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Havens are just as vital as child safety laws

Recent frightening headlines have demonstrated clearly that we must do much more to protect our children.

The threats to our young have come from all corners, with both strangers and family members standing accused of crimes ranging from torture to kidnapping and murder.

In this current atmosphere of rage and demands for retribution and wholesale changes to the legal system comes another attempt to provide protection for children in crisis.

It is far less attention-grabbing than the ongoing movements to rewrite the laws dealing with sexual offenders. But in its own way, it could wind up helping many more children.

Keith Schenck, the general magistrate at the Citrus County Courthouse, is pushing to get a children's advocacy center established here. That institutional-sounding name does not fully capture the simple mission and importance of the place.

The center would be, in a word, a refuge.

As it now stands, children thought to be the victims of abuse, neglect or sex crimes are swept up by social workers or police from their homes, schools or wherever they happen to be when the alarm is raised.

These strangers bring the frightened children to one intimidating place after another: The Sheriff's Office, a hospital emergency room, a social service agency office for treatment and for interviews.

Despite the best efforts of workers to calm these traumatized children, there is only so much warmth that can be generated at such sites.

These are places where important work is being done by busy adults, and the climate does not lend itself to comfort and reassurance.

Recognizing this, Schenck and others hope to create a center where these essential services can be conducted but in surroundings more suitable for troubled children. They plan to meet Friday to discuss options for opening such a facility in Citrus County.

The most promising plan is to extend an existing program in Ocala, called Kimberly's Cottage, to Citrus until resources become available to create a separate facility here.

Kimberly's Cottage has proved to be an asset to the child welfare system and similar efforts are under way in Hernando County to establish a center there.

Kimberly's Cottage has rooms where children can be interviewed and examined by social workers and medical professionals, vital steps in the legal process. But it also has colorful and inviting rooms where children can play or rest, which can be just as important when it comes to helping distressed young victims.

Schenck points out that the need is real in Citrus, as the numbers of children in crisis continues to climb. Last year, he points out, there were 325 such cases in the county. The numbers will no doubt grow right along with the county's explosive population increases.

Those are not simply numbers on a page: Each represents a child who is caught up in a terrifying whirlwind of abuse, anger or neglect perpetrated by adults who should know better. Every one of those children deserve to have society stand up for them against their tormentors, and efforts are ongoing in Tallahassee and elsewhere to strengthen laws to offer better protections.

Those are major and significant steps, which are rightly garnering most of the community's attention.

But we should neither lose sight of nor fail to support this welcome effort to establish a haven in the storm for our children.

[Last modified April 25, 2005, 01:04:14]