Friends of the Madison County Child Advocacy Center

The Madison County Child Advocacy Center (CAC) provides professional intervention and supportive services to fight child abuse. Most importantly, the CAC provides a safe haven for children to talk about the physical and/or sexual abuse they may have experienced and to help in limiting the number of times a child has to be interviewed. Before the CAC opened, a child who was a victim or witnessed a violent crime would often be interviewed by 8 to 12 different people before the case went to trial. Because of the CAC, abused children no longer have to endure such a strenuous interviewing process and authorities are better able to prosecute abuse cases.

In addition to coordinating a multidisciplinary team response and providing a child friendly environment for intervention, the CAC provides two basic services: case management and forensic interviews for children involved in allegations of abuse. In addition to coordinating a multidisciplinary team response and providing a child friendly environment for intervention, the CAC provides two basic services: case management and forensic interviews for children involved in allegations of abuse. Forensic Interviews create an environment that provides a child the opportunity to talk to a trained professional regarding what the child has experienced or knows that resulted in a concern about abuse. The purpose of a forensic interview is to obtain a statement from a child, in a developmentally and culturally sensitive, unbiased and fact-finding manner that will support accurate and fair decision making by the involved criminal justice and child protection systems. The Madison County Child Advocacy Center employs specially trained forensic interviewers to provide child-focused, developmentally appropriate and culturally sensitive forensic interviews.