Community partners, supporters and dedicated staff from the Paluxy River Children’s Advocacy Center gather Dec. 3 to break ground on their permanent location at 805 Lipan Highway in Granbury. This center serves the counties of Erath, Hood and Somervell.
MARY VINSON
Posted Friday, December 12, 2025 12:00 am
By JEFF OSBORNE
Sometimes it can take a while to build hope, but once established, it has a positive impact for generations. That is the goal of the Paluxy River Children’s Advocacy Center, which held a groundbreaking ceremony Dec. 3 for their future building at 805 Lipan Highway in Granbury.
‘This has been a long time coming,” said Margaret Cohenour, executive director of the Paluxy River Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC). The area CAC serves Erath, Hood and Somervell counties.” I’ve been talking about a place to put the CAC for five or six years.”
Cohenour described the CAC’s mission as promoting “the healing of child-abuse victims one child at a time.”
“We work with law enforcement, district attorneys, judges, medical professionals, the CPS (Child Protective Services) and want to make sure kids know that we will be there for them,” she said.
Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds is board president for the CAC, “and without him I don’t know if I’d be here,” Cohenour said.
“This is a big step forward,” he said. ‘The Children’s Advocacy Center has been in operation in Hood County for 18 or 19 years. It started out in a small building along Morgan Street and has moved a couple of times. This will give the CAC a permanent home.”
Cohenour thanked all the community partners who work with and support the CAC, including several city of Granbury employees who worked to get the location secured.
“We started the building campaign last November,” she said. “We’re not quite there yet, but we get to start. Without partners who appreciate what we do, we wouldn’t have been able to make this happen.”
Hood County District Attorney Ryan Sinclair echoed Cohenour’s comments about helping children one at a time, adding, “We want to promote healing to child abuse victims. That healing process is a journey, and a lot of times that journey is started by the child alone.
Organizations like the CAC are here to make sure that although children may start their journey alone, they don’t have to finish it alone.”
Cohenour said the CAC has been paying rent for nearly 20 years in different locations, “and we needed a permanent home. I saw this location, and it was a heart thing. It was beautiful.
“The idea is to create a space of privacy and recovery for the kids. We are really excited about what’s happening here,” she said.
Cohenour said she hopes construction is complete within 10 months.
“I’m hoping by the end of September (2026),” she said. “It should be 10 months for construction from start to finish. The city has developed a plan on how to get electricity to the property. As soon as we’ve got power here, we can get our permit (for construction).
We’ll be ready to rock and roll once we do that.
“We’ve had a really good partnership with the city on this. We’ve been through a lot of meetings, and there have been a lot of steps. Working with them has been instrumental. I’m thankful they see this as beneficial to the community.”
Zoya Thompson, a therapist with CAC, said children are able to enjoy a Hero Garden that helps them recover from trauma.
“There are different types of trauma, from witnessing crime to being an abuse victim,” she said. “We help children make sense out of something that should have never happened. The Hero Garden is a graduation exercise for different children as they go through the process.”
Offering unconditional acceptance and support helps children cope with painful and stressful memories of abusive experiences, she said.
“At the CAC, a child knows their story matters, and they will be believed,” Thompson said. “They have a safe and nurturing place with us. They have a rock and get to take a piece of the CAC with them, and every child who graduates (from trauma recovery) leaves a piece of
their story with us. That encourages each child and family member who walks through the door. It’s not just children who are impacted. This changes entire families, entire communities and eventually the entire world.”
Thompson said children’s rocks will be moved from the current location to the new location, and Cohenour said handprints of the children also will be taken to the new location.
Services offered by the CAC include forensic interviews, which allow information to be gathered from children in a sensitive and legally sound manner, case reviews, prevention education, victim support and advocacy and counseling.
More information about Paluxy River CAC can be found online at paluxyrivercac.org or by calling 817-573-0292