Grant Will Help PEI Kids’ Efforts to Aid Child Victims of Sexual Abuse

Editor's Note: The following is a news release issued by .

Last year alone, PEI Kids, a Mercer County nonprofit dedicated to keeping children safe, provided immediate counseling services to 255 child victims of sexual abuse.

A recent $10,000 grant from the Fund for Women and Girls will support these efforts and fund an intergenerational support group for girls who have been sexually abused and their mothers and other female caregivers.

"This one-of-a-kind program is essential to our community," explains Community Foundation President Nancy Kieling. "Our Fund for Women and Girls giving circle members are proud to support PEI Kids and salute them for their vital work."   

Based in Lawrence Township, PEI Kids has been a leader in addressing issues surrounding child sexual assault for over a quarter of a century. Through its Crisis Intervention for Child Victims of Sexual Abuse Program, it provides immediate short term counseling to over 95 percent of Mercer County’s reported cases of child sexual abuse. Since its inception, the program has served more than 5,000 child victims.

In recognition of the program’s success, Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey recently named PEI Kids as the lead agency for the Greater Mercer Coalition to Prevent Child Abuse, which will work to educate every adult who works and/or lives in Mercer County on how to prevent child sexual abuse and how to recognize when a child may be being abused.

PEI Kids Executive Director Penny Ettinger states, “We are very thankful for the Princeton Area Community Foundation’s ongoing and generous support of PEI Kids. We have provided immediate crisis intervention counseling to sexually abused children for 27 years. It is what we were founded to do -- and what we still do, each and every day.”

According to Dr. Juanita Johnson Brooks, the Program’s Clinical Director for the past 16 years, “Cognitively, socially and emotionally, it is critically important to immediately help the child process the abuse, normalize reactions and provide adaptive coping skills -- and to include the family in the treatment process to help the family process the trauma and to increase family bonds, functioning and healing. Intergenerational support group meetings foster maternal child  bonding and empathy; and enhance child victims’ physical, emotional and mental health at an extremely sensitive time in their lives. “