Ann Wolbert Burgess

Ann Wolbert Burgess is an American researcher and psychiatric clinical nurse specialist whose career has centered on victims of trauma and abuse and on the criminal behavior of offenders who cause it. In the 1970s she worked with sociologist Lynda Lytle Holmstrom to identify and describe rape trauma syndrome, a pattern of psychological and physical responses experienced by sexual assault survivors, drawing on interviews with victims treated at Boston City Hospital. She went on to collaborate with FBI agents Robert Ressler and John Douglas on the Bureau's early criminal profiling research into sexual homicide offenders, helping bring a clinical, victim-centered perspective into what had been a primarily investigative undertaking. Burgess holds a professorship at the Boston College School of Nursing and emerita status at the University of Pennsylvania, and her books include A Killer by Design and Expert Witness.