Our Journey This First Year
It has been an incredible first year here at Northern Lights Child Advocacy Center (How has it already been a year??)
We accomplish our mission in partnership with you and your neighbors–the Marquette County community. You likely know one of the professionals in our network. Law enforcement, lawyers, therapists, social workers, parents, and community volunteers. It takes our entire community to keep kids safe and provide the services they need to heal.
Every person becoming familiar with the signs of abuse and gaining the confidence to make a report strengthens Marquette County, our home. We’re reaching out to ask you to take an active role in building a more resilient Marquette through protecting kids.
Since opening our doors last September, we have interviewed 110 children identified as victims of maltreatment in investigations across Marquette County.
See the breakdown of the types of cases, and the demographics of children we’ve served this year.
This graphic highlights several sobering facts about serious challenges facing our community:
The abuse our kids face includes sexual abuse, but also physical abuse, witnessing violence, abusive images, human trafficking, and/or severe neglect
Kids seen at the CAC predominantly identify as girls, and are evenly split among age groups, birth to 17
Northern Lights Children’s Advocacy Center (NLCAC) serves children and families across all jurisdictions in Marquette County and in the Upper Peninsula beyond, as needed, especially in Alger and Schoolcraft counties.
The vast majority of offenders are known persons in the lives of a child, often someone in that child’s household, in a position of authority, or someone the family knows and trusts. Most cases over the past year involved adult perpetrators.
Meet Ally
NLCAC staff talk to kids and teens about safety every day and help keep them safe through coordinated community care.
NLCAC ensures that every kid in need has access to a highly trained, compassionate, and knowledgeable advocate dedicated to their recovery and their family, validating their emotional responses to trauma. NLCAC’s Advocate helps children in critical ways including forensic interviewing in support of investigations, preparing for court, and therapy.
Before NLCAC opened its doors, every kid, and their family, was left to navigate the system on their own, which can be intimidating and l overwhelming, scary even. No child, and no family, should have to face this alone. One of the courageous kids we worked with was 12-year-old Ally. (Details are changed for safety of course)
Ally was sexually assaulted by a neighbor who had groomed her over the course of several months. (Grooming is when an adult, or older person, forms a relationship with a child or teen intending to exploit them. It involves testing and breaching boundaries and can involve bribes, blackmail, and even isolation from loved ones to give the groomer/intended perpetrator power over the young person). He was meeting her outside of her home, and eventually began inviting her over into his house, alone. After slowly wearing down her boundaries each time he had her alone, he began giving her alcohol to lower her guard even more. Since she was under-age and consuming alcohol was illegal he was trying to ensure she wouldn’t tell anyone for fear that she would get in trouble.
When Ally’s defenses were lowered her neighbor sexually assaulted her and afterward he threatened to harm her family if she told anyone about what happened. He had firearms in the home, and Ally was really afraid that he would follow through on what he said and hurt them. However, despite his threats, the truth came out.
NLCAC ensured that Ally only had to tell her story once, minimizing trauma created by repeating the details of her assault. At Northern Lights, Ally was forensically interviewed by a trained professional, and had assistance in obtaining a Personal Protection Order that gave her and her family assurance that her offender could no longer hurt them.
Toward the end of her time at Northern Lights Ally shared, “Thank you for listening to me and helping me see what happened wasn’t my fault.”
Ally visited NLCAC in late spring and we are happy to share the update that she has been working closely with her therapist and has been showing clinical improvement in her perceptions of safety and experienced reduced anxiety and improved school performance. She has been thriving in school and remains really active in her youth group and in school sports, both have helped her to feel confident and build on her resilience.
Kids and teens just like Ally are the heart of the work we do every single day. Each and every child we serve is a reminder of why our work is so crucial, and why your support, and the support of our community truly matters.
As we rally the support of 2,500 people to give $10 a month our child advocacy center will be fully and sustainably funded for 2025, meaning we could continue to help every child survivor who needs us, today, tomorrow, and in the future!
For the price of a single morning coffee and bagel each month you can be a part of this story of hope and healing for local child survivors! ✨ You can set up monthly donations or donate one time via the donate page.
