Pilot Program Aims to Reduce Child-Abuse Trauma : Criminal justice: The county will get a $141,000 state grant to videotape young victims to cut multiple-questioning sessions.

State officials on Tuesday selected Orange County to participate in a pilot program aimed at reducing the emotional trauma suffered by child-abuse victims as they are processed through the court system.

State Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp said in Sacramento that Orange County will receive $141,000 as one of three areas participating in the pilot project. Under the program, a team of legal and child experts will interview young victims on videotape in an effort to reduce the multiple-questioning sessions required by current court procedures.

Van de Kamp said the program seeks to avoid the “revictimization of sexually abused children during the investigative process.”

Orange County was selected--along with Sacramento and San Francisco--because it has already experimented with such a program in 10 cities over the last year. With the state grant, social service workers said they will expand the program countywide.

“We are already doing many parts of what they are proposing in the pilot project,” said Cathy Campbell, project director of Orange County’s Child Abuse Services Team, or CAST. “What the grant will allow us to do is expand our program countywide and selectively test the use of videotaping during the interviews of sexually abused children.”

The CAST program, started in February, 1989, established a team of experts who are specially trained to both deal with child victims and seek the evidence necessary for prosecution. The program operates out of the county’s Orangewood Children’s Home in specially designed “child friendly” rooms.

CAST involves cooperation between 10 city police departments, the county Department of Children’s Services, the district attorney’s office and a host of private agencies.

Normally, Campbell said, abused children undergo more than five interviews with police detectives, prosecutors, medical personnel, social workers and therapists. The goal of the pilot project is to reduce the number of interviews through videotaping.

The children still must testify in court, she said.

Since March, 1989, Campbell said, CAST has been involved in 954 cases of child abuse from the 10 cities participating.

Countywide, there were 5,626 reports of sexual child abuse last year. The number of abused children is expected to reach about 7,000 cases by the end of this year. Officials said reports of sexually abused children have risen by 60% in the last three years.

Statewide, Van de Kamp said, more than 47,000 reports of child abuse were filed last year.

Van de Kamp said the pilot projects are a first step toward coming up with a new method of working with sexually abused children. “In the past, we have been unable to devise a system that protects innocent children from double victimization--first from their abusers, then from the justice system,” he said.

“Success of these pilot programs should lead to statewide adoption of compassionate interview and investigative techniques. The result will be a system that cares for and supports sexually abused kids rather than one that serves to deepen their wounds.”