Preserving innocence
As recently as the 1990s, a child subjected to abuse had to tell his or her story many times — to law enforcement, social and legal agencies and medical staff.
After enduring frightening abuse or exploitation, the child faced intimidating settings of the police station, emergency room or agency offices.
Barbara Brown, executive director of the Child Advocacy Center, said with nearly 90 percent of abusers being the child’s parent, step-parent, relative, family friend or the parent’s boyfriend or girlfriend, the topic was especially painful.
“It’s already a difficult topic to talk about,” Brown said. “They either decided they’re tired of talking about it or they think a good way to get out of it was to say they were teasing or making it up.”
The approach eventually changed to one of child advocacy, Brown said, in which evidence-gathering became less traumatic for the child and yielded more information. The Child Advocacy Center, which provides service to 18 counties in southwest Missouri, began in 1995 and moved into its current building on Walnut Street in Springfield in 1997.
“It’s so simple, it’s profound in its design.”
Interviews and exams
The Child Advocacy Center takes a team approach to working their cases, using case managers, forensic interviewers, law enforcement, Children’s Division, the juvenile office and members of the medical field. If the team works well together, the center sees good outcomes in which children feel safe and not as traumatized, Brown said.
During forensic interviews, children speak one-on-one with an interviewer trained to interact with children in a developmental way. The interviewers have studied children’s linguistics and how they develop.
“They are trained in how to talk to kids about traumatic events,” Brown said. “Kids aren’t accustomed to correcting adults or asking follow-up questions to make sure they understand what they’re being asked.”
Through the eyes and ears of a video camera, the rest of the team — law enforcement, a case manager, a forensic interviewer and medical staff — watches from the room next door, and the interview is recorded on both audio and video. The interviewer wears an earbud so team members can ask for clarification or to have the child repeat something. Charges in cases depend on specific information — contact on top of clothing is one charge, while skin-to-skin contact is a more serious charge, Brown said.
“We have to get very specific information from the kids so prosecutors know what to charge,” she said.
The center — from its toys to its furniture and walls — is designed to distract children from the ugliness or unpleasantness they have experienced.
“It’s a really good way to put kids at ease,” Brown said. “The first thing we wanted them to see was something bright and colorful. It’s just a really good way to distract kids from the work at hand.”
Sexual Assault Forensic Exams take place in an examination room with highly detailed murals painted on the walls and ceiling. The murals are fascinating to older kids as well as young children because of the hidden scenes in the mural, Brown said.
“We built all these things in the mural to distract kids and to make them feel comfortable,” she said.
Interviewers’ methods minimize the stress of recounting a trauma and elicit more information and better information, Brown said.
“We have to be heavy into the research, not only make sure we’re going to get the most information we can in a child-friendly way, but also to collect reliable information to go to court.”
Brown said the unique toys selected for the waiting room distract children and also help interviewers to assess a child’s speech and development.
“Can we understand their speech? That’s really important to know, if the kid’s going to be describing horrendous things.”
In the forensic interview room, an interviewer knows how to handle a child’s disclosure phase, Brown said. Most children drop their heads when describing abuse. One boy crawled under a beanbag chair, hiding his head while he recounted what happened to him.
“He couldn’t look at the interviewer. He talked, he disclosed, but he couldn’t look at the interviewer.”
During a SAFE Exam, a child is examined from head to toe.
“We look first and foremost at overall health,” Brown said.
Children are examined for neglect as well as abuse. Their weights are evaluated based on their ages and their dental health is assessed as well, Brown said. The experience is similar to a visit to a pediatrician’s office.
“We’re interested in their overall health and well-being,” Brown said. “If there’s an allegation of physical abuse, then we document that. That kind of evidence is usually pretty easy to get and document.”
A magnifying camera, a colposcope, is used to document evidence.
“If there’s an allegation of sexual abuse and the child allows it, we conduct a genital exam,” Brown said.
For a number of reasons, evidence of sexual abuse is generally not there, she said. Though kids do not usually have sexually transmitted infections, the center conducts those tests on site and sends them to a lab.
If a child’s overall health appears to be fine and the child does not want a genital exam, the center respects that, Brown said. They want to reinforce for the child that if he or she tells someone to stop, they should stop.
“We don’t want to push that,” she said. “We’re not going to be guilty of that. It’s a different context, but still.”
Statistics
The average age of a child who comes into the Child Advocacy Center is 7, Brown said. In 2009, the CAC in southwest Missouri saw more kids than any other center in the state — 1,039 kids.
