Dr. Sharon Cooper
Dr. Sharon Cooper is a Developmental and Forensic Pediatrician who cares for children and select adults with different abilities, as well as those who have been victims of maltreatment. Dr. Cooper retired from the United States Army with the rank of Colonel and holds adjunct faculty positions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine and the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences at Bethesda, Maryland. She has provided numerous lectures nationally and internationally and her primary areas of expertise include all forms of child maltreatment, child torture and child sexual exploitation.
Dr. Cooper has published many chapters on the subject of child sexual exploitation and is the lead editor of one of the most comprehensive texts in the U.S. on this subject. She works with victims and families of children who have been the prey of all types of online and offline exploitation. She has provided training to more than a thousand professionals on sexual exploitation under the auspices of NCMEC. She serves on several boards and working groups to include the Marie Collins Foundation (UK), the Academy on Violence and Abuse (USA), and the Vatican’s Congress on Child Dignity in the Digital World.
Dr. Cooper has served as an expert witness in several hundred cases of child maltreatment, and especially provides testimony on all aspects of child sexual exploitation. Dr. Cooper continues to serve with an International Working Group on the victim impact for survivors of child sexual abuse imagery, sponsored by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.
She recently produced Not Just Pictures, the first American documentary to provide insight into the ongoing extraordinary impact of the victimization of children whose abusive images are distributed in cyberspace.