Sad Stories Child Abuse – Child Death Articles & Statistics
These stories, articles and statistics tell the stories of childhood trauma and death in America over the past few months –
INVITE KARA’S INVISIBLE CHILDREN Program into your community.
Sad Stories June 2019 (III – child suicide)
The National Poison Data System, researchers found more than 1.6 million cases of 10- to 24-year-olds attempting to kill themselves by poisoning from 2000 to 2018. More than 70% of the suicide attempts by poisoning were in young women.
U.S. youth emergency psychiatric hospitalizations and suicide attempts are escalating at alarming rates.
Among children between the ages of 5 and 17, annual emergency department encounters for suicidal ideations and attempts have more than doubled from 2008 (0.66%) to 2015 (1.82%)7. That equates to an increase of 35,266 encounters for SI or SA during the period of 2008-11 to 80,590 encounters from 2012-2015.
June Child Abuse 2019 (find your state here)
current news about at risk children bringing transparency and attention to our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.
Mistaking Childhood Trauma for ADHD
6.4 million American youth are diagnosed with ADHD. This article from ACEs Too High by Rebecca Ruiz makes clear the overdiagnosis of ADHD and underreporting of childhood trauma. This goes a long way in explaining the overdosing of youth in foster care with psychotropic medications and giant fines paid by big pharma for illegally selling these drugs to pediatricians for use on very young children.
Almost 80 & Still Terrorized by Childhood Trauma
A sobering story of her life-mate Tom at 78 years old still living with the pain of trauma and abuse inflicted upon him as a child and how the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) based programs are working to heal today’s suffering children.
Response to Our Friend Hector
I believe that the challenge addressed in this document has to do with ACES and other escalating problems in our society. Please let me know your thoughts.
Hector,
Sadly, the combination of American “bootstrap” culture, harsh individual freedom driven capitalism and defining success as “more money/winning at any cost” are denigrating social sciences/human services and anything else that gets in the way (including “science”).
Our institutions are paying a terrible price demonstrated by the cost of and underperformance in quality of life indices across the board (public health, public education, public safety).
This nation no longer leads the world in the things that make for a safe and livable society. We lead in teen STDs & pregnancies, prison populations, recidivism & incarcerated juveniles, poverty and in most financially rewarding areas of endeavor.
Add to that, the concurrent explosion of trauma related mental health problems (ACES) facing institutions service providers; educators, social and health workers, law enforcement, court and detention personnel are finding their level of training severely inadequate, jobs much more stressful and dangerous with a lack of success across most institutional venues.
The level of violence in hospitals, care & detention centers, foster homes and schools is high and growing and our reliance on Prozac like drugs in managing these problems bodes ill for any long term solutions (without treatment these problems grow exponentially)
Generational child abuse and trauma is the most misunderstood and powerful social disease present in this nation today and there are few signs of its abatement.
Child Trauma and Torture Reporting for July 2018 (part 5)
KARA (Kids At Risk Action) tracks current news about at risk children bringing transparency and attention to our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.
This reporting is only sampling of what should be reported – the great majority of child trauma & abuse is never known.
37% of children overall and 54% of Black children are reported to child protection services in America by the time they turn 18.
(American Journal of Public Health 1.17)
Child Abuse &Trauma – Oprah & Sixty Minutes
Share this with your friends and networks – it will make a big difference in the lives of children and the people that live with, work with and love abused children
Oprah calls Trauma Informed Care “game changing,” addresses long …
www.acesconnection.com/…/oprah-calls-trauma-informed-care-game-changing-prom…
2 days ago – Oprah calls Trauma Informed Care “game changing,” addresses long-term effects of trauma on 60 Minutes this Sunday, March 11 … Take a look at the interview Oprah did on CBS This Morning (the link is below) but be prepared – as people dedicated to ACEs awareness and trauma informed care, it will …
Sesame Street Teaching Coping Skills & Trauma Healing
Its official. Trauma informed teaching of coping skills by Big Bird makes it so. 37% of American Children are reported to child protection by the time they are 18. Trauma has become a big part of growing up in America.
Bringing Transparency to Child Trauma & Abuse Ending Child Abuse Where You Live
Unseen and unknown, America’s abused & traumatized children lead painful lives that without help do not improve much as they age.
Do at risk children in your community need more support to lead normal lives? Would more information and community involvement make their lives better?
Check out Kids At Risk Action traveling exhibit provided free to colleges where you live and build support for the better answers these children need.
All Adults Are The Protectors of All Children
Punishing Traumatized Children (the beatings will continue until the morale improves)
Thank you Chris Serres & Star Tribune for identifying how severely the St Cloud Children’s home for children fails abused and neglected kids.
Children live here because a judge found their birth homes so dangerous that the child needed to be removed from the home and placed at the St Cloud Children’s Home.
Instead of providing a safe haven, this facility has been tagged repeatedly with multiple violations over many years. Children having sex in the presence of a staff member, head banging to the point of black eyes, swollen faces and abrasions.
To put a human face on what these violations look like;
As a volunteer CASA guardian ad litem, one of my 11 year old child protection boys (call him John) was misbehaving at a Cambridge Children’s Home.
John was forced outside by a low paid, undertrained staff member, on a ten degree MN night and told that he would be allowed back inside in an hour.
