Category: Uncategorized

Thank you to Kayli for making a difference

By Kayli

I have been working as the Medical Assistant and Community Liaison at the Children’s Advocacy Center since July 2016. For the year prior to that, I was an intern at the CAC while finishing my degree at SOU.

I have absolutely loved my time at the CAC, both as an intern and as a staff member. I truly believe that we are here making a difference in every child’s life that walks through our doors. Being able to be part of an organization like the CAC and the valuable community partners we rely on every day has shown me the importance of believing children and how when we do, great things can be done. This community should be extremely grateful to have so many people working to help and protect children every day.

I am leaving the CAC to go to graduate school to get my Masters in Social Work. I am eager to further my education and continue creating safe spaces for children to heal from trauma and find the smoothest route possible through the criminal justice system.

Although I am sad to be leaving, I am excited for my new journey and to hear about the continued life-saving work done in Jackson County.
Spotlight on a Volunteer: Hannah Fisher-Tachouet

Hannah Fisher-Tachouet

When did you start volunteering at the Children’s Advocacy Center?

I started volunteering at the Children’s Advocacy Center in July of 2017.

How did you become familiar with the Center? How did you find out?

I found out about the Center initially online when I was searching for organizations that I wanted to volunteer for that helped children who have been affected by negative adverse events in their lives. Later I learned more about the specific services that the Center provides children from the CAC Communication and Outreach Coordinator, Ginny Sagal.

What do you do at the Center?

At the Center I volunteer in the Medical building where I do a variety of different helpful tasks. Of those tasks, my favorites are playing with the children while they are waiting to go back for their appointments, helping Eliza make new patient folders, and making appointment reminder calls.

Why do you volunteer?

I volunteer at CAC, because I really value their mission to help children by providing them a safe place to receive help and positive experiences to carry with them in their lives. I wanted to be a part of the impact this Center has on these children.

What is your favorite part of volunteering?

My favorite part of volunteering is being able to play and read books to the children who come into the Center.

What is the passion you have for volunteering at the Center?

My passion for volunteering at the Center stems from my educational background and my love for children. At the end of June 2018, I will graduate from SOU with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Criminal Justice. The Children’s Advocacy Center is the perfect place for me to be able to help children and make a difference in a wonderful and supportive environment.

Can you give us a quote on your thoughts about the Center, the work we do here and how it relates to you and you’re volunteering?

The Children’s Advocacy Center has created a unique safe place for children to be able to heal from negative experiences and become children again. This is a hard field to be in, but each employee has a passion for this type of work, which is evident by the way they interact with the children, families, and volunteers that come through their doors each day. I really enjoy being able to be a part of this organization and the impact that it has on these children. I look forward to my volunteer shift each week.

There is always room for more volunteers. Please let us know if you have a place in your heart to help children and their families. We can set up a time to for a Center tour and talk about how you might want to help the abused children and their families we serve.

Contact Ginny Sagal at vsagal@cacjc.org or call her at 541-282-5474 EXT 1013
Police Chief O’Meara: Why CAC Matters

Post by Tighe O’Meara – Ashland, Oregon Police Chief

I am going to start off on a dark note, but a real note, and one that needs to be recognized.

1 in 10 children are reported to be sexual assault victims. But let’s go ahead and make it worse, because this doesn’t account for the ones that don’t get reported; this doesn’t account for the ones that make it to a family member’s attention but it doesn’t go any further than that. And this doesn’t account for the fact that society puts different pressures on boys than it does girls, so boys feel like they have to carry the burden, silently, allowing it to traumatize them over and over, and allowing the trauma to have a profound impact on the rest of their lives.

We know that sex assaults are under-reported, across the board, at all levels, for many reasons. And grossly under-reported at that. With children it is no different, so if we know about 1 in 10, we can safely assume that the problem is much worse than the 1 in 10 figure. And, that number does not include the child victimizations we have that are physical, non-sexual assaults in nature. Add in the physical abuse victims and the numbers are even more alarming.

These are dark numbers, troubling statistics, and they are not likely to change anytime soon. We have no ability to have significant control over these numbers, and likely won’t for the foreseeable future.

