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....December 7, 10:00 PM |
| Finding Solace At Safe Horizons: Abused Children Break Their Silence At Last
By ELLEN THOMPSON “The hardest thing for a 9-year-old to do is to retell that story,” said Myra Shapiro Director of Safe Horizon’s Child Advocacy Center in Forest Hills. “To them it’s like reliving it, walking through it all over again. And most of the time, they don’t think anyone is even going to believe them.” Each year close to 140, 720 children are reported to be abused in New York state. Bringing the numbers closer to home, in 2004, 14,369 of those children were from Queens County, ranking the borough as the third most abusive county in the state behind the Bronx then Brooklyn, according to Prevent Child Abuse New York, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing child abuse and neglect. There were also those 2,970 indicated reports in which 4,521 Queens children were involved. And then there were those hundreds of cases that were never reported, just as they are not reported today and most likely will not be reported tomorrow or the next day or the next day. The stories Shapiro speaks of though, are but a sliver of those 14,369 abuse cases. They are the abuse cases that all too often fall into that unspoken group: sexual child abuse. Since opening its doors in 2005, nearly 500 sexually abused children have stepped into the Forest Hills Child Advocacy Center mustering the courage to finally retell their stories. Chapter 1: The Stories Begin Just to the left of the door a metal rod hangs horizontally across the wall. Roughly two and a half feet from the ground, tiny coats dangle from tiny hangers hooked over that rod. The walls of the large waiting room are coated a warm peach hue, and affixed with glowing paintings of tiny hands and flowers. Familiar faces fill the room: a plush Big Bird sits on a shelf next to his other Sesame Street friends, while a faded Winnie the Pooh lays on his cotton-filled stomach atop a pile of books. Beyond the waiting room is where the stories are told and they are only told once. Just through the doorway, past a mural of vibrant pink and purple horses galloping over a meadow of crisp greens, is the room where the stories begin. A table that stands level with the child protective caseworker’s knees is pushed against the wall directly across from a double-sided mirror. Next to that table are two tiny chairs, which look as if they could bear no more than 70 pounds. Over hundreds of kids have sat in those chairs, revealing the details of the abuse they have endured by the hands of family members, trusted friends, and occasionally, strangers. The story is recorded on the other side of that mirror, not only by a camera and recording equipment, but also by police detectives, pediatricians, prosecutors, victim advocates, and mental health professionals. Working as a team they collect evidence to build a case and ensure that the child receives appropriate medical examinations and mental health support, but most importantly, they minimize the number of times the child is interviewed. Chapter 2: Beyond the Cold Hospital Walls The next part of the story is often told not by the child, but by a medical exam that takes place in a small room off to the left of the colorful mural. The room takes on the feel of a garden with hand painted roses and vines crawling up the wall past the exam table. The room is far enough removed from a typical medical setting. Laying upon the paper-lined table, plastic butterflies swing and sway above the child as the center’s Medical Director Doctor Jamie Hoffman-Rosenfelf programs the exam tools. “The advantage of this type of place over an emergency room is that emergency rooms are for emergencies. Medical emergencies,” explained Hoffman-Rosenfelf, an expert in child abuse evaluations. “Most emergency rooms don’t have child abuse experts sitting there waiting for these kids to come in, but to take the medical examination and bring it to a place like this makes it much less scary. We don’t want the exams to be done more than once or by someone who is not an expert.” Hoffman-Rosenfelf often finds herself capturing the very thing the detectives and assistant district attorney need in order to restore the child’s trust and bring them justice. Standing behind the colposcope, a camera developed for documenting photographically the genitalia and anus, she snaps the pictures that will be handed over to the ADA, who is working with detectives of the Queens Child Abuse Squad located in the precinct just downstairs. Exams serve as a baseline in sexual child abuse cases, because even though a concern might be there, enough information or tangible evidence is not, explained Hoffman-Rosenfelf. “I’ve seen cases where children have remained at risk despite their best evaluation,” she said. “Either they were too young to give a clear disclosure or it was a case where they never came back because another concern has been raised, and then a different exam has to be done.” |
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