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September 25, 2004

Key to preventing child sex abuse is education for whole community

By Andrew Sirocchi, Staff Writer

Janet Evans' office is plush with stuffed animals. Dolls overflow from a wooden table inside the entrance on the second floor suite at the Hub Building, in downtown Coos Bay. A large stuffed bear sits beside the door to a work space covered in paperwork and case files.

"We try to make this as kid-friendly as possible," said the director of Coos County's Children's Advocacy Center, speaking at an enthusiastic speed.

It's a difficult task, considering Evans' business is dealing with children and families traumatized by sexual abuse. But in the past two years, Evans' passion has made the Advocacy Center more relevant to Coos County, currently tied for fourth in the state for the most cases of child abuse per capita. Under Evans' supervision and with the addition of a trained, full-time interviewer, the Children's Advocacy Center took on 122 cases in 2003, a vast increase from the seven cases it handled in 2001.

Now, the Children's Advocacy Center is adding a new component to its mission - prevention.

How?

Education - and not just children's education.

"Everybody knows somebody who has been sexually abused and everybody probably knows at least one sex offender who has not been caught," Evans said.

"We expect our community to stop allowing sexual offenders to abuse our children and get away with it," she added.

To educate adults, Evans will bring in Cory Jewell-Jensen, a 20-year expert in the field and the co-director of the Beaverton-based Center for Behavioral Intervention. Jewell-Jensen argues that educating children, while important, hasn't done enough to help prevent child sex abuse.

"What kind of has come to pass is a very clear understanding that only teaching children was ridiculous at best," she said. "What really needs to happen is caretakers and adults are the ones who really need to get the information."

Part of the problem with limiting education to children, Jewell-Jensen argues, is that adults often dismiss early signs of child sex abuse. Even after a child has reported an incident, police often aren't notified.

"Fifty-two percent of offenders we see say that kids repeatedly told on them, but the adults they told didn't tell police," Jewell-Jensen said.

Some estimates indicate that on average, children tell up to nine adults before a case is reported to police. Other experts estimate that number could be two to three adults.

Often, that may be because an adult doesn't believe a child. Other times it can be that adults misunderstand the signs.

"We need to have parents take the responsibility on themselves to learn the information, talk to their kids and people who have access to their kids," Jewell-Jensen said. "It also helps strengthen reporting. I hope people understand why it's so important to report."

Jewell-Jensen, who has provided training for several national children's foundations and has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show, will be coming to Coos Bay Sept. 29-30 for a two-day training teaching parents and professions on the signs of sex abuse.

That's good news for an area that either has led or been among the top four Oregon counties with the number of child sex abuse cases per capita. With a population of more than 13,700 under the age of 18, Coos County had 304 reported cases of child abuse in 2003, 47 more than were reported in 2002 and 13 more than were reported in 2001.

Only Baker, Grant and Klamath counties reported more cases per capita than Coos County, which is tied with Union County for the fourth-most cases.

Coos County Deputy District Attorney Karen McClintock, who deals primarily with juvenile crimes, said the caseload can become overwhelming.

"We have a really bad problem in Coos County. It's not just a parent's responsibility or a teacher's responsibility or law enforcement's responsibility to take care of the problem," McClintock said. "Every one needs to be aware. Everyone needs to be able to protect our children."

Coos County, in conjunction with Lincoln County, will become only the second Oregon county to begin an adult training exercise designed to bring sex abuse awareness beyond the "good-touch, bad-touch" education provided to children. But even without the groundbreaking training, Coos County's Children Advocacy Center provides cutting-edge services designed to comfort families and document facts.

Aside the children's toys, the office features is a high-tech medical examination room. Six pediatricians give their time freely to look for and document physical signs of abuse. There, information can be collected delicately, recorded to get a second opinion, and privately shared between experts.

In an office next door is a 6-foot-by-10-foot interview room, sparsely furnished with a small table, two wooden chairs and bordered by smoky one-way glass. The meticulous interviews are videotaped and recorded for possible use in criminal trials. The goal is to make the interviews thorough and complete, in order to avoid having an often shell-shocked child questioned repeatedly by numerous people.

Next to the interview room is the intervention office, where families are brought together to get help to move on with their lives, cope with the damage done by the abuse and live productively.

"It's cut down on the number of sex abuse trials," McClintock said. "With these taped interviews with the children, I can tell the defense that I've got an articulate 6-year-old child I can put on the stand. If they can see that child, they can tell I'm telling the truth."

Evans, who talks proudly of the center's accomplishments over the past several years, said her group is doing what it can to address sexual abuse in Coos County. Now, the center needs the help of the community, she said, and next week's training might be just the key.

"The average parent with children not being sexually abused should be attending these meetings to make sure their child stays that way," she said.

Posted by Nealus at September 25, 2004 11:15 PM

Comments

"everybody probably knows at least one sex offender who has not been caught," - it would more than likely terrify us to know who they are, but I wish we did ala "Megans Law" - good to see you back on stream - hope those storms arnt inflicting too much damage. - Dan

Posted by: Dan at September 27, 2004 09:05 AM

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