Hope and Healing: Preventing Child Abuse in Our Community

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. Lynn Jennings, Ph.D., has ben treating child sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect for over 20 years. She is the TTUHSC School of Health Professions Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program assistant program director/instructor in the Department of Clinical Counseling and Mental Health. Dr. Jennings emphasizes the need for early intervention and outlines the long-term consequences of abuse and the role of friends, family, and mandated reporters in identifying and reporting cases. 

Help us raise awareness about National Child Abuse Prevention Month by sharing this podcast with your community.

Transcript

Melissa Whitfield  0:09 
Hello and welcome back to Texas Tech Health Check from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. I'm your host, Melissa Whitfield. We want you to get healthy and stay healthy with help from evidence based advice from our physicians, health care providers and researchers. April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, and we'd like to help educate our listeners about child abuse and neglect and what we can do to prevent it. In Texas, one in six children suffered abuse in 2024 and three out of five children will never report their abuse. Dr Lynn Jennings is our expert for this episode. She is Assistant Program Director and instructor in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program with our Department of Clinical Counseling and Mental Health in the School of Health Professions. She also has been treating child sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect for over 20 years. Dr Jennings talks to us about the different types of abuse, how that's different from unintentional harm, what signs we should look for if we suspect a child is experiencing abuse or neglect, and what the long term consequences are of abuse. A disclosure, Dr Jennings refers to a conversation we had before we started the interview. I shared with Dr Jennings my own experience as a teenager, when an adult visiting my classroom was standing next to me for no reason and put their hand on my back in a way that made me feel uncomfortable, that took me several years to realize was inappropriate.

Melissa Whitfield  1:51 
Dr Jennings, welcome back to our podcast.

Dr. Lynn Jennings  1:53 
Thank you. It's great to be here.

Melissa Whitfield  1:54 
How are you today?

Dr. Lynn Jennings  1:55 
I'm doing pretty well. How are you doing?

Melissa Whitfield  1:56 
I'm doing well. Thank you. And as I said, welcome back, and you've been here before, but could you remind our listeners a little bit about yourself, your expertise and what you do for the Health Sciences Center?

Dr. Lynn Jennings  2:07 
Sure, I am an instructor and the Assistant Program Director for our Clinical Mental Health program here in the School of Health Professions at TTUHSC,

Melissa Whitfield  2:17 
Well again welcome back.

Dr. Lynn Jennings  2:19 
Thank you.

Melissa Whitfield  2:20 
And this time you're here to talk to us about child abuse prevention, because April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. Why is public awareness so important, and how has awareness changed over the years?

Dr. Lynn Jennings  2:32 
So public awareness is really important, because what we found over the years is that when we have more and more public awareness, we have better opportunities for prevention. So the more we are educating people about the signs, symptoms of child abuse and neglect, then they are able to identify those signs, hopefully catch it early on, and then be able to intervene a child's not as traumatized because the incidents haven't occurred to such a degree that it's become extremely difficult to overcome. And how it's changed over the years is, I'm going to go back to to 2009 we had a a law that was enacted. It was originally House Bill, I think 1041, or 1014, but they changed it to Jenna's Law, and it was because Jenna Quinn, who was an abuse survivor after going through all of the treatment that she went through, felt like that there needed to be an awareness. And so she lobbied the state of Texas and actually got a bill passed that basically gives a mandate for community education. And the whole premise behind that is, with more community education, we have more prevention, more awareness, you know, hopefully stopping child abuse, or at least stopping it early on.

Melissa Whitfield  3:56 
What is considered child abuse, and what are the different forms of child abuse and neglect.

Dr. Lynn Jennings  4:02 
So I like to refer to the Texas Family Code when we talk about this, but I'm not going to talk in Texas Family Code language, because that would be really dry. But child abuse and neglect is basically knowingly harming a child, intentionally harming a child, intentionally leaving a child in a situation that's abusive or neglectful, and doing that in a way that causes emotional harm, physical harm, psychological harm, to a child. And so when you when you look at the different types of abuse and neglect, we have in three major categories. We have child sexual abuse, we have physical abuse, we have domestic violence, and then there's one more, and then neglect is its own category. And so those are the different types that we usually will work with in the community.

Melissa Whitfield  4:58 
A while back, we did an episode on how children with special needs are more likely to suffer abuse. What are some specific risk factors that would make a child more vulnerable to abuse or neglect?

Dr. Lynn Jennings  5:09 
So one of the reasons that children who have special needs are more vulnerable is because they may not have the communication skills, they may not have the ability, they may not even be verbal, and so they become more vulnerable. And what we know about people who commit sexual offenses is that they look for vulnerable populations. So they look for populations of children who are neglected at home, who come to school, maybe not clean, or who are very distracted at school, or don't seem to have a strong family support system or support system at all. And so we have, you know, your foster care population. We have your lower socioeconomic class, that that population, any marginalized populations to include special needs populations, they're all very vulnerable to child abuse and neglect.

