The old Hero House building was demolished last year. It was the organization’ s home since 2000, when the child advocacy center was first established. Photo submitted
“ So, when that interviewer interviews that child, she gets all the information that all the team members need,” she said.
She said if law enforcement needs to press charges or when DFACS assesses safety, they have all the information that they need. The DA’ s office has the information that they need to prosecute the offender. She said the video makes an impact on the jury because it’ s very powerful.
For 18 years, DFACS employees who had gone to training, because Dismuke sent all of her people to forensic training, worked in the center.
Forensic training is just the best training to learn how to talk to children, she said.
“ We do the interviews here,“ she said.
The Hero House ran on a part-time director until Dismuke became full-time, she said.
“ We were always open 24 / 7, was always available for law enforcement and DFACS, but we had just a part-time director,“ she said.
“ I came on board, here, when I retired from the Department of Family and Children Services. My retirement plan was to do the forensics, still, because I loved that part of it,” she said.
“ In May 2018, I became the full-time director. Since then, in 2020, October 2020, we opened our medical part of the services here,” she said.
In August 2019, they hired a part-time administrative assistant, Karen Sanderson, with her main job being putting their paperwork in the system and keeping their funding rolling through the GBI and the child advocacy centers and the Victims of Crime Act of 1984.
“ But since then, we’ ve been able to hire. We have five contract nurses, which are on call whenever we need them to do our medical exams, which is a blessing.”
“ If you talk to any child advocacy center, there’ s only 48 of us that cover 159 counties. So, for Colquitt County to have one is absolutely amazing.”
She attributed the building of the Hero House to First Presbyterian Church,“ They just really saw the vision of what we could do here.”
20 MoultrieScene APRIL 2025