Casey Carter Swegman is a nationally recognized expert on the issues of forced and child marriage in the United States. As the Director of Public Policy at the Tahirih Justice Center she overseas the Forced Marriage Initiative which provides direct services to survivors across the country and technical assistance to service providers and advocates nationally. She chairs the national Forced Marriage Working Group which is comprised of experts and advocates, including survivors, across the country committed to contributing deeply to efforts to address the problem of forced marriage in the United States through community level engagement, transformation, and prevention, as well as direct services, and federal and state-based policy solutions.
Casey was the principal content drafter and developer of the Forced Marriage Initiative website, the first U.S. based resource of its kind, and spearheaded the development of comprehensive best practice guidance for responding to cases of forced and child marriage. She engages in extensive domestic and international training and outreach and serves as a liaison to local agencies and service providers working to strengthen the capacity of their local community to respond to cases of forced marriage.
She has also oversees Tahirih’s state and federal policy advocacy focused on improving protections for immigrant survivors while simultaneously seeking long-term, systemic change, including Tahirih’s campaign to end child marriage in the United States as well as the drafting of core policy priorities for the National Action Plan to End Gender Based Violence in the United States.