NEO Kids centre would benefit abused children, says manager

The program offers acute care services to about 50 children who have been sexually abused, and another 50 who have been physically abused.

But due to its current mandate, the program can only offer counselling services to young victims of sexual abuse.

Horan said her team includes two counsellors, two pediatric nurses and a pediatrician.

The team can also help police and the Crown with forensic investigations to prosecute perpetrators.

During the hospital's annual general meeting June 18, Dr. Nicolas Steinmetz, an associate professor of pediatrics at McGill University, and chair emeritus of the Montreal Children's Hospital Foundation, elicited gasps when he said sexual abuse is the biggest medical problem facing children in Canada and in northeastern Ontario.

Steinmetz said as many as 30 per cent of children have been sexually abused.

He was in Sudbury to lend his support to the hospital's proposal for a standalone outpatient centre for pediatric care that would expand its current NEO Kids centre.

If approved – the North East Local Health Integration Network rejected the hospital's initial proposal to apply for capital funding from the province – the standalone NEO Kids centre would include a new Child Advocacy Centre to help victims of sexual and physical abuse.

Horan said the centre would allow her team to significantly expand the services they offer, and give caregivers and their children a one-stop shop for medical and psychological care.

The Child Advocacy Centre, said Horan, would allow the hospital to broaden the Violence Intervention and Prevention Program's mandate to offer counselling services to children who have been physically abused, or have been neglected in other ways.

Glori Meldrum, the founder and chair of Little Warriors, a national charitable organization committed to the awareness, prevention and treatment of child sexual abuse, said most people are not aware of the issue, which she characterizes as an epidemic.

In 1984, the Federal Report of the Committee On Sexual Offences Against Children and Youths determined one in three girls and one in six boys in Canada experience an unwanted sexual act.

But there has not been another research study on the subject of that scope in Canada since then, Meldrum said.

“It doesn't include human trafficking and child pornography,” she said. “So it's way worse than one in three and one in six. I can tell you that.”

Meldrum said she founded Little Warriors because of her own experience, when she was sexually abused by her grandfather from the ages of eight to 10.

“I'm 43 now, and it's probably been in the last five years that I kind of got healthy,” she said.

Research studies have found that in 95 per cent of cases, the child victims of sexual abuse knew their perpetrators.

In a report Little Warriors conducted with the University of Alberta, it found 95 per cent of child sexual abuse cases go unreported.

Meldrum said sentences for those perpetrators who do get convicted, are not strict enough.

“You get more (time in prison) for stealing a computer, or corporate fraud, than for raping a child,” she said.