April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Part 1
Wednesday, April 1st, 2015 -- 1:30 PM
-April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.I spoke with Melissa Geldernick, the Sexual Assault Advocate for the Personal Development Center, about Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
First, Melissa explained the Personal Development Center.
Melissa said, "Personal Development Center is a non-profit, domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy center. Our home base is in Marshfield. We started their about, I think, 38 years ago. That's our year this year, 38 years. We've been doing Clark County for that whole period of time, but we didn't have an office over here until, I think we've been in Clark now for about 20 years. We also have an office in Owen. It's in the Rehabilitation and Living Center up there."
"So we try to make accessibility really easy because it is such a big county and because transportation can be so hard to get and to maintain. We try to eliminate that as best as we can by having both of those offices and the office in Marshfield because sometimes they're on that border line, like over by Chili, where Marshfield is closer than Neillsville or Owen."
"I'm our Sexual Assault Advocate and then we've got a Domestic Violence Advocate as well. And we can work with adults, kids. We also have a Youth Advocate that goes into the school districts here as much as she can. She's busy because she's got all of Wood County and all of Clark County so she's got a lot of area to cover! We also have an Elder and Vulnerable Adult Specialist and she pops in and out of here too when she needs too."
"We also have a Center for Family Visitation Program. That's where families can exchange their kids safely if there's a restraining order between the parents. And that's open for Clark people too even though it is in Marshfield. But it's still working with a program that we do. And we also do supervised visitation for parents that don't necessarily have a primary placement, but they still have 3 hours a week that they can see their kids. That's something we can do at our facility too."
Coming up Thursday, will hear about the history of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.