State leaders and advocates rally to combat South Carolina child abuse crisis

“That’s 26 elementary schools in South Carolina and that’s too much.” Said Bett Williams, Communications Officer – Children’s Trust of SC.

That’s how many children are faced with abuse in this state each year.

Bett says, that’s how many children her agency offers support to every year.

“We have to then work with families, and I mean at some point you have to think about prevention and working up stream and how do we stop this from happening in the first place and then the next thing is for the families that have experience, how do we wrap around them and help them heal.” Said Bett.

Prosecutors can work with the agency on these critical cases, giving them access to forensic interviews, medical exams and mental health therapy, allowing them to determine what happened to a child.

“The most common form of child abuse last year reported at Children’s Advocacy Centers was sexual abuse but then there was a lot of physical abuse and major neglect as well.” Said Thomas Knapp, Director – SC Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers.

“Sometimes children are very young, and they don’t know how to articulate the harm that was done to them. People trained to communicate to children to get the information that prosecutors need to get a conviction in a court of law.” Said AG Alan Wilson.

Wilson says centers like these need more funding from the federal government and in the meantime, is asking state lawmakers to set aside more money in the state budget to keep places like this running.

“Once these victim services providers shudder their doors and the people spread out, it’s almost impossible to re-pen them and those services go away forever.” Said Wilson.