The Warren County Child Advocacy Center provides a valuable service to children and their families.

That statement is true for similar advocacy centers around the state.

But those centers – typically with small staffs and volunteer boards of directors – spend a lot of time raising money in order to operate. We won’t say that fundraising comes at the expense of helping children, but we have no doubt that budget pressures for child advocacy center officials are a headache.

Two state legislators are proposing something to take the edge off for the local centers. Rep. Kyle Mullins, D-Peckville, and Rep. Jim Rigby, R-Johnstown, are circulating a co-sponsorship memorandum for legislation they are drafting that would create the Child Victim Recovery Fund.

The legislation, if approved, would create a mandatory Child Victim Recovery Fee assessed when an individual is convicted, pleads guilty or nolo contendere, or enters diversion for an offense involving a child victim. The fee would be $1,000 for a felony, $400 for a misdemeanor, and $250 for diversion.

Individuals on probation or parole for covered offenses would also pay a $15 monthly supervision surcharge. Proceeds from the fee would go into the Child Victim Recovery Fund administered by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency and distributed to accredited CACs through a formula-based statewide grant to support forensic services, medical evaluations, trauma-informed mental-health care, family advocacy, and service expansion.

Child advocacy centers like the one in Warren County should be receiving state funding to help pay for their work.

A 2023 report by the state court system showed a nearly 30% increase in sex offender registrations in Warren County from 7 in 2018 to 20 in 2022. Melissa Mclean, Warren County Children’s Advocacy Center executive director, told the Times Observer earlier this year, has done over 300 interviews with children since she started at the center in 2019 – an average of roughly 42 a year. Mclean conducted 70 interviews in 2024, and 30 through the first six months of 2025. The number of times the center shows up in Affidavits of Probable Cause filed by local police agencies so far in 2026 indicates the center’s workload isn’t going to decrease this year, either.

Given the laundry list of existing fees already paid by those convicted of crimes, we would hope Mullins and Rigby don’t face much opposition from their fellow state lawmakers when their legislation is eventually drafted. Those convicted of committing crimes against children should bear some of the cost of the child advocacy centers becoming an essential part of prosecuting sex crimes perpetrated against children.