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Date: 6/14/2022
NORTHAMPTON – A steady stream of new cases involving the most vulnerable within the Northwestern District has prompted the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office to add a prosecutor’s position to its Child Abuse Unit (CAU).
According to Steven Gagne, the Northwestern first assistant district attorney, the caseload for the CAU continues to be “extremely heavy,” with at least one new case of child abuse or neglect coming in every day. “This fortification of the CAU staff was essential to meeting this demand,” Gagne said.
Among the biggest staff changes was Assistant District Attorney Lori Odierna becoming chief of the CAU after longtime Chief Linda Pisano retired in October. Odierna has been with the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office since 2016 when she was hired as an assistant district attorney (ADA) in the Northampton District Court. She was appointed as the Child Abuse District Court supervising attorney in January 2019, where she supervised all child abuse cases in the District Courts, handling the most serious cases herself and mentoring District Court ADAs working on these important prosecutions.
Previously, she served for 20 years as a prosecutor in the Hampden District Attorney’s office.
In an interview with Reminder Publishing, Odierna said that the CAU was “getting busier,” even before she took over the unit in October. Part of that comes from more people reporting incidents of child abuse thanks to more awareness to the issue.
“We have two children’s advocacy centers that have been doing a great job of community outreach and spreading the word about reporting,” said Odierna. “They’re available for services for children, so they’ve been getting more reports.”
One of those advocacy centers, The Children’s Advocacy Center for Hampshire County (CAC), continues to bring awareness to child abuse through events such as “The Little Light of Mine” luminaria display that occurred this past April as a fundraiser to assist with their own abuse prevention efforts.
The CAC is “designed to reduce the stress experienced by child victims of abuse and their non-offending family members throughout the investigation and intervention process.”
CAC’s Executive Director Kara McElhone told Reminder Publishing back in April that there was a low volume of children reaching out in need of their services during the heat of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The reason for this, according to McElhone, was because social distancing and quarantining caused a lack of access to crucial in-person services.
“Our reports were really low, and we knew that wasn’t because kids were safer,” said McElhone. “It was because kids didn’t have access to trusted adults and mandated reporters like when they were in school.”
Fast forward to 2021, and the CAC experienced the highest number of children in need of their services across a one-year period since opening in 2006, including a 40 percent increase of children reaching out.
“The numbers have skyrocketed, and we know that will continue,” said McElhone. “We’ve had a huge surge in the number of kids coming through in the past year since things have opened up a little bit more and kids are back in school.”
The steady increase of child abuse reports can be attributed to a lot of different things, according to Odierna, who also saw a decrease of cases reported at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. “Once things started opening back up a little bit, the [Massachusetts] Department of Children and Families started having access to kids again directly,” said Odierna, when speaking on the reason for an increase in reports. “And then I think just generally the #MeToo movement has allowed people to be more aware of what may or may not constitute a sexual assault.”
Much of what the CAU does involves the investigation of child abuse cases in conjunction with the police. The extra prosecutor added to staff has helped with the backlog of investigations that the CAU currently has, while also making sure each case is looked at thoroughly.
According to Odierna, the CAU also received a lot of cases before the coronavirus pandemic, but at that time, they did not have the personnel to handle the workload. “Having this extra prosecutor enables us to absorb the increase but also to just do the job more thoroughly,” she added.
In 2021, the CAU opened 337 cases involving 424 children, filing charges against 167 defendants. Even with the steady stream of cases, Odierna still encourages people to report any signs of abuse or neglect to the Department of Children & Families, the police, or some other social service agency that has a mandated reporter. Additionally, Odierna said it is important for people to monitor abuse online, especially within the pre-teen to teenager age range.
“I think some people are afraid to report because they think “I don’t know for sure,’ but that’s the job of the investigator’s to figure out,” said Odierna. “Even if you suspect [child abuse], you need to alert somebody so that it can be thoroughly investigated.”