A Few years ago Judge Heidi Schellhas gave me a printout of the psychotropic medications the very young children in her child protection courtroom were proscribed. The impact of seven year olds on Prozac, Ritalin and other powerful medications is still with me.
How profound the impact sexual abuse, violence, and neglect has on a child (and the community that he/she will live in)
Without the right kind of care, violence and neglect hurts a child forever. The hole in their life is gigantic and small efforts don’t mend this serious damage.
What does it say about a community that leaves children in toxic homes because it does not have the foresight, concern, or resources to protect its youngest and most vulnerable citizens?
Keep in mind that Hennepin County used to be one of the nations most progressive child protection counties.
As a guardian ad-Litem there were many children in my case load that had been through three, four, and five years of the worst kinds of tortured abuse. One boy had spent much of his life tied to a bed, starved, and sexually abused (from four to seven).
He has AIDS today (about 14 years later) and not had anything like a real life. I would call it a tortured life of awful choices and no real joy.
I tell a similar tale about a girl of the same age who was abused from the time she was four until she was seven. The man that molested her was never made a party to a lawsuit or a court case. He continued to molest children for many years with no interference from authorities.
At the time of her court case, my guardian ad-Litem office was faced with the choice of turning the case into a criminal trial where the seven year old would have to face her accuser and testify (and lose) or go through the family court process and be removed from his presence safely. It was not a hard choice if you were concerned about the safety of the seven year old girl. But the man is still molesting children.
You can listen to these stories at length (click here)
Our institutions are not set up to handle people like him.
Add to that the use of Prozac, Ritalin, and the plethora of psychotropic medications that keep the children in child protection services from hurting themselves or others, and the book I refer to in this article title starts to write itself.
Abandoned children tasered by police, , two year old foster child lost in Nevada,, eight year old to be tried as an adult in Arizona?,
Jeff Weise was asking for help,
Needs work, but it’s a start.
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