Section 1 - Investigation, Prosecution, and Support

Drawing by Madeline, age eight

Organizing a Community Response

The impetus for the committee came from a small group of concerned service providers. A core group had gathered early in 1990 to help Family and Children's Services (FCS) develop strategies for meeting the needs associated with the joint investigation. Group members felt strongly that the responsibility for dealing with the crisis should be shared by the entire community because it clearly required a coordinated effort on the part of many services and organizations.

At the time the existing service network was very disjointed. "It's fragmented," says Sheila Irvine, a social worker at the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital and member of the core group, "because that's the way the government is - money comes in
fragmented forms." Historically, social agencies serving sexually abused children had developed independently and were funded separately by different pots of government money. Each set goals and priorities in isolation and were answerable only to their own funding source. This led to duplication, inconsistency and gaps in meeting the needs of sexually-abused children.

Prior to the crisis, there had been several successful instances of informal cooperation among service providers, and a service planning and coordinating body, the Children's Services Advisory Group, was in place. Without formal mandates, however, this type of voluntary collaboration was quite tenuous and made little impact on established systems and procedures.1

This meeting, held at the end of March 1990, was an opportunity to involve the larger community in consultation, coordination and planning. A request was made for an ongoing commitment from the individuals and agencies present.

That chart was the basis for funding requests to the Ministry of Community and Social Services. It revealed major gaps in treatment and support services for non-offending family members and foster parents of sexually abused children. It also showed a need for support and training for professionals and school personnel who would work with the child victims. Other gaps included services for adult survivors of child sexual abuse and treatment for adolescent and adult perpetrators.

Community education and prevention programs were also seen as essential. The decision was made to redeploy or reallocate as much as possible within the existing structure. The local public unit offered to second two half-time staff specializing in sexual health education to the prevention effort. Family Focus, a local community-based mental health agency, also agreed to dedicate a part-time worker.

When the crisis hit, Family and Children's Services was able to obtain additional funds from the Ministry of Community and Social Services to carry out their obligations under child welfare legislation based on an increase in demand for their services. This did not include funds for treatment. Unlike child welfare funding dollars for children's mental health services are not tied to the volume of service demand. Rocci Pagnello points out that a child in Ontario who breaks a bone has the right to speedy medical care, but "if a kid gets traumatized to the point that her psyche is emotionally fragmented, there is no guarantee that she is going to get treatment in six months, a year, or two years."

The Advisory Committee's initial proposal requested almost a million dollars over two years to upgrade and coordinate sexual abuse services throughout Leeds-Grenville. The funds were to be used to hire a multi-disciplinary team consisting of a psychologist, two social workers, two child and youth workers, and a clerical support person. These were to be complemented by the prevention staff seconded by other agencies. A program manager was to have responsibility for coordinating and integrating all these services. Funds were also requested for consultation services to help assess the children's emotional needs and for training to help prepare the children for court.

"We ended up modifying the proposal, scaling it down and making it Prescott-centred," remembers Henry De Souza, " although it was clear to us that even though the story broke in Prescott, the kids didn't necessarily all live in Prescott and the resources, such as the foster homes, were throughout Leeds-Grenville." The group did not press for a project manager, something they would later come to regret.

The Advisory Committee wanted the additional treatment funds to be used to strengthen the entire service network and have a lasting impact on the community's capacity to respond to child sexual abuse. "We were very clear right from the outset " says De Souza, "that we wanted any new resources to either remain in the community or to impact on the community."

The original idea was that the specialized therapists working with the Project Jericho children would share their experience with other mental health workers, keeping the knowledge within the community. Sheila Irvine explains: "You start with a very concentrated model where a lot of the expertise is within the Treatment Team and then spread the knowledge out by moving people into the system as trainers."

The fact that this failed to happen is viewed by many as the chief weakness of what was otherwise an exemplary community organizing effort. For a variety of reasons, the expertise was left in a "very small pocket," says Geoff McMullen, Executive Director of Developmental Services of Leeds-Grenville. "We didn't strengthen the system, we strengthened a component of the system. The problem was that the component was lost when the dollars were lost." And although most agree that the result has been "a stronger community with more skills," McMullen and others believe that they could have done better.

The Advisory Committee spent the next few months recruiting the members of the Treatment Team and finalizing its own membership, structure, terms of reference, objectives, interagency protocols and lines of communication. It began to meet on a monthly basis. It was decided that the program supervisor from the area office of the Ministry of Community and Social Services would be an ex-officio member and the mayor of Prescott, Sandra Lawn, would chair the committee. Many committee members felt that being outside the service network helped Lawn focus on coordination and bringing a common sense approach to the project. She could do this, says Dr. Grant Curry, psychologist with the Leeds and Grenville Board of Education, "she wasn't in the position of thinking about 'my agency' or 'my service'."

The committee grew out of the existing people who were involved through the core group and the community meeting. As time went on, others were asked to join to make it more inclusive. Some disagreements arose about including members of the public and service consumers. An argument was made that broadening the committee beyond the social service and professional community would foster community participation and healing. There was, however, a concern that the court cases could be jeopardized if a committee member inadvertently broke confidentiality. Most committee members agree with Geoff McMullen that broad community representation is desirable, but that there has to be a "balance between confidentiality and input that gives different perspectives."

Since the committee was set up at arms length to the criminal investigation to protect confidentiality and ensure non-interference with the legal process, neither the police nor the Crown Attorney attended meetings. Information was relayed through Rocci Pagnello in his role as supervisor of the child welfare investigation. It was not always easy communicating needs and concerns back and forth between the investigation and the Advisory Committee.

Each of the representatives (eg. from education, health, child welfare and mental health) were accountable to their respective organizations as well as to the committee. As Bonnie McIsaac, the Ministry program supervisor who came on board in 1991 after the project was underway, explains: "Certain staff were dedicated to the functions or tasks outlined by the Advisory Committee and responsible for them to the Advisory Committee." For example, the public health staff were jointly accountable to their own public health unit as well as to the Advisory Committee. The Treatment Team was attached administratively to Beechgrove Children's Centre, but accountable to the Advisory Committee.

To work well, this kind of structure requires clear agreements at the outset. In this project, confusion sometimes occurred when the committee's expectations of staff conflicted with those of their agencies. For example, in the prevention effort, differences centred around how much time should be devoted to project versus agency work. There were differences as well in philosophies of child sexual abuse prevention that took some time to be worked out. There was also a period of intense self-education for committee members at the beginning of the case, as they read widely on the issue of child sexual abuse and sought out specialized assistance from experts in the field.

As time went on, subcommittees of the Advisory Committee were formed to address specific needs: the treatment and reintegration of perpetrators; services for adult survivors of sexual abuse; the planning and monitoring of the project's formal evaluation; and strategies for sharing the lessons of the project with the wider community and ensuring that adequate treatment and prevention services for child sexual abuse became permanent parts of the community.

Emergency/Crisis Response

• Bring together a small working group for initial crisis response
• Look at the information available and determine the information you need
• Involve the appropriate provincial ministries
• Seek the assistance of experts

• Define the area you seek to serve
• Define target groups and anticipate their needs for information, education, support and treatment
• Assess the strengths and weaknesses of your community services in meeting these needs
• Define the resources you have and those you lack
• Define priority actions
• Design strategies for filling service gaps
• Prepare a communications strategy

• Organize an interagency committee
• Determine membership, leadership and build relationships
• Determine location of committee, mandate and accountability
• Determine size and structure
• Define roles and responsibilities
• Designate a project manager if necessary
• Define guiding principles and key concepts and approaches
• Take time for team building
• Determine process to protect confidentiality
• Define immediate priorities and longer-term goals

ACTION:

Deciding What to Do

1. Decide quickly what must be done first. Work rapidly and systematically but don't panic. For example, you will want to ensure that the children are safe and receiving the services and support they require, and you will need strategies for dealing with the media and helping the community handle the crisis. If you plan to evaluate your efforts, you will need to get that process started early.

