By Tammi Pitzen, Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County
I am sitting in my office this morning blasting music before everyone gets here. This is not unusual. I tend to get here before staff and before things get too hectic to plan out my day and to get as much done prior to the busyness of the day starts.
It is during these precious minutes in the sort of quiet of my morning that I am able to focus on the mission of the CAC.
I am able to hear the silence of the abused children in our community.
The month of April is always a poignant reflection on the work that we do because it is “our” month (Child Abuse Prevention/Awareness and Sexual Assault Awareness Month). In 2016 there were 872 abused children in our community, according to the latest version of the Child Welfare Data Book. I find that number astounding.
But what bothers me even more are the children that remain silent. It actually scares me a little.
According to some statistics we know that about 30% of child sexual abuse goes undisclosed and unreported.
I have been working in this field for 28 years. I started in my twenties. My first job was with a rural child protection agency in Louisiana. I was literally hired before I graduated. During finals week I drove home for an interview on a Saturday. I started work the day after my graduation ceremony because I needed to have my diploma in order to begin with the State.
I went back and began working in the community where I graduated high school. The population of the parish seat was under 8,000 and the parish was around 50,000. These were “my people” as we would say in the South. I either knew them, knew of them, knew their aunt, their sister, their brother or graduated with their cousin. Seriously.
I had no idea what I was walking into. I had no idea the heartache I would feel when assigned a report that involved someone that I went to high school with. It was a military town, so mostly I prayed to get a report involving the families on post.
In retrospect this was the best thing that could have happened to build the best foundation for what turned out to be my life’s work. I learned some key skills that I am recognizing many in the field have not developed.
I learned humility. I learned compassion. I learned empathy. I also learned the art of persuasion. This was sometimes the only tool available to get you off the front porch facing a very angry father, who held a gun in his hand, and to the kitchen table, with a glass of sweet tea in front of you. Let me clarify. The gun was never pointed at me and, truth be told, this only happened to me once. These people…my people…were those I grew up with. They were people, in some cases, that were adults that I respected.
I can almost pinpoint when I developed these skills. There was a legislative change in my state and all unfounded reports had to be expunged from all records. The pay for a caseworker in Louisiana at that time was pretty low. This was an opportunity to make some overtime, so many of us would come in on the weekends and work on expunging records.
During that process, I came across many records of people I went to school with. When I realized how many of the kids I went to school and church with that were reported as victims of abuse, my childhood played back in my mind in slow motion, in segments. I could literally remember moments when I was “judging” kids I knew as being lazy because they slept in class or bad because they were always lashing out at people.
Those overtime hours were hard. I spent a lot of time in self-reflection. I can say that I always tried to be nice to everyone, so I didn’t feel like I had to redeem myself in anyway, but it was a pivotal moment in my life.
Since that time, I have had others who were more than classmates, they were/are friends, tell me about their history of abuse. It reminds me that these children who are abused in our community are not unknown to us. The 872 abused children in Jackson County are part of us. They are “our people”.
As April comes to an end I want to challenge each of you to continue to do something…to do one thing a day, a week, a month, or at least a year to help address child abuse.
It is a community problem. We have to work together. It is the only way to make a change. I invite you to call me or to contact us through our website or our Facebook Page if you are unsure what your one thing could be.
