Hearing the Voice of a Child Tour
“Hearing the Voice of a Child” Tour
Join us for an hour long tour
of the Child Advocacy Center
Hear the Mission, See the Process,
and Capture the Feelings
of a Child’s Journey
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Nashua Center-2 Wellman Avenue Suite 140 |
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April 6, 2010 @ 5:30
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June 1, 2010 @ 5:30
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September 7, 2010 @ 5:30
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November 2, 2010 @ 5:30 |
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Manchester Center-960 Auburn St
March 2, 2010 @ 5:30
May 4, 2010 @ 5:30
August 3, 2010 @ 5:30
December 7, 2010 @ 5:30 |
Private individual & group
tours available upon request
Call to Reserve your Seat Today!
(603) 889-0321 - Nashua Tours
(603) 623-2300 - Manchester Tours
www.cac-nh.com
Providing Justice and Healing for
Child Victims, One Voice at a Time
Christopher Sosa
Young victims of sex crimes find help at Child Advocacy Center
By KATHRYN MARCHOCKI
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff
Monday, Apr. 28, 2008
MANCHESTER – It could be any child's bedroom, comfortable and small with soft purple walls. Not a place where dark secrets get told.
For dozens of abused children who have come to the Child Advocacy Center since it opened last August, it is a safe and reassuring place for them to reveal painful accounts of rape, molestation and other sexual assaults, nearly all at the hands of someone they knew and trusted.
"They walk in and they are nervous," said Bethany Cottrell, a forensic interviewer at the 960 Auburn St. center. "Then they tell me their deepest, darkest secrets. They know they don't ever have to see me again. And then they talk to me about soccer."
The Child Advocacy Center model - which started in Huntsville, Ala. in the early 1980s - is revolutionizing how child sex crimes are investigated, area police and prosecutors said. And it's getting results, they added.
Rather than subject child victims to at least six to eight separate interviews by police, social workers, prosecutors and victim witness advocates, the child meets once with a trained, certified forensic interviewer at the privately run center.
Meanwhile, those assigned to the case work as a team. They watch the interview over closed-circuit television from another room, occasionally passing questions on to the interviewer via two-way radio. The interview is recorded and kept as evidence.
"We would dream about the day we could bring this type of focus and neutrality and connection in a team environment to these cases ... It is the way we should have been doing them," said Hillsborough County Attorney Marguerite L. Wageling, who began prosecuting child sex assaults in 1985 and sits on the center's board of directors.
Since the state's first Child Advocacy Center opened on the Seacoast in 2000, they operate in all but Merrimack and Coos counties, Child Advocacy Center of Hillsborough County Executive Director Kristie Palestino said. Plans are under way to open centers those counties next year, she said.
Getting justice
"For many, many years, we asked children to be seen and not heard," Bedford Police Detective Matthew J. Fleming said.
"Now, not only are they seen by the CAC, but they are heard by the CAC. And it gives them the voice that they desperately need, which is to get help," added Fleming, a veteran sex crime investigator and supporter of the center's child-friendly, team-based approach to cracking these cases.
Counties that adopted the child advocacy center model nationwide reportedly have seen an estimated 40 percent increase in successful prosecutions of child sexual assaults, Palestino said.
Not only is the model less costly than traditional investigations, it also produces stronger cases that often result in abusers opting to plead guilty rather than stand trial, she added.
"Ultimately, if we can avoid having to have a victim testify because the suspect's case is so damaging and so solid that they have to plead out and the victim never has to go to court to testify, you did it. It's done," Fleming explained. "You got justice for the child. You got justice for the family."
More importantly, the model spares child victims from having to describe again and again the intimate, embarrassing details of their abuse, each time reliving the painful experience.
"Kids were retelling their stories six, seven or eight times. Sometimes, you would see a number of discrepancies in the disclosure, not because the child lied, but because the child is asked the question different ways and suspects were getting away," Fleming said.
Defense lawyers often pounced on any variation in the children's stories in an attempt to discredit them at trial, he explained.
Stronger cases
From the outside, there is little that sets the gray, ranch-style house apart from any other in the quiet neighborhood across from Elliot Hospital, which donated the house to the private nonprofit organization that runs the center.
Once inside, however, visitors step into a cheerful room with child-sized sofa chairs, teddy bears and games. Scattered along the hallway walls are children's colorful hand prints. Called the Hands of Hope Wall, it's there to remind children they are not alone. Each child is invited to add a handprint to the collection and take home a teddy bear before he or she leaves.