2. When you begin to plan, assess the crisis situation carefully with the information you have available and try to anticipate all the needs it will create. The needs of many groups must be incorporated into your strategies. Key target groups to consider in your planning: child victims, non-offending family members and caregivers, adult survivors, perpetrators, professionals, educators, community groups, volunteers and special populations such as the physically or developmentally-handicapped. Think carefully about how you will define the boundaries of the community affected.

3. After assessing the existing capacity within your community to respond to the needs generated by the crisis, define the resources you may need to call on or bring in from outside. Define which needs can be met by: a) shifting, redeploying, training or seconding existing community resources b) external consultants c) external hired staff.

4. When you seek the assistance of outside specialists (both as short-term consultants or longer-term employees) have a clear idea what kind of help you seek and take the time to do thorough background checks. Put any agreements for services clearly in writing.

5. One of the first things you will need is a comprehensive communications strategy which spells out lines of communication within agencies and between agencies. One part of this is a media strategy. When designing this strategy, determine the target audiences you seek to communicate with and try to analyze their interests, information needs and communication styles. Being clear about what groups require what information, what arguments are likely to be most convincing and what language is most likely to be effective will help in deciding the best ways to present your information.

1. Look at a sexual abuse crisis as an opportunity to improve your service network and strengthen your community. Good long-term planning, taking into account the impact all decisions will have on the community, is absolutely vital in any crisis.

2. Try to adopt a non-blaming, non-adversarial approach from the outset. All service providers should do everything possible to cooperate, collaborate and coordinate. Put aside territorialism, turf wars and professional mistrust for the sake of the children and the community.

3. Try to establish an open and constructive partnership with relevant govenunent ministries and officials and encourage them to take their responsibility for solving the problem.

4. If your existing services are fragmented, it is essential to form a community-based interagency committee to coordinate the responses of the service network to an MVMO crisis. Build on any relevant natural networks or committee structures that already exist. Putting a good structure in place at the beginning will go a long way toward allowing you to build on the lessons learned from the crisis and foster systemic change. Consider setting up the committee as an ongoing structure for coordinating family violence services or attaching it to an appropriate ongoing community coordinating body.

5. Be aware of the need to preserve the confidentiality of those involved in the crisis as alleged victims and perpetrators. Build in mechanisms to ensure that all committee members are accountable to protecting the confidentiality of alleged victims and perpetrators.
6. Selecting a leader/chair from outside the service network (eg. a local politician) can provide strong community leadership and may help to keep service providers focused on the needs of the children and community. However, you will want to ensure that the person chosen has the necessary sensitivity to child sexual abuse and social service issues.

7. When organizing your response to the immediate crisis be crystal clear about the mandate and duration of any committees or special projects created. Take the time to discuss and clearly set out the committee's mission, key concepts and approaches as well as a series of guiding principles for all your actions. Set out the committee's short-term and long-term goals and objectives and specify who is to carry them out. Specify roles and responsibilities of members. In cases where staff will be jointly accountable to two bodies (their own agency and an interagency committee), ensure that potential areas of conflict are worked out carefully at the outset. Create the necessary subcommittees to carry out the goals of coordinated effort (eg. media, evaluation, treatment, prevention, community healing). Set measurable objectives.

9. You may want to limit the size of the overall interagency committee for effectiveness. Encourage additional participation on subcommittees. Outline how subcommittees will communicate with and report to the main committee. It's a good idea to develop a screening mechanism for prospective members.

And, indeed, it turned out to be. The sensationalistic media coverage that followed was to have a profound and lasting impact on the lives of the victims, their families and the entire Prescott community. It was to compound the pain and confusion experienced by the townspeople and add unnecessarily to their fear, shame and embarrassment. It was also to affect the investigation and prosecution of the perpetrators.

On February 15 1990, a local paper broke the story that 25 charges had been laid against two men and two youths for sexually abusing 11 children. "When I got to the office, the media were just going berserk," remembers Lawn, "they were everywhere."

The Impact of the Media on the Community

The media's reporting of the case and their aggressive conduct sent the cornn,unity into an uproar. One article brandished the headline "Town Lives in Fear" and began: "A siege mentality has settled over this Seaway town in the wake of astonishing revelations about a child sex ring. Children are being kept indoors, neighbors are whispering and the townsfolk have turned their back on 'Hog Alley,' the subsidized housing development where the crimes took place." 4

Lorne Bender and Robin Reil, elementary school principals in Prescott, remember being hounded by reporters day and night. They also had to contend with news media constantly hovering around the children in search of juicy information. "I had a television crew follow my daughter down the street sticking a mike under her mouth and asking her questions," one mother complained. 'They're rude and they scared her." 5

The media's exaggerations helped fuel unwarranted fears that strangers were lurking around every comer ready to victimize children. It obscured the reality that the sexual abuse was committed by people the children knew and trusted. It also reinforced the myth that the sexual abuse of children is an uncommon occurrence which happens only in peculiar places and among certain groups of people.

Locally, the spotlight on the low-income neighbourhood where the initial crimes took place stigmatized many innocent people and created handy scapegoats. It allowed townspeople to distance themselves from the issue by viewing child sexual abuse as something "other people" did.

On a national level, the intense media glare made Prescott's name synonymous with sexual abuse, spawning jokes about "Molestcott." Isolating Prescott in this way sent the message that it was somehow different from other small towns. One Canadian Press story started off:  "Rape. Physical abuse. Sexual abuse. It seems impossible that this quiet, pastoral town on the shore of the St. Lawrence ... could harbour such a distasteful secret."7Macleans Magazine referred to the situation as Prescott's "shameful scandal." 8

Attempting to Broaden the Media's Understanding

This type of sensationalistic story conveyed the impression that these things don't happen in other communities. But although Prescott was the target of attention, the truth of the matter was that less than half of the accused (roughly 44%) lived in Prescott at the time the crimes were perpetrated.

Lawn and others were angered by the 'holier than thou' attitude fostered by the media. In their view, the media had a responsibility to cover child sexual abuse - one of the most serious social problems of the day - in a fair, balanced and informed manner. As a key spokesperson, Lawn took every opportunity to set reporters straight about its true prevalence in Canadian society.

Some reporters did make an effort to situate the Prescott crisis within a broader context. One quoted Rix Rogers, author of the federal govemment's report on child sexual abuse as saying: "There but for the grace of God goes any other city in Canada. It's unfair to single out Prescott, because this can happen anywhere." 9

Once the initial frenzy had died down, the national media withdrew, and the local media shifted its focus to the response of the area's human services network to the crisis. By this time, the interagency group of concerned professionals and community members from Leeds and Grenville had come together as the Prescott Child Sexual Abuse Advisory Committee.

As it got organized, the group realized that a lack of coordination between key authorities involved in the case had been a factor in the poor media coverage. In an effort to minimize confusion and reduce the diversity of messages, Sandra Lawn was named official spokesperson and chief media contact for the committee and the community effort. The police continued to handle all enquiries about the criminal investigation.

How the Media Helped

The local media proved helpful in drawing attention to the shortage of treatment services available to sexually abused children in Prescott and area. The Brockville Recorder and Times reported that Leeds-Grenville Conservative MPP Bob Runciman called on Liberal Minister of Community and Social Services Charles Beer in June 1990 to take immediate action to provide funding for the Prescott victims of sexual abuse.

