The Montana Department of Justice awarded nearly $150,000 in grants to four Children’s Advocacy Centers across the state to help improve care for child survivors of crime and abuse, Attorney General Austin Knudsen announced.
The funding comes from a Johnson & Johnson settlement resolving allegations the company manufactured, marketed and knowingly sold baby powder tainted with carcinogenic asbestos. In the third phase of the grant program, accredited centers are eligible to receive up to $50,000 annually for equipment and information technology, facility improvements and professional training expenses.
Knudsen traveled to Hamilton to personally present Emma’s House Child Advocacy Center with its award during the announcement.
“Montana’s child advocacy centers provide a supportive and safe environment for children during difficult times,” Knudsen said. “That is why it is important that they have the funding they need to continue providing these critical services when Montanans need them the most.”
The four centers receiving funding in this phase are Emma’s House Child Advocacy Center in Hamilton, $37,874.69; Fort Peck Tribes Red Bird Woman Center CAC, $25,243.20; Lewis and Clark County CAC of AWARE, Inc., $49,688.50; and First Step – Providence St. Patrick Hospital, $29,700.80.
Val Widmer, executive director of Emma’s House, said the funds will support a technology upgrade to forensic interviewing equipment, safety improvements to the building and training for multidisciplinary team partners, adding that the investment translates directly into safety, justice and healing for Montana children.
Children’s Advocacy Centers provide a single, safe location where abused children and their non-offending family members can meet with the multidisciplinary team handling the investigation and care, reducing the number of interviews a child must give and the risk of additional trauma while supporting stronger investigations and prosecutions.
Montana has nine accredited CAC programs statewide, each of which received $20,000 in each of the program’s first two phases since 2024. The Montana Department of Justice’s Montana Child Sexual Abuse Response Teams maintains memorandums of understanding with all nine accredited programs and the Children’s Alliance of Montana.