I have been chief of police in Ashland for about a year and a half now. I have learned a few lessons, and have much more to learn. One of the things that I first learned, after months and months of stressing out over everything, is that bad stuff happens. There is no getting around it, people are going to get victimized. And this includes children.

And while it is important to do everything we can to prevent, just as important is how we respond when it happens, because it is inevitable that it’s going to happen, and we will never eradicate it, not anytime soon anyway.

So I slowly realized that just as important as trying to prevent crime, is trying to respond to it in the manner that is best for the victim, best for those close to the victim, and best for the community.

A couple of quotes I like that say this well:

“It’s not the failures that define us so much as how we respond” ~ Shane Parrish

“What defines us is how well we rise after falling”

We don’t have the control we want over these incidents to prevent them from happening, so we need to make sure we respond to them well, and this is where the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County shines a bright light on the dark numbers I mentioned. This is where the women and men of the CAC step in and offer national best practices for the Jackson County community.

Jackson County is great for team work.

No agency in Jackson County is big enough to go it alone, we all need each others help. And perhaps nowhere does this present itself more than with child victims. We are lucky to have this partnership in Jackson County, and we are fortunate to have a set game plan, county wide, for how we are all going to respond to these troubling complaints.

Violence against children is after all a community-wide problem, and community-wide, county-wide, all of the police are on the same page on how to handle it, and we can offer this only because of the dedicated experts we have working out of the Children’s Advocacy Center.

This should give all of us, all members of the community, some the peace of mind. Peace of mind in knowing that while we can’t (unfortunately) stop these horrific things from happening, what we can do is come together and embrace national best practices.

We can come together and make sure the child victims are not traumatized again over the same situation.We can come together and set up a program and a plan for the victim and the non-offending family members to move past the incident to a better place, both physically and emotionally. This is what CAC brings to our community.

The police officers in our community want to be there for all members of the community who need us. We want to be there when someone calls and says “I’m in trouble.” And, we will be, we will answer the call and respond to help all who ask for our help.

But, we can’t be everything to every person, and we can’t provide the level of work that our most vulnerable community members need, that is the importance of the CAC and the dedicated women and men that work there.

When we become aware that one of little ones needs help, we all want to spring into action, and we do. In our police departments we have trained and dedicated officers that are there to be a part of that process, but we simply can’t offer these kids and these families what they need, and without the CAC, we would be pretty lost.

For that matter, we can’t offer ourselves what WE need to move a criminal case forward, without the help of the CAC, because they provide us with the right facilities and atmosphere to get the evidence we need to bring a case to the DA’s office.

Do you know what the CAC looks like?

It’s like coming into your own home, it’s like visiting grandma – there’s your toys over in the corner, there’s the friendly loving face waiting to greet you. Take the CAC out of the picture and you’re trading that comfortable at-home feeling for the cold sterility of a police station. You’re taking away that level of comfort and replacing it with a hospital visit for the medical exam. You take away a short visit, in what feels like your family dining room, for grand jury and replacing it with a trip to the DA’s office.

The model employed by the CAC, the model that allows for all services to be provided under one roof, from initial assessment, interview, medical exam and follow up counseling for victims and non-offending parents, saves about $1,000 on each case that is brought forward.

Without this model we would have to try to piece these services together, further traumatizing not the just the child victim, but also the already stressed and traumatized parent who is trying to struggle through these incidents.

We are truly fortunate to have this facility and these people, working there, every day, bringing compassion, comfort and healing to the survivors, and the families. Helping not just the families move through these difficult situations but, while doing so, supporting the law enforcement mission to hold the offenders responsible.

The numbers quoted at the beginning of this post are troubling indeed, but our partnership, county-wide, with the CAC of Jackson County, shines a light on that dark problem, and helps us all get through it to a place that’s a little bit better.

So what can you do to help?

Take the child sexual abuse training offered by the CAC.

Tell your friends and family about the CAC, spread the word about the CAC’s mission and the important, invaluable work that is done there every day. Encourage your friends and family to take the training and to help out.