He was quoted as saying: "After these many months 28 of the 36 children identified have received no psychological treatment whatsoever. The Ministry acted quickly to provide funds to assist with the prosecution of those charged, but it hasn't provided one cent to permit this urgent treatment to begin." 10 This public pressure may have helped to hasten the govemment's decision to fund the special short-term treatment team and prevention initiative requested by the Advisory Committee.

The Media's Impact on Victims and Survivors

One of the main challenges of media relations in a complex multi-victim case is the need to balance the desire to use the media to educate and inform with a concern for the victims and the criminal process. A key part of the picture is the need to protect the victims. In a society that still blames and stigmatizes the victims of sexual abuse, exposure can be extremely harmful.

Although the media is prohibited by law from publishing the names of minors and victims of sexual assault, care must be taken not to provide any information, even anecdotal, that identifies the individuals involved or makes them feel they have been identified. In cases of intrafamilial abuse, publication of the names of the perpetrators can also identify the victims, and must be avoided.

Ruth Campbell-Balagus, one of the three therapists hired to work with the children, says the media publicity heightened the children's sense of shame. At school they were whispered about, pointed at, revictimized, as if the crimes against them were somehow their fault. 'They hated the glaring headlines, the stories about that awful Prescott place, the details of what happened. As a result, the Treatment Team had issues to deal with in therapy that don't normally arise," says Campbell-Balagus.

Working with the Media

By mid-1991, the treatment and prevention initiatives were well underway. In order to increase public understanding of child sexual abuse, members of the Treatment Team developed successful strategies for communicating important themes through the media without damaging individuals or the judicial process.

Although the therapists would only address general issues, they still checked with clients and families beforehand to see if they had any objections to the team speaking publicly None did. Happily, the stories that ultimately appeared were all very positive, says Campbell-Balagus, and appeared to have no negative impact on the children.

One of the reasons for this is that team members were well prepared prior to their interviews and comfortable with the press. Being coached by a media specialist helped ensure the interviews met their intended goals. The team held mock interviews to learn how to answer questions in a way that put forth their own message and steered clear of issues outside their area of expertise

They tried to understand the media's agenda and to work with it rather than against it. "We realized," says Campbell-Balagus, "that newspapers have a product to sell and need a story, so we provided information that would give them what they wanted without compromising the families."  The team also agreed in advance to hold only joint interviews and to appoint one member of the team as primary spokesperson.

After the frenzy had subsided, the local media had become much more sensitized to child sexual abuse than before. The Prevention Committee found them quite willing to publicize its activities and provide information about the issue. But the baptism by fire with the media at the beginning of the case had burned many of the professionals who opted to "back off" from contact with the press for a period of time.

The impact of the Media on the investigation and Prosecution

Prescott Police chief Matt Hayes was also quoted as saying that the media hoopla actually stalled the force's work. "We asked the media to hold off with any break in the story because it would impede our investigation at a time when we were just starting to get information," he said. "That break in the story meant we had to do a lot more legwork. It made our job more difficult." 13

It was also essential to guard against making statements that could jeopardize the court cases. The job of defence lawyers is to be alert to any information that might be prejudicial to their clients. If used in court, this can prove damaging to the Crown Attomey's prosecution of cases.

One consequence of the intense publicity around the Prescott situation was the request by defence lawyers for trials to be transferred out of the immediate area to ensure unbiased juries. These are referred to as change of venue trials. Almost one third of the cases were moved to locations such as North Bay and St. Catharines at a cost to the government of hundreds of thousands of dollars. In fact, Crown Attorney Desmond McGarry suspects that the cost of moving the trials was almost as much as the investigation itself.

• Form a media committee
• Develop a strategic media/communications plan immediately
• Call on outside expertise for advice and help if necessary
• Learn how the media operates
• Clarify roles and communication lines within and between agencies
• Appoint a spokesperson/coordinator

ACTION:

1. Be prepared, proactive and upfront by developing a strategy that will promote media cooperation, provide constructive information and minimize  inaccurate and fear-inducing messages.

3. Be clear about who you want to keep informed and about what. Different media have different needs. Local media will be interested in providing specific information to local residents, including where help is available. Regional media will be concerned with these things but will also focus on the involvement of regional agencies including regional/provincial governments. National media may care more about the overall picture. Radio will want quick information. Television will want visuals. Print media will want depth and graphics.

4. Using the media well can help educate and heal the community. Always put the facts of the case into a broader context. Look upon the media as potential partners in community healing.

5. It's a good idea to designate as media liaison/coordinator someone who is not part of the investigation. No one should speak to the media during the investigation or trials without first obtaining permission. Along with an official spokesperson, it is useful to have one or more trained public relations persons who can: help the spokesperson deal with the media; look after media needs; report media concerns so that they can be dealt with before they cause problems; keep track of what is being reported so that errors or rumours can be spotted and corrected. The assistance of a media expert can be especially useful when national media descend on a small community.

6. Coordinate messages to ensure unified, consistent and positive communications. Violating agreements by speaking independently can be very destructive of relationships.

7. Make sure that you provide information to the media in a way that protects the confidentiality of victims and does not jeopardize the investigation and prosecution.

Tips For The Media Spokesperson

* If you don't know something, say so immediately and promise to get the information as soon as possible.

* If something comes up which you consider dangerous, ask the media to hold on briefly so the material can be checked out.

* If an error has been made, admit it at once. Concealed errors will leak out and cause far more problems.

* Never say "no comment". This is usually taken to imply there is something to hide.

* If information cannot be made available, give a reason.
 
 

Keeping a Communicatons Log

It can be helpful to keep track of----

* what media called/ arrived
* what was said to any media
* what was promised as follow-up to any media
* what was said to the community
* What the key questions/ issues are or seem to be
* what was published/aired

By January 1991, the newly-hired therapists had begun work in the renovated greystone building on the Prescott waterfront alongside the other members of the joint investigative team from the police and Family and Children's Services. A great deal had been accomplished by this group since the beginning of the investigation, much of it under intense pressure and scrutiny.

"The early part was really overwhelming," recalls Rocci Pagnello, "here was ust too much to do." As manager of the child welfare side of the investigation, he was trying to develop key systems and procedures at the same time as they needed to be used. As a result of this experience, he strongly advocates planning in advance for sexual abuse crises.

Once the children were identified as potential victims of abuse, their immediate needs were attended to. Where their safety and well-being were in jeopardy, they were removed from their homes and placed in the care of Family and Children's Services. Family court proceedings were launched to determine guardianship of the children and ensure their safety. Because of the number of children that had to be brought into care at the same time, Family and Children's Services hired Ottawa lawyer Jennifer Blishen l4 to prepare the cases. Many of these cases were very complex and involved trials that took up to two weeks.

Clinical assessments were court-ordered for the children going through protection proceedings. These were done by the Family Court Clinic in Ottawa. 'They're comprehensive assessments," says child protection counsel Jennifer Blishen. "The clinic interviews everyone: the children, the parents, the parents with the children. A social worker goes to the home. Psychological testing is done. There is the ability to do sexual behaviours testing on the adults." This process usually results in a recommendation to the court regarding the living situation that is in the best interests of the child.

Meanwhile, the police were continuing the criminal investigation, which involved interviewing suspects, potential victims and witnesses and gathering physical evidence. They adopted a strategy of laying charges against the accused in batches. 15 'There was a conscious decision not to be out charging and identifying single perpetrators and single victims," says Bonnie McIsaac. "It was done in groups so as not to contaminate the evidence or information sharing among alleged perpetrators or alleged victims." By the early summer of 1990, some preliminary trials were held to determine whether there was enough evidence to warrant full trials.

