People

SAARA is led by a team who have conducted extensive research on sibling aggression and abuse, published numerous scientific journal articles, and trained hundreds of students, professionals, and practitioners.

Key Staff

  • Affiliate Faculty
    Professor Emerita
    Director, SAARA
    Phone: (603) 862-0939
    Corinna Jenkins Tucker, Ph.D., CFLE, is an expert on sibling aggression and abuse and director of the SAARA Initiative. Her primary research interests include sibling relationships and parenting across the lifespan. Dr. Tucker has researched and published extensively on sibling relationships for over 30 years.
  • Professor/Director, Crimes Against Children/Family Research
    Phone: (603) 862-2761
    David Finkelhor, Ph.D., is an authority on child maltreatment and a consultant to the SAARA Initiative. Dr. Finkelhor serves as the director of the Crimes against Children Research Center at UNH and is a Professor of Sociology. He has studied the problems of child victimization, child maltreatment, and family violence since 1977.
  • Research Scientist
    Phone: (603) 862-0936
    Tanya Rouleau Whitworth, Ph.D., is a Research Scientist for the SAARA Initiative. Her research includes the importance of familial and parenting experiences for children’s and adolescents’ well-being. Dr. Whitworth’s work focuses on sibling sexual abuse and barriers to help-seeking for sibling aggression and abuse.

Advisory Board

Our advisory board of key stakeholders includes pediatricians, survivors, therapists, and researchers. With their varied backgrounds and perspectives, board members bridge multiple disciplines and perspectives and engage authentically with varied stakeholders. The board meets twice a year, and members are actively involved in SAARA’s research and advocacy work.

  • Board Member
    Leslie Abrons, LCSW, is passionate about bringing visibility to this unrecognized trauma that has life-long impacts. She works with children, adolescents, and adults as a licensed clinical social worker. She is trained in various clinical approaches and is deeply interested in the body-mind connection, the impact of trauma, neuroplasticity, and understanding learning differences. She has lived experienced, and brings the knowledge of her healing journey to her practice.
  • Board Member
    John Caffaro, Ph.D., is an expert on sibling violence and sexual abuse. He has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and two seminal books addressing sibling abuse trauma. Dr. Caffaro serves as Distinguished Professor at the California School of Professional Psychology, Los Angeles and as Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. He divides his time between psychotherapy treatment, teaching, writing, and professional training.
  • Board Member
    Wendy Gladstone, M.D., is a pediatrician and a member of the Child Advocacy and Protection Program at Dartmouth Health Children’s. Now retired from the child abuse pediatrics clinical specialty, she remains active in teaching, peer review, and mentoring. Dr. Gladstone is a charter member of the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Task Force on Child Abuse and Neglect and the state’s Child Fatality Review Committee. She is particularly interested in preventing child maltreatment, child advocacy,…
  • Board Member
    Amy Meyers, Ph.D., LCSW, is a professor, psychotherapist, and clinical social worker. She was trained in psychoanalysis at The National Psychotherapy Association for Psychoanalysis. Dr. Meyers has 30 years of practice experience in New York City and has taught in higher education for 18 years. She has researched childhood and adolescent physical and emotional sibling abuse and its impact on the development of intimacy in adulthood. Dr. Meyers has published and presented nationally about sibling…
  • Board Member
    Nathan H. Perkins, Ph.D., MSW, is an Associate Professor at the School of Social Work at Loyola University Chicago. Nathan’s professional and research interests include physical and emotional sibling violence, as well as sibling violence and its intersection with other types of family violence. Dr. Perkins’s research explores parental perceptions of sibling violence as well as the lack of policy that exists to address this form of family violence.
  • Board Member
    Ritu Ullal, M.D., is a medical provider for the Child Advocacy and Protection Program at Dartmouth Health. Dr. Ullal helps provide medical and psychosocial evaluations for children and adolescents when there is a concern for abuse or neglect. She is a family physician with experience in primary care and substance use disorder, and her interests include mental health care and violence prevention.

Students