The Manchester center, also known as the Mary Elliot House, serves northern Hillsborough County communities. The county's southern tier has been served by the Nashua center, which opened in fall 2004. The two centers served 466 children in 2007. Their average age was nine.
The center not only provides support to families immediately, but it produces stronger cases that move more quickly through the justice system, Wageling said.
"It used to be you'd get a case 60 days or so after it was reported to police and 10 people had interviewed the kid and nobody had reached out to the parents," Wageling said. "The case would start to fall apart before we even got it."
Jennifer Sosa feared the worst when she learned Shane Vadney, a teacher's aide at the Nashua day-care center her 3-year-old daughter attended, was accused in 2006 of molesting another girl there.
"My daughter was very close with him ... She adored him," Sosa said.
The Child Advocacy Center in Nashua worked closely with investigators and began interviewing 80 children between 3 and 5 years old shortly after the allegation was made.
Sosa was skeptical, fearing interviewers would ask leading questions that would not stand up in court.
"If I'm going to have my child interviewed, I don't want it to be futile; I want it to have some weight," Sosa recounted.
Her daughter's interview over, the girl came skipping out of the room to her mother. "Hi, mommy. I'm all done," Sosa said her daughter told her.
Only later did the team inform Sosa her daughter said Vadney abused her. Today, nearly two years after Vadney confessed to molesting 12 children and was sentenced to 50 to 110 years in prison, Sosa said her daughter still hasn't talked about what she revealed to the interviewer.
Sosa said the case would not have come to such a successful and quick prosecution - Vadney was sentenced less than eight months after his arrest - without the center's involvement. She now serves on its board of directors.
Today the center's continued success depends on community support. It is seeking individual and corporate donations, leaders and volunteers. Donations of office supplies, teddy bears and in-kind services also are appreciated.
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For more information, contact Kristie Palestino at 623-2300 or online at www.cac-nh.org.
AG Appoints State Board to Oversee NH CAC
Press Release: February 19th, 2008
Concord, NH – Attorney General Kelly Ayotte has appointed a statewide board to oversee and support New Hampshire’s eight established and two developing Child Advocacy Centers (CACs). Funded in part through the Victims of Crime Compensation Fund, Child Advocacy Centers are community-based facilities that provide a child-friendly environment for conducting child abuse investigations and coordination of services for child victims and their non-offending family members.
Members of the Attorney General’s Child Advocacy Center Advisory Board include several state Commissioners, agency heads and directors of non-profits involved in family violence prevention (a list is attached).
In 2007, New Hampshire Child Advocacy Centers provided services to more than 1,375 children. Ninety percent of these children had a presenting allegation of child sexual abuse, the majority under 10 years of age.
In communities with a Child Advocacy Center, law enforcement, the Division for Children, Youth and Families, the County Attorney’s Office, victim advocate services and medical and mental health professionals sign a shared services agreement in which all parties self mandate a team approach to child abuse investigations and subsequent service delivery.
New Hampshire currently has eight Child Advocacy Centers:
- Child Advocacy Center of Rockingham County with offices in Portsmouth and Derry Contact: Maureen Sullivan 603-422-8240
- Hillsborough County Child Advocacy Center with CACs in both Nashua and Manchester -- Contact: Kristie Palestino 603-889-0321
- Greater Lakes Child Advocacy Center in Laconia – Contact: Meghan Howe 603-524-5497
- Child Advocacy Center of Grafton and Sullivan Counties at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center with offices in Lebanon and Newport – Contact: Cathy Brittis 603-653-9012
- Strafford County Child Advocacy Center in Dover – Contact: Amy Barham 603-516-8100
- Carroll County Child Advocacy Center in Wolfeboro – Contact: Katie Watkins 603-569-9840
- Monadnock Region Child Advocacy Center in Keene – Contact: Atonya Hart 603-352-0413
For more information on the Children’s Advocacy Center model in combating child abuse or to find a CAC in your community, please call 603-380-3095 or visit www.NHNCAC.org
Child Advocacy Center Advisory Board Members
Chair: Honorable Kelly Ayotte, Attorney General
Kate Adler,Community Member
Maggie Bishop, DirectorDivision for Children, Youth and Families
Colonel Frederick BoothNH Department of Safety
Kent Hymel, MDMedical Director, Child Abuse and Prevention Program, CHAD
Pam Kozlowski, JDDistrict Court Administrator
Sandra Matheson, DirectorOffice of Victim/Witness Assistance
Grace Mattern, Exec. DirectorNH Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence
Chief Peter MorencyNH Chiefs of Police Association
Kristie Palestino, Exec. DirectorChild Advocacy Center of Hillsborough
Chair, NH Network of CACs
Amanda Peterson, State CoordinatorNH Network of CACs
James Reams, JDRockingham County Attorney
Brad Russ, DirectorInternet Crimes Against Children Task Force
Marcia Sink, DirectorCASA of NH
Help Ease the Nightmare of Child Sexual Abuse
The following op-ed article was published in the Manchester Union Leader on Sunday, March 9th 2008.