It was readily apparent that the testimony of the child victims would be critical to the cases. But courtrooms are frightening places for children at the best of times. Anxiety created by the prospect of confronting perpetrators and talking about their abuse in front of strangers can lessen the effectiveness of a child's testimony and add significantly to the trauma they have already suffered.

These are two reasons court preparation is so important in cases of child sexual abuse. Research has shown that the testimony of children who feel comfortable on the stand tends to be more credible. Good preparation can also reduce the retraumatization of children. 'There's a difference between a good witness on the stand and getting a healthy kid back off the stand," stresses Rocci Pagnello. "We wanted both."

'The police didn't really understand the family court process and the kinds of evidence we needed for that," recalls Pam Gummer. "And we didn't understand the criminal court process in the intimate kinds of ways we now know it. So there was a lot of discussion and long, long work hours."  After animated exchanges, they would usually come to some kind of consensus, she says.

"We realized," says Crown Attorney Desmond McGarry, "that for this to be a successful prosecution we all had to work together. That included putting aside whatever differences we might have. It was very important - and it actually worked - to make sure that each person understood clearly the role of the other person and respected the limits."

Jennifer Blishen offers an example: 'The very nature of the work meant that child protection workers would have to speak to accused persons. The workers had to be very careful that they knew where their role ended. If the accused started to say something that might be an inculpatory statement, the police had to be called in right away. Obviously such a statement could be very crucial evidence for the Crown in a criminal prosecution. If it was not properly taken and the appropriate warnings and cautions were not provided, then it could be inadmissible from a criminal court perspective."

"We held regular meetings and established a core group which met all the time," explains McGarry. The one thing that everybody agreed on right from the beginning was that the needs of the children took precedence over everything else. "We made a very clear decision to put the kids first in everything we did," he says.

"If it meant withdrawing a charge," McGarry continues, "I would withdraw. I don't worry about my win/loss record. If it's not in the best interests of the child to prosecute then we have to be serious and not prosecute. And, in the context of this project, I would never dream of making a decision like that without at least going around the table and finding out what everybody thinks."

This was a new experience for Pam Gummer. "Before this, Family and Children's Services had limited input into decisions about prosecuting sexual abuse cases and what charges to go ahead with," she says. "Here, we were able to help in those kinds of decisions. We had a lot of knowledge about some of these family systems. We were actually going into the homes and knew these people and the child victims."

'There is so much information in this kind of investigation," says Rocci Pagnello. "Family and Children's Services had ten, eleven workers and the police had four to eight at certain points. You have all these people out there pulling in bits of information which may connect with other bits, but you don't know until you all get together. Being in the same building made sharing critical information a lot easier and quicker."

"Being able to work together to share the information we needed to share was a benefit to our clients," Meyers says. "Seeing each other on a daily basis, we could spend two minutes in the hall and deal with a particular issue rather than spending a week playing phone tag. It was a lot more efficient. We were more on top of the cases and knew what was going on."

As well, McGarry talks of the valuable ongoing liaison between the Treatment Team and himself through Janet Lee for most of the cases. "It involved me telling them what was going on in my contacts with the children because it affected their therapy. If I interviewed a child on Monday, and on Tuesday he or she was having problems like bed-wetting, it told me something happened during the interview. So we had a way to deal with that."

Meyers adds that the investigators and other members of the front-line team learned that "therapy isn't this magical time where you take the kid behind a closed door for an hour a week and fix them up and send them out." A child's healing process requires a strong support system, which includes caregivers, teachers and all the other professionals a child comes into contact with in the course of her daily life. The more these key people cooperate, the better off the child will be.

Working closely with the police made it possible for the therapists to know why charges were or weren't being laid, something that does not always happen in sexual abuse cases. Another advantage, says Meyers, was that "the others had a better relationship with the children because they could see how we behaved with them and they developed some of those skills too."

The team also offered camaraderie and mutual support that made it easier for the professionals to cope with the emotional stress of the job. "We were really fortunate to have a team who supported one another," says Pam Gummer. "When we were having a really lousy day or when a kid made further disclosures, it was nice to know you could go to other team members and talk or cry -- it was really the ideal model."

The Investigation and Legal Process

"Successful investigation is hard work and thoroughness," says Crown Attorney Desmond McGarry, "and 99% of it is dull and tedious." One of the reasons for the success of this case, he says, was that the investigators stopped at each stage to ask what more could be done to get evidence to strengthen the cases. That doesn't always happen in criminal investigations of child sexual abuse. Some investigations "consist of taking a statement from the child, taking a statement from the parents, and that's it," says McGarry. 'The police in this project were acutely aware that all sorts of things can be done to support the Crown's case if you take the time to go over it thoroughly enough."

"Let's say you're talking to a child and he or she says the abuse happened in the apartment on afternoons that his mother was at bingo. You ask: "Was anybody else ever there?" "Well," the child says, "sometimes so and so was in the other room." That may not have come out before. Then it is crucially important to go and talk to that person to find out what he has to say. He may say he never saw anything happen. But he may say that he was there on a number of Thursday afternoons when the perpetrator was in the other room playing Nintendo just as the child had described."

In a number of instances the children were able to describe houses but weren't sure of their locations because they had moved so frequently. It was necessary to get photographs of the houses so that the children could identify them and confirm where the abuse took place. 'Those are little things that take time," says McGarry, "but they're important."

McGarry says it was also vital to go over what was said at the preliminary inquiry to see if there was any evidence that could be developed to further support the case. This was even more critical in instances where there was no physical or medical evidence, such as in cases where the abuse had happened many years before.

This multi-victim case involved numerous children, many of whom were very young, some of whom only had a peripheral association with the situation. Interviewing these children required skill, speed and thoroughness. All potential victims had to be interviewed as quickly as possible, by experienced interviewers who could understand and communicate with children.

Interviewers had to remain objective, as well as compassionate, despite hearing horrendous stories. They had to ensure that they did not make assumptions or lead the child, particularly when hearing a story that seemed similar to one already related. Ideally, says Jennifer Blishen, expertly trained interviewers should be in place right from the start in a case like this, "whether they are available in a particular child protection agency or whether you bring them in." Having people who know what they are doing makes investigations less vulnerable to charges that ideas are planted in the children's heads by adults. She also believes that cases like this need access to experts in the fields of child psychology, posttraumatic stress disorder, and credibility assessment.

A concern distinct to multi-victim cases - where the children know and communicate with each other regularly - is that evidence may be unintentionally contaminated. "If there is more than one victim for any one perpetrator," explains Rocci Pagnello, "then when you talk to that one victim, the chances are good that they may go talk to the other victims." It is important for investigators to reduce the chances of contamination bv interviewing quickly, by instructing the children not to discuss their stories with each other and by keeping them separated. Where contamination is suspected, the source must be identified and isolated.

Cases involving interconnected abuse present still other challenges, says Pagnello. "You have to keep track of who is connected." The investigators had link charts in their offices with pictures of perpetrators and arrows out to the victims showing who each was related to so the whole picture was obvious.

Situations where the abuse took place many years ago presented additional problems such as the lack of corroborating evidence, the distance of alleged victims who may have moved, the death or failing health of alleged offenders and sketchy or non-existent files.
 

(( In the early stages of the intrafamilial cases, the police went in with search warrants and did their searches very early in the morning. Once they were done, we (the child protection workers) arrived to address with the family child protection concerns. It was an emotional time for these families who had been up for several hours while the police were searching their houses.