Keeping in mind the quote that I offered before: “What defines us is not that we fall but it is how well we rise after falling.”

I will close with this:

The CAC is a shining example, of a community coming together to rise, everyday, time after time, after falling down, one child victim at a time. That’s why the CAC is so important, and that’s why we need to support it.

Tighe O’Meara, Ashland, Oregon Police Chief
Parenting Teens: A Mom’s Story

By Ginny Sagal, Communication and Outreach Coordinator at the Children’s Advocacy Center

Since starting my job as Communication and Outreach Coordinator at CAC, I have had some thoughts about my parenting. Being an older mom with twins has been a wonderful journey. When they were little I would be very careful where they went for play dates, and who was going to be at the house. I knew it was my job to protect them. That was some time ago.

As a parent of teenagers ready to go off to college in a year and a half, things are much different than when they were little. No more play dates as they all seem to communicate with their friends on the internet. I will walk into my son’s room only to find that he is online playing a game with five of his friends. The new generation spends much time communicating with their peers online and texting.

I am happy that when I do go into my son’s or daughter’s rooms that they can share with me what they are doing and have no secrets. When they are on FaceTime their friends get to see me and I get to see who they are. Communication is very important with teenagers. It is important to let them know that you care and that you give them their space, but also that you are there for them if they need you. You are their protector.

I know with the parenting I have done, they will make good choices about who they will choose to be friends with and groups they will be part of once they get to college. Protecting our children comes from good parenting and communication with your children.

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. Every child is special and needs our care and protection. With good parenting tools we can contribute to a safer community for our children.
Dylan Farrow and believing child victims of sexual abuse

By Tammi Pitzen, Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

Having spent nearly a quarter of a century working in the field of child protection with a focus on sexual abuse, I am somewhat baffled by this:

We as a society have always, and evidently continue to be, aligned with the offenders and against the victims.

I know. When you read it in black and white, and in very simple language, it seems so hard to believe that we do this.

Let’s examine the recent events of Dylan Farrow coming out with a strong statement regarding her sexual abuse by Woody Allen. It seems that as a society we have turned our head and said that it is okay to sexually abuse a child if you are an entertainer or if you are famous. It becomes okay to sexually abuse a child if you have money. Even with the people who support Dylan, it is support that comes in the form of “if this is true…”

Why is that? We work so hard to disprove a child’s statement. We work so hard to convince ourselves that child sexual abuse only happens in the park at night. That these heinous offenses are perpetrated by people we don’t know. That these terrible acts are only perpetrated by the dirty old man in a trench coat offering candy to a child to lure them into his white unmarked windowless utility van.

I have seen it in the courtroom while trying to provide some sense of support to a young child testifying in an open courtroom about the most intimate, terrifying, and confusing sexual events that have happened to them.

Generally when you go into a courtroom during a trial there are two sides — the prosecution and the defense. It is much like a wedding. If you are supporting the offender, you sit on the side of the courtroom behind the defendant. If you are supporting the victim, you sit behind the prosecutor’s table. It is always heartbreaking to me. I position myself in the front row behind the prosecutor’s table so the child and I can make eye contact. But in the moments before the young child walks into the courtroom to testify, I always survey the room. There are always, without exception, people sitting behind the abuser in support of his actions. Most times the other side, the side where you sit to show support for the victim, is empty — with the exception of me.

In the community where I did most of my court support, the Deputy District Attorney would always request to talk to the jury after a not guilty verdict came in. Almost without exception they would be told, when asked about the not guilty finding, that the jury believed the victim but really wanted more evidence. There are no fingerprints left. There are no witnesses. And despite what you see on TV, there is no DNA evidence left. There are many reasons why that is and that might be a subject for another blog.

The evidence is the child’s statement, and if you believe it, then why is that not enough? It is enough that the perpetrator denies his offenses. We give him/her the benefit of the doubt.

I wonder what would happen if we all said enough is enough.

What would happen if we as a society got behind our child victims and stood strong with them? Research shows that not many victims lie when it comes to their abuse and if they do lie, it usually a lie to cover up that it happened — not to fabricate that it did happen.

