The Four Corners Child Advocacy Center, a vital resource for child abuse victims in Southwest Colorado since its founding in 1992, has appointed Lacey Osterloh as its new executive director. Osterloh, a Cortez native and citizen of the Cherokee Nation, brings h professional experience and personal insight to the role.
Osterloh previously served as lead advocate and forensic services director. Her path was shaped by surviving sexual assault in 2009 and receiving support from victim advocates.
“I cried because I can’t believe I’ve come this far,” Osterloh said about finding out she would be the new executive director. “When I got into victim services work, I didn’t even know what an advocate was or that victim services existed until I needed them myself. And then I was like, ‘This is what I want to do.’”
Osterloh started at a safe house with Renew, where she worked for 2½ years before taking break from advocacy. When a position opened at the advocacy center, she hesitated, concerned about the emotional toll of working with children.
She soon learned, however, about the resilience of the young survivors.
“I was really scared to take it at first, and I was like, ‘Oh man, I don’t know if I can actually work with kids. That’s going to be so heartbreaking.’ After doing it, I will never go back to working with adults,” Osterloh said. “Kids are so incredible, they’re so resilient and they just inspire me every day.”
As executive director, Osterloh still conducts forensic interviews but now focuses on administration, including grant writing and fundraising. She hopes to expand the center’s unfinished upstairs into therapy rooms or offices and grow the staff beyond the current lead advocate and three backups.
Outside the center, Osterloh also engages in other advocacy efforts. She contracts with the Colorado Children’s Alliance to train new victim advocates and multidisciplinary team coordinators across Colorado and neighboring states. Earlier this year, she testified before the Colorado Health and Human Services Committee and the Colorado State Senate in support of codifying the Indian Child Welfare Act into state law.
The center assists in investigations of child physical and sexual abuse, working with law enforcement and Child Protective Services. It provides a neutral, child-centered space designed to support children during difficult times.
Children come through the center’s doors almost every day, whether for forensic interviews or for ongoing trauma therapy that is provided by an in-house therapist.
Children visit the center almost daily for forensic interviews or trauma therapy. Interviews are conducted by neutral professionals using nonleading questions, recorded and streamed to CPS, law enforcement and the district attorney’s office in a separate room to reduce stress and avoid retraumatization.
Children are informed when their interviews are recorded and observed to foster trust and transparency.
More information about the Four Corners Advocacy Center and its mission can be found online at www.nestcac.org.
