She asked, “Am I pregnant?” She had been carrying that question for two years.
I grew up in a family with six kids. My mother was the Girl Scout leader and the Boy Scout leader and she was always at school. I don’t know how she did it. I still don’t. She always had a card in her wallet with the child abuse and neglect hotline number on it. She kept it there the way some people keep emergency numbers. Just in case. Just so everyone in the house knew it existed.
I’m the youngest by a lot. The oldest of us is sixteen years older than me. Most of my childhood my siblings were already adults. One of my brothers came to us through foster care when he was two. In all of my memories he is just my brother.
I spent my high school years following my aunt across the state volunteering with Special Olympics. I thought I was going to be a special education teacher. When I got to Missouri Southern I was pretty sure I knew where I was headed. Then I took a criminal justice class as an elective and my whole plan changed. I took another class and then another. I didn’t plan it. I just kept following it.
Right out of college I started working as a deputy juvenile officer in Camden County. I spent ten years sitting across from kids on the worst days of their lives.
Ten years of this work and you start to recognize stories. You start to see the next step before it happens. And you start asking yourself if there’s a way to change the ending. When I heard about the work Kids Harbor was doing, something in me said that’s where I needed to be. I left a stable state job, the benefits, all of it, and made the leap into the nonprofit world. The first paycheck didn’t come on time. I had two kids and a house. I held on.
Kids Harbor is a place where children who have been abused don’t have to keep telling their story over and over again. One room. One team. One time.
I’ve been into lots of sheriff’s offices and police departments over the years. They’re intimidating, even to somebody who’s been in there. Now imagine a child. Something has happened to them that should have never happened. And they have to walk into that room anyway. The systems we built to respond to it, the police stations, the courtrooms, the offices, were built by adults for adults. Nobody did that on purpose. It’s just that a child who has survived something unsurvivable can find themselves walking into room after room, telling their story to person after person, in places that were never designed to hold them. Kids Harbor was built to change that.
At Kids Harbor we bring all those people to the child instead of sending the child to all of them. One interviewer, one room, one time. A forensic nurse standing by, ready when the child is ready, in whatever shape that takes.
Our professionals are trained to meet children exactly where they are. These kids come in carrying questions they’ve never felt safe enough to ask. Questions about their own bodies. Questions they’ve held onto, sometimes for years. I remember one girl who had waited two years before she was ready to say anything. When she finally sat with our forensic nurse, her question was simple. Am I pregnant?
From the moment a child walks through our doors, we walk with them. However long that takes. Whatever they need. We want every child who comes to us to know that what happened to them is not their fault, and that they are not alone in it.
We put out a wish list when we’re out of snacks because kids don’t function well when they’re hungry. We had a family come to us once who hadn’t eaten in at least a day. I got in the car and picked up a meal for them.
I’ve questioned myself. Whether I’m the right person for this. Whether somebody else could do it better. I think most people do.
My mom wasn’t a caseworker. She wasn’t a forensic nurse or a juvenile officer. She was a mother with six kids who kept a phone number in her wallet because she knew it mattered. That’s all it takes to be part of this. You just have to decide that kids belong to all of us, and then pay attention.
Cara Gerdiman
Executive Director of Kids’ Harbor, Inc.