Daniel Monfried: You can help ease the nightmare of child sexual abuse
By DANIEL MONFRIED
For just a moment, I want you to close your eyes and re-imagine the first time your child or grandchild wrapped a tiny hand around your finger. It may well be the first time as parents that we truly appreciate how precious life is; how innocent, vulnerable and utterly dependent our children are on us for their safety and well-being.
I want you to now imagine that same hand dipped in red or blue or yellow paint and pressed to the white wall of Nashua's Child Advocacy Center, signifying that your child has been the victim of a sexual assault; that the world has changed and that childhood as you both know it is now over.
To view the kaleidoscopic scattering of prints on the CAC's Hands of Hope Wall is to have your heart broken hundreds of times over. It is to witness in arresting color the stories of countless children, some barely old enough to talk, recounting the worst moments of their lives so that justice can be pursued and life can finally move forward.
The children dip their hands in the paint for one reason: to let the next child who walks through the center's glass doors know that he or she is not alone.
Last November, state Sen. Ted Gatsas encouraged me to join the board of directors for the CAC of Hillsborough County. Like so many important causes, any surplus of purpose and vitality the center enjoyed was undercut by a deficit in funding and public awareness. On any given day, the center's leadership must juggle trying to help as many families as possible with trying to find the resources needed to keep their doors open.
Before November 2004, when the CAC opened in Nashua, child victims in Hillsborough County faced unbearable odds. Before a case could make it to trial, a child might endure eight interviews -- some with teachers, others on camera with social workers. For most, it began in the backseat of a squad car. The holster, the gun, the badge, the blue lights, the metal cage, the questioning by an officer who had spent the day arresting criminals, and was now asked to show the sensitivity required for a 5-, 6- or 7-year-old.
For victims, this meant continued pain. For prosecutors, it often meant compromised cases, as a child's story might change slightly under pressured and prolonged questioning.
To tour the center is to witness law enforcement, prosecutors and child advocates all working together to complete in one interview what previously took eight. It is to enter a comfortable, quiet, non-threatening setting where kids can finally tell their stories to a trained professional, take home a teddy bear for the courage they showed, and dip their hands in the paint so that other children will know they are not alone.
It is to see successful prosecutions skyrocket by nearly 40 percent, to see families begin the process of moving forward and to see kids once again be kids.
Yet despite logging more than 400 interviews last year and being on pace to nearly double that number in 2008 between offices in Nashua and Manchester, the center's future is uncertain.
Attorney General Kelly Ayotte has formed an advisory panel charged with finding sustainable public funding. Elliot Hospital has shown incredible faith and generosity by donating space for a Manchester branch. Both are a tremendous boost to our mission. But right now, what we need more than anything is you.
Each of CAC's centers across the state needs leaders, volunteers, donors and board members to inspire others and to galvanize support (they can be reached through www.cac-nh.com). They need computers and office equipment. They need you to take tours and to see the handprints in person.
As a community, it is our greatest obligation to protect the most vulnerable among us. It is estimated that one in four girls and one in six boys will be abused before their 18th birthdays. Of these cases, 95 percent will be sexual. Just one in 10 will come forward with their stories.
Today, the wall stands as a living reminder of that evil, and of the justice and compassion we can accomplish together.
I want you to now close your eyes again and to imagine the center shuttered, the burden shifted back to police and families and the handprints painted over by a new tenant. I want you to imagine a child coming in and seeing a blank white wall. The problem is not going away. Neither can we.
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Daniel Monfried is a co-founder and partner at Hillcrest Management, LLC, in Milford, and board member of the Child Advocacy Center of Hillsborough County.