GREENFIELD — Local law enforcement leaders are moving forward with plans to establish the county’s first child advocacy center — a place where young crime victims can more comfortably reveal the traumas they’ve faced and where families can seek help and information about social services.
Prosecutors and police have taken the first steps to bring the project to fruition since the idea of establishing a local advocacy center was first floated eight years ago.
The future Hancock County Child Advocacy Center has earned its nonprofit status, and local leaders are working to assemble a board of directors.
The purpose of a child advocacy center is simple, officials say: it’s a place away from the guns and badges of a police department where the victims of abuse, neglect and sex crimes can feel safe to come forward and open up about what has happened to them.
Reporting such crimes can be scary, especially for the community’s youngest members, said Detective Sgt. Nichole Gilbert of the Greenfield Police Department. A child advocacy center offers an environment that’s far less intimidating than a police department, where children should feel more welcome and at ease, she said.
It’ll take more time and hard work, Hancock County Prosecutor Brent Eaton said. Soon, they’ll start raising money, looking for land or a building to move into. They don’t know yet how much the place will cost or what the annual operating budget might be.
But once the doors are open, the center will be the foundation on which strong criminal cases against the perpetrators of these crimes are built, he said.
There are more than 1,000 child advocacy centers across the globe, and when implemented correctly, they can improve a community’s response to child abuse and neglect, according to National Children’s Advocacy Center, a training facility for child abuse prevention professionals that opened in Alabama in 1985.
The center encourages leaders of child advocacy centers to form a multidisciplinary team — police, prosecutors, child services case managers and other advocates — that can coordinate response to an allegation of child abuse or neglect.
That model will be utilized locally once the Hancock County center is up and running, Eaton said, and some of the groundwork for it already is being laid — namely forming a better partnership among prosecutors, police and state case workers.
Investigators from all areas of law enforcement will be able to utilize the child advocacy center to ensure children are interviewed about criminal allegations just once, Eaton said.
A representative from the prosecutor’s office, a detective from the investigating agency, and an Indiana Department of Child Services representative can all be present, watching the interview out of sight of the child, ensuring that all their respective questions are answered in that single interview. This will bring continuity to the investigation and lessen the burden on the victim, Eaton said.
Local police try to do this as much as they can now, but they’re limited to the space available at police departments and the local prosecutor’s office, Gilbert said.
Investigators across the state are turning to child advocacy centers more often to conduct their investigations, according to Indiana Chapter of the National Children’s Alliance.
Nearly 7 percent more Hoosier children visited an advocacy center 2017 than 2016. In total, 10,958 forensic interviews were conducted in 2017, compared to 10,276 that were conducted in 2016, a press release posted on group’s website states.
Much of that increase is attributed to increases in opioid drug use, along with increased reporting of child abuse and neglect to the Indiana Department of Child Services.
The number of forensic interviews conducted locally varies from week to week, said deputy prosecutor Cathy Wilson. She’s seen as many as six in one week and as few as one in a week.
And those are just in the cases with criminal implications, Wilson said. Case managers with the Department of Child Services — who could also utilize the county’s child advocacy center — conduct forensic interviews even more regularly, but those records are closed to the public.