“Toni” wanted to be anywhere but seated in a small room Friday morning, surrounded by observers, and having to talk about sex.
She fidgeted constantly, shifting from one side of the chair to the other, twirling her hair with her fingers.
Her interviewer, Jeannie Beck, an adult protective services officer with the Pittsburg Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services office, wasn’t exactly relaxed either.
Their conversation was awkward, littered with Toni’s occasional expressions of profanity or other means of letting it be known that she would rather be elsewhere.
The discussion — a series of videotapes involving the 12-year-old Toni and an older boyfriend of one of her acquaintances.
Toni wasn’t exactly pleased that the tapes had been passed around school.
But her biggest complaint was that the tapes were discovered at all, and that she would have to go through the legal process while the male subject in the tapes was prosecuted.
Watching intently and taking notes of the fictionalized account were a handful of law enforcement, social services and other officers from across the state, in Iola last week as part of the Finding Words training.
The training, developed by the Western Kansas Advocacy Center, is geared to help develop the newest approaches in the prevention and investigation of child abuse — in particular, sexual abuse.
The five-day training session at St. John’s Parish in Iola was capped by hypothetical interviews. The students were graded on their performances, while the spectators occasionally were asked for suggestions of other questions that could be asked.
The “victims” were portrayed by current and former drama students at Wichita State University.
Toni, in this case, was not an actual 12-year-old girl, but instead WSU graduate Briley Meek, who has developed Toni and two other characters for the periodic training sessions.
“Toni’s the type of character who just doesn’t see what the big deal is,” Meek said, further explaining that the character’s desensitivity toward sex had been a gradual process.
“I mean, they have a TV show ‘16 and Pregnant’ that people watch,” Meek said, voicing a hint of displeasure. “What are kids supposed to think?”
THE TRAINING IS developed to help those involved in child protective services to better conduct forensic interviews by avoiding leading questions and getting thorough information so that additional follow-up interviews are unnecessary, explained Kelly Robbins, Finding Words of Kansas facilitator and executive director of the Western Kansas CAC office.
“Child abuse cases, especially sexual abuse, are among the hardest cases in Kansas to prosecute,” in large part because of insufficient interviews with the children.
With proper interviewing techniques involving more than just law enforcement, “we can work as a team to better serve the child, and to get better information,” Robbins said.
The five-day or 40-hour training session included several hours of classwork instruction by law enforcement personnel and other social services representatives, a number of tests and other take-home assignments “which everybody must pass,” and finally the mock interviews, Robbins said.
Students included law enforcement personnel, SRS representatives, attorneys, therapists, school counselors and other child advocacy center representations.
The culmination of the training results in an extensive and collaborative effort to serving children who have been abused, Allen County Sheriff Tom Williams said.
“Finding Words of Kansas is the gold standard of showing people how to interview children,” Williams said.
Finding Words training sessions are held three times a year across the state.
“Allen County was fortunate to get the training here,” Williams said.
The class was hosted by the Allen County Child Advocacy Center, in conjunction with the Allen County Multi-Agency Team and Hope Unlimited.