We came in and told them we had allegations of possible abuse we had to investigate. We asked them to sign consent forms to have their children medically examined. All of the parents signed consents for us to take the children to Hotel Dieu Hospital for their medical exam.

If the medical exam was suspicious, then we would apprehend. Upon our return we would call and say that we were going to initiate court proceedings, that we are apprehending the child, that the child was going to be placed in foster care.

As soon as we received the parent's consent, we would interview the child. Sometimes there was a disclosure, sometimes there wasn't. We would meet with the parents afterwards and encourage them to cooperate and have their child medically examined. If it was an extrafamilial case and we had no concerns about the parents' involvement, they were physically present during the medical exam. They had an opportunity to speak to the doctors and nurses.

In some of the extrafamilial cases, the children were really quite young, often pre-verbal. Some of them presented with medical evidence indicative of sexual abuse and we had to apprehend to further assess risk issues. That's when we referred them for psychological assessments. In cases like that, if you have a child who isn't able to disclose who the perpetrator is, you may have to apprehend in case the perpetrator is actually a parent. And in some of these cases we apprehended those children because we suspected that the parents, even though they weren't the abusers, had failed to protect the children from abuse.))

Parallel Proceedings in Family and Criminal Court

In cases of intrafamilial sexual abuse, overlaps in child protection proceedings and criminal proceedings are not uncommon. But the sheer numbers and interconnections involved in this multi-victim, multi-offender case made it even more complicated than usual. "We might have three or four child protection cases," says Jennffer Blishen, "which were in some ways interconnected and one or two of those would also be going to the criminal courts at the same time."

'The burden of proof (or standard of proof is different before the court in a child protection proceeding and a criminal proceeding," explains Blishen. "In criminal court, you have to prove that a crime was committed beyond a reasonable doubt. In family court, we have to prove that the child is in need of protection which covers a whole spectrum of issues. The definition is multifaceted and the burden of proof is on a balance of probabilities."

Often, the defence counsel would suggest waiting for a criminal conviction before agreeing to an order for Crown wardship. In some ways it does make more sense to have the criminal trial first, says Blishen. "If the person is convicted, there is no need for a full-blown child protection hearing, because if it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he or she had sexually assaulted the child, nobody is going to argue that in the child protection context." But criminal trials often take much longer to get to court. "In child protection cases we can't wait long; we need to be as quick and expeditious as we can so the lives of these children are not left in limbo."

'The police told Family and Children's Services that if there was anything they could give us in terms of statements taken for criminal court, we could use them in family court if it meant ensuring the safety of the children," says Maureen McDougall. "That was a really big plus for us because we were able to access a lot of the interviews they did with perpetrators - interviews we wouldn't necessarily do."

Many defence lawyers were overwhelmed by the disclosure, says Blishen. 'They had no idea of the depth and the extent of the evidence of abuse that had been ongoing for some time." As a result, many offered to work out a compromise because they didn't want to proceed to trial. A number of parents eventually voluntarily consented to Crown wardship with no access.

One of the problems inherent in this process was that it discouraged alleged abusers from obtaining treatment. "Acknowledging that they had done these things in order to be considered for treatment programs meant laying themselves open to criminal charges," says Maureen McDougall. When parents denied the abuse and refused to seek help, Family and Children's Services had no choice but to remove the children from the home.

And because many of the children had been abused by grandparents, uncles and aunts, parents were encouraged to sever all contacts with their extended families if they wanted to strengthen their position in family court. "We recommended that they no longer associate with their families because they were a risk to the children," says McDougall.

In family court cases, a child may be in care up to 24 months from admission to the scheduling of their crown wardship trial. Family and Children's Services is responsible for a plan of care which includes access to parents and/or siblings and any services needed such as special school or day care programs, speech therapy and psychiatric assessments. One of the most time consuming aspects of these cases was supervising visits with parents. The child and youth worker plays an essential role in supporting the child, providing parenting assistance and managing these visits. As the termination of visits approaches, the stress on the child, parents and worker increases. The social worker is responsible for filing the protection application, outlining the plan of care, coordinating all services for the child and family, and managing the child protection trial.

Putting Children on the Stand

There is no question that testifying in public about sexual abuse can make children anxious and unsettled. One of the things attempted in this case, says Jennifer Blishen, was to avoid having the children testify in family court, because they were going to have to testify enough in the criminal context. This was possible because in family court hearsay evidence - the out-of-court statements given by children to third parties - is arguably admissible through a third party, she explains. "So instead of having the child testffy, a social worker who interviewed the child could potentially report what the child told them."

None of the children were ever required to take the stand in criminal court if it was not in their best interests, says Crown prosecutor McGarry. However, one of the key lessons learned was that, with good support and preparation, more children than imagined were capable of being reliable witnesses, surviving the court ordeal and even benefiting from it. After several children who were not initially thought capable of testifying, did so successfully, it became obvious that the children were stronger and more resilient than many adults had given them credit for.

"Experience taught us to take the time to ensure that children were given the opportunity to testify," says McGarry. "For many of them it was very important. Once you've seen a six-year-old come walking out of courtroom three feet off the ground because he has done it - regardless of the outcome of the case - you realize why it is important. It can be really empowering if it is done right. If it's done wrong  it's awful."

Victim/Witness Preparation

"Doing it right" meant that all the members of the front-line team had a role to play in lessening the trauma of the court experience. Everybody involved was sensitized to the children's needs to feel safe and secure throughout this process. "The key to successful court preparation is the team work," stresses Janet Lee, Victim/Witness Assistance Coordinator. "Everyone - the police, Crown, social workers, child and youth workers, volunteer drivers, treatment team, support staff, foster parents and community agencies - all worked together. It's like building blocks, there has to be a foundation for support."

She points to the contribution of the Treatment Team, for example. "I don't care how good court preparation is, if the victim or child is in crisis, there's not much I can do. Having a treatment team means there was already work done in getting a child to understand feelings and feel safe before I came in. It is very difficult to prepare children in incredible crisis with no support systems. I can't work miracles."

From McGarry's perspective, Lee had four main tasks: to acclimatize children to the process of going to court; to deal with their anxieties; to prepare them to meet him; and to advise him on any special needs the children may have. Lee notes that she was fortunate to be able to work with a Crown Attorney she could trust to look after a child's interests in court, and because of that she felt comfortable transferring the trust she had built up with a child over to him. McGarry has a knack for communicating with children, says Lee, and he made himself available to meet with them several times before the trial.

In general, a victim/witness program (of which there are 12 in Ontario jurisdictions) helps children to understand the adversarial nature of the criminal justice system, teaches them about court procedures, the roles of key people and familiarizes them with legal terms and concepts. It also makes children comfortable with the physical layout of the courtroom and stresses the importance of telling the truth and speaking clearly. As well, victim/witness personnel advise the Crown on issues of concern to victims and witnesses (for example, their need for aids to testimony), provide information and support to the parents/caregivers of the child and provide referrals to community resources.

No matter how much children may want to testify, it is often frightening to face their abusers in open court. As a result of 1988 amendments to the Criminal Code, children are now able to take the stand without having to see the accused, either from behind a screen or through closed-circuit television. These are referred to as aids to testimony. The Prescott case broke new ground in the regular use of closed-circuit television.

