About Alice Vachss

Admitted as an attorney in New York in 1975, Alice Vachss was one of the first women criminal trial lawyers of her era. From the rough-and-tumble of Manhattan's Night Court, to the gallery at the Old Bailey, in New York City as a sex crimes prosecutor and as a special victims bureau chief, and in the Pacific Northwest as a special prosecutor, she has spent the past 41 years fighting for what she believes in. Her dedicated website is alicevachss.com Alice Vachss, is the former Chief of the Special Victims Bureau of the Queens (NYC) District Attorney's Office. During her tenure, she tried more than 100 felony cases to verdict, including rape, child sexual assault, elder abuse, domestic violence, cult abuse, and homicide. Under her leadership, the Special Victims Bureau innovated new approaches and techniques in sex-crimes prosecution which ranged from trail-blazing the use of DNA evidence in New York courts, to firing the first shots in the still-current battle to modernize statutes of limitations for sexual assault. Ms. Vachss is the author of Sex Crimes (Random House, 1993), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. That book (included here as Sex Crimes: Then in this two-book edition) coined the term collaborator to describe those within the criminal-justice system who provide aid and comfort to perpetrators. Before assuming leadership of the Special Victims Bureau, Ms. Vachss was a VISTA volunteer, a counselor in a maximum-security prison for violent youth, and a trial attorney in New York City's Legal Aid Criminal Defense Division. After publication of her book she specialized in such areas as campus sexual assault, elder sexual abuse, civil legal response to violence against women and, more recently, she returned to sex crimes prosecution. Her latter experiences lead her to write a sequel to her book, entitled Sex Crimes: Now. Both the original and the sequel are include here as Sex Crimes: Then and Now.