So where do we go from here? I ask, when you weigh in on whether Woody Allen could have done this, that you consider carefully the message you are giving to the children in your life. That is right. If Dylan Farrow were your daughter how would you feel about what the public response has been? How would you want Barbara Walters to respond? How would you feel if Diane Keaton stood up and supported your daughter’s abuser? If your granddaughter reported sexual abuse, what is the response that you would want her to receive?

Examine the facts. What financial gain is Dylan Farrow receiving? Is she getting anything out of this?

Someone has to be the first to say that it is time to support our child victims. Someone has to tell the Woody Allens of the world that sexual behavior with a child is never okay. Someone has to say that enough is enough.

At some point we can no longer close our eyes and pretend that sexual abuse happens in some other place and to someone else’s children. At some point we must realize that it is no longer enough to say that we believe the child sexual abuse victim . . . but we just need more evidence.
The deafening silence surrounding abused children

By Tammi Pitzen

I am the newly hired Executive Director at the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County. I have spent the last twenty three years working to protect children from abuse. One can imagine the stories that I have heard in what I refer to as “the small little room”. The small little room is a special room set up with video and audio recording capabilities and I spent a large part of the last few years in one of these rooms talking with children about events that have happened in their lives. Most of these events are abusive in nature.

I have had many people over the years ask me how I could do such a depressing job. How could I sit in that room with a child telling me about terrible things that have happened to them and still be able to sleep at night?

I usually tell them it is the things that I don’t hear that keep me up at night. It is the silence that surrounds most abused children that I find deafening.

I know through research that approximately thirty percent of children who are abused never tell their story. This statistic has haunted me throughout my career. Why will they not tell? What can we do that will help them to tell? I have asked some children, “What made you not tell?” Their answer? “No one ever asked!”

Then the next question is, “Why not?” Adults tell me all the time, “I don’t know what to ask.” They tell me, “I don’t want to make my child paranoid or afraid.”

This is the part that I find puzzling. Children look to adults to protect them and to let them know what is right and what is wrong. What message are we giving them when we are still sending messages through our actions or lack of actions that it is not okay to talk about sexual abuse? Sexual abuse happens in secrecy. Sexual abuse is allowed to continue to happen through silence. I just don’t understand why we as adults want to give all the power to perpetrators and none of it to our children. After twenty three years of experience and training in the field of child abuse I still have no answers.

My wish for all children is that they have adults in their lives that will take the time to learn what the signs of abuse are and learn what to do when they see them.

My wish for all children is that they have adults in their lives who will take the initiative to learn what questions to ask their children so they can take steps to protect them.

We ask ourselves what has happened that the world have become so unsafe for our children. The answer is that we as adults have not done enough to empower children. We have not done enough to keep our children safe.

My question to you is what will you do today to reduce the risk of sexual abuse of a child in your life?

Sign up to take a class through the Children’s Advocacy Center to learn about child abuse prevention. We have a new class every month. Our next one is Monday, Jan. 27th, 4-7 pm at the CAC. To register, contact Shandi at ssmith@cacjc.org or call: 541-734-5437.

Tammi
Why it Matters

This is a post by Randy Ellison, author of the book — Boys Don’t Tell: Ending the Silence of Abuse. Randy is also Board President of Oregon Abuse Advocates & Survivors in Service (OAASIS)

Why does what happened to me matter? Why does telling my story matter? Why does your story matter? What difference does it really make?

Why does it matter forty years later that my minister sexually abused me? Well for starters it impacted everything I did or didn’t do. When we live in total denial of major trauma that happened to us in childhood, our entire reality is distorted.

Because I had never spoken of what happened to me, every decision I made in life was informed by the trauma I suffered as a child. Technically I was a survivor, but as long as I held on to the toxic stress of child abuse, I was giving victim reactions to a lot of the input that came my way. It was not a choice I made, it was programmed into my brain to respond to people and situations as though they might be a threat.

