Bringing Awareness To Child Abuse

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI)- It’s a problem that plagues every community, child abuse.

“A child is an innocent person and often times they really can’t be able to help themselves,” said West Point Police Chief Avery Cook.

Law enforcement said they’re seeing a rise in the number of reported child abuse cases.

Sally Kate Winters Family Services reports from 2016 to 2017, the organization saw a 73 percent increase in the number of child abuse interviews they conducted.

The abuse comes in different forms, and Sally Kate Winters is on the front-line in many of these investigations.

“Sally Kate Winters provides forensic interviews for child victims of abuse, so we do felony child abuse investigations and we interview kids who’ve been abused,” said Morgan Colley, Children’s Advocacy Center Advocate at Sally Kate Winters Family Services.

Now the organization is sharing its knowledge.

During a Child Abuse Investigation Training on Monday, law enforcement officers, child protective services, and first responders learned new techniques for spotting signs of mistreatment.

“We’re trying to help provide law enforcement with every tool that they need to investigate child abuse and child sexual crimes especially,” said Steven Woodruff, investigator for the district attorney’s office. “We’re seeing an uptake in that in our community, and we don’t think that it’s just now starting to happen, we think that it’s just beginning to be reported more.”

“We’re doing two different presentations, one on corroborating evidence, so we have a child that discloses something and getting them to think about some of the minor details that a child might bring up in their testimony to make their story come alive,” said Jim Holler, who conducted Monday’s training session. “This afternoon we’re doing one more investigative piece, especially physical abuse investigations and what the investigators can do to help the kids to help make their stories come alive.”

Holler is a former police chief with more than three decades of law enforcement experience.

He said the tools everyone learned during the training session are important and can help prosecutors be more effective.

“Just trying to put all the facts together and making sure that we’ve got the details, so we can bring a strong case to our prosecutors office, and hopefully that case will be strong enough to go proceed without a child  having to testify,” said Holler.

Sally Kate Winters and the district attorney’s office co-sponsored the training session.