Every day, the headlines show the same names: Jeffrey Epstein, his associates, powerful men and celebrity enablers. The coverage fixates on notoriety, scandal and gossip. What gets lost is the truth: Child sexual abuse is not at all rare, not historic, and not confined to just infamous cases. It happens every day, in every Pennsylvania county, to thousands of children whose names will never be known to the public.
If there is one lesson to be learned from the Epstein scandal, it is not about celebrity. It is about the reality of widespread, systemic child sexual abuse and the responsibility of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to respond to survivors with the needed resources and services.
That response already exists in Pennsylvania. It is delivered every day by Children’s Advocacy Centers. But despite their essential role, Pennsylvania’s CACs are severely underfunded, and the consequences are real. Funding instability limits staffing, delays access to therapy and medical care, and forces CAC professionals to spend time fundraising instead of serving children.
Children’s Advocacy Centers are the frontline infrastructure for responding to child abuse. When abuse is suspected, CACs provide a child-centered, trauma-informed response that coordinates law enforcement, child welfare, prosecutors, medical providers and mental health professionals so that children are not retraumatized by a fragmented system. CACs ensure that children tell their stories in a safe, neutral setting, while investigators and prosecutors receive reliable evidence and families receive immediate support.
In 2025 alone, nearly 14,000 Pennsylvania children came to a CAC because of suspected abuse or neglect. More than 10,000 of those cases involved child sexual abuse. CACs conducted thousands of forensic interviews, medical evaluations, and referrals to trauma therapy. These are not optional services. CACs are how Pennsylvania fulfills its legal and moral obligations to protect children, hold offenders accountable, and support healing.
Yet the only guaranteed state funding a CAC receives is approximately $50,000 annually; the remaining funds must be pieced together through competitive grants, local contracts, and private fundraising. On a per-child basis, it costs roughly $1,150 to serve a child adequately and fairly at a CAC. Pennsylvania directly supports only $123 per child, leaving more than $1,000 per child dependent on unstable, non-guaranteed funding sources. Statewide, this creates a devastating annual funding gap of nearly $15 million for services already being delivered to abused children.
The consequences are real. Funding instability limits staffing, delays access to therapy and medical care, and forces CAC professionals to spend time fundraising instead of serving children.
Pennsylvania’s underinvestment is especially stark when compared to other states. Despite having one of the largest child populations in the nation, Pennsylvania ranks near the bottom nationally in per-child CAC funding. Peer states with similar populations invest several times more in their child advocacy center infrastructure.
We ask CACs to respond to some of the most serious crimes imaginable while funding them as if they were optional charities rather than essential public safety infrastructure.
The right response to Epstein is not endless retrospectives or renewed outrage at famous perpetrators. Child sexual abuse survivors deserve immediate protection and care, and systems must be strong enough to respond quickly every time abuse is disclosed.
Children’s Advocacy Centers are that system. Sustainable, offender-funded investments shift the burden away from local fundraising and short-term grants toward a stable, accountable model that centers survivors rather than sensational cases. We applaud state Reps. Kyle Mullins and Jim Rigby for working on bipartisan legislation to create this funding stream.
If we truly believe the lesson of Epstein is about protecting children, then the path forward is clear: Support Children’s Advocacy Centers. Invest in survivor services. Build a system that responds to abuse every time, not just when the perpetrator is famous.