Training center targets child abuse
Community college to serve as educational hub for 15 states
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
BENTONVILLE — A national center designed to train front-line professionals to detect, prevent and respond to child abuse held its first classes at Northwest Arkansas Community College on Monday as campus officials announced plans to raise $2 million to create a permanent facility for the program.
The National Child Protection Training Center, based at Winona State University in Minnesota, selected the B entonville college as the first of three planned national partners, Executive Director Victor Vieth said.
Vieth announced Stephanie Smith, a former Indiana prosecuting attorney, will direct the Arkansas center.
“We intend to end the mass misery of child abuse,” Vieth said. “To say that our goal should be anything less is to say that some degree of child abuse is acceptable. It isn’t.”
Charged with covering 15 states in the South, the center will train workers such as teachers, nurses and policeofficers how to interview child victims of sexual abuse, offering a certificate program in Child Advocacy Studies.
The center also will help other colleges and universities develop and implement lessons related to child abuse issues and offer seminars for professionals in the field, Vieth said.
The national program has not finalized its other tworegional sites, but the Bentonville site likely will be its only community college partner, he said, noting that many “first responders” to child abuse, such as police officers and registered nurses, have two-year degrees.
Beverly Engle, director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Benton County, began petitioning the college board to apply as a center satellite in 2006. The advocacy center, which interviews and examines child victims of physical and sexual abuse, saw about 600 children in Benton County last year.
Northwest Arkansas Community College President Becky Paneitz said the state’s U.S. congressional delegation secured $500,000 in federal appropriations last year to launch the center’s programming. The college’s board voted this month to remodel the Highlands Oncology Clinic to create a permanent home for the center.
The clinic, adjacent to campus, was purchased with $5 million from a recently completed $16 million capital campaign. It will requireanother $2 million of fundraising to cover the costs of remodeling and opening the space, currently leased by the clinic, in time for a 2012 opening, Paneitz said.
The building will include a mock courtroom and interrogation rooms and an area used to replicate crime scenes, such as homes where methamphetamine is produced, she said.
Northwest Arkansas law enforcement professionals praised the center’s potential to enhance investigations in the area.
“Sometimes people think these cases are won in the courtroom, but that is the last place they are won,” Benton County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Stuart Cearley said.
He recalled his first child abuse case as an untrained prosecuting attorney, working with an officer who was “better accustomed to interviewing a perpetrator than a 5-year-old child.”
One of the center’s primary tasks will be providing certification in “ChildFirst,” a forensic interview technique. Certified questioners then interview children once, replacing a confusing and intimidating series of questions byfive or six agencies common in many counties. Arkansas is one of 17 states that recognizes the training.
Vieth said interviewers who aren’t trained in a “linguistically and developmentally appropriate way” often provoke children to exaggerate or recant stories, diminishing credibility in a court room.
For example, if an interviewer asks a young boy how many times he was abused, he may respond “one million,” expecting a larger number to yield a greater response, he said.
“They don’t appreciate the value associated with a number,” Vieth said.
The center trains interviewers to deconstruct patterns of abuse with young victims to get an accurate account.
Vieth and Smith taught the center’s first classes Monday, centering on cross-examination, jury selection and opening statements in abuse trials.
“They will have a head start now,” Smith said. “They will be more effective in joining us in the fight to end child abuse.”