My quality of life suffered immeasurably, and over time I became just plain tired of trying to hold it all. I do not believe one can attempt to recover from child sex abuse to please or satisfy someone else. You have to want it or need it for yourself, more than the perceived safety of keeping the secret, with the pain locked inside.

So as I started my therapy I had to learn to put health ahead of secret keeping. It took effort and intensity to break through my mind’s defenses and the shame that guarded my secret. To be honest, in my case it probably took a year before I realized how much others really meant to me. After a life of keeping everyone at a distance, when I started showing up, I found a whole new world open to me. As I learned to be present with others I was finally able to give and receive love.

Reporting my abuser mattered. The places he had been a minister were notified so they could look for others that might have been victims and needed help. The faith community became aware of what had happened in their building and had the opportunity to discuss what they needed to do to protect children and work for prevention. In creating a safe environment for kids, everyone benefits.

Telling your story matters more than you could ever imagine. It gives people you have never met the strength to share their own story. And the more we share our stories, the more we heal, systems change and our communities heal. As survivors, telling our story first changes our lives, and then it gradually moves outward through our love ones in an ever widening circle.

Children’s Advocacy Center intervenes in this process for kids that have been abused and focuses on helping the child recover. What matters most is preventing abuse from happening at all. But until we are able to do that, we need CAC to help the healing begin as soon as possible. Help a child heal today.

Imagine a world without child abuse. Together we make it happen. It matters.

To find out more about Randy Ellison and his book, Boys Don’t Tell: Ending the Silence of Abuse, visit: http://www.boysdonttell.com/

Randy Ellison
On the Cusp of Change

This is a guest post by Jennifer Wolfe, a writer, middle school teacher and mother of two teens. Here she reflects upon the challenges of growth and metamorphosis for both children and their parents.

“Her life now hovered on the cusp of change…at this precise intersection in time, contemplating both distant memories and the uncertainty of the future, she knew she was standing on the lip between past and future. she had not yet taken a step forward into her new unwritten life.” Lee Woodruff

She stands on the cusp of womanhood, her body and mind blossoming in unison. Only seventeen, the future spills before her with temptation. Choices abound, crashing through her day as she contemplates which class to take, which test to cram for and scrolls through glossy promises of college after college, holding her future in their hands. On her bedroom floor, littered with hastily scribbled to-do lists, fading birthday streamers and balloons nearly deflated, neat piles of laundry await, compromises about what to carry away to six weeks of summer ski camp in one not-so-gigantic bag. I can still see her childhood smiling back at me as she packs.

He bounds into the room, red faced and sweaty, backpack full of treasures discovered in a neighbors’ ‘free’ pile down the street. Deserted childhood bowling trophies, a half-filled helium tank, a roll of unopened masking tape and someone’s discarded Sacramento Rivercats handkerchief now strewn across the baby blue carpet of his bedroom. He is thirteen, teetering between that round-faced little boy I toted on my hip and that suave seventh-grader gently holding hands with his girl after school. He towers above me now. It’s his time to sample life, taking n taste after taste of all the world has before him. One class after another, new sports, new friends. A decision about a ski academy, the move-in date etched in our minds. Moving away before I’m ready. I grin as he gulps down his favorite dinner, and push myself back into his childhood.

I’m riding the line, straddling the fast lane. Since when did the teeter-totter weigh less on my end? Motherhood, once so physically exhausting, has now shifted its pressure. My mind tethers me to the past and drags me into the future. I write, I teach, I parent, I love, forever remembering who I am first and wondering how long that will last. We push ourselves to travel, to meet new people and speak their language. I strain for their hands, hoping to catch a finger before they soar off in another direction.

We hover on the cusp of change, dipping our toes into the unknown waters and in that precise moment, contemplate our next step. We ride the ebb and flow of life, sometimes skittering to the safety of shore, occasionally squeezing our eyes shut and diving into the wave. The future lies before us like a foggy horizon, and we, cautiously, carefully, often blindly, scan the horizon, searching for the lighthouse.

You can read more by Jennifer Wolfe on her blog, Mamawolfe: Life lessons from a mom, teacher and citizen of the world