“There are 15 [centers] in the state,” Brown said.
In the center’s percentages for types of abuse, the percentages equal more than 100. That’s because some children experience more than one type of abuse.
Last year saw a 24-percent increase from 2008 in the number of cases and an average of 87 kids a month.
“We’re way, way busy,” Brown said.
In the first three months of 2010, each month has seen more cases than the same month in 2009.
“We’re hopeful it will go back down,” Brown said. “We can be hopeful, but we would not be surprised if it never went down again.”
About 20-25 percent of kids are not returned to a parent’s custody.
“Usually the reason is because mom chooses the boyfriend and isn’t willing to believe the child,” Brown said. “That is a prime time for kids to say ‘I was just kidding.’ How unfair is that? They didn’t do anything wrong, but they’re being punished, so to speak.”
A person living in the child’s home is doing the harm about 80 percent of the time, Brown said.
The center’s case managers make referrals to other agencies and counseling, Brown said, for the child and for the family.
“Parents need to work through that,” she said. “When one family member is victimized, everyone needs intervention.”
Funding
The state of Missouri funds about 1?4 of the advocacy center’s budget, Brown said. The center conducts several fundraisers and writes grants. Fundraising of about $650,000 in 2008 allowed an addition to the center to open in 2009, reducing wait time for children. Confidentiality for cases also became more secure with the shorter wait time.
“Usually these things are kept private for good reason,” Brown said. “You don’t want to have to sit in the waiting room with somebody else. We’ve still got $80,000-$90,000 to pay off, but we just about had it paid for before we even broke ground.
“We’re in the process of hiring new staff so we can work it full-time. You don’t want to lose evidence in a child abuse case. If it takes too long, we’ve lost the evidence.”
The goal of the Taste of Cakes fundraiser Friday, June 4, (see sidebar) is to raise 10 percent of the center’s annual budget. Each of the center’s fundraisers has had a different theme. This year’s theme of cakes will include a cake competition and cake-themed hors d’oeuvres.
She would like to see businesses and individuals in southwest Missouri donate to the center, Brown said. About half of the children the center serves live in Greene County. The other half live in the other 17 counties the center serves. In 2009, the Child Advocacy Center served 73 children from Polk County.
“It’s time to start asking for help from folks in these outlying communities that we serve,” Brown said. “It’s really an important service for the most needy of children — children who have been victims of a crime. It’s a good thing to support. It’s a good mission to support.”
The mission
“What I really like about this mission is the objectivity,” Brown said. “It’s just as important to find out something didn’t happen as it is to find out something did happen.”
In one case she remembers, a mother overreacted to something her child said. During the interview, the team found that the child had meant something else, but was scared to tell his mom that it had been a mix-up.
“That was a good day,” Brown said. “That’s a focus as well, getting the truth. If the truth is nothing happened, that’s a great day.”
At the end of their work, children have drawn pictures for their interviewers or case managers. After their experiences, some have been comfortable enough to invite the center employees to their homes, Brown said.
“If we get kids wanting to know if we can come to their birthday party next month, then we’ve done a good job,” she said. “The whole environment is designed not only to distract the child, but to engage the child, to remind them they are a kid.”
To learn more about the Child Advocacy Center or how to support its services, visit childadvocacycenter.org.
Children served by the CAC in 2009, by county
Barry — 5
Cedar — 23
Christian — 84
Dallas — 38
Douglas — 33
Greene — 530
Hickory — 8
Howell — 76
Laclede — 14
Lawrence — 2
Oregon — 6
Ozark — 7
Polk — 73
Shannon — 1
Stone — 1
Taney — 8
Texas — 1
Webster — 74
Wright — 44
Other counties (children outside service area) — 11
Taste of Cakes
• Friday, June 4
• Competitors are Amycakes, Beth’s Bake Shoppe, Cameo Cakes, Celebrations by Sonja, Cake Creations by Darlene, Lola’s Pastry & Eatery (Nixa) and Woods Supermarket (Bolivar).
• Sponsorships are 16 dinner tickets — $10,000 and up; 12 dinner tickets — $7,500-$9,999; 8 dinner tickets — $5,000-$7,499; 6 dinner tickets — $2,500-$4,999; 4 dinner tickets — $1,000-$2,499; and one dinner ticket for $125.
• Contact Linda at 831-2327 to be a sponsor.