Melissa Whitfield  6:10 
How can we tell the difference between unintentional harm and abuse or neglect? I know you touched on this a little bit earlier.

Dr. Lynn Jennings  6:17 
Okay, so one key that I always tell is people who do things to children that don't violate their boundaries, like maybe they they raise their voice to them, or they accidentally bump into them that doesn't really violate a boundary of a child, people who intend to hurt children progressively violate boundaries of children. For example, what we know about most sexual offenses are actually it's pretty well known in the Sex Offender Treatment world that there are three main goals that a sex offender or a person who is intending on committing a sexual offense to a child, there's three main goals that they have. The first one is to get access. The second one is to maintain access, and the third one is to create an alibi or reduce the risk of disclosure of what's happening and so so maintaining access. If we're in a family situation and it's a family member, they already have access. They don't have to worry about getting it. They don't have to worry about maintaining it. Typically, the family dynamic is kind of protective, and so when something happens within a family, the child is naturally not going to disclose, or be fearful of disclosure, because it's going to destroy the family, or it's going to not be believed. And then, then, what? If it's an external which is a very smaller percentage of the time, is usually, let's just say, a band director. So if a band director wants to commit a sexual offense, then he has the access of his band students. He doesn't have to worry about maintaining it unless they quit band. And then he's the band director, you know? And if they've won a bunch of state titles, or they've won a bunch of regional titles, then they're viewed as a upstanding member of society. And so we don't have to worry about, well, he doesn't have to worry about maintaining access or gaining access, or building an alibi, because he's already viewed in the community as this upstanding person. And so when a child would go to disclose against a band director, it would be very difficult to do that, because you're calling out a pillar of the community. And so what we know about people who want to commit sexual offenses is that they're constantly violating those boundaries, and they're constantly doing things like touches on the back, touches on the bottom, touches on the breast area, other touches and on the thigh. Things like that are progressive movements to move toward whatever their end goal is. And so those are things that what we would be considered like intentional harm, things that people do progressively to create and continue to create boundary violations within that that relationship.

Melissa Whitfield  9:26 
What are some indicators that a child might be experiencing abuse or neglect?

Dr. Lynn Jennings  9:32 
My number one indicator that I always tell people to look for is a change in their their mood or a change in their behavior ever so slight, because it's typically very slight in the beginning. An outgoing child becoming more withdrawn, or like an introverted child becoming isolating, you look for those small little changes. Sometimes it's changes in their hygiene, changes in their sleep patterns, changes in their eating habits, changes in the way that they dress. A lot of times, children who are being abused will wear long sleeves in the summertime to cover up any bruising or any kind of self harm indicators. Sometimes, kiddos who are being abused, especially in the the situation of sexual abuse, they will they will go days without showering because they're trying to make their bodies as yucky as possible so that maybe the abuse won't continue, or they can stave it off for a little bit. Other indicators are grades. You know, a lot of times kids will just start failing classes, and they've been AB students, there's just a lot of different indicators. But the thing that I really like to look at is, for that child, what are the changes in that child? Ever so slight. Because sometimes it's going to be puberty, right? And we're just going to look at it, and it's going to be changes in hormones and all those things. But if it's something that continues on and seems to get progressively worse, then we really need to be aware and opening our eyes. When we start noticing the changes we need to keep an eye on it. If it continues to go on, we need to do something to intervene at that point and try to find out what's going on.

Melissa Whitfield  11:18 
What are some of the long term consequences of a child being in an abusive environment?

Dr. Lynn Jennings  11:23 
So some of the long term, and again, it's it's really individual per person, but we see a much higher percentage of either promiscuity or we see a much higher percentage of just someone having an aversion to anything sexual at all, if it's sexual abuse. We also see that depression, anxiety, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder type symptoms like hyper vigilance or watching everything and being super watchful. We see all kinds of difficulties in school, difficulties in relationship. There's a higher percentage of drug use for self medicating purposes, usually, is how it starts and then it develops into like a substance use disorder. There's just so many different things, it's almost hard to capture them all. But like I said, with each individual person, you really need to notice the changes in that person and see how they're responding. So when I'm treating someone who's been sexually assaulted or physically abused, I hone in on what their needs are and try to meet those needs where they are right then, so that we can then help them to be as productive adults as possible.

Melissa Whitfield  12:39 
What can friends or family members do in identifying potential cases of neglect or abuse?

