Hill Country Children’s Advocacy Center breaks ground on new facility
Officials broke ground on Aug. 23 for new a Hill Country Children’s Advocacy Center in Burnet. Pictured are (from left) Darrell Greco of Greco Construction, Hillary Sotello of GrantWorks, HCCAC board member Adrienne Field, Burnet city councilors Philip Thurman and Ricky Langley, board member Stephanie Rye, City Councilor Dennis Langley, board member David Bennett, Burnet City Manager David Vaughn, board member Stephanie McCormick, Erica Garza of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, board member Allison Milliorn, board President Wade Langley, board member Ben Farmer, and HCCAC Executive Director Kim Winkler. Staff photo by Nathan Bush
Officials broke ground on a new Hill Country Children’s Advocacy Center on Wednesday, Aug. 23. It will be located next door to the nonprofit’s current home at 1001 N. Hill St. in Burnet.
Since 1992, the center has served child abuse victims by conducting forensic interviews and providing mental health services. The nonprofit has offered these services at its current location since 1994.
“We’re a place of hope, healing, and justice for children and families in the aftermath of abuse,” HCCAC Executive Director Kim Winkler said. “We also raise awareness and provide education on child abuse in the community with the ultimate goal being to eradicate child abuse.”
The new 9,000-square-foot facility will ensure the nonprofit is able to expand critical social services to abused children in its five-county radius, which includes Burnet, Blanco, Lampasas, Llano, and San Saba counties.
“We’ll continue to provide advocacy, interviews, therapy, but we’ll have two interview rooms, two observation rooms, an expanded medical examination room, and more waiting rooms so we can serve multiple families at one time,” Winkler said. “Right now, we have to be careful when scheduling since we can only do one family at a time because we don’t have the space.”
Winkler said the nonprofit has other planned uses for the new facility.
“The new building will also allow us the ability to hold trainings and provide dedicated offices for law enforcement and other multi-disciplinary team members to use when working on cases,” she said.
The old space is now too small for the nonprofit.
“As our communities have grown, the population has exploded in those areas,” Winkler said. “Our numbers have gone up and we’ve outgrown this building.”
The center has had to rent extra space over the years.
“We’ve actually had to outsource our therapists into a rented facility just because we didn’t have enough room here for privacy,” Winkler said.
The original building will transition into a therapy office once construction on the new one is complete, Winkler said.
A nearly $5 million grant awarded in April by the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs will finance the project. The grant was facilitated by the city of Burnet.
“The grant needed to come through a municipality,” Winkler said. “We were really fortunate that the city agreed to do that for us and our community.”
Builder Greco Construction Inc. is expected to finish the job in the next 10-12 months, Winkler said. nathan@thepicayune.com
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The same thing happened to a friend of mine in college. His wife was cheating on him with his best friend and he found out about it. They got divorced and the wife got sole custody and kept the daughter away from her father for the rest of the girl’s life and lied about him. He got a degree from UT in communications and has been trying to get in touch with the daughter, but the mother had turned her against her dad. He worked in CPS for the state for 17 yrs. and is now a well liked Methodist minister. He had remarried and divorced. She had daughters from a previous marrigage and he adopted them, but they still keep in touch with him and get together for his birthday.
I desperately hope that the people and entities involved here are thoroughly aware of the possibility of false allegations of sexual abuse. In high conflict situations allegations of child sexual abuse can be leveled against one parent.
I am the victim of such a scenario. The mother of my oldest daughter is a penultimate Narcissist. She is also a criminal and a drug addict to this day. She did to me and to our daughter what is known overall as Parental Alienation. At that time (circa 1992) there was a patent and vociferous rejection of such a form of child and adult abuse. It was peddled by some that Parental Alienation was “junk science’
Indeed, about that time the Houston Chronicle reported on this. An attorney ‘soldier’, Alene Ross Levy, with Haynes and Boone law firm was interviewed. She volunteered for an organization formed in about 1986, Justice for Children (JFC) which called Parental Alienation “Junk Science”. Levy told the Chronicle the same thing, and she also said “Parental Alienation is a ruse a male child predator will allege to get custody of his child”!
Thus JFC, still in existence I must sadly say, entered into an agreement with my daughter’s mother to sue me for custody, as I had been given our daughter after a previous lawsuit brought by her mother. I raised and cared for her from her age of eighteen months until she was six and one half (5 1/2 years).
JFC grievously failed our daughter as well as myself and her mother with their intrusion and involvement. Our daughter with the help of two young attorneys from the then Fulbright and Jaworski, John Sullivan and Joe Thompson removed our daughter from my custody and gave her to her mother. I was legally cut off from having any access to her.
I waited 26 years to reconnect in any way with my daughter. My daughter I learned had been housing her mother but asked her to leave after she discovered that her mother was a pill head. Two years ago, my daughters youngest sister committed suicide or overdosed. She had been living with her mother! Needles and filth were found all over their apartment.
So I caution, with great concern, to beware about allegations of child sexual abuse as there are those will make those allegations falsely and indoctrinate the child to say such things have happened to them!
Beware too of Parental Alienation. You may educate yourselves on this heinous form of child and adult abuse by apprising yourselves of the thought and the work of Dr. Craig Childress, who shows among things, that Parental Alienation is described clearly and succinctly in the DSM-V.
Courts with their judges, attorneys, and assessment centers need to educate themselves on this very real form of child abuse.
Thank you to the Daily Trib for publishing my testimonial above. I so greatly appreciate this! Robert Gartner