Courage is a word typically associated with soldiers, firefighters, police officers and others fighting on the front lines to keep us safe from harm. But courage can also be ascribed to those who push fear, stigma and discomfort aside to talk about that which society keeps in the shadows.

These individuals are courageous because their actions — combating secrecy by communicating openly — protect us from harm, especially the most vulnerable among us.

Many researchers believe nearly five children die every day in America from abuse and neglect. Every year, during the month of April, communities across the country come to focus on prevention and awareness-raising to reduce the number of American children who are victims of abuse.

A crime of secrecy, child abuse tragically breeds within our society because it is difficult to talk about. In an effort to break this silence, the National Children’s Alliance has coordinated the launch of One With Courage campaign across the country. One With Courage is the first-ever national public awareness initiative centered on the courage it takes to talk about child abuse, learn the signs of abuse, and report abuse when it is suspected.

Why One With Courage? Because it takes tremendous courage for young victims to come forward and talk about the abuse they have experienced. It takes courage for adults to recognize the signs of abuse and report their suspicions. And it will take courage for all of us to engage in open dialogue about child abuse.

One With Courage also aims to highlight the unique role children’s advocacy centers play in providing comprehensive, coordinated and compassionate services to child victims of abuse across the country.

The Androscoggin Children’s Advocacy Center, an associate member of the National Children’s Alliance, supports the One With Courage campaign. The ACAC opened in 2005, the first child advocacy center in Maine. The ACAC is a community initiative, with 17 agencies collaboratively utilizing a multidisciplinary team approach in the investigation of child abuse cases and the recovery of child abuse victims and their families.

The ACAC is a place where children who have been abused can be interviewed by a specially trained forensic interviewer in a child-friendly environment. Individuals who need the information revealed by the child can witness the interview via closed circuit television in another room, and can feed questions to the interviewer so that they get all the information needed to complete an investigation.

Using the ACAC and multi-disciplinary approach helps reduce the number of interviews the child must have, and provides more comprehensive information for the assessment of the child and the investigation of the case.

The Androscoggin Children’s Advocacy Center provides many benefits to children and their families and to the community as a whole.

For victims and their families, the benefits of the ACAC are readily apparent — consistent and prompt follow-up to abuse reports, quality and consistent forensic interviews, compassionate support for the child and family, referrals to professionals with expertise in specialized fields, dramatically fewer victim interviews and increased successful prosecutions.

For the community, the ACAC helps to contain costs. Research shows that traditional investigations are 36 percent more expensive than CAC-based investigations. In addition, the ACAC helps to foster collaboration among systems in addressing the issues of child abuse.

In 2011, the ACAC served more than 90 child victims of abuse and their non-offending family members. Without the intervention services of a children’s advocacy center such as ours, these child victims may not have received the help they needed and statistics tell us the abuse would likely have continued.

As a leader in the child advocacy field, the Androscoggin Children’s Advocacy Center believes in the courage it takes to stand up for our children and protect them from abuse. While this issue is brought to the forefront during April, we hope our local communities continue to be “one with courage” year-round, and help us win the fight against child abuse and neglect that plagues every community across the country. It is only after we establish informed, empowered communities that we can eradicate child abuse.

Keri Myrick is coordinator/forensic interviewer with the Androscoggin Children’s Advocacy Center. For information on One With Courage, go to www.onewithcourage.org.