Thirty multidisciplinary investigative teams members from McKean, Elk, Cameron and Potter counties attended a two-day training session in Bradford on Thursday and Friday.
The sessions were held at the First Presbyterian Church.
The training was provided through a grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) via Fox Valley Technical College Missing and Exploited Children – Training and Technical Assistance Program.
Training topics concentrated on best practices throughout investigations of child maltreatment — focusing on the safety of children and investigative process.
“We — the Children’s Advocacy Center and our entire team— are fortunate to have access to such excellent training with nationally renowned experts in the field of child maltreatment,” said Mikele Bay, director of the McKean County Children’s Advocacy Center. “The response from the training was overwhelmingly positive and our CAC hopes to bring more training to McKean, and our surrounding counties, in the future.
“This training exemplifies the strong collaboration of partner agencies throughout all four counties to conduct thorough child abuse investigations and focus on the needs of the victim child,” she continued. “The CAC is proud to be a small part of the larger team of professionals attending to the needs of our most vulnerable citizens.”
Julie Kenniston, MSW, L.I.S.W., and Dave Peifer, retired special agent in charge for the state Attorney General’s office, conducted the training sessions.
Kenniston is an independent contractor and trainer presenting nationally and internationally on interviewing and investigation of child abuse and exploitation cases. She is the executive director of The Center for Family Solutions, Butler County’s developing family justice center in Hamilton, Ohio. She specializes in the areas of forensic interviews, interdisciplinary teamwork, peer review, sexual abuse and exploitation issues, domestic violence dynamics, assessment, and planning. Kenniston is a licensed independent social worker in Ohio. As a recent board member of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children having served two terms, she remains as the co-chair of the forensic interview committee to continue the forensic interviewer mentor project. Kenniston is co-author and co-editor of the 3’d Edition of Handbook on Questioning Children: A Linguistic Perspective, originally written by Anne Graffam Walker, Ph.D., and published by the American Bar Association.
Peifer, retired from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, was the special agent in charge of the Bureau of Special Investigations – Child Predator Unit. This unit is responsible for conducting undercover online investigations, responding to complaints regarding children sexually exploited via the Internet, conducting community education programs and monitoring of the Internet for the bartering in child pornography. Peifer has been a law enforcement officer for 35 years and was the supervisor of the Delaware County District Attorney’s Criminal Investigation Child Abuse Unit & Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force for 13 years. During this time Peifer has investigated hundreds of incidents of child abuse (including child sexual abuse) and child pornography. Peifer has received over 1,200 hours of training in the field of child physical and sexual abuse as well as the use of the internet by sexual offenders to seduce, entice and gain access to children for the purposes of sexual exploitation.
