She is also professor emerita of criminal justice and criminology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on child maltreatment, research methods, and gender, race and crime.
[2] In the 1980s Williams spent time in Bermuda, working on prison reform and social justice issues while teaching courses in criminology and sociology.
[2] The August 2007 issue of SAGE Journal of Child Maltreatment was co-edited by Williams and Veronica Herrera.
[5][6] Williams is notable in the field of Memory for her longitudinal studies in the area of violence against women[7] and childhood sexual abuse.
During the 1970s, Williams collected data from 206 girls between the ages of 0 and 12 who were admitted to the hospital emergency room because of sexual abuse.
It was deemed unlikely that they simply did not want to discuss personal matters as 68% of this group reported other incidents of sexual abuse from their childhood.