The coronavirus pandemic has generally translated into a downturn of activity in most workplaces, but that’s unfortunately not the case for the Southwest Mississippi Children’s Advocacy Center.
Its services were in more demand in 2020 compared to the year before, the center’s community outreach director April Boarman told the McComb Exchange Club on Thursday. The club, whose core project is child abuse prevention, made a donation to the center during the meeting.
The center provides forensic interviews for children who are the victims of abuse and neglect, or who have witnessed crimes. It also provides victim advocacy services, therapy for children and “non-offending caregivers,” with each case reviewed by a team of legal and medical professionals.
The center served 649 children in 2020 compared to 518 in 2019.
Children 12 and under accounted for the largest age group served. Girls vastly outnumbered boys receiving services from the center — 332 compared to 141.
The caseloads included 191 instances of physical abuse and neglect, 242 cases of sexual abuse, 12 trafficking cases and 80 domestic violence cases.
The local advocacy center opened in 1999 and is one of 12 located throughout the state. It serves children in Pike, Amite, Walthall, Lincoln and Copiah counties.
Boarman said abuse can mean a lot of different and awful activities and can come in the form of emotional, sexual or physical abuse and neglect.
“Emotional abuse is anything that’s hurtful or threatening to the child,” she said. “It’s hard to tell if someone’s being emotionally abused because they don’t have those scars.”
Warning signs include children who are overly fearful and anxious, emotionally detached from their parents or acting inappropriately adult or infantile.
Warning signs for sexual abuse include chronic stomach pain or headaches, children soiling themselves, changes in eating habits, sexually transmitted diseases, anxiety and depression, sleep disturbances, an unusual fear of people, rebellion, runaway behavior, lack of interest in activities, poor self esteem, avoiding relationships, children trying to act “too prefect,” regression into previously outgrown behaviors and suicide attempts.
“These are the things we need to look out for,” Boarman said.
She said more than 90% of abuse cases are done by someone the victim knows.
“That kind of throws away the concept of ‘stranger danger,’ ” she said. “We’ve been so focused on strangers that we forget to look at what’s going on around us.”
Of those cases, about 30% of abusers are family members, while 60% are someone the family knows. Other children are sometimes the perpetrators of abuse, Boarman said.
The vast majority of cases occur in isolated situations.
“You need to be paying attention to where a child is isolated from other individuals,” Boarman said.
Warning signs for physical abuse include frequent and unexplained injuries and imprints of hands or belts.
“The child might always seem on alert or they may flinch at sudden movements,” Boarman said. “In the summertime that may wear jackets because they have bruises they are trying to cover up. They may have internal injuries you cannot see.”
Child abuse is a felony offense and anyone who witnesses it is obligated by law to report it, Boarman said. Failure to do so carries a $5,000 fine and possible sentence of a year in jail.
“Knowingly condoning child abuse is a crime,” she said. “Using drugs in the presence of a child is a crime.”
While neglect isn’t categorically the same as abuse, it’s viewed similarly under the law.
“This is when we are not giving the child proper, food, shelter, clothing or medical needs,” Boarman said.
She said neglected children may carry a strong odor due to a lack of frequent bathing and may appear unkempt. They also may have poor school attendance.
While no merit is found in some abuse claims, those instances are extremely rare, Boarman said, noting that on average less than 5% of very young abuse victims are found to be untruthful when making their claims. For older children, the number is a little higher, about 10%. About half of the people accused of child abuse will deny it when evidence is otherwise sufficient to determine their guilt in court, Boarman said.
And for each child the center serves, there are many more out there who will probably never receive the treatment they need, Boarman said. She noted that more than three-fourths of abuse victims, on average, never tell anyone about what happened to them until adulthood.
“That’s because they start having a lot of problems that don’t happen until adulthood,” she said.
And the problems they face can be life-altering, she noted. Abused children are more likely to get in trouble with the law later in life and go on to abuse others, she said. Women with a history of physical and sexual abuse are more likely to experience revictimization later in life.
April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, and Boarman noted that the center receives federal funding from a crime victims grant and some state funding, but donations are critical to its financial survival.
For more information, to make a donation or report a case of abuse or neglect, call the center at (601) 684-4009. The Mississippi Child Abuse hotline is (601) 432-4570.
