Published: May 13, 2008 11:11 am      

Southern Indiana Child Advocacy Center provides services, enforcement under one roof

A facility opening Wednesday could make solving child sex-abuse cases in Southern Indiana easier.

The Southern Indiana Child Advocacy Center, located at 2818 Grant Line Road in New Albany, will have a grand opening ceremony at 10 a.m. Wednesday, with officials including Floyd County Prosecutor Keith Henderson scheduled to speak.

The center is organized by the nonprofit group Family and Children First, with the help of grants from organizations such as Caesars Foundation of Floyd County.

The center will be a child-friendly environment where young people can obtain trauma services, mental-health assessments and medical care all in one location, according to Rebecca Sherrard, director of the center.

She said children who may have been abused will be interviewed once by an official with the organization, while police officers and children’s services representatives watch on a monitor from another room, keeping the victim from having to retell their account multiple times.

“It can be very traumatic, inadvertently, for children having to tell their story so many times,” Sherrard said. “We try to do (the interviews) in one place, at one time, so everybody gets on the same page.”

A similar center is operated in Louisville by Children First. Sherrard said by working with local police and prosecutors, convictions for abuse-related crimes have more than doubled, thanks to the work of their forensic interviewers.

“We’re not just out to get the bad guy. The interviewer goes in blind, which lends itself to neutrality,” she said.

The average child the organization deals with is a 9-year-old, white female, according to Sherrard. The Louisville center works an average of 1,000 child cases per year.

The organization works on a referral basis, but can steer families in the right legal direction if they are directly contacted.

“If we can help a kid early on, we’re going to save society a lot of money,” said Sherrard, adding abused children can develop behavioral disorders if they are not treated.

The Louisville headquarters is the only certified child sexual-abuse advocacy center in its region, and serves seven counties.

The Indiana center will serve five counties, though Sherrard said they usually see cases from around the state in Louisville.

“No child victim or their family ever pays anything for any service that we have,” she said.

Sherrard said the organization also provides help for children who are proved to be telling a false story, whether of their own making or via instruction from an older family member or friend.

The center will cater to bilingual needs and different cultures, she said.

“We’re just thankful to the Department of Community services, Floyd County Prosecutor Keith Henderson and the Caesars Foundation of Floyd County for supporting us in this,” Sherrard said.