$5-Million Gift Boosts Fight on Child Abuse

Fund-raising efforts for a new center for abused children got a big boost Thursday with a $5-million pledge from San Diego philanthropist Jessie Polinsky, said a spokeswoman for the Child Abuse Prevention Foundation.

The contribution “catapults us into our campaign efforts,” said Jennifer Vanica, executive director of the foundation, which raises about $500,000 each year for agencies that assist child-abuse victims in San Diego County. “It puts us a good six months ahead of schedule.”

The foundation needs to raise $15 million to build the proposed center, which will be owned and operated by the county, Vanica said. The 130-bed facility will offer emergency shelter, counseling and child-abuse prevention services. Those services now are housed in different locations throughout the county, making it difficult to coordinate treatment and causing children to be “shuffled around.”

Workers are expected to break ground on the project by the end of 1991, and should finish in 1993, Vanica said.

The County Board of Supervisors formed a partnership with the foundation last year to build the center after a study found shortcomings in services available to the county’s growing number of child-abuse victims. Last December, the board approved a 10-acre, county-owned area in Kearny Mesa as the site for the new center.

“What would you say when the private sector wants to raise millions of dollars for a new child-abuse center?” asked Supervisor Susan Golding, adding that the county is mandated by the state to protect victims of child abuse but doesn’t have the funds to do all that is needed.

The Polinsky donation brings the amount raised to $7 million, Vanica said. The other $2 million was raised through state funds, a local McDonald’s operator’s association, and Skyline Wesleyan Church.

“Mrs. Polinsky stepped forward right away to show her commitment to the project,” Vanica said of the 91-year-old La Jolla heiress, whose husband, the late A. B. Polinsky, owned the San Diego division of the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. until his death in 1983. She said the Polinskys have supported the foundation for several years.

The center will be named the A. B. & Jessie Polinsky Children’s Center, foundation board chairman Jack Goodall announced Thursday.

“It’s an incredibly generous gift,” Golding said. “And it couldn’t be for a better cause. . . . These children are absolutely innocent victims of all the terrors that society can pile upon them. It’s a statement of our humanity, how well we care for them.”

The official fund-raising campaign is not scheduled to begin until spring, said Diane Larson, the foundation’s assistant director. Staff workers are planning the campaign now. The foundation plans to raise the rest of the $15 million over the next three years, she said.

Of the goal amount, $12 million is needed for construction and $3 million for an endowment to enhance basic services paid for by the county, or to provide services that county or state funds don’t, Vanica said.

The county’s only emergency shelter for child-abuse victims, Hillcrest Receiving Home, was built to accommodate 16 to 20 children, but now routinely houses 60 to 70, Vanica said.

In 1989, 82,437 cases of suspected child abuse were referred to Child Protective Services, a 200% increase over the past four years, Vanica said. The severity of the abuse also appears to be increasing. Three years ago, the Child Abuse Hotline in San Diego received 100 to 200 reports of sexual molestation each month. Now they are getting as many as 400 each month, she said.

The proposed center will house children in cottages, some built to the scale of a small child, said Vanica, to “create a warm and friendly environment that says, ‘We care about you.’ ”