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July 10, 2011

Jenny Bratton takes on leadership role at agency

By Janet Jacobs Corsicana Daily Sun The Corsicana Daily Sun Sun Jul 10, 2011, 08:00 PM CDT

Corsicana — Jenny Bratton got to see a success story on her first day on the job as executive director of the Child Advocates of Navarro County.

A young woman who has aged out of foster care and graduated from Corsicana High School with honors, was accepted to the Navarro College nursing program on scholarship. With the assistance of generous donors, the Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program was able buy the girl a computer so she could start college on an even footing with the other students.

“There are a lot more happy stories than people assume,” Bratton said.

If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Jenny is the wife of Randy Bratton, Corsicana Police Chief.

Randy Bratton has resigned from the Child Advocates advisory board, and Assistant Chief Ronnie McGaha has taken his place on the board to avoid any conflict of interest.

Jenny Bratton and her two young sons, nicknamed Jim and Jack, moved to Corsicana in December 2008, roughly a month following Randy Bratton’s hiring by the city. Jenny spent her first year back in Texas studying for the Texas bar exam, and being a stay-at-home mom, which for her also meant getting involved in the community through volunteer work at Bowie Elementary, the Boys and Girls Club and other organizations.

“I got to know the community,” she said. She also passed the bar exam on the first try, so she is licensed to practice law in Texas.

A part-time adjunct instructor at Navarro College, Jenny Bratton was ready to seek full-time employment when the Child Advocates agency lost its executive director of eight years, Kim Martinez.

“It’s a tremendous loss to lose Kim,” Jenny Bratton said. “The only positive thing is I’m not entrenched and I can ask ‘What can we do different? What can we do better?”

Nor does Bratton come into the job unprepared. She spent seven years as a Florida prosecuting attorney working in the area of juvenile sex offenses. That was where she met her husband.

Although working with hurt children can be stressful, Jenny Bratton said she isn’t concerned about burnout.

“I never looked at it as depressing,” she said. “The bad things have already happened. Our job is to help and fix, which is very positive. Sometimes we can help fix things and sometimes we can’t, but always our job is to help the child and the non-offending caregiver.

“Not all the stories are happy, but there are some, and not every child who gets broken is broken forever,” she added.

Child Advocates serves as an umbrella organization over two different programs with different funding and functions. The Court Appointed Special Advocates links volunteers with kids who are caught up in the system. The other side of the building conducts interviews of children who have been abused, with the purpose of assisting law enforcement in prosecuting the abusers.

“It’s a wonderful staff,” Bratton said. “Kim put in place wonderful people. It’s always nice to start a job and have great people in place.”

The agency is fortunate that it has good ties with the community, and plenty of support, she said. She praised the board members and volunteers, and pointed out that this past spring, volunteers held a basketball event that raised more money for the agency than ever before, and organizer Scott Stevens is eager for next year, Bratton said.

When she was introduced to the local police officers, they were told not to worry about her relationship with the chief, but to be more concerned that she was a prosecutor who knows what investigators should be doing to make a case.

“Our main position is we support law enforcement and the district attorney in conducting interviews for them,” Bratton said. “The Child Advocates purpose is to prevent revictimization of these kids so they don’t have to tell their story 50 times to 50 different people about the most intimate things.”

Unlike her husband, Jenny Bratton is a born Texan, although she didn’t grow up here. A military brat, she was born in Lubbock, but her father died when Jenny was just three, and her mother moved to Florida.

At 46, Jenny Bratton has been a corporate lawyer, a prosecutor, and a stay-at-home wife and mother.

“I was a stay-at-home mom for more than 10 years and I don’t think I was bored once,” she said.

However, now that her sons are 9 and 11, she felt comfortable going back to work. The goal is to save money for their college. It took her years to pay back her college loans, Jenny Bratton said. If possible, she wants to avoid that for her children.

She just needed the right job to come along.

“I think most people like their jobs if they feel like what they’re doing is important and if they have good people to work with,” she said. “Put those two things together and anybody’s going to be happy with that they’re doing.”

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Janet Jacobs may be reached via e-mail at jacobs@corsicanadailysun.com. Want to “sound off” to this article? E-mail: Soundoff@corsicanadailysun.com

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