Carl Perkins Center opens 3rd location in Gibson County

MILAN, Tenn. — A new center with the sole purpose of helping victims of child abuse and their families officially opened its doors Thursday afternoon.

The Carl Perkins Center opened up its third and final location for Gibson County in Milan, where director Leah Blackburn said they will help around 250 children.

“The idea for this center is to serve Milan and the population here so that way the families that we work with won’t have to travel to Humboldt or Trenton, that we can provide the services to them right here in this community,” Blackburn said.

The opening was possible through donations from local businesses. The building off of East Van Hook in Milan was donated by BR Supply. The furniture was donated by Aaron’s and some of the forensic equipment was donated by the Milan Police Department.

The center has a special forensics interview room where children only have to share their story once with investigators while the rest of the team is in the observation room.

“That way it is a nonthreatening environment and the child can tell their story while the professionals are in the other room, and that way the child only has to tell their story once,” Blackburn said.

Ken Pullias is the former president of the Gibson County Carl Perkins Advisory Board, and he said he has been with the project since the beginning.

“Just to make it comfortable for the people when they walk in to kind of feel like this isn’t a hospital or a large office complex — this is somewhere where I can sit down and talk to somebody,” Pullias said.

Abby Little is the current president of the advisory board, and she said this is only the start of their mission.

“It’s definitely the beginning, because it will be here now — we can start serving the community more easily, help these families out,” Little said. “So many people have worked so hard to make this happen and we couldn’t have done it without them and we want them to know that the community is still here and supporting us and to see how much it means to the community is wonderful.”

Blackburn said they hope to host parenting classes and trauma therapy in the new location soon.