coming up next i'll be speaking with mary maples training director of corner house a child advocacy organization in minneapolis that's next on the st paul for it's not a restaurant now it's not a restaurant it is on the corner however our house on the corner of attendant twenty fifth and minneapolis minnesota our children's advocacy center what does that mean it means that we provide a child friendly environment for children who are involved in child abuse investigation to put have their services provided we work collaboratively with what we call multidisciplinary team those are the mission of corner house is to ensure that the voices of children are heard and understood in cases of alleged child abuse and so part of that for us is making sure that people in other communities whether it's in minnesota or in other parts of the country or in other parts of the world that those other professionals in those other communities know how to talk to kids in a child friendly and legally sound way is there a look at a national clearing house or  that part of what corner house is trying to be there is a national agency called the national children's alliance credits children's advocacy centers there are children's advocacy centers all over the country in all of us have some very common goals and missions and levels of service we also have some very individualized things that we do that are really meant and meet the needs of the children in our individual communities so the national turns alliance is a clearinghouse they do a lot a lobbying at the federal level and they also go out and visit all the children's advocacy centers in the united states to make sure that we're doing a good job and the people you're officers and or child protection investigators as well as prosecuting attorneys in their specific techniques it sounds like it's almost like a listening skill it is a listening skill it's a listening skill that's probably the most important thing we teach people is how to listen to kids but the other thing is that we teach them is how to make sure that when they are structuring a forensic interview with a child they're doing it in a way that's not leading and  importantly is child friendly and so that those investigators understand the fundamental things that they need to know about child development about linguistics about communication as well as about how to make sure that they're not suggesting information to a child because what's important to us is getting accurate and detailed information whether that's about a child experiencing abuse or whether it's about the fact that a child didn't experience abuse it sounds like a great deal that is is almost curricular in nature that you're teaching a specific skill set to what extent is corner house also involved in advocacy of recognizing that children are children's voices are  underappreciated and undervalued and that the problem may be under weighted public perception we do try to do some outreach and information sharing education in the community in general with regard to what's  what adults in our community whether their investigators or not need to be doing as far as listening to kids and being aware of and preventing child abuse we deal primarily with investigations that involve child sexual abuse and so some of the things some of the other training that we try to disseminate are not just as far as talking to kids in an actual friends or going to you but also for people who work with kids in the community mandated reporters that's kind of a buzz term that people have been talking about quite a bit lately with some of the high profile sexual abuse cases in the country so that people who are not in an investigative capacity but are working with kids in a regular basis teachers doctors social workers  understand what to do and how to do it if they do have concerns that a child's been abused and that is it partly also that they avoid contaminating as you said before suggesting and reading answers that's a really important part of what we try to teach mandated reporters is what to what they should do as far as reporting suspected abuse but also what not to do and one of the things that's important is that that mandated reporters and other community members concern people parents anyone who interacts with the child doesn't contaminate the investigation and sometimes what happens is because people are concerned they ask it's too many questions and that can that can although everybody has the best of intentions around that that can actually do more harm good as far as the investigation do you have to stay up on current changes in the law yes we have to stay open current changes in the law the current best practices in the area of forensic interview in child development linguistics communication one of the primary responsibilities of the staff a corner house who are trainers is to stay up on those practices and make sure that we're incorporating them on a regular basis into our curriculums and do you personally have much contact with children in your job i do i do not as much as i would like to be followed it is it's a real privilege to talk to kids in general but particularly if they do have something that's difficult to share and have had a difficult experience is very rewarding to know that i get to give them a chance to talk share those experiences if they can and so that is an aspect of my job i really do enjoy a corner house hennepin county so that's a fairly small subset of the actual child abuse investigations that are being done and we do about five hundred friends are going to use a year in minneapolis we train investigators all over the world and we do we train more than two thousand and people per year so and we do that with a staff of seventeen people couple of part time people the rest are full time and your director of training correct ok so a lot of the staff involved in training we have three interviewer trainers and they more or less split their time between talking with kids directly and and travelling and doing training in house a corner house and then there's we do travelling training they're reaching out to law enforcement and one of the kinds of professionals mostly it's law enforcement child protection investigators and prosecuting attorneys and so as i started out initiated on our team and so those people those investigators are at the table literally when a tile is interviewed if i'm the interviewer for example before i even go and meet the child at corner house i'm meeting with law enforcement and top protection her the investigators on the case the only thing i do in the in the investigation is the interview i have the easy job i get to talk to the child it's the it's the law enforcement officers in the top protection workers and the prosecuting attorneys who are going to have to do the the real meat of the investigation and and see that through we're all at the table together and then those investigators along with an assistant county attorney  are they watching me do that interview literally live through a closer television system a corner house so that