Thank you Brandon Stahl for your dogged research and reporting.
This is my take from Brandon’s article of Nov 30th (linked above)
Minnesota’s recent brutal murder of 4 year old Eric Dean after 14 ignored reports of child abuse by mandated reporters (and one family assessment) is becoming just one of thousands of cruel stories demonstrating the low value our nation places on children.
As American’s, we talk big about how we value children and our religious affiliations are many, but there really is very little child protection in the U.S. If you are three years old and your caregiver is repeatedly abusing you, there’s a good chance no one will help you.
Watching this over many years as a volunteer guardian ad-Litem causes me great pain and it is only recently that I have found any hope that conditions might change for the weakest and most vulnerable among us.
MN has tried to reform its child protection system 3 times in the last 25 years, 16 state and county agency heads the nation have resigned or been fired (mostly after the death of children they were hired to protect).
In Maine, it is estimated that up to 70% of abused to death children were known to child protection agencies. In Arizona, 6000 child abuse reports were ignored by the agencies and many children died (they abolished Arizona’s child protection agency afterwards). Florida reported almost five hundred children killed while known to child protection (since 2008).
What follows is my past reporting on how various states treat their youngest citizens;
One thousand stories of child abuse across the nation (find your state here)
Three year olds on Prozac (how does it work in your state?)
Ohio, Texas, and Florida child protection news
Kids For CAsh (how bad can it get)
Almost half the children dying from abuse in Colorado were in or known to child protection
State of Virginia screens out 83% of all child abuse reports
For more, click on “the states” right hand column on our website dropdown “select a category”
