An innovative centre that helps find justice for abused children is seeking to raise $1 million, in hopes of expanding in order to deal with an ever-increasing caseload.
The rooms in Edmonton’s Zebra Child Protection Centre, filled with stuffed toys and kids’ furniture, soften its real purpose. Here is where police, child protection workers and other agencies investigate allegations of child abuse and provide services to the young victims.
“The child is much more able to communicate better … coming here and they can play and interact and just be a kid,” said RCMP Const. Mara Peterson, who joined the centre in May.
The Zebra Centre, which started in 2002, is the first of its kind in Canada. It brings together different agencies to deal effectively with child abuse allegations.
Since its opening, the centre has seen a massive influx of new cases. In the past five years alone, they’ve seen an 85 per cent increase in new investigations.
Bob Hassel, the retired police officer who now runs the centre, said there is a desperate need for more space to handle the new cases.
CEO Bob Hassel says the conviction rate for abuse cases has tripled since the centre opened 13 years ago. (CBC)
“If that’s the type of trending that we’re doing, we’re probably going to run out of space pretty quick here,” he said.
He said the centre gets funding from the Alberta government and from fundraising efforts. But this year, they set an ambitious $1 million goal.
Part of the money would also go towards a fund to help pay for continued psychological support for victims.
Before it opened 13 years ago, the process of investigating child abuse allegations was an intimidating and traumatic experience for the victims.
Interviews would be done at a police station or RCMP detachment, usually by a uniformed police officer. Many of the people working with the children were not fully trained in how to deal with child abuse allegations, and various protection agencies didn’t always communicate with one another.
“We weren’t sure if we were doing it right,” he said. “And that wasn’t really working.”
The centre’s approach has paid off. Before the centre, the conviction rate for child abuse allegations hovered around 20 per cent.
Now, that rate had more than tripled.
More importantly, Hassel points out that the majority of those convictions come from guilty pleas, which eliminates the risk of retraumatizing the child during a trial.
He wants to provide more service to children, especially those outside of Alberta’s major centres. But to do that, they’ll need more room.
“Edmonton police service or the Edmonton area children and family services, they would love to give us [more] people. but we just don’t have anywhere to put them right now.”
