Staca Shehan
Staca Shehan joined the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) in 1999 and is the vice president of the Analytical Services Division. She is responsible for policy decisions and overall operations within the division, including oversight of the Child Sex Trafficking Team and Sex Offender Tracking Team. In this role, she helps create and manage the division’s budget; conducts interviews about issues relating to child sex trafficking, noncompliant registered sex offenders, internet crimes against children and attempted abductions of children; and provides training sessions to the public, private industry, other nonprofits and law enforcement agencies.
In 2011, Ms. Shehan spearheaded the creation of the Child Sex Trafficking Team at NCMEC to respond to the increased need for technical assistance and analysis in child sex trafficking cases. This dedicated team provides support to law enforcement agencies who are working to identify and recover children victimized through sex trafficking and successfully prosecute those involved in trafficking children. These unique resources include analysis of potential suspects and child sex trafficking victims/potential victims.
In 2017, Ms. Shehan was selected as one of 21 representative members on the National Advisory Committee on Sex Trafficking of Children and Youth in the United States. The Committee advises the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General on policies improving the nation’s response to the sex trafficking of children and youth in the United States. She has also written several articles on behalf of NCMEC regarding child sex trafficking and children missing from care. Such publications were featured in the ‘United States Attorneys' USA Bulletin, Vol. 65, No. 6’ and by the OJP Diagnostic Center.
During her career at NCMEC, Ms. Shehan also developed and implemented the Sex Offender Tracking Team. The team created procedures and protocols used by analysts to provide technical assistance to law enforcement in their efforts to locate noncompliant sex offenders. During this process, she worked closely with NCMEC programmers to outline the creation of the Sex Offender Case Management system. This system allows analysts to track offenders and compare their geographic locations to open and unsolved child abductions, attempted abductions and incidents of child sexual exploitation.
Ms. Shehan holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from La Salle University with a minor in Criminal Justice and Certificates in Executive Leadership and High-Performance Leadership from Cornell University.