Event honors young victims

Post Falls Mayor Clay Larkin remembers clearly the day nearly 40 years ago when he was called to a Post Falls home as part of the city’s volunteer ambulance crew.

A mother had called 911 because she couldn’t get her young daughter to quit crying.

“The reason the little girl was crying is her parents had extinguished cigarettes on her arms, her butt, her legs,” Larkin said Thursday to a crowd gathered for the Child Abuse Prevention Month kickoff in Coeur d’Alene. “That should never happen.”

As rainbow-colored pinwheels spun in a cutting wind outside the Pandhandle Health District Office, Larkin read a proclamation on behalf of mayors from Spirit Lake to the Silver Valley.

The pinwheels represent the more than 900 cases of child abuse reported in Kootenai County last year.

Blue wooden cutouts of children and babies flanking the podium at Thursday’s kickoff represented children who died from abuse or neglect. Each Silent Witness cutout bears the name of a child, their age and a short description of the abuse that ended their lives:

Brooks, Age 1, battered.

Cedric, Age 3 months, battered and shaken.

Ashley, Age 5, smothered.

“We shouldn’t have any of these here,” Larkin said, motioning to the cutouts. “But we do.”

Representatives read proclamations on behalf of U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, U.S. Rep. Bill Sali, U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo and Idaho Gov. Butch Otter.

Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Wayne Longo thanked volunteers from the Court Appointed Special Advocates program for their work in helping abused children.

“Any child that slips through the cracks is a child lost,” Longo said.

After the brief ceremony, a resource fair was held to share information on child abuse prevention and community resources.

“This is a celebration of what we do,” said Beth Barclay, director of ICARE, a child abuse prevention agency. “It’s our 15 minutes of fame for the year, but we’re preventing child abuse every day of the week all year long.”

Coeur d’Alene High School senior Mark Altman, who is working for Crapo’s office for his senior project, attended Thursday’s event. That such an event was necessary bothered him, he said, as did the fact that speakers mentioned the cost to taxpayers of abuse.

“I think the human concern is more important,” he said.