Gov. Asa Hutchinson has long said helping abused children became a mission for him in part because of his wife.
On Wednesday, he revealed who inspired first lady Susan Hutchinson: Beverly Engle, who founded and served as executive director of the Children's Advocacy Center of Benton County.
He spoke at a ceremony for Engle, who was awarded the Child Advocacy Centers of Arkansas Percy Malone Child Protection Award. The event was at the Clinton Presidential Center.
"Susan, in Benton County, got inspired by Beverly Engle. She got inspired, she worked with Beverly, she saw her passion and her love for the children and also the necessity of the work," Hutchinson said. "Beverly, you've inspired me."
Hutchinson sat with Malone, a businessman from Arkadelphia and a former Democratic state senator who worked to secure funding for the centers and provide training to investigators who work with abused and neglected children. Malone was presented the first award in 2010.
"Percy, I knew you from a distance. I want you to know, Percy, I didn't like you from a distance," Hutchinson said to laughter in the audience. "Percy probably didn't like me from a distance, but, you know, when I got to know Percy, we were brought together because I have an incredible respect for his leadership, his heart and his passion, for the protection of children in our state. So Percy, I want you to know I love you now."
"Governor, I love you, too," said Malone afterward. "But I love Susan more."
Engle, Malone said, always focuses on bringing people together.
"You don't realize -- maybe you got a little taste of it today -- the inspiration you've given all of us because you were there and you did help other legislators to understand what we're doing and it wasn't easy in that time and we felt it should have been," Malone said. "With the first lady's help now, it's going to be easier for all of us, all of us in the audience, to make forward progress over the next seven or eight years at least."
"I really am always amazed that people think I've done anything noteworthy," said Engle, who spoke last. "I learned like you, who are part of this team, we do what we do because once you know, how can you not?"
She told the story of two children in Benton County, bone thin with sunken cheeks. The investigators who entered the home "thought they had walked into a concentration camp."
The children were kept in a room that was bare except for a mattress on the floor and given only a bowl of rice a day to eat. They were made to stand for hours in a square drawn on the floor while being videotaped when their parents were gone for hours or days. The parents reviewed the tapes to see if the children moved.
"I could go on," she said. "This is in Benton County, OK?"
After the ceremony, Hutchinson said his budget, which would increase funding to the Department of Human Services' Division of Family Services by about $20 million, would help the division keep up with a growth of children in state care.
"We've had an influx of children, so it's hard to make progress on [caseloads]," he said. "This is necessary for us to handle children that are currently in our system, to make sure their needs are met, and to make sure that we're starting to make progress on that caseload ratio."
Metro on 04/21/2016