Dr. Lynn Jennings  12:45 
Well, a lot of times, it's not the popular answer, but a lot of the times is, you know you need to confront something that you that you see. If you see someone being extremely harsh with a child, you might pull them aside and offer some help. Like, hey, do you need help babysitting or this? You seem really stressed out. If you see someone hurt a child, my number one go to is, as a mandated reporter, is I just call it in. To call in an abuse or neglect case you don't have to know everything. You have to just know some basic information and have a suspicion of abuse or neglect happening. That's in the Texas Family Code. And there's a good faith law that covers us if we do it in good faith, then, then we're usually covered legally, so that we're not, you know, getting into any trouble. I mean, doesn't mean somebody's not going to get mad at us or something. But you know, if you're trying to help protect a kid, then that's some of the risks that you take of making a report. But you know, noticing those things, trying to intervene, if you notice, like a parent's really stressed out and you you see it like it's starting to get progressively worse, intervening at that point may prevent a full on physical abuse case later, a domestic violence type case later. And so I always tell people, if it's a family member, you need to call it into the statewide intake hotline for CPS. But if you don't know who to call, call law enforcement, because they always respond really quickly if you notice that someone in the family is being inappropriate, isolating another member of the family, meaning mainly a child, then that is also something that you need to call in, because anything that seems off, if that adult is giving particular attention to a child, seems to be violating boundaries, seems to be isolating that child. That's a concern. And so you always want to keep an eye out for that. If you see that happening, you want to probably figure out kind of what's going on if you can. Maybe talk to the child, talk to the adult, and then if it still doesn't settle, right, then it's good to make a phone call into the police department or into statewide intake.

Melissa Whitfield  15:09 
Would you recommend the same thing if it's perhaps an older child abusing a younger child?

Dr. Lynn Jennings  15:15 
Absolutely. So sibling abuse is alive and well as well and in the state of Texas, what we do know is that anyone over the age of 10 can actually enter into treatment, actually be arrested for an offense if they are physically abusing someone younger than them, especially, you know, the big age range that we look at is three years or younger, but when it comes to like rape or physical abuse or something like that, then we look at what's happening. Was it a forced issue? Was it something that the other child was not okay with? And if that's the case, then the offending child will then be put into treatment. They'll actually be arrested, and then they will either spend some time at the juvenile detention and then go to treatment, or sometimes, if the offenses is bad enough, then that child will go to inpatient treatment. And there's several inpatient treatment facilities around the state where they treat sexual offenses that are pretty significant. And the good thing is, is when juveniles get that treatment, the recidivism or the reoffense rate is much lower. It goes from like 60% without treatment down to like 18 or 15 to 18%. With adults, it goes from with treatment, it goes from 60 something, 68 or 65% down to 23% so treatment really does help to inform and help them to learn different ways of managing things so that they are not constantly violating other people and hurting other people for their own sexual gratification.

Melissa Whitfield  17:12 
So how can parents get help for their children if they're in an abusive situation?

Dr. Lynn Jennings  17:16 
Like I said, if, if they find out, they need to report it. They need to take them to the police department. They need to do something immediately. From there, once a report is made of abuse or neglect, if it's not by that parent, then they will go to the child advocacy center, and they will have a forensic interview, and, if necessary, a sexual assault exam. And then from there, the child advocacy center gives all kinds of resources. They will give them counseling. They will give them Crime Victims Compensation packets to to fill out and send into the state so they can be reimbursed for all their expenses that are related to that crime. There's help getting ready if the child has to testify in court. There's all kinds of different resources with food and housing and items that they may need in their home if they have to leave immediately, and they have to then go to safety, you know? And they can get all of those, all of those resources available for them so that they can leave the situation as quickly as possible.

Melissa Whitfield  18:24 
Is there anything else that you would like to add?

Dr. Lynn Jennings  18:28 
So this year, we planted a 965 pinwheels to celebrate the 965 now survivors that we have in the Randall and Potter County area. So if you drive by a child advocacy center or a courthouse lawn and you see pinwheels, those are, those are what commemorates because we do it all over the state of Texas, and that's what commemorates the number of children that were brave, that could tell their story, and are now survivors instead of victims. And so I think it's really important if you have any interest in working with this population, and I tell my students this all the time, you know, find out more about it. Community education through your child advocacy center is funded by a grant, so it's available for your schools, for your daycares, for your churches, for anybody that really wants to know more about it, they have a great training program that they put on. I know, I know we do through our child advocacy center the bridge up in in Amarillo, and they are constantly doing community education. Like I said, you know that the whole reason Jenna's Law was enacted was because the education piece is the biggest part of awareness and prevention, and the more we all know instead of burying our heads in the sand, the more that we can all be then active participants in stopping abuse and neglect from occurring and being able to identify and look at things and and maybe not just go, huh, that's weird. And just kind of, you know, walk away from that, still kind of wondering if that was something I should have done more with or not. And then you have a way of knowing what you can do with that information and how you can help.

Melissa Whitfield  20:20 
Well, thank you so much for coming in our podcast and helping us bring awareness to National Child Abuse Prevention Month. Can't wait to have you back.

Dr. Lynn Jennings  20:29 
Thank you.

Melissa Whitfield  20:31 
Thanks for listening to Texas Tech Health Check. Make sure to subscribe or follow wherever you listen to podcasts. This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek immediate medical advice from your physician or your health care provider for questions regarding your health or medical condition. Texas Tech Health Check is brought to you by Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and produced by TR Castillo, Suzanna Cisneros, Mark Hendricks, Kay Williams and me, Melissa Whitfield.