The centers will bring together all the services ... so the children will no longer have to run around to all the offices and re-live their nightmare over and over again.
The Knesset has approved a law requiring the Finance Ministry to provide NIS 7 million to fund construction of seven treatment centers within the next three years for children suffering physical or sexual abuse. The centers will be operated by the Social Services Ministry.
The law, promoted by the National Council for the Child, was proposed and pushed through the parliamentary process by Labor Member of Knesset, Rabbi Michael Melchior, but enjoyed broad support across the political spectrum. Sixty-seven MKs voted for the bill.
One-Stop Services for Abused Children
According to Melchior, the new centers will provide all necessary services under one roof, including the facilities in which authorities must interview child. Therapists use a variety of means, including toys, games, dolls and other media, with which to help children express and then later work through the feelings generated by the horrors to which they were subjected.
Much of the material that results from the sessions is important for a variety of professionals to have access to in order to bring to justice those who abused the children in the first place.
The dilemma has been how to bring together under one roof all the elements needed to interview the children and then later provide them with the resources for recovery while generating the material needed to convict their tormentors, so that the children are not forced to visit several different agencies as they have been up till now.
Equally important under the measure is that a child who suffered abuse would only have to testify once. "The centers will bring together all the services – police, psychologists, doctors and child welfare officers under one roof," explained Melchior, adding that the children "will no longer have to run around to all the offices and re-live their nightmare over and over again."
The testimony would be videotaped or observed by various social service officials, thus allowing a number of experts to assess the child without requiring him or her to repeat the story. It also allows the child to tell the tale without forcing him or her to face the attacker.
This is critical because with every retelling, a child – and for that matter, any abused adult – is traumatized anew, exacerbating the original psychological shock and possibly creating further permanent damage.
The centers will be designed to be child-friendly, Melchior said, which it is hoped will also help them feel a little safer and reduce the trauma they have experienced.
One such center is located in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Kiryat Yovel, operating as part of a pilot program funded by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation.