Carrie Cuthbert

The Bold Idea:

The Women's Rights Network (WRN) was founded with the goal of establishing a Global Network Against Domestic Violence & Sexual Abuse that would offer its members ongoing access to resources, strategies and organizing opportunities in different countries. In building its Global Network, WRN began to recognize the strategic value of using the human rights framework in the struggle to end domestic violence and sexual abuse, and the need for advocates in the United States to develop a human rights approach to these issues in their own communities.

WRN’s mission evolved to address domestic violence as a human rights issue within the United States through education, documentation and advocacy. In 2003, WRN completed the Battered Mothers’ Testimony Project (BMTP), which documented and exposed human rights abuses by the Massachusetts family courts against battered mothers fighting their abusers for custody of their children. The project included a human rights tribunal held at the Massachusetts State House, the publication of a human rights report, and creation of a replication guide. WRN’s work is currently continued through the Gender and Justice Project at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College.

Biography:

Carrie graduated from Amherst College in 1990 and Harvard Law School in 1995. In 1995, she received an Echoing Green Public Service Fellowship, an Irving R. Kaufman Public Interest Fellowship and a Do Something grant to co-found the Women’s Rights Network, a human rights organization working to end violence against women in the United States. In this capacity she directed the Battered Mothers’ Testimony Project (BMTP), which was featured in the Ford Foundation publication, Something Inside So Strong: A Resource Guide on Human Rights in the United States and has been replicated in several U.S. communities.

Carrie has authored a number of publications on gender violence and human rights. She was selected to participate in “Strategies to Expand and Strengthen Human Rights in the United States” (1999) and in the first National Training of Trainers of Human Rights Educators (2000). She was elected to serve on the US Human Rights Network Coordinating Committee (2003) and on the Board of the New England Learning Center for Women in Transition (2003-2005).

Currently, Carrie runs the development department at Free Press, a national nonpartisan organization working to reform the U.S. media system (www.freepress.net). She lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband and daughter.