Cathy Crabtree is the Executive Director of Children?s Advocacy Centers of Texas. Prior to assuming this position in November 2005, she served as a director with the Crime Victim Services Grants and Contracts Division for the Office of the Attorney General in Austin, Texas. Cathy has also been a private consultant/trainer, providing training and technical assistance for staff, board and team members of local CACs as well as representatives of CAC state chapters across the nation. For six years, she served as the Director of Program Services for Children?s Advocacy Centers of Texas, Inc. ? an organization she helped to establish in the early 1990s. In her capacity as Director of Program Services for CACTX, she provided training and direct technical assistance to staff, board and multidisciplinary team members at some 61 CAC programs in Texas. Her work at the state and national level in the CAC field follows a seven-year stint as the founding executive director of a local CAC in Young County, Texas. She continues to serve on the Training Faculty for the Southern and Midwest Regional CACs and is a site reviewer for the National Children?s Alliance. A former newspaper editor, she holds a degree in Journalism from West Virginia University.
DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE
By Joy Rauls, CACTX Executive Director
Seven-year-old Daniel knew only that he was scared when he walked through the door with his mother and younger sister, but seeing the brightly colored walls, the toys and games scattered about and the smiling faces of the people who worked there, he immediately knew that he had done the right thing. The day before, Daniel had somehow mustered all the courage he could find to tell his mother about what he had seen happening to his little sister when they went to the babysitter’s house each day after school. He was her big brother and he knew he was supposed to protect her.
Fortunately for Daniel, when he found the courage to tell, there was someone there waiting at a local children’s advocacy center (CAC) ready and able to listen. Last year some 40,000 children like Daniel entered the doors of a children’s advocacy center in communities large and small throughout Texas. These children were met by professionals with special training so they knew how to listen, how to respond and how to act in order to ensure Daniel, his sister and other children like them would be protected and given the support and the tools they need to heal from the scars of abuse, eventually growing up to be healthy, whole adults capable of making a contribution to society.
Restoring hope and allowing children to resume their childhoods is what children’s advocacy centers are all about. They represent unique partnerships with law enforcement, child protective services, prosecutors, medical and mental health professionals, forensic interviewers, victim advocates and others – all of whom come together at the CAC to meet the needs of each child and family who comes through those doors.
The CAC model is a proven approach but one that requires an enormous commitment on the part of the professionals and agencies that work in the child abuse field. It also requires a tremendous, ongoing contribution of resources from public and private entities alike. Here in Texas, the CAC movement continues to thrive because Texans have dedicated themselves to making sure that when children like Daniel find the courage to talk about what has happened to them, there is a local children’s advocacy center ready and able to listen.