JANUARY 2018 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 33
PRESS BUSINESS
Helping the most vulnerable with a smile
Suffolk Child Advocacy Center offers safe space for kids in dark times
By TIMOTHY BOLGER
Andrea Ramos-Topper stays positive despite
the thousands of heinous sex crimes against
children she has helped law enforcement
investigate at the Suffolk County Child
Advocacy Center that she’s run for two decades.
A licensed master social worker, the children’s
services division director maintains that upbeat
attitude regardless of how many unspeakable
details kids share with authorities in the Central
Islip nonprofit’s playroom with a two-way
mirror — a facility that’s proven key in making
underage victims comfortable enough to open
up to investigators.
“A lot of people ask, how do you do this?” says
Ramos-Topper. “Really the community that
supports our efforts…really helps the children
begin the healing process.”
The National Children’s Alliance, which
oversees about 300 similar centers nationwide,
recently re-accredited the CAC, one of few on
Long Island that work with sex crime survivors.
The center also offers medical, mental health,
peer-to-peer and other services.
CAC opened in 1997 at the
urging of a grand jury
report that found issues
with the investigation into
Katie Beers, the 10-yearold
girl held in an
underground bunker
in Bay Shore for two
weeks in 1992.
“You can never
overemphasize
the critical role
that the Child
Advocacy
Center has,”
says Gregory
Blass, the former
commissioner of the
Suffolk County Department of Social Services.
Retired Det. Lt. Greg Byrne, the ex-commander
of the Suffolk County police Special Victims
Section, agrees.
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“Without having a resource like the CAC, we
certainly wouldn’t have the successes that we
have in investigating and prosecuting these
types of cases,” says Byrne.
The center, a unit of the nonprofit EAC
Network, expanded in 2010.
“As we saw an increase in needs in the
community,” Ramos-Topper adds,
“We realized that there was a need
for a larger facility.”
More recently, they started the
Safe Harbour program that
provides services to survivors
of human trafficking and
sex trafficking. They’ve
helped about 150 victims,
including dozens of boys
and girls in the past three
years. Ramos-Topper notes the
Andrea Ramos-Topper smiles in the face of
decades of tough cases. Photo by Bob Giglione.
problem persists despite public ignorance.
“The sad truth it does happen, and it happens
here in Suffolk County,” she says.
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