Sarasota's New Child Advocacy Center Strives to End Child Abuse Forever
By Diane Tauber Schultz

Jeni Silver is a Parenting Educator, and Victim and Family Advocate at the Child Protection Center (CPC) in Sarasota. She was also abused as a child. She calls herself an "adult survivor of child sexual abuse," and helps children in Sarasota and DeSoto Counties who are victims of abuse through her work at the CPC. This is not a story that should never be told. It is a story that should never have happened. And that is precisely what the CPC is working to accomplish.

The CPC intends to put an end to child abuse in this community in three generations, so babies are no longer thrown, beaten and shaken to death, and children aren't starved, neglected, and attacked by the very people who are entrusted with their care. Their five core programs — Community Awareness and Personal Safety (CAPS), Child Protection Team (CPT), Children and Families Supervised Visitation Program (CFSVP), Sexual Abuse Treatment Program (SATP), and Kid Kindness Program (KKP)—are designed to teach and educate children and families, prevent, protect, intervene, and provide physical and emotional support and treatment for the vast variety of physical, sexual, emotional, abandonment, and neglect child abuse cases that walk through their doors every single day.