Since 1983 April has been National Child Abuse Prevention Month and a long standing event to shine a light on what can be done locally was held Thursday.Hands Around the Courthouse was held outside the Knox County Courthouse was held yesterday and organized by the Blue Ribbon Task Force, which is made up of a host of local agencies involved mainly with children and families.
Director of Wellness and Health Promotion with the Knox County Health Department Erin Olson says that child abuse isn’t prejudiced.
It can affect all income levels, ethnic groups, religions and certainly all towns and cities.
There were over 29,000 confirmed victims of abuse and neglect in Illinois in 2017.
Last year in Knox County alone there were 1,041 hotline calls reporting abuse with 34 of those cases being confirmed and 20 children taken into protective custody.
Judge James Standard was the event’s keynote speaker.
Standard says there should more resources directed at preventing conditions that lead to abuse.
“It takes awareness to begin with. It takes an understanding of the conditions that lead to abuse and it takes a recognition that those problems exist throughout our society,” Standard says. “You can go to any community in this state, over a certain population, you’re going to find an incidence of some conduct that we would consider to be abuse.”
He says Illinois has many programs to keep abusers from harming again but none that focus on prevention.
