Valley child abuse expert pens new book

May 9—Dr. Pat Bruno, the Valley's leading expert in child abuse, has written a book that covers his career and the impact his work has had on young victims and bringing abusers to justice.

"How Can I Not? Reflections on a Life Evaluating and Treating Victims of Child Maltreatment," is a 158-page self-published book that is part memoir of Bruno's transformation from pediatrician to child abuse expert and a case study of the causes of child abuse and its impact on communities.

"I've been writing it, on and off, for 20 to 30 years," said Bruno, a Geisinger pediatrician who wanted to document the changes in the medical and legal field regarding child abuse and what still needs to be done to protect children. "There's value in looking back at the past to see what went on and how we can do things better."

In a forward for the book, which is available on Amazon.com, David Turkewitz, a member of the Pennsylvania Attorney General Advisory Board of Child Abuse and past president of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, writes,"Dr. Bruno serves as an inspiration for anyone who doubts the ability of a single individual to make this a better world."

Bruno said he wrote the book for a general audience.

"It was written so everybody would have an understanding about child abuse and how we, as a community, can prevent it," he said. "It's my experiences and the cases I've been involved in, but it's also about the science of child maltreatment."

He recalls feeling "woefully inept" as far as his medical training when he began working as the only pediatrician in Northumberland County in the late 1970s.

Throughout the 1980s, Northumberland County led the state in the number of reported and actual child abuse cases. Faced with that grim statistic, Bruno decided to take action by temporarily leaving his private Sunbury practice in 1987 to spend a month receiving specialized child abuse training in San Diego, Calif.

A year later, he proposed opening the Center for Child Protection at Sunbury Community Hospital.

With assistance from the hospital administration, then-Rep. Merle Phillips and Sen. Edward Helfrick among many others, Bruno was successful in opening the first center of its kind in Pennsylvania.

The book cites Robert Sacavage, a retired Court of Common Pleas judge and former Northumberland County district attorney, who in 1990 praised the work being done at the center.

"Dr. Bruno and the Sunbury Community Hospital spearheaded the efforts on the part of the medical community," Sacavage said in a 1990 letter to the hospital chief executive officer. "The establishment of the Child Protection Center at your hospital and the acquisition of the very latest technological equipment acted as a catalyst, in my opinion, of the formation of a joint task force to deal with child abuse problems. Speaking on behalf of the law enforcement community, our conviction rate for offenders has been greatly enhanced with the availability of physical and testimonial evidence obtained through the center."

But there was still more work to be done.

One child in particular prompted Bruno in the mid-1990s to step up his efforts to improve the lives of children and establish a Children's Advocacy Center (CAC) in Northumberland County, a place where young victims of abuse are treated and interviewed a single time in an effort to limit the trauma of having to repeat their stories for multiple law enforcement, attorneys and medical practitioners.

"I was explaining to this little girl, who was about 7 years of age, what I was doing as I was examining her. She asked me, 'Will this help to heal the hurt in my heart,'" said Bruno, exhaling deeply. "I knew I had to make things a little better. She changed the course of things we were doing."