April is nationally designated as Child Abuse Prevention Month as well as Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
Two local organizations – HAVEN Children’s Advocacy Center and Reach of Cherokee County Inc. – are working together to bring awareness to local residents at 4 p.m. Monday on Facebook Live with WKRK radio and District Attorney Ashley Welch.
National Children’s Alliance reports that nearly 700,000 children are abused in the United States every year. Child abuse is defined by the Mayo Clinic as any intentional harm or mistreatment to a child under 18 years old.
Child abuse takes many forms, which often occur at the same time. Physical child abuse occurs when a child is purposely physically injured or put at risk of harm by another person, according to mayoclinic.org.
Anna James, executive director for HAVEN, said the most common form of child abuse in Cherokee County is sexual abuse. About 60 perfect of clients are victims are sexual abuse, with neglect and physical abuse making up the rest of the total.
James said many clients are victims of multiple types of maltreatment and abuse. HAVEN served 166 victims in 2020, which she added is the highest number of clients in a single year since the center opened in 2005.
1 in 2 women hurt
Sexual assault is defined by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network as sexual contact or behavior that occurs without explicit consent of the victim. Some forms of sexual assault include rape and attempted rape, fondling or unwanted sexual touching and forcing a victim to perform sexual acts, such as oral sex according to rainn.org.
The National Center Against Domestic Violence states that 1 in 2 women and 1 in 5 men will experience sexual violence in their lifetime.
Cecilia Crawford-Faulkner, executive director of Reach of Cherokee County, said the organization helped 90 cases of sexual assault from February 2020 through February 2021. While HAVEN helps younger victims of sexual assault, Reach helps older victims of abuse.
Jessica Vernon, domestic violence advocate for Reach, said the majority of sexual assault cases are for women in their late 20s to early 30s.
“We haven’t seen any significant changes during the pandemic, numbers have remained about the same but there has been an increase in male victims,” she said.
Reach of Cherokee County is the only shelter in the state of North Carolina to have a separate men’s shelter. One local family knows too well the daily affects of a young child being taken advantage of at a young age.
A family’s sad story
In 2015, a young mother achieved her goals of graduating with a college degree, and her young daughter spent the weekend with her father.
“I went to pick her up on Monday afternoon,” the mother said. “Everything was normal. I gave her a bath that night and she started laughing.”
The mother said her daughter, then 3, didn’t want to get her half-brother in trouble, so the mother started questioning what happened.
“He had touched her,” the young mother said. “I talked to her dad immediately.”
She said it was 10:30 p.m. and the next morning the abuse was reported. The half-brother of the little girl was 13 years old.
The little girl’s brother had several run-ins with law enforcement, including five misdemeanor charges, and when detectives were called they planned to get the brother from school. The young mother said the brother spent one month in a detention center due to being deemed a menace to society.
The young mother said while they were in the court hearing, the brother showed no remorse for his actions and laughed when the judge questioned him about the incident. She said he did not have to put his name on the national registry of sex offenders because of his age and his three felony charges were dropped or reduced.
“One of the reasons a charge was dropped was because my daughter didn’t know the correct name for her private parts,” the young mother said, anger in her voice. “He was sent to a halfway house but got in trouble regularly there. Right before he was going to get out, he ran away with a girl and got caught doing something sexual with her. His counselor said it was OK because he was nervous about going home.”
The young mother said her daughter remembers what happened to her, and though she still wants to be around her brother, there is a court-ordered restraining order in place until the girl is 18. The halfway house wanted to do a reunification between the siblings, but the young mother wouldn’t allow it.
‘Mixed emotions’
The young mother is also a stepparent to her daughter’s half-brother. She said it’s very difficult being the parent of both the abuser and victim in a sexual assault/child abuse case.
“It is hard because I love them both,” she said. “Having to pick basically which child to support and take care of over the other. My daughter has therapy once a week and she is on medications to help deal with anxiety and panic attacks.”
She said while her daughter suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome, anxiety and flashbacks, she also asks, “Mommy, when can I see my brother?”
The young mother said she does have a fear of the future when her daughter reaches an age to legally see her brother again.
“We can’t even go in the area where they live without her having a panic attack,” she said. “There are a lot of mixed emotions.”
While it is difficult, the young mother wants others to know they are not the only ones going through this and it is OK to seek help.
Reach is working to get a support group started for non-offending parents of sexual assault victims. For details about sexual assault or child abuse, visit the websites havencac.org and reachofcherokeecounty.org.