USA SEXUAL VIOLENCE LITIGATION LAWYER OF THE YEAR LAWYER MONTHLY LEGAL AWARDS 2025 7 6 USA SEXUAL VIOLENCE LITIGATION LAWYER OF THE YEAR CHRISTINE DUNN Co-Managing Partner, Washington DC Office Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight LAWYER MONTHLY LEGAL AWARDS 2025 Christine Dunn is Co-Managing Partner of Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight’s Washington, D.C. office and CoChair of the firm’s Sexual Violence, Title IX, and Victims’ Rights Practice Group. A nationally recognized plaintiffs’ attorney, she represents survivors of sexual assault, discrimination, and whistleblower retaliation, with her work featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and People magazine. Christine has received numerous honors, including The National Law Journal’s Elite Women of the Plaintiffs Bar and Lawyer Monthly’s Sexual Violence Litigation Lawyer of the Year. A former federal civil rights prosecutor, she holds a J.D. from the University of Virginia and a B.A. from Yale University. ABOUT CHRISTINE DUNN You’ve built a distinguished career advocating for survivors of sexual violence. What initially drew you into this field, and what continues to inspire your dedication to such difficult and important cases? I attended a Quaker school from 7th through 12th grades. Although I’m not Quaker, I was very influenced by the emphasis that Quakers place on public service and fighting against injustice. Looking back, I realize that those values heavily impacted my career trajectory. Before joining my current law firm, I spent many years working as a civil rights prosecutor at the Department of Justice. Most of the cases I prosecuted involved police misconduct, including several cases where a law enforcement officer committed sexual assault. As a prosecutor, I spent countless hours working with sexual assault survivors. I developed a passion for helping survivors get justice. After leaving the Department of Justice, I joined my current law firm, Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, a civil rights and social justice firm where I co-chair our Sexual Violence, Title IX and Victims’ Rights practice group. In this role, I still help victims of crime obtain justice, but on the civil side, rather than the criminal side. In many ways I find being a civil attorney for crime victims to be even more rewarding than my work as a prosecutor. On the criminal side, the victim is not a party. Instead, it is the government vs. the perpetrator. The victim has certain rights in a criminal case, e.g., the right to be notified of important events, the right to be heard at sentencing, etc.; however, the victim does not get to call the shots. That’s different than a civil case. In a civil action, the survivor initiates the case and gets to make the decisions – in consultation with their lawyer – about how to proceed. That can be very empowering for a survivor. Sexual assault survivors routinely tell me that one of the worst parts of being victimized is feeling like they have lost their power. Bringing a civil lawsuit, where they get to make the decisions, can help survivors feel like they are regaining some of their power. Empowering survivors and helping them to get justice is the most rewarding part of my work. Have there been pivotal moments in your career when advocating for survivors posed unique professional or personal challenges and how did you overcome them? Working on behalf of sexual assault survivors does pose unique personal and professional challenges. Professionally, there are a lot of legal roadblocks that make it hard to pursue these cases. One of the biggest legal challenges is that statutes of limitations – time limits in which you have to bring a legal claim – are often very short. This is at odds with the reality that sexual assault survivors routinely delay coming forward. It’s heartbreaking when a sexual assault survivor is finally able to come forward to seek accountability, only to realize that the statute of limitations has expired. When this has happened, I’ve worked hard to think creatively about arguments to try to get around the statute of limitations. For example, is there a way to argue that the survivor didn’t discover the abuse until a later date? Fortunately, this challenge is decreasing as more states pass longer statutes of limitations for sexual assault, especially sexual assault experienced by children. Another legal challenge I routinely face involves my work on behalf of military sexual assault survivors. In 1950, the Supreme Court decided a case called Feres v. United States, which held that active duty servicemembers cannot bring tort claims against the government for anything “incident to military service”. Unfortunately, over the years, this has been interpreted so broadly that military members are essentially barred from bringing any claims, even ones that seemingly have nothing to do with military service. The Feres doctrine has even been used to prevent servicemembers from bringing claims when they have been sexually assaulted. It blows my mind that being raped could ever be seen as incident to anyone’s military service. Trying to navigate around the Feres doctrine is difficult. Fortunately, there have been some recent cracks in the law with respect to military sexual assault claims. I represent a number of military sexual assault survivors, and I’m working hard to exploit those cracks in the law and push back on the Feres doctrine. I firmly believe that the only way to change the law is to be willing to fight the hard fights. Doing this work is also personally challenging. I have a teenage daughter who is the light of my life. I constantly get calls about cases involving teenage girls being sexually assaulted. It’s hard not to think of my own daughter when I hear these stories. As a mom, it’s really tempting to keep my daughter safe by wrapping her in bubble wrap and never letting her out of the house. But I don’t want her to grow up scared, so I have always approached parenting with a “knowledge is power” philosophy. From the
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