The Children's Justice Center is a home-like facility which serves children and families who are experiencing the crisis and chaos that comes with the disclosure of physical or sexual abuse of a child. The Center is designed to help children feel safe and comfortable so that they may begin to deal with the difficult and often frightening issues that surround abuse. The focus and function of the Children's Justice Center is to reduce the trauma of the child abuse investigation, provide medical services and help the child feel safe to reveal the truth.
The Center has been in Logan for 17 years and serves Cache, Box Elder, and Rich Counties. In that time, they have conducted over 5,000 interviews for children and almost 800 medical exams. The Center partners with numerous agencies so that children and families receive follow-up care and treatment.
The three speakers from CJC will be:
Joan Liquin has worked in criminal justice fields for 20 years. She was the Gang Project coordinator with Logan City Police Department where she was active in community education and prevention, and in coordinating the activities of a multi-police agency task force. She spent 12 years with the Cache County Attorney’s Office as a Victim Advocate. This involved working directly with those that have been impacted by personal or property crime through the court process. Joan is the Executive Director of the Cache Children’s Justice Center.
Kari Godfrey is a Case Specialist with the Children’s Justice Center. She is responsible for working directly with children and families, helping them as they begin the process of disclosing child abuse to investigative authorities. She works closely with law enforcement detectives and state Child Protection Services investigators as they work to establish what has occurred to a child, what safety is needed for the future, and the needs for a child and family currently. She serves on a team that is working to better protect teen child abuse victims in the school setting from further harassment and bullying. Kari believes very strongly that children can be happy and resilient when given the right tools and support and works to help them move forward.
Carol Smith is an active member of the Friends of the Cache Children’s Justice Center Board. The Friends Board is a nonprofit charitable organization that serves to support the activities of the Center. Private funding is critical for assisting child abuse victims and their families and Carol has been a member for almost two years. In her professional career, you may have seen Carol in the Emergency Room of the Logan Regional Hospital where she served as a trauma care Registered Nurse. In the years before the Cache Children’s Justice Center was in existence, Carol saw some of the children come through the Emergency Room and because of those experiences in seeing children at times being further traumatized, she has been a strong advocate for the importance of the Center and the work that it does.
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