Safe Harbor Child Advocacy Center

Staff and volunteers with the Safe Harbor Child Advocacy Center continue to recruit volunteers in Tennessee’s Fourth Judicial District, which includes Cocke, Grainger, Jefferson and Sevier counties. Recently, employees and volunteers with Safe Harbor staffed an information booth at the 2006 Rhythm in the Hills event in Pigeon Forge during the Memorial Day weekend.

    Persons staffing the booth talked to attendees of the three-day event and handed out flyers to passersby to inform them about the non-profit organization’s mission and services.  Information passed out to event spectators outlined statistics of abuse in the district as a whole, as well as a breakdown by county, even specifying the estimated number of children up to age 18 who have been impacted by cases of confirmed abuse. In one 12-month period, the 4th Judicial District recorded 5,334 total cases of confirmed abuse or neglect. That total broke down to 2,088 in Sevier County, 1,118 in Cocke County, 567 in Grainger County, and 1,561 in Jefferson. Sevier abuse cases represented roughly 11 percent of the children estimated to be living in the county.

    Safe Harbor’s board of directors is raising funds to build its first state-of-the-art facility to serve child victims of sexual abuse, as well as severe physical abuse and neglect. See “Pat Summitt helps to raise CAC’s roof” in today’s edition of The Herald for more information about Safe Harbor’s efforts toward establishing the district’s first Child Advocacy Center.

    Safe Harbor Child Advocacy Center is an IRS approved 501 (c)(3) non-profit. To learn more about Safe Harbor, volunteer your time and talents to aid child-victims of abuse, or to make a tax-deductible contribution to support their work with child victims of severe abuse, contact executive director Donna Koester, at (865) 453-2638, email DonnaKoester  @  charter.net or visit their Web site at www.SafeHarborCAC.com.