Guadalupe County Children’s Advocacy Center shares insight into the local abuse of children
(Seguin) – Now that you have had days in which to travel by those patches of pinwheels planted in areas across Guadalupe County, it’s finally time to uproot the significance of each one.
On April 1, the Guadalupe County Children’s Advocacy Center set up batches of 893 pinwheels each at 15 locations across the area. The 893 recognizes the number of children served by the advocacy center in 2021. The awareness effort is done annually in observance of April as Child Abuse Prevention and Awareness Month.
Christy Williams, the executive director of the advocacy center, says the pinwheels help to illustrate the number of children abused and neglected and the service that was provided to each victim this past year at the local non-profit program.
“Each one of those pinwheels at each site signifies one child who came through the doors of the children’s advocacy center to receive specialized services from our center whether that be a forensic interview or counseling services, their supportive family members have come and gotten resources and an advocacy session of support and ongoing advocacy calls. Every single one of those kids is part of a case that was then just staffed at our monthly case review meetings to ensure that all of their needs are being met and they are not falling through the cracks so those are all the children that came through our doors last year,” said Williams.
Williams says unfortunately the COVID-19 pandemic did little to protect children. She says, instead, it showed the community that abuse only transforms its shape.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, we started seeing different types of cases. Instead of our usual child sexual abuse and child physical abuse which we see the vast majority of our cases, we started seeing results of 911 calls or hospitalizations or ER visits, so we started seeing more domestic violence cases, more broken bones, drug endangered children, people who are riding in vehicles with people under the influence. Those were the kinds of cases that we started seeing while the country was shut down and people were sent home,” said Williams.
Williams says the years of staying within our homes was challenging especially for her team of professionals who did the best that it could of staying on top of the abuse and ensuring that kids were being protected as much as possible.
“And then once the children started coming back out of their homes and doing summer camps and especially when they returned back to school, that’s when we started seeing a huge influx of sexual abuse cases and physical abuse cases that were taking place during that time where everybody was told to stay home. So that was a struggle for our staff knowing the trends of the types of cases that we see day in and day out knowing that those cases were not coming in but absolutely knowing that there’s no way that that just magically just stopped happening in our community was a great concern and then to have those really difficult cases of people who sometimes were badly injured or were in some serious danger of death just be the shift during that time was really difficult for our staff and our own mental health as we are walking alongside everyone in this community with the pandemic and the unknown with that and now we are also taking on this kind of shift in those kinds of cases,” said Williams.
She says this past year especially proved very tough for some of our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.
“When the kids started going back to school, I guess we started seeing a lot more of our sexual abuse and physical abuse cases and we still see the gamut of all of them and have had some pretty serious domestic violence and gun related cases over the past year or so but this 893 is definitely more in line with our pre-pandemic norms. We definitely have seen more kids in this last year than we did in the previous two years,” said Williams.
Among the 15 locations hosting pinwheels are the Guadalupe County Courthouse; Texas Lutheran University at Hwy. 46; Faith Lutheran Church, McQueeney Baptist Church, Veterans Memorial Park, Cibolo Soccer Fields, the Schertz Police Department and the First Presbyterian Church in Seguin.
Those wishing to join the fight against child abuse are encouraged to sign-up as a Champion for Courageous Children. The campaign is a fundraising effort for the advocacy center. Those wishing to get started are asked to text GCCAC to 44-321. They can also call 830-303-4760.
The pinwheels will remain planted through Monday, May 2.