Two years after critics sounded the alarm about a controversial doctor and her child abuse diagnoses, Lehigh County is moving forward with a new model for its Child Advocacy Center.
Such centers are spaces where law enforcement, medical experts and child advocates are able to work together to investigate child abuse allegations, with the goal of minimizing stress on possible victims by lessening the number of times a child must be interviewed about alleged abuse.
The revamped Lehigh County center would be community-based, and run by a nonprofit. Lehigh County commissioners on Wednesday heard a motion to hire law firm Fitzpatrick Lentz & Bubba to work on the formation of the entity, with a vote possible next month.
Catharine Roseberry, an assistant Lehigh County solicitor, said the law firm would help form a nonprofit corporation to run the center. Once the corporation is formed, it would not be a county entity, so an outside law firm is needed.
County Commissioners did not discuss the plan further at Wednesday’s meeting.
The county previously used Lehigh Valley Health Network’s John Van Brakle Child Advocacy Center until 2024, when questions were raised about its director, Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen. She retired shortly after county Controller Mark Pinsley released a report stating that the Lehigh Valley had an “abnormally high number” of medical abuse cases under her watch.
Numerous families have filed lawsuits over Esernio-Jenssen’s diagnoses, and at least one child homicide conviction was vacated amid doubts about the doctor’s testimony at trial. Matthew Wolfe, 40, was serving a 20- to 40-year sentence in the November 2013 death of 2-month-old Quinn Wolfe. Through an agreement with the Lehigh County district attorney’s office, that sentence was reduced to 4½ to nine years, and he was released in November.