an office in her home, to an entire suite of offices; from one staff to 10 full time staff and multiple contract employees. Under her direction, beginning in 1998 through the present, LCADV has funded innovative domestic violence programs in the state’s urban areas as well as in the isolated rural parishes; has spearheaded improvements in service delivery for survivors with disabilities, as well as for survivors within our state’s LGBTQ communities; and will be the lead in Domestic Violence Fatality Review Projects statewide over the next two years. Currently, Ms. Carter also serves as an appointee on the Louisiana Women’s Health Commission, the Louisiana Protection Order Steering Committee, the Victim Services Advisory Board, the Domestic Violence Advisory Council of the Department of Social Services, the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement Domestic Violence Standards Subcommittee, the Committee on Quality Assurance of the Office on Women’s Policy, the STOP Violence Against Women Conference Committee, the Attorney General’s Sexual Assault Task Force.

Document last revised Tuesday, November 21, 2006 2:02 PM

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Criminal Justice Dept., P.O. Box 41652, Lafayette LA 70504
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