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Deb Ryan Running for Chester County DA Job
L O CAL
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
IT TOOK JUST ONE CASE
for Deb Ryan, now running for
District Attorney in Chester
County, to know she wanted to
be a prosecutor.

After graduating from
Boston University, she had a
sense of wanting to “help” in
some way; she just didn’t have a
“how” yet. She landed an intern-
ship at the office of then-Phila-
delphia District Attorney Lynne
Abraham, where she “fell in
love with the work.”
Early on, she sat in on a trial
where she watched a prosecu-
tor make a closing argument in
a murder case.

“It was riveting,” she said.

“Watching him advocate for
justice on behalf of the victim
and the survivors, his family,
was so awe inspiring I was
hooked instantaneously.”
As she spent more time in the
internship, she found that sort
of sense of justice to be exactly
what she had been seeking.

“There was this incredible
sense of unity and support for
victims, and the idea of advo-
cating for justice for someone
who has been harmed in some
fashion by a team of people who
really cared about doing the
right thing was inspiring,” she
said. “The people I had worked
with or for were amazingly
kind, generous, smart people
who really just wanted to help
the community in some way.”
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6 FEBRUARY 28, 2019
Now, Ryan, a graduate
of University of Pittsburgh
School of Law, is running as a
victim’s rights advocate in her
race against incumbent district
attorney (and former boss) Tom
Hogan in Chester County, posi-
tioning herself as the candidate
most interested in protecting
victims and working with police.

“They’re looking for some-
one who will be a supportive
leader,” she said, something
that her friends in law enforce-
ment have told her has been
lacking in recent years.

Ryan, the granddaughter
of Holocaust survivors, moved
around a lot when she was
young, as her family followed her
father’s job with General Electric
from Massachusetts to Syracuse
to Villanova, where they finally
settled. Ryan attended Harriton
High School and Har Zion
Temple before leaving for Boston
University. After she graduated
law school in 1998, she joined
the DA’s office in Philadelphia.

Those were trying but exhil-
arating days.

“We dealt with so many dif-
ferent kinds of crimes, we had
an enormous caseload, and we
tried a ton of cases every day
there,” she said.

Still, she found the expe-
rience rewarding, especially
when it came to the difficult
work of combating childhood
sexual abuse, an area that has
come to be her calling card.

In 2002, she had her second
child and decided that she would
stay at home for a few years.

The family moved to Chester
County and, for the next four
years, Ryan worked part time as
the chief operating officer at her
mother’s nonprofit, Champions
of Caring. The programs she ran
encouraged children to become
“social entrepreneurs,” creating
action plans for bettering their
communities and training them
in skills like resume writing and
public speaking.

Still, the old life called.

“I’m a prosecutor through
and through,” she said.

Deb Ryan
Photo provided
In 2006, she began working
at the Chester County DA’s office
as an assistant district attorney
and spent the next decade rising
up the ranks, earning promotions
and awards from Hogan himself.

In 2016, she started working at the
Crime Victim Center of Chester
County as the county coordi-
nator for the Safe and Healthy
Communities Initiative, working
on a program to eradicate child
sexual abuse through education.

About a year ago, her friends
in law enforcement began to
tell her that she should con-
sider running, a request she
first rejected out of hand. They
felt disrespected by the current
administration, without sup-
port, and looked to Ryan as the
solution. “I’m not a politician,”
she reasoned. But she’d think
about it, she told them.

Around then, she visited her
brother in Israel, a reporter for
The Jerusalem Post.

“He looked at me and said,
‘You know you can do so much
good for so many people if you
do this,’ and I took that to heart.”
A week later, he died
unexpectedly. Ryan believes that the sense
of justice instilled in her by her
grandparents, teaching her and
her brother to advocate for the
marginalized in whatever way
they could, still powers her.

“I want to be the voice
on behalf of victims and
survivors,” she said. l
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