Fara Gold

Fara Gold is the Senior Counsel of Strategic Advocacy at Edwards Henderson. She is a former federal and state prosecutor who joined the firm after spending more than 20 years prosecuting sex crimes and other cases involving vulnerable victims in both state and federal court. Fara served in the U.S. Department of Justice for almost 16 years, mostly in the Civil Rights Division and then in the Office on Violence Against Women. She traveled throughout the United States (often on a weekly basis) handling complex investigations in small towns and large cities, securing convictions in cases where offenders (mistakenly) counted on no one believing the people they victimized.

Fara is nationally recognized for her expertise in prosecuting sexual assault by law enforcement officers and other government actors, having prosecuted more of those cases than anyone in the country to date. She built a sex crimes prosecution practice within DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, and as a result, she was named the Division’s first Senior Sex Crimes Counsel.

Fara published several articles and has been honored with multiple awards for her work, including two prestigious Attorney General’s Awards and the FBI Director’s Award for Excellence for Distinguished Service in Assisting Victims of Crime. She is routinely called upon to train attorneys, investigators, and other professionals about trauma-informed interviewing and effectively building sexual assault cases, including in 2025, when the Japan Ministry of Justice invited her to train prosecutors in Tokyo. Fara has taught as an adjunct law professor at Georgetown University Law Center and American University. She is currently an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law. Fara is licensed to practice in Florida, New York, and Washington, D.C.

Notable Cases and Accomplishments

Fara has litigated a wide array of civil rights cases, including prosecuting government actors at the state, federal, and Tribal level for using their authority to commit sexual assault. Notably, she brought the first federal case charging a public school employee with violating students’ constitutional rights by sexually assaulting them; she successfully prosecuted a chaplain at a federal prison in Dublin, California for sexual abuse, setting the stage for other prosecutions of corrections officers within that prison that led to systemic change; and she prosecuted multiple private prison transport offers, including one defendant who sexually assaulted more than a dozen women during transports, for which he received two life sentences.

In 2022, Fara successfully spearheaded an effort to enact legislation that both strengthened the federal government’s ability to prosecute sexual assault overall and made all forms of sexual assault committed by law enforcement officers into a felony. In 2023, Fara played an integral role in the then-Deputy Attorney General’s efforts to root out sexual abuse in the federal Bureau of Prisons, working with the U.S. Sentencing Commission to increase the federal sentencing guidelines for federal corrections officers who commit sexual abuse. In 2024, Fara authored DOJ’s Framework for Prosecutors to Strengthen Our National Response to Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence, a blueprint, based on a consensus of more than 120 experts, for building provable cases in a manner that ensures victims are treated with humanity, while upholding defendants’ due process rights.

Fara also prosecuted other types of complex and high-profile investigations. She indicted the first case under the Matthew Shepard and James L. Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a landmark federal hate crimes statute that was signed into law in 2010. She also served as the lead civil rights prosecutor on the criminal investigation into the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, and was the primary author of the publicly released accompanying report.

Media and Publications

Fara’s cases have been covered by various media outlets throughout the country. She was featured on the Podcast on Crimes Against Women, Season 6, Episode 1. She also published several articles: Victims Ignored Is Justice Denied, Justice Connection Substack (June 23, 2026); Protecting and Corroborating a Sexual Assault Victim’s Account: Using the Federal Rules of Evidence to Build a Provable Case, DOJ J. OF FED. LAW & PRACTICE, Resources for Victim-Centered Prosecutions in Federal Practice Issue at 133 (September 2024)l 2022 Update: Prosecuting Sexual Misconduct by Government Actors, DOJ J. OF FED. LAW & PRACTICE, Civil Rights Part II, Criminal Issue at 53 (March 2022); Investigating and Prosecuting Sexual Misconduct Committed by Law Enforcement: Federal Jurisdiction, ABA Criminal Justice Magazine, Winter 2021 at 10, Volume 35, Issue 4 (January 2021); and Investigating and Prosecuting Law Enforcement Sexual Misconduct Cases, 66 U.S. ATT’YS BULL. 77, 78 (January 2018).

Awards and Honors

Fara received multiple awards throughout her career: Attorney General’s “Crystal Eagle” Award for Exceptional Service (2015) (DOJ’s highest honor); Attorney General’s Award for Outstanding Contributions by a New Employee (2012); Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) Alexander Hamilton Award (2025) (highest honor awarded among the 70 OIGs across the federal government); Department of Justice IG’s Collaboration Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Inspector General (2023); FBI Director’s Award for Excellence: Distinguished Service in Assisting Victims of Crime (2021) (FBI’s highest honor); Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service (2020).

Fara was also selected to be a Harvard Law School Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow for the 2024-2025 academic year; she served as the guest speaker University of Miami School of Law Honors Graduation Ceremony in 2015; and she received the University of Miami School of Law Alumni Leadership Award in 2014.

Background

Fara began her career as a state prosecutor for the Broward County State Attorney’s Office. She attended the University of Miami School of Law as a member of its public interest scholars’ program. There, she was inducted into the Iron Arrow Society, the university’s highest honor, for leadership and service. She graduated magna cum laude and was a member of the Order of the Coif. Fara earned her undergraduate degree from Emory University, where she was part of the Emory Scholars’ Program.

You can contact Fara at fara@cvlf.com or 954-323-2076.