Blog

My story didn’t begin with me having a voice. It began in the silence and secrets and shame that so many victims struggle to break free from. And for a long time I felt more broken than healed. It was so easy to see the scars. I still see them. Not as many, not as… Continue Reading

I may live in a city, but I’m a small town girl. My childhood home was on a dirt road in one of the most impoverished counties in the country. When my daughter was five, we visited and she looked at the old barns and irrigation canals where we used to play and asked, “were… Continue Reading

“Don’t give up on your client.  When I first started therapy, I wouldn’t talk…every time, I wouldn’t talk for like the whole hour… some therapists would have given up…” “The lady [prior therapist] tried to force things and just wrote stuff down…” “Therapists should sit and listen…” “What people don’t know when you’re going into… Continue Reading

In Australia, Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) have been raised as a way to improve responses to child abuse based on the demonstrated benefits of this approach in the United States. However, there are some important differences between jurisdictions in the U.S. and Australia that need to be considered in adapting the approach. For one, many… Continue Reading

A man in my home state of Illinois will spend the next 40 years behind bars as the consequence of sexually abusing his girlfriend’s daughter. The abuse started when she was just three. Sadly, this sort of tragic story is unremarkable in America. But what is remarkable is how the abuse stopped at age seven…. Continue Reading

The first time I walked into a Children’s Advocacy Center, I was a teenager dealing with the aftermath of years of sexual abuse. The CAC helped my family and I understand what happened to me and gave us hope to get through the process of both my healing and the prosecution of my perpetrator and… Continue Reading

Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) have come a long way in the last 30 years.  We have added services and interventions based on solid research—evidence-based practices (EBPs)—all the while maintaining a passion for ensuring that these practices put children on a better path than before they came through our doors. Because the research has come so… Continue Reading

The American Counseling Association’s Traumatology Interest Network (2014) defines vicarious trauma as “the emotional residue from hearing other people’s trauma stories and becoming witness to the pain, fear, and terror the trauma survivor endured” (Network, 2014).  Being witness to another’s pain can cause us to see the world differently.  Individuals working with, and hearing the… Continue Reading

It’s no great surprise that much of our work in advocating for the well-being of children focuses on, well, the children—how to interact with them, how to help them manage stress and trauma, how to recognize symptoms and identify treatments. However, a large body of evidence shows that intervening with parents to strengthen parenting can… Continue Reading

NOTE: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence against children. I was 23 years old, in my first job as an assistant social worker in the Atlanta schools, when I was called to the principal’s office of a quiet suburban elementary school. The principal met me with hushed tones outside his office door and said,… Continue Reading