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Child Abuse is Indiscriminate and Prevalent
By Theron Willis
HOMETOWN NEWS
A worker at the Children’s Advocacy Center of Spartanburg conducts a physical examination of a child.
(Editor’s Note: This is the first in a two-part series on child abuse in which Hometown News will focus on challenging the common perception of this most despicable of crimes and bringing to light its unrealized prevalence in society.)
April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month and is a time of raising public awareness about the subject. But for many children - more than society knows about or might care to contemplate - abuse is a very real fact of life twelve months out of the year.
According to national statistics, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused before the age of 18, and nearly 70% of all reported sexual assaults happen to children ages 17 and under. Yet only 1 in 10 of those young victims of abuse actually report it.
The Children’s Advocacy Center in Spartanburg sees more than the statistics; the people there see the very real faces of the victims of child abuse daily, giving them a perspective on this plague that mere numbers cannot convey.
Bill Herrick - who is the executive director of the Children’s Advocacy Center in Spartanburg - says he has experienced the haunting and unrealized prevalence of child abuse not just with his job but also when and where he least expected it.
“Oftentimes I’ll meet someone through my stepdaughter or at a party or event somewhere and they’ll say ‘Oh I know you, you work at the Children’s Advocacy Center’” Herrick said. “And I’ll ask them how they know that and they’ll say ‘Because I was a client there.’ It (child abuse) is just that common.”
For the rest of the story, see The Chesnee Tribune for week April 1, 2010.
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