ANAHEIM : ‘Safe Place’ Set Up for Abused Children

The turquoise and beige walls at Martin Luther Hospital’s “The Safe Place” are decorated with drawings of Donald Duck and Goofy. A three-foot-tall panda fills a corner of the small room and Mickey and Minnie Mouse dolls are atop the cupboards. Children’s books neatly line a stand.

But “The Safe Place” is far from the happiest place on earth. In the far corner is a pelvic examination table, silent testimony to the fact that the life of even the youngest child can be shattered by an abusive adult.

Down the hall from the emergency room, “The Safe Place” is the only hospital room in Orange County set up specifically for the examination of children who may have been sexually abused. Since it opened last October, examinations there determined that about half a dozen boys and girls ages 2 to 16 had been sexually abused.

“For adult victims, the examination (for sexual abuse) can be traumatic, because they don’t know exactly what is going to happen to them,” said Elizabeth Winokur, the emergency room’s supervising nurse. “Can you imagine how it is for a child?

“We try to make ‘The Safe Place’ as comforting and non-threatening as we can,” she said. The hospital was able to get Disneyland to donate the time of the designers and artists who decorated the room, plus the toys.

“The Safe Place” receives patients primarily at night and on weekends when the county’s Child Abuse Services Team examination facilities--which see 800 children annually--are closed.

Cathy Campbell, the county’s program director, lauds the hospital’s effort. Before “The Safe Place” was set up, “kids were sitting in emergency rooms for two to eight” hours before being examined by doctors without expertise in this area. “I wish hospitals in other areas of the county would get involved.”

The Martin Luther staff usually decides to use “The Safe Place” when it sees a child who was abused within the last 72 hours, Winokur said, because within that time frame it is still possible to find evidence that can be used at trial.

Using the fictional example of a 4-year-old girl who has told her mother that the neighbor has just molested her, Winokur said that as soon as the child enters the emergency room, a nurse is assigned to be with her until she leaves.

After police are called, the child is taken to “The Safe Place,” where she will be briefly interviewed by a nurse.

“At a seminar to show us how tough describing sexual abuse must be for a child, the speaker told us to turn to the person sitting next to us and graphically describe our last sexual encounter,” Winokur said. “For a child that lacks the verbal and coping skills of an adult, describing what happened can be very difficult.”

The child will then be allowed to play and become comfortable in the room before a doctor begins the examination. The child’s statements and any evidence collected will be turned over to the police. Everything is usually completed within an hour.

“People will sometimes ask if it is difficult to deal with children who have been abused, and it is,” Winokur said. “But it’s a good feeling, too, because we know that when that child leaves here, the abuse for that child is over.”