District Attorney Ferman co-founded the
Mission Kids Child Advocacy Center along with the Office of Children and Youth and Police Chiefs of Montgomery County, in recognition that the manner in which child abuse cases were investigated and prosecuted by law enforcement agencies was not necessarily in the child’s best interests, Opened in 2009, Mission Kids helps to ease the criminal justice process for abused children in Montgomery County, providing the necessary support services to help them heal and ensure their abusers are punished.
According to District Attorney Ferman, “The center was designed to centralize the necessary support services for abused children. Before the center opened in 2009, an abused child needed to go through multiple interviews by law enforcement, social services, prosecution, medical care services, mental health care providers and counselors, often at different locations over an extended period of time. This caused them to relive the horrors of their abuse over and over, causing unnecessary trauma and making it nearly impossible for many of them to find the strength they needed to testify in court against their abusers. Mission Kids serves as a child-friendly facility where victims of abuse are interviewed, examined and counseled in one safe and comfortable location by a multi-disciplinary team of compassionate individuals.”