Father Channels Grief Over Young Daughter’s Murder Into Child Abuse Center

Murdered by a child molester, Amy Schulz left a legacy of horror. But she also left a legacy of hope--a center that aims to protect other boys and girls.

The Amy Schulz Child Advocate Center grew out of the rage her father felt when he discovered that the same man who raped, beat and stabbed his 10-year-old daughter had sodomized another child a decade before.

“It just infuriated me,” Dennis Schulz said. “They had a chance to capture this person 10 years ago.”

So he almost single-handedly created the Mt. Vernon center, which tries to produce evidence for prosecutions, offers counseling to parents and children, and prepares children to testify in court if necessary.

More than 50 such centers have been built throughout the country, and 100 more are under construction, according to the National Children’s Advocacy Center in Huntsville, Ala., the prototype center that opened in 1985.

“There is movement there that was not there before about a year ago,” said Kathleen Broyles, a spokeswoman for the Huntsville center. “People adore the concept and it is very humane.”

It also addresses common problems in prosecuting child abuse cases: too few social workers to counsel all the abuse victims, parents frustrated with law enforcement, and prosecutors untrained to deal with child abuse victims.

At the Amy Center, children who have been attacked are taken to a toy-filled interview room. Homey lighting detracts attention from a two-way mirror that hides police and prosecutors.

A child has to talk to only one interviewer, who can relay questions from the police or attorneys via a headset.

The idea is to provide a less traumatic alternative to the police stations and government offices where children otherwise might have to recount their attacks up to five times during the investigation and prosecution of a case.

“If the child is questioned over and over again by the doctor, state’s attorney, police and the (Department of Child and Family Services) worker, they begin to think no one believes them,” said the Amy Center’s director, Vicki Duncan.

If there had been a center such as this one years before July 1, 1987, when Amy Schulz was killed, “Amy might be alive today,” her father says.

At dusk that day, Amy began walking into the tiny southern Illinois town of Kell to tell her older brother that the family dog had been found.

Cecil Sutherland, a 32-year-old former maintenance worker from the nearby town of Dix, kidnaped Amy along the road. He drove her to a field a few miles away. He sodomized and beat her, strangled her and slashed her throat, leaving her to die, according to testimony at his trial.

Sutherland was convicted in May, 1989, of murder, aggravated kidnaping and aggravated criminal sexual assault. He is appealing his death sentence.

During the trial, Sutherland’s 16-year-old stepson testified that he had been sodomized 10 years earlier by his stepfather.

Schulz, 42, began talking to state officials and county prosecutors about preventing violence against other children.

At a conference on child protection, he learned of a child advocacy center in Springfield and of the movement to counsel child victims and prosecute their attackers without making victims repeatedly tell their stories.

Community support for such centers is crucial, Broyles and Schulz say, because they are expensive and usually require private and public support. But prosecutors say the centers improve the chances of jailing child abusers.

Authorities in Huntsville credit the center there with helping increase prosecutions and convictions, said Karen Hall, a Madison County assistant district attorney.

The number of child sexual assault prosecutions handled by Hall’s office grew from 89 in 1987 to 115 in 1989. The office more than tripled the number of guilty pleas and nearly doubled the number of jury convictions, she said.

Schulz became a convert to the advocacy-center cause. For months, he spent most of each week away from his Salem vacuum cleaner store, pleading at the state Capitol and at small town meetings for a center in southern Illinois.

In July, just over a year after Sutherland was convicted, the Amy Center opened with $100,000 in private and state grants. In its first six months, about 30 children have been helped, Duncan said.

Thanks to the Amy Center, a man who assaulted at least three children pleaded guilty and went to prison, said Jefferson County prosecutor Kathleen Alling.

Duncan had prepared the children to testify, Alling said, and if the defendant “thinks the child is ready and is willing to go through with a trial . . . (he) often feels that his chances of being acquitted are not very good.”

Schulz wants to see the centers spread throughout the country. For him it is a crusade, inspired by the memory of his little girl.

“There are so many cases that we don’t know about. The only thing I can do is to help prevent it from happening to other children,” Schulz said.

“I have to break the cycle.”