SANDPOINT (ID)
Priest River Times
January 10, 2018
By Keith Kinnaird
SANDPOINT — A new chapter is opening at one of Sandpoint’s most storied homes.
The McFarland House, the stately dwelling at the corner of South First Avenue and Superior Street, is now home to the LillyBrooke Family Justice Center.
The home will serve as an advocacy center for survivors of childhood sexual abuse, although you would not gather that from the home’s comfortable appearance.
“We’re setting it up to look like a house. We just want that feel — like you’re coming to grandma’s house,” said Peggy Frye, victim witness unit coordinator for the Bonner County Prosecutor’s Office.
LillyBrooke, which is patterned after the national child advocacy center model, will serve as something as a hub for abused children in Bonner and Boundary counties.
Children who disclose abuse will be able to do so in a setting that is closer to a home than the sterile confines and pale lighting of an office space. The home will eventually fitted with an audio/video system that will allow children to make their disclosures in one room while a multi-disciplinary team monitors the interview from a different room.
The home will also be used for forensic examinations.
The idea is to bring law enforcement investigators, prosecutors, doctors and Idaho Department of Health & Welfare officials together to take account of disclosures without sending children and their family to various locations where they have to continually restate their accounts.
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