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(10/30/19) - Last year the CAN Council Great Lakes Bay Region provided 563 forensic interviews to abused children across Arenac, Bay and Saginaw counties. Twenty-five of those interviews were in Arenac County, while there were 252 in Bay County, and 286 in Saginaw County. This year the CAN Council GLBR will serve children in those counties, as well as Huron County. "Having it in Huron County now is just a blessing," said Huron County Prosecutor Tim Rutkowski. Rutkowski reported in 2018 children went through 50 forensic interviews, but this year that number may rise to above 70. According to the Michigan League for Public Policy's most recent Kids Count report, Huron County saw an increase of 63.8 percent for reported cases from 2012 to 2017. That's well above the state average of 26.2 percent for the same time period. Now those children will have services much closer to home. Huron County's prevention organization recently affiliated with the CAN Council GLBR to offer forensic interviews and other services at the new Children's Advocacy Center in Bad Axe. Previously children who were physically or sexually abused, or witnessed violence, had to be driven out of the county for an interview. "These children don't have to go to Lapeer, Tuscola, Sanilac or Bay to be interviewed," Rutkowski said. "They can be interviewed right in our home area." Rutkowski described the Children's Advocacy Center and the programming it offers as a, 'missing piece'. Emily Yeager, president and CEO of CAN Council GLBR, said adding this service in a community with rising abuse cases is important for holding the offender responsible, as well as reducing stress for the child. "The idea is, it's one interview, one time, one place." Specially trained forensic interviewers talk to the child one-on-one. "She wears an earpiece while conducting the interview in a child-friendly setting, and then everybody who needs to hear, see the interview is in a separate room watching it on closed circuit television," Yeager said. Often time the people in the other room include a police investigator, a prosecutor, and someone from Children's Protective Services. If a child had to talk to each of those people individually it could be traumatic, and lead to additional problems in court. "So now you have what in essence is the very same account of what had happened, but they told it three different ways, and a defense attorney will turn it around and make it sound like, 'well they changed their story'," Rutkowski said. Haylie Oldenburg is a forensic interviewer based in the Saginaw office. She is focused on figuring out how to get a child to open up. "There's never going to be a case that's the same, there's never going to be a child I'm working with that I can use the same questions for," she said. Ultimately it's her job to find out what happened to a child. "The sensory details, so what did you see, what did you hear, what did you smell, things like that. Those are going to be impactful for a jury," Oldenburg said. However, forensic interviews are just one of the services provided by the CAN Council GLBR. Yeager said the organization takes a multi-faceted approach to combating child abuse, and offers different services in each county. "For sure we want to prevent it to begin with, when we can't we want to be there to do that expert interview on the kiddo to help the kiddo get relief from the abuse, to help the prosecutor get criminal charges against the perpetrator, and then once that child is in the court system due to abuse or neglect, we want to be their voice," Yeager said. Prevention programs include school-based programs, community and professional development programs, and parent support programs. The Court Appointed Special Advocate, or CASA, program is part of the equation too. The CASA volunteers serve as the voice for children who are in the court system. Click on the 'Related Links' with this story to learn more about the CAN Council GLBR as well as the report cited in this story.