GREENFIELD — During the Children’s Advocacy Center of Franklin County and North Quabbin’s 10th annual “Hope, Healing and Help Breakfast” on Friday, speakers looked back on another year and commended the courage of the survivors the organization serves.
“It’s about coming together to stand beside children and families that need us most,” board of directors President Stacy Boron said at the start of the presentation at Greenfield Community College while listeners ate breakfast. “Together we can ensure that children who have faced unimaginable challenges find hope, healing and a brighter future.”
In 2024, the nonprofit helped 115 children, who have faced abuse and exploitation, through the investigation process, according to Executive Director Carol Conragan.
Director of Clinical Services Beth Agostino-Evans said she holds between 15 and 20 sessions with families each week, carrying a caseload of 20 to 30 children at a time. Through building relationships with survivors of child abuse and their families, Agostino-Evans said she sees the healing firsthand as “children and families take back their power and their strength.”
During Conragan’s speech, she asked the audience of local legislators, supportive business owners, clinicians and volunteers to participate in an activity. Clipped to the back of their chairs were papers printed with the silhouettes of children above ages in bold type. Conragan asked attendees to unclip the papers from their chairs and stand up when they heard her state the ages. Starting with 5 years old, Conragan called out numbers. By age 18, nearly the entire crowd was standing, creating a sea of silhouettes.
“Take a look around the room,” Conragan told the crowd. “What you see represents the 115 traumatized children who were brave enough to come forward and tell their story last year.”
She stressed that this number represents only 10% of the projected number of children facing abuse or exploitation based on national statistics, adding, “That means 1,000 children are hiding in the shadows.”
“Children don’t have a voice,” Conragan said in an interview. “[Children] are often a minority, and they don’t have a chance to speak out and protect themselves, so they need grown-ups to do it, and sexually abused and commercially exploited children need extra help, because it’s not a topic that people are comfortable with.”
At the start of her speech, Conragan told the crowd, “You here in the room are not shying away from this tough topic, and I am extremely grateful for that.”
Ja’Duke performers sang “Tomorrow” from the musical “Annie” before keynote speaker Ashley Oquendo took the podium. She recounted her childhood of abuse and the relationship with Children’s Advocacy Center family advocate Abby Bliss that helped her finally see healing on the horizon.
“I was living through a haze, just going through the motions; numb, disconnected, surviving not living,” Oquendo said.
Through emotional, physical, sexual and financial abuse, Oquendo’s father instilled “a kind of fear that creates an invisible cage.”
“There was no safe place,” Oquendo said. “In that house, ‘no’ was not allowed.”
Oquendo, now a senior in college in Tennessee, said she finally faced exhaustion from years of abuse as a teenager after falling asleep at the wheel. She said the same courage that pulled her to protect her siblings from her father pushed her to seek help.
“I expected cold, clinical conversations, paperwork, procedures, but instead I was met with warmth and patience, with safety,” Oquendo said, describing her experience with the Children’s Advocacy Center. “For the first time, I was in a space where my story wasn’t too heavy and where I wasn’t too much.”
Oquendo said Bliss taught her to trust again and not expect toxicity from those with authority.
“To say [Bliss] changed my life would be an understatement,” Oquendo told the crowd. “The Children’s Advocacy Center became more than a safe space; it became a symbol of what’s possible.”
She added,” Where silence had been my survival strategy, they gave me a microphone.”