"I believe in closed-circuit TV," says Desmond McGarry. "Because the court has to give permission, one of the things we had to do was find someone to testify that the child required it in order to give a full and candid account of the abuse." This job went to several expert witnesses who assessed the needs of many children for aids to testimony. "The issue came down to fear and concems about the accused as well as distractibility," says McGarry. "It is very distracting for the child, someone with limited attention span, to go into a courtroom and give evidence." Once the arguments were made, however, McGarry found all the judges more than willing to accommodate the need for closed-circuit TV.

A unique situation that arose in this case was the need to prosecute individuals who were also called as witnesses in their own or other cases. In one instance, the accused was a person with a developmental handicap who McGarry knew would have difficulty understanding how he could be his friend in one case, and not in the next. McGarry arranged for another Crown to prosecute the case so as not to confuse and upset him.

In other cases, that wasn't necessary. McGarry was scrupulous about keeping the cases separate. "I was very careful to ensure that people knew that when they talked to me as a witness about what happened to them, I was not going to ask them about the case in which they were accused," says McGarry. 'They didn't have to worry that I would try to incriminate them."

This type of fair and respectful treatment had an interesting outcome. "Many of the accused actually felt more comfortable with the prosecution and Project Jericho staff than with their own lawyers," notes Lee. "Our police investigators are exceptional individuals," she says. "There is no malice there. Believe it or not, a lot of the accused actually thanked the investigators after coming out of jail. They said it was the best thing that could have happened."
 

(( Generally, I become involved at the time police make the decision to lay charges. The victim / witness preparation person acts like a buffer between the victim and the judicial system - sort of the humanizing part of the whole process.

First, I look at the Crown brief, that's what the investigators put together for the Crown to prosecute on. I also look at the victim's statements. I never discuss evidence with any victim or witness. I am not shaping or influencing testimony in any manner. But it is really important that I understand what they have gone through.

I sit down with the investigators and they tell me from their perspectives as police officers, social workers, whatever - how they think the child will do in court, what their personality is like, so I get a general feel for the case. I find out about the family history and the stability of the child's environment. ff the child is still in the home, I learn what kind of supports they have, if any, and the attitude of the support person. In these cases, I may have to spend time trying to get the parents to understand the system so they don't transfer their anxiety and anger to the children or put undue pressure on them.

I was careful to interfere as little as possible with the children's lives. I didn't want the kids to feel they were being punished any more by going through this court process. I tried to work around their schedule so they didn't have to miss their Brownies or anything like that. I tried not to have them miss too much school or even avoid missing school at all. I worked evenings and weekends so that their schedules were not disrupted.

I tried right from the beginning to empower the children with information in terms of their self-confidence by saying that they are important, and they have an important story to tell. I say that the Crown Attomey's job is to help them tell their story; the defence lawyer's role is to defend the accused and raise a reasonable doubt that maybe the accused didn't break the law.

I tell the child that we don't know the outcome and we can't promise anything, but the police believe you. You're the one who knows what happened, because you were there. Your only job is to tell the truth. I would ask them: Who is the most important part of the team? And they would say: the Crown Attorney. No, you are. Oh, Me! And the light bulb goes on. So the kid sees a huge team - all working for them.

We ease into the court stuff. I try to humanize the Crown Attorney as much as possible before they have a chance to meet him. I talk about Des, and his dog, his horses. It's very rare that a witness has a chance to ask the Crown Attorney anything personal, especially kids. I think they have the right to do that. It shows that we are all the same. We are just regular people. We all feel scared or nervous about going to court.

I run through a 'fear list' with the children to help me identify and get them to talk about their anxieties. I ask the child to respond to statements such as 'I'm afraid I won't be believed,' and then we can really zero in on their specific concerns.

It's important to make court preparation as interesting as possible. Court is really important and very serious but getting ready for court doesn't need to be mundane or dry. Depending on the level of the child, we do quizzes about court questions. We sit down and colour a lot. When we had change of venue trials, the police would videotape the exterior of the courthouse and an empty courtroom so the victims would be familiar with them and feel more comfortable.

I built a miniature courtroom model complete with figures in robes to explain to the children the three different ways kids go to court. Uncertainty is very difficult for kids. They wonder how they will testify in court. I say it is up to the judge to decide and we won't know until the day we go to court or maybe the day before that. That is an added stress for the child. In most cases, it has worked out well. Many of the children have testified via closed-circuit TV.

(( What I tried to do was interview the children about three times. The first interview builds a rapport with the child. Sometimes that's easy, sometimes it's hard. It requires being reasonably up-to-date on the World Wrestling Federation, "My Favourite Pony," cartoons, all things I don't mind being up-to-date on. Having a sense of what kids are listening to musically, things like that.

Contrary to what people might think I don't spend a great deal of time going over and over the evidence because I don't think it's productive. I dont want children to go into court and tell their story by rote. It's not effective. The twelve people in the jury will just say that the kid has been coached.

At the first meeting there is the most gentle lead-in to the sexual abuse. I try to get them to talk to me about the sexual abuse in the first interview before we quit so that they know that this is what they are there for and that it is serious. I also want to establish the vocabulary and break the ice on a number of issues.

The second interview is to go through the evidence. It's important the children know the types of questions they will be asked. I need to know the types of answers they're likely to give. We get comfortable talking about it together because that's what we will be doing in court.

The third interview is usually shortly before the court appearance. I try to focus on cross-examination and issues around court - what it will be like, who the judge is and stuff like that. The victim / witness coordinator does most of that but I like to go over it myself.

When I prepare witnesses for cross-examination, I know the types of questions that lawyers use that can be confusing for children. I usually use a hypothetical situation which has nothing to do with the case and ask them the types of questions which can cause kids trouble. Also, in my experience kids will say " I don't remember" or "I don't know,"  when they mean "I don't understand". "I don't know" and "I don't understand" are two very different things for us. We tell them to say, "I don't understand".

The preparation after the preliminary hearing consists of meeting with the child and building up how well they did. Whether they did well or not is irrelevant, I want every child I deal with in court to come out feeling successful. I don't care whether the case is going down the tubes or not, they have done their part.

I always insist on going over the facts at least once again before the trial in order to deal with anything that may have arisen in the preliminary inquiry that may be inconsistent. Other than that I don't make the children go through the whole process again by rote.

Most of the children went through preliminary inquiries and trials, so they end up testifying twice. And then there were kids who ended up giving evidence in three or four different cases - so maybe giving evidence as many as eight or ten times. If that is the case, going through the first interview each time is unnecessary.

In cases where the child was involved in more than one trial, you have to be very careful to explain to the child that he is coming to see you today about his dad. When he comes to see you next week, it'll be about his uncle. We try to keep those things separate for them. ))

Helping the Children Heal:  The Task of the Treatment Team

Since the target population for the Treatment Team were children and families involved in the Project Jericho investigation, referrals came through the child welfare team which had contact with all the sexual abuse victims. All incoming referrals were reviewed at a weekly meeting of the Treatment Team. After discussion of the specific needs and skills required to work with each client, an appropriate therapist was assigned.

After going through the files and meeting with the child, family and other service providers, the therapist would determine the treatment goals for each child. The Treatment Team employed a variety of techniques and modes of therapy in an effort to meet these goals. Individual, sibling and family therapy were all provided, with the majority of clients receiving some form of individual therapy. Several received joint sibling sessions to work on specific issues and family therapy was offered to the biological, foster and adoptive families of some clients.

"Our therapy was designed around developing individual treatment plans for the kids which were closely related to the plans of care that Family and Children's Services had as well," says Meyers. 'These kids needed all sorts of things put in place for them - social skills groups, opportunities for recreation and drivers to get them to the 32 places they needed to get to."

