Child abuse reports have increased over the last year in Oneida County.

The Oneida County Child Advocacy Center’s director said reports initially dropped when schools went remote, but picked back up. A lot of cases are being reported to therapists.

About three years ago, Derrick O’Meara’s retirement from his 33-year career with New York State Police was interrupted.

“When the sheriff and undersheriff came to me and asked me to take this on, I gladly took it on,” O’Meara said.

He had only been retired for about a year and half when he says he was asked to be director of the Oneida County Child Advocacy Center.

“There’s a need for this in our society today, and I feel honored and privileged to lead such a professional team,” he said.

It’s been an unusual and challenging couple of years thanks to COVID, but the center’s work doesn’t stop, and neither does the need for it. Child abuse reports keep coming in.

“Our numbers continue to rise. I think we will be probably around 10% more cases this past year,” said O’Meara.

The Oneida County Child Advocacy Center offers a safe space for kids to talk. As far as investigations go, several agencies are on-site.

“Members of the [Oneida County] sheriff’s office, Rome Police Department, Utica Police Department and New York State Police,” O’Meara said.

Schools went remote in 2020, so initially, O’Meara says, reports went down by about 50%. That’s because the CAC wasn’t receiving reports from school officials, but he says the number shot back up when mental health services were needed.

“Therapists and counselors started to become the conduit for a lot of the reporting we were seeing about child abuse cases,” said O’Meara.

With increased internet usage, O’Meara says more child exploitation is going on. He says kids are sending inappropriate, sexual-based pictures and videos online.

“Little children are getting into basically pornography and some of the anime pornography that they are then experimenting on each other, which is a very real problem,” said O’Meara.

O’Meara said these posts are putting kids in damaging situations, and may be solicited by people preying on children.

“I just can’t really stress enough for people to watch what their kids are doing online. It’s just a lot of predation going on out there, and a lot of material that is harmful to children,” O’Meara said.

O’Meara also said drug and alcohol abuse has increased among adults.

“It tends to increase the number of cases that are going on because people’s inhibitions are lowered using substances, and problems occur,” he said.

O’Meara said these issues are happening across the state and country. The Oneida County district attorney said some more of his assistants are helping the CAC with cases because of backlogs caused by COVID.

Reports of suspected child abuse or maltreatment should be made to the New York Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment by calling 1-800-342-3720.