Shari Karney

Shari Karney (born February 2, 1954) is an American attorney, incest-survivor activist, and bar exam review company owner.

Shari grew up in Southern California. She graduated with a B.A. from University of California Los Angeles then went to law school and graduated with her J.D. from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

While practicing as an attorney in 1983, Shari was asked by a mother to take on a child custody case where the mother thought her 3-year-old daughter was being sexually abused by her ex-husband. While she was questioning the ex-husband on the stand during cross-examination regarding the incest she began to scream and yell and lose control without understanding why. As the witness talked, Shari has claimed she became nauseated and sweaty. She has claimed that she kept hearing the sound of typing in the back of the courtroom, but no one was there. When the witness gave an excuse for touching his daughter's genitals, she screamed, "These men just get away with it!" and leapt into the witness box and tried to strangle him. The judge cited her for contempt, sent her to jail for two days and ordered her into therapy. It was in therapy that she has claimed that she remembered her own childhood molestation by her brother and her father, who was a writer. Shari's brother and father have denied her allegations. Nevertheless, she vowed to help other alleged incest victims fight their abusers in court.

Shari began taking incest survivor cases helping the victims sue their families in civil court to win legal compensation in order to be reimbursed for therapy and other costs. When victims couldn't pay, Shari would finance the suits herself with income from her bar review course, Barwinners. However, Shari found it difficult to win these cases when the courts had a statute of limitations on victims of one year from their 18th birthday to sue. One problem is that incest survivors often were too young at 19 years old to have the means to bring suit. Also, some survivors, like Shari, had repressed the painful memories and did not remember them until they were older and the statute of limitations had run out. She decided she would have to change the law in order to get justice for these victims.

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