The Treatment Team regarded the children they worked with as regular kids - kids who had survived sexual exploitation and who were in need of healing - not kids who were "abnormal or incredibly damaged." While psychologist Susan Meyers says she doesn't have a firm idea whether the children associated with this case were more traumatized than other sexually abused kids, in her clinical judgement they weren't. 'There were some kids who had ritualistic aspects to abuse and some who did not," Meyers says. "But that's probably the case at any treatment centre."

What made these children different from the norm were the number of perpetrators involved in their abuse and the links between them. Their trauma was intensified by the frequency with which they had to change living situations and appear in court. 'Their issues involved all the different moves, grieving for people who had been in their lives and weren't any longer and figuring out whether the could trust anybody or not," says Meyers. "Also, a lot of the younger kids had developmental lags."

In the natural maturation process, children learn to define their personal boundaries, negotiate with others and cope with emotions such as anger, sadness and fear. Their self-esteem is fragile. Children are dependent on adults for survival and approval, and they learn what's right and wrong from the trusted authority figures in their lives.

Contrary to popular notions, therapy does not involve an endless discussion of the actual abuse. "Our goal is not to make them regurgitate every sordid detail. They don't have the coping mechanisms to deal with it, and they can be retraumatized or desensitized if they're made to recite events with no emotions attached," says Bridget Revell.

In order to grow, children need to be able to feel again. For this to happen, they must be able to communicate their pain and have it acknowledged. This can be done through play, art and puppet games. "In play therapy, therapists model behaviour, teaching children how to express feelings, showing them that they have boundaries and can safely interact with others without being violated."17

For example, one male child had difficulty with anger. Like many abused children, he'd control his feelings to the point of not showing any at all, then small things would provoke temper tantrums. "He'd lose control," says Revell, "and later he'd promise he would never get mad again in his whole life." This is a pattern often seen in abusive men, who beat their partners in fits of anger, express remorse, promise never to do it again and are inevitably triggered again. The root cause of this rage is often some form of childhood violation.

Through play, Revell helped the boy learn how to safely express his anger, stand up for himself and set boundaries. Revell helped him personalize his temper. They made friends with his 'Temper Lion" and talked about what made the temper come out. Revell invented a "Get Mad Quiz Game" which involved a puppet judge and three puppet contestants on each side answering questions on what kind of behaviour was appropriate when angry.

"We had the room to be innovative and develop different approaches to therapy," says Revell. "When you're treating a specialized population of kids, you may not be able to do things the traditional way. There were two particular kids who I spent many afternoons with in the summer driving to places where they had lived in the past. For one kid it was to give him a sense of his personal history. Prior to foster care he didn't really have a memory and he was confusing his statements about his previous homes with his foster homes. I drove him around to the various houses he had lived in and we took pictures. It took an inordinate amount of time, more than an hour a week in the office, but it was essential."

Breakthroughs take different forms with different children. Often they emerge indirectly from some type of play. "Playing in the sandbox or painting pictures, playing with anatomically correct dolls or talking through hand puppets - with the child choosing and leading the activity - the therapist watches for 'the teachable moment,' those spontaneous happenings in which the children experience a burst of insight that moves them forward."18

Meyers had the demanding task of helping him understand that his behaviour was inappropriate, not because sexuality was bad, but because it hurt others when it was acted on without their consent. She was making little progress until one day the boy arrived at his session upset because another child had stolen his baseball cards. Pleased that he was finally feeling something, Meyers comforted him and explained that having his baseball cards taken without permission was like his father taking his body without permission. He needed to realize that his father had taken something that belonged to him and that it was wrong. Understanding that he'd been powerless to stop the abuse, he could begin to reclaim himself.

The primary goal of therapy is giving the "self" back to the child and letting them have control of that. 'The essence of many traumas is losing control," says Bridget Revell. 'This is what healing is all about: being able to look back and say, yes, I was helpless then, and now I'm safe."19

2. To provide therapeutic counselling to victims and their families.

3. To coordinate the case management of children and their families who were not part of a court-ordered child welfare service.

4. To ensure that all victims identified by the investigation receive treatment.

5. To ensure that all necessary information between child welfare and other professionals can be disclosed.

6. To integrate available services to respond to the treatment needs of children and their families.20

During treatment, the living situation of 60% of the children changed. Forty-four per cent moved to another living situation, 4% returned to live with their biological family and 12% changed their place of residence with their families.

Sixty per cent of the children were actively involved with Family and Children's Services. At the end of treatment, 38% of these children were Crown Wards, 12% were temporary wards, and 10% were under supervision orders.

Eighty-one per cent of the children in treatment were involved in the legal process. Of these, 26% went through family court proceedings, 38% went through criminal trials and 36% were involved with both.

Criminal court involvement was identified as a major issue for 60% of the children. Of those, 87% were prepared by the Victim / Witness coordinator and Crown Attorney. Thirteen per cent were not required to testify. Of those prepared, 74% did provide testimony. Thirty per cent were required to testify more than once. 21

An Integrated Healing Model

The treatment model used in this case was one which encompassed the entire social context of the children involved. The Treatment Team saw their role as helping to strengthen each child's support system by working closely with all the important people around the child, in addition to spending time with them in therapeutic activity

"You have to be involved in the rest of the kid's life," says Ruth Campbell Balagus. 'They spend most of their time at school and at home, or with their friends on the street." Children need to be surrounded by people who know how to help their healing: parents, foster parents, teachers, friends, volunteers and other professionals.

With that understanding in mind, the Treatment Team placed a great deal of emphasis on collaborating with the people and agencies that had regular contact with the child. This took two forms: engaging in consultation and case coordination, and providing support and education.

Consulting with key individuals promoted regular communication about many aspects of children's lives and ensured that decisions were consistent, coordinated and took into account the impact on the child's home life, school situation, therapy process, court involvements and overall development.

Regular contact was maintained between the therapists and the chent's caregivers. This consisted of communication when the child was brought in for therapy, telephone contact, frequent visits to foster homes or biological families, family sessions, and attendance at multi-agency case conferences. In many cases, visits to foster families and some family sessions were made jointly by the therapists and the child welfare workers to ensure a consistent approach.

In cases where Family and Children's Services was involved and consent for communication had been obtained, there was frequent consultation between FCS and the Treatment Team. Often, weekly meetings were held between the therapist and the child welfare worker to provide updates and continue planning for the client. Telephone contact occurred regularly, sometimes daily.

The FCS Child and Youth workers were the children's primary workers and were very familiar with their specific needs. They had extensive contact with the children, foster parents and schools. They provided parenting assistance, supervised visits and noted all observations. They organized recreational opportunities and helped coordinate the children's schedules.

The Treatment Team also attempted to maintain regular contact with the child's school. In some situations this involved bi-weekly meetings between the therapist, the child welfare worker and the school. In other instances, the contact was face-to-face or by telephone as needed. For some children, regular case conferences were held involving a wide range of players. Meyers recalls one case in which meetings included the foster parents, the relief foster parents, the teacher's aid, the teacher, a developmental services group home which occasionally provided relief, a one-to-one worker from FCS and herself.

"Getting together every three or four weeks as a team to talk about the child was really effective," she says. "I could report that his dad was in court last week and he's concerned about the verdict. The teacher could pipe up and say that the child had been listening to the radio that morning and heard talk about his dad, so he was expecting a blow-up around noon. We would talk about what was in place in case that happened and people would offer their suggestions. We could arrange that the foster dad be called to come and pick him up and give him some cool-down time."