they get the information from the child in real time and they can communicate with me as they need to in real time so the child doesn't have to be spoken to again or questioned again ideally would you were and i feel like i do know now we although a lot of children's advocacy centers throughout the country do have that kind of a system we use a telephone in our interview rooms ok so you can just literally stop and question f own side that may be put in it for immediate action and yeah well then there are pertinent to the interview itself so i might of missed something i mean i might have misunderstood something i rely on my team to make sure that i'm doing a good job so that kids don't have to be reinterviewed ok how about the issue of retrain scripted memory that there may be had to do with what's contaminated do you have to deal with that a lot do we do i need to explain what that is now what do you mean by more stories are laid down across it it just kind of gets fuzzy or more blurred which is one of the reasons you want to stay away from asking too many questions that's right and contamination and we we often refer to that in training in our interview practice suggestibility and so we want to make sure that we are not contaminating the child's memory or telling of their memory by asking too many questions by re interviewing a child because as you said then they might start to incorporate things that are more about the telling of what what happened versus the actual experience so yeah that's very very important to us and one of the main things we tr teach the people that we train is how to avoid that how to make sure we're being neutral and unbiased when we talk to kids whether it's in the interview or or the events around the interview i would imagine a lot of those problems actually fall in the lap that i enter to in a forensic interview on were to go to trial i would testify as a as a witness and as the person who had did that forensic interview with the child and one of the advantages of the multidisciplinary team approach that we use at corner house and that is used everywhere at every children's advocacy center is that it's video recorded and so not only is that team i mentioned watching me do that interview live but there's a d v d recording of the interview when prosecutors who need to make charging decisions and prepare for trial prepare for a court case for charging they get to watch that d v d and see for themselves what the child said or didn't say and how the child acted in the interview so that helps them to to make the decisions you know that are in the best interest of justice on the child ok in case you're just joining us this is the st paul forum and i'm john forty today i'm interviewing because of the nature of our work you know we have ups and downs and those ups and downs come and go sometimes from day to day or hour to hour there may be days when we don't do any interviews and there may be days when we do five six or seven interviews although that's rare it can be very very busy or very quiet what is typical is that when a child comes to corner house for their interview they have a positive experience they come to a child friendly setting that neutral it's very child friendly in that you know it doesn't look like adults office doesn't look like a police station it's it's very warm and it's a place where kids and their caregivers can feel safe we although it might seem that a child would be traumatized by talking about their experience because of you know we're very purposeful and careful to try to make that experience as positive as it can be it's not unusual for kids to actually feel better when they leave it can be a relief to share  information about something that's that's happened to them and sometimes kids will even say to us you know can i come back yeah can we talk again another time is there any  curve is it five eight or ten or twelve you know we serve people anywhere from three years old up to vulnerable adults for us the majority of the kids we see a corner house  are between the ages of about seven ten or eleven but we serve lots of adolescents we serve lots of preschoolers unfortunately child abuse and child sexual abuse cross all age ranges all socioeconomic status all races everything so there's a real variety is there any any hypothesis as to why that seven to ten seems to stick out in your mind  i think it's more a matter of developmental ability and you know those kids those quote school age kids have more ability to communicate about their experience so and they also have more experience in the world and may become be more aware that if they are being abused they it's not ok and they should talk about it and can talk about it but they're also young enough that they can still be challenging to interview if you're not comfortable with kids if you don't have  training to talk to kids so they tend to be the population of children that our investigative partners are more likely to bring to us whereas as kids get older you know twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen investigators and we are funded in a variety of different ways we have contracts with our the the partners that i've mentioned so we have contracts to do forensic interviews with all of the law enforcement jurisdictions and experienced in talking to kids the service we provide is that forensic interview it's regardless of what the child does or doesn't say in the interview we get some funding from federal and state  grants primarily the office of justice programs and we also of course like every nonprofit do our fair share of private fundraising we've got a little under ten minutes left and i want to read to the meat of this conversation which is how should community members what should they know about child abuse what is the what should the public really know i think the public needs to know that unfortunately child abuse happens it's more common than we'd like to think sexual abuse is more common than we like to think and that that supportive and appropriate adults in the community can make a real difference to kids  that parents caregivers should educate kids as far as what's ok and what's not ok with their bodies and what to do if something that's not ok happens to the child and what to do is to talk to a trusted adult really important for us as adults to let kids know that it's ok to share that information with adults whether it's an adult you know a caregiver a parent or somebody that's trusted that's not as close to the child you know a lot of parents do do a really good job of telling kids you know if something bad happens you can tell me it's a good idea to tell me but sometimes for a lot of different reasons a very difficult for kids to tell their primary care giver even the littlest kids worry about how that caregiver will respond unfortunately the vast majority of abusers of children particularly people who sexually abuse children are known to that not only known to the child but are very close relatives or caregivers of the child and so that makes it very complicated and difficult for