NEW JERSEY
Ashbury Park Press
BY A. SCOTT FERGUSON
STAFF WRITER
As Martin Krupnick stood before 50 prosecutors, police officers and supporters of the proposed Monmouth County Child Advocacy Center last week, he wished that they were celebrating the groundbreaking for the new building, or better, the official ribbon cutting.
Instead, Krupnick, a psychologist and chairman of the Friends of the Monmouth County Child Advocacy Center Inc., told the audience at the meeting in Freehold Township that the group would set a goal of 14 months to raise the remaining money to build the state-of-the-art center in Freehold Township.
In the past 20 years, more law enforcement agencies have turned to child advocacy centers as a way to better deal with children who are physically, sexually or mentally abused by adults.
"This will provide them with a comfortable and therapeutic environment instead of shuffling them from one agency to another," the Rev. John Bambrick, a pastor at St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church in Manalapan and a survivor of childhood abuse, said during the meeting. Krupnick's organization so far has raised about $700,000 of the $6 million needed to construct the 16,000-square-foot building on land donated by the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders on Kozloski Drive and Burlington Road in Freehold Township.