ALEXANDRIA, La. (AP) - Cases of child abuse and neglect might not touch your life, but they touch your pocketbook.
“So even if you don’t believe that you’ve been impacted by sexual abuse or abuse in this community, you’re paying for others to address it,” said Wade Bond.
Bond is the executive director of the Rapides Children’s Advocacy Center Inc., an organization that will celebrate its 20th anniversary in Rapides Parish at the end of June. The group, which is an umbrella for the Children’s Advocacy Center and CASA, always has dealt with the aftermath of abuse and neglect cases, but is ready to branch out into a new role - prevention.
Sometime in June, the organization will start hosting mandatory reporter training classes for area schools, bus drivers, law enforcement, nurses and social workers. Louisiana law requires people in some professions to report suspected child abuse or neglect to the parish office of the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services.
It’s a shift for the organization, which was brought to the parish in the mid-1990s by a group of concerned citizens. Bond said such action is a defining characteristic of the parish and its people, that they take action when they see something wrong.
“Our community still has the capability of knowing your neighbor and being accountable to one another. In most situations, when people see a problem, they try to address it,” he said. “I think, from our state workers to our judges to our law enforcement, and also to the community and teachers, we are above average in responding to the needs of children who have been abused.”
He said the group is finding the same spirit in Avoyelles Parish. The CASA program established an office in the parish in February, and two groups of CASA volunteers have been sworn in to handle cases in the 12th Judicial District Court. A third group will be sworn in this week.
Judge William Bennett, in a letter to Bond, said he was “amazed” at the work being done by the CASA volunteers in Avoyelles. He said their reports have been excellent and knowledgeable, and he called the coordinator of the Avoyelles office, B.J. Gallent, “simply amazing.”
“Avoyelles, itself, has created a community that has rallied around the needs of children,” said Bond. “The care and support that the citizens of Avoyelles have for children is evident, and has actually made our job somewhat easy. Everywhere we go, people know we’re there, and they embrace us with open arms.
“It’s what a community should be.”
Actually, this is the second time CASA has been in Avoyelles Parish. The organization had gone into the parish earlier in its history, but ran out of funding. It’s a mistake that Bond and the organization’s board of directors didn’t want to see happen again, so they crafted a strategic plan that they’ve been following.
Bond said the group’s board has about 20 members from a vast array of backgrounds. Most of them have served as president at some point, which he called a “tremendous asset” because they can get to the heart of what needs to be done without requiring a lot of explanation.
“Whether it’s fundraising, or community activism or community accountability, they step up,” he said. “They recognize the need and make it happen.”
After a promotion, Barett Byrd now is the group’s assistant executive director. Earlier in the year, he was the CASA program director. He supervised the staff that has direct contact with the CASA volunteers, and participated in training new volunteers.
A retired Marine Corp colonel, Byrd said he was responsible to Bond for the program, what the volunteers did and what they failed to do. He admits that the process of becoming a CASA volunteer is not easy, and that’s by design.
Byrd said he has a lot of respect for someone who signs up for training and then bows out if they can’t handle the responsibilities. It’s better than having someone go through training, then not live up to their obligations.
“All we’ve done then is we’ve added one more face into that litany of faces that child sees,” he said.
He often speaks to community groups about the organization and why it’s necessary, even if that’s not something a lot of people want to acknowledge. Children are abused and neglected in every neighborhood in every parish, he said. But it’s often easy to brush it aside.
“The fact of the matter is, you can either ignore something or you can address it and do something about it,” said Byrd. “It doesn’t matter if it’s child abuse, racism, sexual assault. You either ignore it, or you do something about it.
“And I come down on the side of do something about it.”
Bond said the consequences of not doing anything hits everyone. He said the immediate cost in direct tax dollars for one sexual abuse case is $1 million. Only 50 percent of children under 18 will disclose that they’ve suffered abuse, he said. Another 25 to 30 percent will disclose their abuse during adulthood.
“And there’s always a group of about 20 percent who will never disclose to anybody what happened to them,” he said. “And from a community perspective, recognizing that abuse is 100 percent preventable and recognizing that we can’t place the burden of responsibility solely on the backs of children to save themselves, that’s why we’re here.”
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Information from: Alexandria Daily Town Talk, https://www.thetowntalk.com
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