Last week I read the horrific newspaper stories about the man accused of tying his live-in girlfriend’s 6 year old boy to a post in the basement and whipping him with an extension cord. (Read StarTribune Story Here.) Other than prosecuting the offenders, what can the County Attorney do to stem the tide of child abuse? As it turns out, a lot.

According to Victor Vieth, Executive Director of The National Child Protection Training Center how we investigate, charge, and prosecute can have a dramatic positive impact on identifying, reporting, and ultimately reducing child abuse. www.ncptc.org For example, using multi-disciplinary teams to investigate allegations can enhance the ability to prosecute. This in turn encourages reporting of abuse. These best practices can reduce both physical and sexual abuse of children.

Training and educating people who are designated by law as mandatory reporters of child abuse similarly enhances reporting rates. Training prosecutors on how to interact with child victims and their families, how to present cases in court, and how to rein in abusive defense tactics increases the success rate of such prosecutions, in turn leading to greater reporting and prosecution of offenders. By implementing effective prosecution techniques we can help break the cycle of abuse and eventually reduce its frequency.

If I am elected to be your next Ramsey County Attorney I will work with experts to review our current programs, implement the latest proven methods of investigation and prosecution, and work to reduce the incidence of child abuse in our community.

In addition, I will institute a system to review child abuse cases prosecuted during the previous year. A similar program initiated in Cottonwood County Minnesota helped prosecutors spot trends in the community, which in turn led to greater success in combating abuse through effective intervention before the abuse occurred. This same annual review resulted in more effective prosecution of those cases that did occur.