Gazette opinion: Team up to protect Montana children
Billings Gazette
Editorial
Published 2/16/2012
The most powerful statement made at a Monday press conference about Montana’s commitment to protecting children was who attended:
U.S. Marshal Darrell Bell, Assistant U.S. Attorney Marcia Hurd, County Attorney Scott Twito, Sheriff Mike Linder, Police Chief Rich St. John, state Child and Family Services Division regional administrator Kevin Frank, Becky Bey of the nonprofit Center for Children and Families and Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock.
It takes all of these agencies, working together, to protect Montana children from abuse and neglect.
Bullock announced that six state Department of Justice programs and two statewide partnerships are being organized into the Montana Children’s Justice Center. The intent is to improve coordination and to use these resources more effectively to prevent and prosecute harm to children.
The Montana Children’s Justice Center will help support multidisciplinary teams called Montana Child Sexual Abuse Response Teams. These teams already have been established by 17 Montana communities to share expertise, improve training and deal more appropriately with child victims while ensuring that child abusers will be held accountable.
Teams work in Gallatin, Fergus, Mineral, Jefferson, Big Horn, Stillwater, Teton, Valley, Hill, Park, Carbon, Cascade, Beaverhead and Deer Lodge counties and on these reservations: Rocky Boy, Fort Peck, Blackfoot and Fort Belknap.
Butte, Missoula, Hamilton, Helena, Kalispell, Thompson Falls, Dillon, Anaconda and the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations have both child sexual abuse response teams and child advocacy centers where child welfare and law enforcement professionals can conduct exams or interviews in a non-threatening, child-friendly setting. Both the teams and the centers aim to avoid unnecessary repetition of interviews and exams that can further traumatize child victims.
Yellowstone County is missing from those lists. That needs to change.
Twito said he hopes to have a multidisciplinary team working on child sexual abuse cases by year’s end.
However, agencies first need to consistently report abuse for a team or center to be effective, Twito said. To that end, he is working with the Montana Association of County Attorneys to draft legislation that would require the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services to report all incidents of child sexual abuse to local law enforcement. A Yellowstone County case previously reported in the Billings Gazette revealed that state law doesn’t mandate such reporting now.
Sarah Corbally, state administrator for Child and Family Services, said the department is working with Twito “to address gaps in mandatory cross-reporting.”
The Center for Children and Families, a private nonprofit organization in Billings, is seeking support to house a children’s advocacy center in downtown Billings, Bey said. The Center for Children and Families already provides sober, supportive housing for families with parents in addiction recovery, assists foster parents and works with the Yellowstone County Family Drug Treatment Court. The organization has space available in its newly acquired building and is starting fund raising to set up the advocacy center.
Yellowstone County should have these collaborative tools — a sexual abuse response team and an advocacy center — to protect our children.
As Bullock said: “Successfully protecting kids and prosecuting offenders requires all of us working together.”