Bridgehaven Comes to Rotary

The Dayton Rotary Club listened to a very interesting program this past week. The Bridgehaven Team of Paula Torres and Shelley Quigley presented the program specifically discussing Liberty County statistics and program. Liberty County had 1,263 intakes while Chamber County had 366 intakes. They have two dedicated staff to just read intakes. The ladies also discussed the various services that are provided by Bridgehaven which include: Court Advocacy, Case Information, Rainbow Room, Referrals and Follow-Ups. Bridgehaven also has six different interviewers that meet with children and the training to become an interviewer is very intense. The Forensic interviews that are conducted can be broken down into different types of abuse. These are sexual abuse (172), physical abuse (78), child witness (62), child at risk (138), neglectful supervision (38) and emotional abuse (4). They also discussed the breakdown of the demographics of the children- White (208), Hispanic (161), African-American (29), Bi-racial (12) and Other (16). When it comes to the ages of children that they work with, Bridgehaven’s statistics shows that there were 74 children in the age bracket of 0-5 years, 206 students between the ages 6-12, 144 children between the ages of 13-17 and 2 that were 18 or older. Sadly, it was reported that the majority of the alleged perpetrator’s relationships come from either a parent or a stepparent. The Dayton Rotary Club praised Torres and Quigley for the work that they do for our children and our community.