Peter Adasek '61, a Colorado Springs pediatrician and expert on child abuse, had always wanted to give something back to his grandparents' homeland of Czechoslovakia.
So, in 1991, he spent six months teaching and lecturing about child abuse and pediatrics in Prague and throughout the country.
Since then, he has returned to Prague each year and added Austria, Germany, Argentina, Norway, France, the Middle East, Asia, and Guam to his travels, teaching doctors, nurses, teachers, and social service
workers how to identify cases of child abuse.
Adasek went into practice in 1970 and soon found himself spending a lot of time in court testifying about child abuse cases. Becoming increasingly frustrated that so many abusers went free because of lack of evidence, he began videotaping his interviews with victims. ” I was able to take that tape to court so that
it might be admitted as evidence,” he says. “And many times the accused parent alleged perpetrator would plead guilty because the tape existed.”
He shared his videotaping experience in several published articles and became established as a national expert.
After spending so much time in courtrooms fighting to save children, Adasek decided to try his hand at law in 1989, enrolling in the law school at University of San Francisco. “I wanted to be a lawyer-to be a consultant to the district attorney and convict child abusers,” he says.
But he became disenchanted with law, finding lawyers too concerned with monetary gain, so he began examining his options.
Born in Little Falls, N.Y., he was the first of his family to graduate from college. ” I came from a poor family-my parents worked hard and
my grandparents were factory workers,” he says. “I decided that I
wanted to give something back to the country where my grandparents came from-Czechoslovakia.”
After a determined letter-writing campaign to doctors in Czechoslovakia, he finally heard from Czech Minister of Health Martin Bojar, who invited him to lecture at Charles University and its associated medical schools in Prague. The lectures were so successful that Adasek gave talks throughout Czechoslovakia, and he has been invited back to the Czech and Slovak republics annually.
Adasek was spurred to travel to other parts of the world, and he most recently lectured on child abuse at hospitals in Bangkok, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Guam. This summer, when he returns to the Czech and Slovak republics, he also will teach English to Czech students between the ages of six and fourteen.
Adasek no longer practices, devoting his time to his free lectures. He usually covers his own transportation expenses, but he says that the “strokes” he receives for his work are well worth liv
ing a frugal life. “People will tell me they feel more comfortable diagnosing child abuse,” he says-and that translates to saving lives.