Communication seen as key between parents, children

BROWNSVILLE - If recent trends continue, the Cameron County Children's Advocacy Center will respond to nearly 1,000 cases of child abuse this year

Elizabeth Shull, the center's executive director, said this year's figures have yet to be released but they are expected to mirror figures for 2007, which show an average of 80 cases per month.

The advocacy center runs Monica's and Maggie's House, a complex where specialists conduct forensic interviews of children who have been referred there by law enforcement authorities on suspicion of abuse. The houses were named in memory of two Rio Grande Valley children who died as a result of child abuse.

Investigators determine if a child has been subjected to any type of abuse including sexual, physical, emotional, witnesses to a crime, neglect or abandonment. Their findings are submitted to the district attorney's office for prosecution.

In 2007, the center responded to 548 cases involving sexual abuse and 162 cases of physical abuse, statistics show. Twenty cases involved both types of abuse. The center also treated 124 witnesses to a crime and 61 unspecified types of abuse.

Shull said the center offers counseling to help walk children along the path to healing. She said that contrary to popular belief, with proper therapy and time, victims of child abuse can move on to live full lives without running the risk of becoming abusers themselves.

According to the center's statistics, the majority of reported abuse comes from low-income families, but Shull said that is because those families are more likely to report it.

"They tend to be more likely to make an outcry," she said. "The middle income and up are less likely to make an outcry because they tend to be more educated and have a position, so they are more likely to keep quiet about it."

Shull said the majority of sexual abuse was reported to females between 6 and 12 years old.

"It is very sad, but many of the male victims fail to come forward, so they go unreported," she said. "There is a sense of shame, and they begin to question ‘am I homosexual, am I straight?' "

Shull said many times people fail to see the importance of sexual abuse in teenage girls, attributing it to normal behavior.

"They are not ready," she said. "Emotionally they are not ready to engage in a sexual relation even though they may think they are. There is also the pregnancy aspect: Are they ready to have a child? What about STD's: Are they ready for that possibility?"

Shull urges parents to establish open lines of communication with their children and to create a trusting bond where the child would feel comfortable making an outcry.

"As sad as it may sound, most of the cases of abuse deal with either a family member or a person very close to the family," she said. "Less than 10 percent of attacks come from an unknown perpetrator. It's usually a parent, a cousin, an uncle, a compadre."