— An African proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child,” but it takes a multidisciplinary team of law enforcement and social agencies to treat childhood victims of sex abuse and to prosecute pedophiles.

The National Child Advocacy Center and its regional offices, such as the one in Athens, were set up to streamline a system that can sometimes subject a young sex-abuse victim to as many as 15 separate interviews.

Karen Hangartner, who is affiliated with the Southern Regional Children’s Advocacy Center, was the trainer Wednesday when a local multidisciplinary team met at Athens State University’s AMSTI building to learn how to support victims and how to gather evidence through a cooperative effort.

In the United States, one in four females and one in six males would be victims of sex abuse by the time they reach age 18, Hangartner said. A child’s chances of falling victim to a sexual predator are higher than contracting any of the well-known diseases, she said.

“People with a history of childhood sexual abuse have higher rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, unwanted pregnancies, domestic violence, mental illness and sexually transmitted diseases,” Hangartner said. “There are lifelong consequences to sex abuse.”

Many of those consequences eventually fall on taxpayers with the lifetime costs of treating childhood sex-abuse victims totaling as much as $3 million.

Hangartner said those involved in public awareness and fundraising for diseases know to make their messages relevant to everyone. She said one of the reasons for childhood sexual abuse not getting the publicity and funding for prevention, treatment and investigation and prosecution of perpetrators is that it is a distasteful subject.

Hangartner said, “Not everyone can do this work. We work with issues most people don’t want to see.”

The fact that it is a distasteful, painful subject accounts for the underreporting of the crime, she said.

Educators, who are often the first people who learn about a child being a victim of sexual abuse and who are mandated reporters, are often unsure whether to report the crime. They mistakenly think they will bring even more pain and embarrassment to the child.

In 95 percent of sex crimes against children, the perpetrators are known by the victim and, in a very high percentage of cases, are family members. Child victims often face pressure from within the family to keep the incidents secret for fear of economic, emotional and social disruption of the family unit.

Hangartner said the goal of a multidisciplinary team, which must consist of representation from law enforcement, child protective services, prosecution, medical, mental health, victim advocacy and the Children’s Advocacy Center, is to meet regularly and share information on cases to shorten a process that sometimes could drag on for months or years.

“A child can talk to 15 people, but our goal is to provide a safe place to tell the story once,” she said. A child, after the fifth interview of telling the same story, will begin to think they are not giving answers that please adults and will change his or her story, she said.

She said when retired congressman Bud Cramer was still a Madison County district attorney in the early 1980s, he was approached by an irate grandmother who told him, “The system traumatized my grandchild more than the abuse.”

Cramer sent out investigators to all parts of the nation to talk to those who deal with child sex abuse. From what they learned, the Children’s Advocacy Center in Huntsville was established. That center became a national model for treating victims of childhood sexual abuse and is now the National Children’s Advocacy Center.

“Bud Cramer brought the woman’s granddaughter to the first Children’s Advocacy Center,” Hangartner said. “She had tears in her eyes and she said, ‘What took you so long?’”

Different missions

Hangartner said each member of a multidisciplinary team has his or her own goal, depending on the agency represented.

“There are often huge conflicts on teams because members don’t understand the processes of the other disciplines,” she said.

But no matter what the goal, the ultimate mission of the team should be to work together to lessen the trauma for the child and family.

“You all hold a piece to the puzzle, and if you don’t come together and talk, sometimes other members will never know (a piece of vital information),” she said. “One person is not the decision maker that is open to attack by defense attorneys because you all have the information.”

Hangartner encouraged the multidisciplinary team to meet at least once a month, with “informal communication between.”

She said chief among the team members’ discussions should be how to provide emotional support to the child and family.

“Support for the non-offending caregiver is the most important factor in how well the victim weathers the abuse,” she said.