Friday, February 8, 2008

West Yadkin C.A.R.E. Graduation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Feb. 8, 2008

Judge Jeanie Houston spoke today to approximately 250 students, faculty and parents during graduation ceremonies for West Yadkin Elementary School's Child Abuse Reduction Effort program.

C.A.R.E., formed in Randolph County in 1992, is a 16-week course designed to teach second-grade students to recognize and report child abuse. The initiative is taught by specially trained uniformed officers from local law enforcement agencies.

During West Yadkin's ceremony, 102 second graders received certificates from their teachers, Judge Houston and Hollis Stinson, the Yadkin County Sheriff's Department school resource officer who taught the course.

"When we were seven and eight years old, we didn't have to worry about the things that they teach in these C.A.R.E. classes, and that bothers me and it probably bothers you, too," Judge Houston said during her remarks. "It's a different world than we grew up in."

Statistics on child abuse, Judge Houston said, are staggering. Every day in the United States, four children die as victims of child abuse. Eighty percent of those children are under the age of four. She continued, adding that a case of child abuse is reported in the state of North Carolina every 10 seconds.

During nearly 19 years in the court system of the 23rd Judicial District, Judge Houston said she could name without hesitation at least six children in the four-county area of Wilkes, Yadkin, Ashe and Alleghany counties who had been killed as the result of abuse.

Judge Houston, who attended West Yadkin Elementary as a child, called on parents to be involved in the lives of their children.

"Every parent here today is an interested and concerned parent, or you wouldn't be sitting here," Judge Houston said. "You need to talk to your kids. You need to know what's going on their life."

On the judicial bench since August 1997, Judge Houston has spoken at numerous C.A.R.E. and Drug Abuse Resistance Education graduations throughout the 23rd Judicial District.
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