kids to talk about that's another thing for people to know is that it's pretty rare that a child if they're sexually abused will disclose that abuse immediately it's much more common that children will delay a disclosure and there's again lots of reasons why so we're going to those of how and when and why a tile makes that disclosure is just really important for people to be supportive of those kids but also not to contaminate any future investigation and so not to ask kids for a lot of details necessarily to just go ahead give kids messages about thanks for telling me it's not your fault you didn't do anything wrong is there anything else you want to talk about and then leave it at that and make a mandated report make a report to law enforcement protection whether you're legally a mandated  reporter or not you know it's not our job unless your investigators not your job to figure out if something that the child said is quote true or not true or you know ask a lot of details of the child report the information to child protection law enforcement and get take your cue from them i'm wondering if there are a lot of discussion in the field as to a best practice if you think it's sufficient to simply say it's ok to tell me if something bad happened because i would think so many perpetrators would be threatening them and saying if you tell anyone and so the child thinks i can or i can't i'm not going to so if there is a way to coax that information out or we want to tell the child  you tell me it's ok to yeah i mean it's a good idea to tell kids it's it would be a good idea to tell me if something like this happens you know who do you think you could tell who would you be comfortable telling as i kind of alluded to before it's really important to make sure that kids are identifying for themselves another trusted adult they can tell who is maybe not quite as close to the child so maybe that's a teacher maybe it's somebody who's a coach maybe it's  whoever it is make sure kids have permission to not only go to mom and dad but that they can also go to other people because that might help to the other broad prevention strategies sure  education not just of the community and adults but of kids making sure kids know you know what what's ok and was not ok teaching children the proper name for parts of their body so that they have words to use to talk about an experience if they have one that's abusive giving kids permission you know to talk about it as a society you know just being more open to those discussions  i think part of the problem and part of the reason kids keep it a secret is because we just as even as adults we don't want to believe it happens it's very disturbing but what's most important is that if a child experiences abuse that they they have trusted adults they can talk to and that when they talk about it they're supported and what we know from extensive research over the years is that when kids are supported in their disclosure by their primary caregivers and other people in the community they do very well in terms of recovery it's kids who aren't believed who are protected who have a harder time we talk about prevention strategies it seems that you know very young children are going to be very vulnerable because they're with adults and they have almost almost no control but there's a age maybe it's five or above where they kind of have an intuition that they distrust people is there a lot of counseling them to trust their instinct  yeah that's an excellent suggestion i mean letting kids know that if it doesn't feel if it's not ok with them if they're not sure about it if it's confusing that's a good point to i mean you know sexual abuse isn't doesn't always feel bad so to speak it doesn't necessarily hurt people who hurt children in that way do it in a very manipulative and oftentimes gentle way that is confusing to kids so letting kids know too that if it's something that you're not sure that's confusing that doesn't feel right to you let's talk about it ok tell me more about mandated reporting laws who who's under that i mean i see as part of the professional training they know but if you don't know when you  it's some things are very clearly spelled out as you said teachers doctors and unity the health care profession paraprofessional education staff coaches psychologist those kinds of people are very clearly mandated reporters but what's more what's less clear in our laws is about people who are in a position in a position of authority and control over tiled and so you know i would argue that any adult who has knowledge whether you're legally a mandated reporter or not if you suspect or have concern that a child has been abused it's always better to err on the side of reporting and although it's it's very helpful to investigators and you know to top protection law enforcement if you're willing to share your contact information with them in case they do need to investigate and clarify something with you if you want to make a man to report anonymously you absolutely can do that and it's far better to do it and make an anonymous report than to make no reported all ok i want to get right down to the mechanics if a parent has the child come to them and say i've been abused in some way what action steps to the parents take to they go to the police well in addition to first and foremost sending those supportive messages to the child without getting too far into the details with the child and the other thing for caregivers to keep in mind or whoever hears a report from a child is that it's really important that we be cautious about our initial response and trying as as disturbing as it would be to have a child come to you and tell you they've been abused when we when we as adults react very emotionally to or to to hearing that information from a child kids will take that personally and that can sometimes shut them down so it's important to be supportive and as neutral as possible the next thing to do is out of the child's earshot to make that phone call as quickly as you can and we always suggest reporting to both law enforcement in the location where you believe the crime occurred so for example if somebody thinks a child's been abused in st paul you would report to st paul police we also suggest that you report to the county where the child lives so that would be ramsey county child protection and we've got a little less than a minute left i want to make sure that we get we plug the website as they say in t v business but also just quickly what can people do to support the work of corner house and other child advocacy organizations there's lots of things you can do from volunteering at corner house volunteering at special events you know making a donation and spreading the word of prevention and you know about our services and there's lots of ways that you can find out more about us on the web site ok thank you very much burials for having me i've been speaking with miriam maples of training director of corner house in minneapolis a child advocacy center that's all the time we have this week watch us again next week