Photo by Larry Ferguson
Medical, legal and investigative help, along with mental health counseling, is readily available and easy to access in El Paso and Teller counties for physically and sexually abused children now that the agencies are housed at a recently opened child advocacy center in Colorado Springs.
“The children don’t have to go to the police station, then to a doctor’s office, then to the Department of Human Services, or maybe to a mental health provider and then over to the district attorney’s office,” said Geoff Heim, president of the board of directors of Safe Passage, a children’s advocacy group.
“If you had to do all those things, it makes it so burdensome to get the outcome you want. So hopefully, this center will help.”
Safe Passage acts as the chief coordinator for a variety of agencies that annually provide help to more than 1,000 youths and caregivers. This fall, it moved its offices into a more than 13,300-square-foot building at 2335 Robinson St. on the Westside.
The center is also home to offices for UCHealth medical providers, investigators with the Colorado Springs Police Department’s Child Crime Unit, the Department of Human Services, the Family Center and Kidpower.
For Heim, a Manitou Springs resident who is a former prosecutor and now is a defense attorney, and Maureen Basenberg, Safe Passage executive director, the move represents the fulfillment of an effort that’s been on the drawing board for many years but was financially out of reach until now.
Safe Passage was founded in 1994 as the Children’s Advocacy Center of the Pikes Peak Region. Located in a Victorian house on South Cascade Avenue, the center was the result of a collaboration between law enforcement and the district attorney’s office as community demand grew for child advocacy services.
“Before that, it wasn’t working well,” Heim said. “It wasn’t a child-friendly way to handle those cases. Kids would be put in the back of a police car, taken to the police station, same as the suspects.
“With this new center, kids will have to go to just one location and won’t have to relive the trauma of what happened over and over and over again,” Heim said. “We can make this one ‘worst day’ a first step to brighter days.”
The remodeled center represents a $2.7 million investment. Safe Passage is conducting a capital campaign that has already passed the halfway point.
The Colorado Springs organization is based on a national model that is quickly becoming popular in more cities.
“We’re the first in Colorado,” Basenberg said, referring to the all-services-in-one-place concept. “There are roughly 800 advocacy centers in the United States. About 20 percent are co-located.”
Basenberg has extensive experience working with child advocacy agencies located under one roof. Before coming to Safe Passage five years ago, she was the director of Childhelp, an advocacy center in Phoenix.
There, she helped coordinate the services of several in-house partner agencies, including the police department, child welfare investigation office and the Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
Basenberg said Colorado Springs’ new center is the result of commitment and belief from partner agencies and their leadership.
“And the result of finding a bank that believes in us to fund a nontraditional business proposal.”
Heim said the decision to move to the new center on Robinson Street took some creative thinking by the various agencies involved, including the board of directors at Safe Passage.
“We began talking about moving in 2005,” Heim said. “This is what we aspired to. It really took some forward thinking and getting people to the same table, pulling in the same direction.”
In 2020 and 2021, Heim and Basenberg said, the coronavirus pandemic has skewed the number of cases in which Safe Passage has been involved, with the numbers currently lower than average because of the pandemic. That’s because many abuses are likely going unreported.
“There’s the belief that all kids are safer at home, but these (abused) kids are not. They were without their safety net, their check-ins, their resources, and parents were without them too,” Basenberg said about the teachers, pastors, counselors and other professionals in the community who report suspected abuse cases.
“People were also unsure about their income and they were without their own social network.”
In 2019, Safe Passage was involved with1,015 cases. That number dropped to 672 in 2020 and currently stands at 587 for this year.
But Basenberg expects the number of abuse cases to increase once the pandemic subsides and more suspected cases are reported.
“The pandemic presented kind of a perfect storm of opportunity (for abusers),” she said.
Heim and Basenberg agreed that among their priorities as Safe Passage executives is letting the community know the center is open at a new location, and informing the public about the in-house services available.
“What matters is that the community knows we’re here,” Basenberg said.
Information: www.safepassagecac.org or 636-2460.