(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Through play therapy, young victims of abuse and neglect can gain strength before they testify. It’s thanks to Imagination Dollhouses for Children that builds and donates model-sized courtrooms for children to better understand what the inside of a courtroom looks like.

“The other thing that the gentleman who created this talked about was that power of ‘you’re bigger than the courtroom’,” said Safe Passage Executive Director, Maureen Basenberg. “So it kind of gives you a sense of a bigger authority, you know, which is really just a visceral feeling of being in power.”

Safe Passage is a children’s advocacy center helping children in El Paso and Teller Counties.

“What we do to help children is that when they’ve been so brave as to make a disclosure that something has happened to them, we coordinate that response really with an eye toward hope and healing,” Basenberg said. “Bringing together law enforcement, medical, mental health advocacy, even prevention services to help to answer their brave statement and move them toward hope and healing.”

The group works alongside Colorado’s 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office to help children be prepared to testify in court.

“The District Attorney’s Office is a close partner to Safe Passage, and they regularly prepare children to testify in court,” Basenberg said. “A key element of any criminal trial. So, to show children inside of a courtroom in a non-threatening setting where each child feels more in control.”

A demonstration was shown on the play-sized courtroom as 4th Judicial Senior Deputy District Attorney, Kelson Castain guided tester Maeve Basenberg through it.

Taking the stand can be nerve-wracking, and the goal of this new tool is to help show children ahead of time who is who inside of the courtroom.

“There’s a lot of anxiety that goes with the unknown and so for people, whether they’re adults or children, when they walk through that door and they don’t know what to do, what to see, who they’re going to come across, or what to expect,” said 4th Judicial Senior Deputy District Attorney, Kelson Castain. “There’s a lot of that anxiety that kind of builds up and prevents them from really doing a good job and coming into court and telling people about the traumas that they witnessed.”

4th Judicial District Attorney, Michael Allen, shared how taking the stand can be scary no matter one’s age.

“I go through this even with adult victims that are getting on the stand to testify,” Allen said. “There’s always going to be nerves. Any time somebody gets on the stand in a criminal trial because of all those factors we just talked about, lots of strangers looking at them, a judge sitting above them, looking down, paying very strict attention.”

Imagination Dollhouses for Children donates these wooden model courtrooms to nonprofit organizations working with child victims of sexual abuse.

Mock jury set up inside of the model courtroom

Basenberg shared during the presentation how the creator behind this company made doll houses for his granddaughter and then had a request to make one for a local child advocacy center.

The donated models will specifically help in the Pikes Peak region for children to feel at ease before stepping foot into a courtroom, especially if they have never been in one before.

“The huge benefit to having a model courtroom like this is that we can show them in a safe and non-threatening kind of way what that courtroom is going to look like, where they’re going to go and how they’re going to act when they get into the courtroom,” Castain said.

Allen shared the types of cases in which children would appear in the courtroom.

“We’ve had kids testify in murder cases,” Allen said. “I can think back to a case that Kelson and I actually prosecuted where there were kids involved, where a father killed the mother and that can be tough on anybody. So, we have kids testifying in murder cases, sex assault cases, domestic violence cases, you name it, where a kid might be a witness.”

This new tool will help children understand what a courtroom looks like and the roles of the people inside.

This form of play therapy is helping children be comfortable and have a sense of power before they speak on a traumatic experience.

“So the real the goal is to make that part more comfortable so that they can come in and then testify truthfully as to what they saw or heard or maybe what has even happened to them,” said Allen.