A child sex abuse victim in Morgantown should receive services including forensic interviews consistent with a child victim in Louisville or Bowling Green or Brownsville.

That’s part of the rationale behind the Model Protocol for Local Multidisciplinary Teams on Child Sexual Abuse, adopted by the Kentucky Multidisciplinary Team on Child Sexual Abuse staffed by the Office of the Kentucky Attorney General. The protocol is the best practice standard that lays out the role of each agency involved in the process of serving the victim, known as multidisciplinary teams.

The teams in each county are comprised of representatives from law enforcement, child advocacy centers, prosecution, department for community based services, medical professionals, mental health professionals, victim advocates, education professionals and other related professionals whose participation on the team is deemed necessary.

The protocols are not new. There have been several released in Kentucky since 1998, the most recent in September. All of Kentucky’s 120 counties were given an April 1 deadline to submit a protocol for their county based on the model released last year. The commonwealth’s attorney’s office for each county is responsible for writing the protocol that doesn’t have to exactly mirror other counties but must at the very least include everything from the model created at the state level. As of Friday, five of the 10 counties in the Barren River region have completed their protocols – Barren, Butler, Monroe, Edmonson and Hart.

“Yes, we want to protect children,” said Dawn Long, executive director of the Barren River Child Advocacy Center. “Yes, we want to hold people accountable who hurt children. But equally important is that we are providing services in the least traumatic way possible. If we stay in line with those national best practices standards, we have the best, highest likelihood of accomplishing that goal.”

The protocol sets in place accountability for all of the agencies involved.

“This document is so important because Kentucky is starting to hold agencies accountable at the state level,” Long said. “We are required to meet a higher standard.

“This protocol is really the closest that Kentucky has ever been within being in line with the national best practices standards. That’s a big deal because Kentucky has really struggled to get there.”

The work of the entire team matters to a community because children who don’t receive proper intervention can become offenders, can endure chronic victimization leading to substance abuse and if an offender isn’t stopped he or she will continue to reoffend, affecting other children and other communities, Long said.

Sexual abuse is the worst kind of childhood trauma, Long said.

“This (protocol) document and this effort is absolutely vital to children because we want to do no more harm to these kids,” Long said. “We cannot change what’s happened to this child when they walk through the door. The way in which we as an individual agency provide services … we can and absolutely do have an immediate impact on how that child is going to get through that process. Are they to come out of that process on the road to healing and recovery, which is absolutely possible, or are they going to experience additional trauma going through that process which will potentially hinder that process.”

Warren County Commonwealth’s Attorney Chris Cohron anticipates having the protocol for Warren County completed within the next 30 days.

“As we’ve gone through multiple versions of protocols over the last few years, they have naturally expanded and tried to address emerging issues that our multidisciplinary teams face,” Cohron said. “As child sexual abuse investigations have been modernized over the last 15 years, the protocol has been used as a best practices guide for handling all aspects of these cases.”

The two goals for local multidisciplinary teams are safety and protection for child victims of sexual abuse and accountability of the child sexual abuse service system.

“Following this protocol makes sense and it’s actually working,” Long said.

Within the two primary goals of the model are several other objectives which include but are not limited to increasing the quality of sexual abuse investigations, prosecution and victim services, elimination of duplicate efforts such as one forensic interview conducted with a child, holding all professionals involved in the process to the highest standard of professional conduct and the continued implementation trauma-informed care.

“When a child enters the system, they are supposed to receive consistent services throughout Kentucky, and those services are based on national standards by discipline,” Long said.

The protocol is a helpful resource for Tim Coleman, commonwealth’s attorney for Edmonson, Butler, Ohio and Hancock counties.

One of the services Coleman appreciates the most from child advocacy centers is forensic interviews. For the counties in which he prosecutes child sex abuse cases, he expects all forensic interviews to be done at one of the two advocacy centers in his judicial circuit.

“Interviewing a child is never an easy thing,” Coleman said. “You want to make sure it’s done correctly. You don’t want to have it called into question.”

“It’s immeasurable the help they provide,” Coleman said of the advocacy centers in his circuit.

“It gives the children a much more relaxed environment. It helps a lot in that respect that they are being interviewed in a professional manner that’s being videotaped so we don’t have to put the child through multiple interviews.”

All interviews at advocacy centers are conducted one-on-one between the forensic interviewer and the child and are recorded on video. Police, prosecutors and other members of the team who need to hear the interview may sit in another room and watch the interview from a closed circuit television. The children are made aware prior to the interview that people involved in the process of helping them will be watching from another room. Forensic interviewers at the Barren River Child Advocacy Center are highly trained and must undergo regular peer review.

“It’s a structured, unbiased conversation with (the child) that helps them to be comfortable enough to tell their story, if they are ready,” said Jacqueline Peterson, a licensed marriage and family therapist and one of the forensic interviewers who contracts with the center.

Peterson pulls videos of her most challenging interviews for peer review because she wants feedback that helps her improve her skills.

The interviewer will typically meet with police first and may wear an earpiece during the interview so that police or prosecutors can communicate questions to the interviewer that they have about the abuse. The interviewer asks only open-ended questions, careful not to lead the child in any direction.

Having those questions asked in a way that does not lead a child is important in the successful prosecution of perpetrators of the abuse.

“The vast majority of child sex abuse cases are delayed disclosures,” Cohron said. “If you can ensure the child is safe and it does not impede the investigation, the best practice is for the the forensic interview to be done at the advocacy center. It is a safe environment and done by trained professionals in a setting that gives you a complete interview of the child.

“In acute cases you must have the flexibility in the model protocol to conduct those interviews outside of the advocacy center,” he said.

The state model protocol allows for limited investigative interviews in instances of danger or risk of more abuse to protect the child from additional harm but the model clearly states that all efforts should be made to conduct interviews of child sex abuse victims at advocacy centers.

In Coleman’s judicial district he prefers that those imminent danger interviews be conducted for minimal facts only.

“They do such a great job with interviews,” he said of the advocacy center. “It’s a child-friendly environment. They have the medical facilities and can get them set up with counseling.”

The advocacy centers have all of the necessary information and professionals to make sure that the children receive every service needed and available to them at no cost.

“The centers are really important to our whole process and they do a great job,” Coleman said.

— Follow Assistant City Editor Deborah Highland on Twitter @BGDNCrimebeat or visit bgdailynews.com.