Loudoun Rethinks Children's Services

Advocacy Center Could Open in Fall

Officials from eight government agencies and two nonprofit groups are drawing up plans to open Loudoun County's first child advocacy center, perhaps as early as September, amid reports that crimes against children are on the rise in the county.

The nonprofit center in Leesburg will help coordinate child abuse investigations and treatment of alleged victims and offer law enforcement agencies a child-friendly place to conduct interviews, officials said.

"This center is needed," sheriff's spokesman Kraig Troxell said after attending a planning session for the center Thursday.

Crimes against children have jumped as Loudoun's population has soared in recent years with tens of thousands of families moving in, officials said.

From July 2006 through June 2007, for example, the county's Child Protective Services unit investigated 1,047 complaints of alleged child abuse and neglect, a 58 percent increase from three years earlier, according to government data.

More than 1,500 children were interviewed during those 12 months, because some complaints involved more than one child, officials said.

"The increased number of complaints are due to the growth of the county but also because people are more aware and more likely to report obvious abuse when they see it," Troxell said.

But unlike many jurisdictions in the Washington region, including Fairfax, Arlington and Montgomery counties, Loudoun hasn't had a child advocacy center. Such centers bring together officials from many disciplines, including law enforcement, child protection, health care and victim advocacy, to make decisions on how to handle cases.

In Loudoun, child abuse victims are interviewed in a variety of places, including schools, homes and law enforcement agencies.

"Child-friendly" isn't the phrase that leaps to mind when describing the interview room of the Loudoun sheriff's criminal investigations unit, Troxell said.

"Its walls are all white, and the carpet is gray," he said. "It's a cold environment."

For children, he added, "it can look like a scary place."

The center will be run by a Leesburg-based nonprofit group, Loudoun Citizens for Social Justice/Loudoun Abused Women's Shelter, and headed by Judith A. Hanley, a child development specialist.

"This will be a location where children from 2 to 17 years old can walk in and know this place is for them," said Hanley, who previously worked for INMED Partnerships for Children, an Ashburn-based nonprofit group that has provided education and health-care services in more than 100 countries.

"Part of the center will be geared toward children 10 and younger," she said. "It'll have bright colors and toys. There also will be a room for teenagers. This won't be a place where the children could be perceived as the one who did something wrong."

Hanley said the center also will seek to minimize stress on alleged victims by facilitating communication among agencies involved in child abuse cases, including Loudoun's mental health department, the sheriff's office, the Leesburg Police Department, the county attorney and the commonwealth's attorney.

"We want to bring all of these different agencies to the child, rather than the child having to go to each agency separately, which causes more stress," she said. "If the services are brought to the child at our center, that also increases the coordination and communication among agencies so they don't have to spend as much time contacting each other for each individual case."

With so many agencies involved, Hanley said, agreement hasn't been reached on some key elements of how the center will operate -- or even look.

"It's hard to say exactly how this is going to work, because we haven't voted on everything and not everything is set," she said. "We have to agree on, well, everything you can imagine. Like, who's going to conduct the interviews? Like, what are the hours of operation? Even, what color are the walls going to be? This is quite a task because everybody has equal say, everybody has equal ownership. But that's why child advocacy centers work so well in many locations -- because you've got the buy-in of all the agencies."

The center probably will be based at first in a county-owned house near the county courthouse in Leesburg, according to Hanley.

But it will move, after renovations are completed, to its permanent home on Inova Loudoun Hospital's Cornwall campus in Leesburg, she said.

Initial funding for the center has come from the Virginia Department of Social Services ($70,000), the National Children's Alliance ($50,000) and Floris United Methodist Church in Herndon ($25,000).

"Everybody wants to make sure the center enhances the system we already have," Hanley said. "Our system in Loudoun is working. We only want to enhance it."