Communication with schools was one area where the establishment of a specialized team was somewhat problematic. Given that the team had been established to treat sexual abuse, anyone seen as a client of the team was automaticary identified as being involved in the investigation and was viewed as being a victim. This differs from situations in which clients are referred to general children's mental health services and may be there for a variety of reasons. In the case of children still residing with their biological families, families often chose not to have the Treatment Team communicate with the school to avoid being labelled.

These dedicated individuals were on the road every day from morning to night, transporting the children to a myriad of appointments and activities. The children's schedules often included therapy once a week, family visits once or twice a week, constant assessments (psychological and court-related), special assessments, court preparation, as well as attendance at trials and pre-trials.

The therapists consulted frequently with the personnel involved in both family and criminal court proceedings. The team worked with the lawyers and victim / witness preparation worker to explain upcoming court processes to clients and to prepare them if necessary. The Treatment Team was consulted regarding specific issues, such as the best way to involve a client in a court proceeding or explain a court decision to them. They also engaged in case specific discussion with the police regarding clients as was needed. On several occasions children were introduced to the police team during sessions as a way of lessening anxiety or of assisting in preparation for interviewing.

While collaboration was recognized as vital to effective treatment, it was considered equally important to ensure that all clients had their rights to confidentiality respected. This was accomplished by using standardized Ontario Ministry of Health forms (Consent to the Disclosure, Transmittal or Examination of a Clinical Record) to obtain consent and share information between agencies.

"It was hard for people to understand that if two professionals were talking on a regular basis they could also maintain confidentiality within bounds they had set," says Pam Gummer. "That was something we all really worked on with clients. We were very clear with them what we needed their consent for and what areas would be discussed with other service providers."

Therapy and the Court Process

Some Crown prosecutors and treatment centres seek to delay a child's therapy until a trial is over in order to avoid defence charges that the treatment process influences a child's testimony and thus contaminates the evidence. Because it can take months or years for most cases of sexual abuse to come to trial, this may result in a long wait to be helped. This was never considered an option in the Prescott case.

Crown prosecutor McGarry says that delaying or withholding therapy is never in the best interests of the children, and is questionable from an ethical point of view. "What we did," says McGarry, "was make sure that the therapists understood their responsibilities. We relied on them to be professional enough to be able to recount what happened in therapy if it became an issue in court and have what they did stand up to scrutiny."

However, incremental disclosures are common with child sexual abuse, and disclosures during therapy do occur. When this happened, the therapists stayed focused on their job of dealing with emerging feelings and did not try to carry out investigations. When a child reported new information related to the alleged abuse, they promptly notified the investigative team.

The clear separation of roles within a collaborative framework helped to keep the process clean, says Susan Meyers. The therapists were not involved in the investigation in any way. By the time kids came to them, they had been interviewed by Family and Children's Services and the police.

In a few cases, the Treatment Team was asked to testify in family court proceedings. Team members occasionally attended criminal trials to provide support to child witnesses. They also wrote Victim Impact Statements which were submitted to the courts for the purposes of sentencing convicted offenders.

As for the impact of court on the children's healing, Bridget Revell says that the main problems were caused by long time frames and delays. Children who had to wait years for the family court to decide their fate were often preoccupied with where they were going to live and whether they were going to see their biological parents again and these concerns hindered their progress.

With criminal court, children have to keep the information about the abuse in their mind in a certain way.  Having to keep the facts in the forefront of their mind as a trial approaches, only to be faced with a postponement and having to dredge them up again months later can affect children's ability to process the abusive experience and put it behind them.

Educating the Community

In addition to their clinical work, the Treatment Team felt it was their responsibifity to provide education to the community on sexual abuse. Targets included other community professionals, families and the public at large. The Treatment Team spoke to schools, day care centres, potential adoptive parents, and the staff of Beechgrove. Bridget Revell recalls one school in which the Treatment Team spent several hours with the school staff  "talking about sexual abuse, the impact on kids, how it could be approached and how it could be dealt with."

Advisory Committee member Henry De Souza notes that many of the schools appreciated the fact that they could call the Treatment Team for advice. "In general schools get information and education on identification," says De Souza, "but haven't a clue what happens after that - about how to be supportive of the child and what to do."

Planning for Long-term Treatment Needs

One of the major problems created by the special project status of the Treatment Team was the question of continuing the children's therapy when the team disbanded. The Treatment Team was initially funded for a two-year period (1991-1992) but received an extension to continue its work with partial funding for a third year.

At the close of 1992, special funding from the Ministry of Community and Social Services for the child welfare component of the investigation ceased and the Child Abuse Project came to an end. Although the police investigation carried on, the child protection workers were brought back to the Brockville office of Family and Children's Services and only Pam Gummer remained on the investigation part-time.

At the same time, the therapists were also moved to the Brockville office of Family and Children's Services where they continued to provide treatment. Because the Prescott Child Sexual Abuse Advisory Committee had also disbanded by this time, the team's reporting body was switched to the Children's Services Advisory Group (CSAG), the group responsible for local children's mental health services.

Soon after beginning their third year, the Treatment Team started to plan for its termination. This was jointly facilitated by the Ministry and the CSAG. In May of 1993, all the relevant community agencies met with the Treatment Team to discuss how clients still requiring treatment would continue to receive services in the community.

Because of the nature of sexual abuse, certain issues arise at certain stages in a child's life. Children who are doing well at one point can be anticipated to need therapy as they mature and experience new situations and feelings. The issues for a five-year-old are different than for a child at puberty or for a young adult.

"Kids who had been victims of the kind of abuse that occurred in this case have long-term needs which require a long-term planning approach," says Rob Richards, the program supervisor from the Ministry of Community and Social Services who presided over the winding down of the project. "Special project status is not something that is likely to go on forever so you can anticipate and improve your case planning. That obviously requires effort on the part of both the project and of the potential receiving agents for their cases."

"One contentious issue was intensity," explains Richards. "When you have a purpose-built project, the level of intensity for each case can be set across a relatively limited number of kids and families. When you try to maintain that intensity in the context where there is more staff but many more people to be served, it becomes awkward. There is a conflicting priority to resolve."

The controversial question of whether the children involved in Project Jericho had been given more immediate, long-term and collaborative service than other sexually abused children in the area (a so-called "cadillac service') and, if so, whether this was justified, was debated again during the discussion about the transfer of cases. Because resources were limited, some agency personnel felt that it was unfair to allow these children to hop over other equally needy children already on waiting lists.

Agencies did agree to continue the treatment of Project Jericho children without interruption. Profiles of each client were drawn up, along with the treatment skills required and sent to the prospective agencies. Once therapists were assigned, case conferences were set up to discuss the needs of each child to be transferred.

Strengthening the Foster Care System

Many of the children involved in the investigation were in foster care at one point or another during their time with the Treatment Team. Thirty-eight per cent were Crown Wards by the time the Treatment Team wound up. The courts had terminated the legal rights of their parents and had made the province of Ontario their legal guardian through Family and Children's Services.

Those who are not adopted will live in a succession of foster homes until they are old enough to graduate from the system. The therapists say that constant upheavals and resulting insecurity can leave as many, if not more, emotional scars as the abuse that led to the child being removed from the home. 'Two of my kids were more traumatized by the foster care system than they were their abusive homes," says Ruth Campbell-Balagus. "One of my clients is her fifth foster home in two years. Her problems were increasing, and it wasn't because she was dealing with sexual abuse. Her biggest goal in therapy was dealing with separation and loss, from her biological family, from foster home to foster home."

One foster father tells of trying to cope with a young boy who could not express his anger appropriately. It emerged through verbal and physical threats, rampaging his bedroom, urinating in comers and messing himself. The family had two young girls of their own. The placement finally collapsed because t