When you ask a CASA volunteer about their experience, you will hear the words heart-wrenching, challenging, sad, frustrating, exhilarating, encouraging, and bitter-sweet. However, when you take a look at the victims, the vulnerable children, what they experience is inconceivable.

Imagine this, your mother is addicted to methamphetamine and is usually high or passed out. There are strangers coming and going in your home, eating your food, being mean to your mom, touching you in places you don’t want to be touched, making a mess that you have to clean up. You take care of your little sister, feeding her, bathing her, and making sure she is safe, and then… the police come, raid your house, and you have to leave all of your toys, your clothes, your house, your mom, and might never see them again. And by the way, you are 9 and your sister is 2.

Or, imagine that you go to school and other kids make fun of you because you do not smell very good, your clothes are dirty and have holes in them. You get into fights easily and are told you are a very angry child. Then you go home and tell your parents that you got into trouble at school. The beating is done with a belt, no dinner, and you are grounded…where can you run to get away from the hurt? Where is it safe?

As you think about how awful these scenarios are, imagine one more. You and your sister are already victims of abuse and neglect. You have been taken away from your mother for her drug use and failure to protect you; so you have to start visiting your father. He takes advantage of you, bad touches instead of good. You can still remember how good touches used to feel. Your feelings hurt because he says if you tell anyone then you really do not love him. You disclose to your foster parents, social worker, and CASA that this has been going on. Ultimately, you end up in the courtroom, testifying to the judge and jury about what your father has done, as he sits there with his angry face, swearing at you, threatening you, scaring you, again. You see your father in hand cuffs and an orange suit, your stomach hurts and feels queasy, trying to figure out what it all means, and what might happen next. Does this mean I really don’t love Daddy? Does he really not love me?

The children are ultimate survivors, victims of Mom or Dad’s poor choices, victims of an over worked social service system, and sometimes victims of a seemingly unfair judicial process. As a CASA volunteer you are there for the child, to speak for the child who can not protect or speak for him or herself. Your voice is what protects them when their own tiny voice can’t be heard. As a CASA volunteer, you have an incredibly unique opportunity to influence where that child ends up. While the ultimate decision is the judges, you, as the only party who is working on one case at a time, and the only person whose recommendation is not being paid for, may be the best chance that child will have. That child deserves to be loved and nurtured, free from fear, free from adult responsibilities, free to laugh and love and learn how to be a good parent themselves some day. Are you willing to accept the challenge? And if not you, then who?