Amy Eakin

Amy Eakin stands inside the Oak House Child Advocacy Center offi ce, where paintings adorn the walls to make children feel comfortable.

STORY & PHOTOS BY JILL HOLLOWAY Helping kids in harm’s way

After serving as intern at The Oak House Child Advocacy Center, Amy Eakin found her calling to advocate for children all over Decatur County.

The word, “hero” takes on a whole new meaning when thinking of Amy Eakin.

Eakin, a forensic interviewer and Director of the Oak House Child Advocacy Center, has dedicated her life to putting away individuals who abuse and prey on children.

Eakin began her work in 2012.

Prior to joining the Oak House CAC full-time, Eakin had interned there, while studying Sociology in college.

“It became my passion,” she said. “I now cover the whole Judicial Circuit.”

Once starting her work professionally at the Oak House, she returned to school to focus on forensic interviewing, eventually returning for extended forensic interviewing and advanced forensic interviewing.

Forensic interviewing is a specialty focused on child interviewing techniques.

“We interview children anywhere age 3-18,” Eakin explained. “We can interview them for sexual abuse, physical abuse or children who just witness domestic violence.”

During a forensic interview, it is just Eakin and the child, although any agency involved, such as law enforcement or the Department of Family and Children Services, are invited.

If any agency decides to attend the interview, they are required to sit in another room and can watch on another screen.

“These interviews are all recorded, because they can be used as evidence in that case,” Eakin said.

As agencies will see on the video, all of the interviews

Eakin conducts are childfriendly.

“All of the questions formed in the interview come directly from the child,” she explained. “If the child doesn’t bring it up, I don’t bring it up.”

Hearing the horrors these children have been through during the interviews can sometimes haunt Eakin.

“When I fi rst started interviewing, I had a really tough time with it,” she said. “I still have cases to this day that I will never forget.”

Even with the harrowing cases, though, there can be a silver lining.

That silver lining can come in the form of a letter.

Eakin said she received a letter that now hangs on her wall in her offi ce to remind her of why she keeps on fi ghting for these kids. The letter was from a mother whose daughter Eakin interviewed in one of her fi rst few cases.

“On Black Friday of 2013, my daughter woke up ready to tell her secret,” the letter read. “Pop tart crumbs still around her mouth from breakfast, she let go of everything she’d been holding on to for two long years. None of us had any idea of what to expect when we made the initial report, it was all so formal and overwhelming, even my 7-year-old daughter felt it. The fi rst time during our process of making the sexual abuse reports about our daughter that I felt my shoulders relax just a little was that afternoon when we walked into The Oak House in Bainbridge and were introduced to Amy Eakin… having her as my daughter’s advocate was the biggest blessing to me as a mom, when all I felt was agony and pain seeing how the abuse affected my daughter fi rsthand. She comforted me and helped me through the worst imaginable thing a parent could think would ever happen to their child.”

The mother went on to laud Eakin for advocating for her daughter during the trial, when her daughter was too scared to go to the stand when called.

“I will forever be grateful for her and how much love and empathy she showed,” the letter ended.

Eakin is often reminded of the young girl’s strength when she reads the letter. The girl has gone on to be a teenager now, but Eakin fully believes if that young girl was strong enough to go through that experience, then she can be strong enough to fi ght for every child, just like her.

“I live by the Bible verse, Isaiah 6:8,” Eakin said. “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’”

Eakin said she resonates with the verse, because she fully believes she was sent by the Lord to be the children’s voice.

“When I interview a kid I say, ‘Okay God here I am,’” Eakin explained. “I may get beat up on the stand, but at least it’s not the kid.”

Eakin does not get to take the stand in court cases in place of the children she usually interviews, however she said the brunt of the crossexamination is what falls on her.

“We follow these cases all the way through until prosecution,” she said.

While most cases are won with Eakin’s testimony, she said the ones she never forgets are the very few losses.

“I can count on one hand the number of cases we’ve lost, because I’ll never forget them,” she said. “We can’t win them all, but we try.”

Through working these cases, Eakin has become protective of her own family, including her children and grandchildren.

“My children can tell you that they didn’t get to do things their friends did,” she said. “I didn’t let them go to sleepovers, because I saw things that happened.”

Eakin has learned many things on the job that she implements at home, but most importantly she has learned to listen to kids when they say they don’t like an adult and to never force a child to hug an adult, when they are expressing they don’t want to.

“We are that way with my granddaughter, even though she’s my granddaughter,” Eakin shared. “It’s her body and we want her to be comfortable.”

Eakin is hopeful this will pay off in the long run and that her children and grandchildren will never have to endure the sexual or physical abuse that she has seen for far too long in her line of work.

While Eakin doesn’t consider herself a hero to her family or the children she serves, she said it is humbling, when she receives notes like she did from the mother to remind her that she is truly fulfi lling God’s work- something that she hopes to continue doing until she is called to do otherwise.

Jill Holloway— Post-Searchlight THEIR FIGHT IS OUR FIGHT: Eakin, pictured with members of the Decatur County Sheriff’s Offi ce, DFCS and Bainbridge Public Safety recently hosted a Child Abuse Prevention Month lunch, where a child abuse survivor shared her story.