Robert N. Parrish

Robert Parrish began his legal career in the Utah Attorney General’s Office in 1980. In 1983, after representing the Utah Department of Public Safety as its sole counsel and presenting criminal appeals before the Utah Supreme Court, he became a prosecutor and managed trials of all kinds before specializing in child abuse prosecution in the late 1980s. Parrish has worked on both child protection cases and criminal cases involving proof of child abuse issues. While deputy director of the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome from July 2000 to 2002, Parrish consulted on hundreds of cases all over the world, authored a training curriculum for law enforcement and CPS investigators, and wrote articles and chapters for several prosecution and medical texts. Parrish has presented training in England, Australia, and throughout the United States on a variety of topics relating to abusive head trauma in children and focusing on the legal system’s role in responding to this severe form of child abuse. In 2002, Parrish returned to state government as a Guardian ad Litem, representing abused, neglected, and delinquent children in juvenile court and managing six other attorneys and staff.