Instead, John walked home, in a T shirt, on the highway from Cambridge (35 miles). 11 year-old traumatized youth don’t often make good decisions (especially children on multiple psychtropic medications).
John was in child protective services (and this group home) because his father tied him to a bed and left him alone for days without food or water from the ages of four to seven.
John was regularly sexually abused, beaten & starved over 4 years living with his dad. When I met him, this 7 year-old boy was covered in bruises from head to foot and on both sides of his body.
Transforming the System: A Call For Action
Grounded in compassion and learning, we must act forcefully to promote transparency, understanding and change to reform how abused and neglected children find safe permanent homes and deal with the traumas that brought them into child protection. Beginnng this year, the ACA makes advanced mental health services available to traumatized children giving them a chance to heal and thrive.
This effort requires focused support for achievable objectives.
When we’ve done that, we will have transformed the System.
Possible actions include:
Activist organizations uniting in every community to push for awareness of and changes in policies that are failing or demonstrably superior.
Action teams in each Congressional district communicating regularly with their Congressperson (support these teams where they are and create them where they don’t exist).
Child-affirming activist communities whose members build awareness and understanding of programs and policies impacting at risk children can improve those laws and policies.
With this approach, we can address the child, the family and the system.
Best ACEs Articles for August 2016
Why Many People Don’t Talk About Traumatic Events Until Long After They Occur [TheConversation.com]
After traumatic events, such as physical or sexual assault, domestic violence or combat, that threaten to rob us of our dignity and spirit, people typically don’t tell others. In fact, many trauma survivors either never speak to anyone about what happened to them or wait a very long time to do so. The reasons for this are multi-fold and likely include shame, perceived stigma of being a “victim,” past negative disclosure experiences and fears of being blamed or told that the event was somehow their fault. And when it comes to reporting sexual harassment, women fear for their jobs, promotions or placements.
Best ACEs Articles for July 2016
Register for the 2016 Conference on Adverse Childhood Experiences [ACEsConnection.com]
Join Center for Youth Wellness October 19-21 for the 2016 Conference on Adverse Childhood Experiences in San Francisco. The conference is a unique opportunity for every expert and practitioner committed to advancing the ACEs movement to come together to build a better future for children exposed to early adversity and trauma.
A Wish List For At Risk Children
Subsidized day care (tens not thousands of families on state’s waiting list); more mental health services (consistent and better control and use of psychotropic medications)
BA degree, mental health training & higher wages for day care workers; more training, smaller caseloads, & greater resources for social workers and school counsellors
removing law enforcement from the front lines of dealing with mentally unhealthy people & eliminating jails and prisons as housing for mentally unstable people
fail safe programs ending child death by caregiver; more and better training and resources for handling child abuse in rural MN; End child suicide
interrupt generational child abuse; expand programs for children aging out of foster care; stop courts from trying children as adults
create support, training, and alternatives for adoption and foster families; expand kinship searches & support;
encourage media to report on the state of mental health and child protection in your community
make ACEs & trauma informed policies the rule not the exception; stop child trafficking;
reduce psychotropic medication use by young children and children in child protection;
involve the community in the safety and well-being of all children;
through adequate access to mental health services);
End child abuse and mental health stigmatizing
Help KARA find and engage the brightest minds
and improved perspectives in
the search for more effective
Child Protection &
children’s
Mental
Health
ACES Connection (articles from April)
MARC Advisor: Brenda Jones Harden, PhD, ACEsConnection.com
Dr. Brenda Jones Harden is Associate Professor in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology at the University of Maryland College Park. Her research examines the developmental and mental health needs of children at environmental risk, especially those who have suffered maltreatment or trauma.
Colleges Need to Do More to Support Poor Students, PSMag.com
A new report from the Department of Education calls on schools to improve the graduation gap.
Mental Illness Mostly Caused by Life Events Not Genetics, Argue Psychologists, Telegraph.co.uk
While there has been some success in uncovering genes which make people more susceptible to various disorders, specialists say that the true causes of depression and anxiety are from life events and environment, and research should be directed towards understanding the everyday triggers.
The Growth of Concentrated Poverty Since the Recession, in 3 Infographics, CityLab.com
A new analysis by the Brookings Institution shows increases in two-thirds of the largest U.S. metros.
Don’t Let Defensiveness Stand in the Way of Personal Growth, PsychCentral.com
Defensive walls go up quickly when we feel unappreciated or disrespected. The walls are meant to keep out unfairness and negative evaluations of our choices and behaviors. But what it often shuts out is self improvement.
Survivors Of Childhood Trauma Videos by Dr Vincent Felitti & ACES
Child a abuse survivors are up to 5000 times more likely to attempt suicide, have eating disorders, or become IV drug users 7 minute video (DR Ferlitti)
Childhood Disrupted (the book)
Donna Jackson Nakazawa book CHILDHOOD DISRUPTED explains how a child’s biography becomes her biology and how to heal. It may be the first self help book about ACEs and speaks to why chronic disease, mental illness, violence, suicide, and addiction are so common to abused and neglected children.
Donna is a science journalist that writes about toxic stress and childhood development in a way we can all understand. She presents 13 stories of trauma about people she followed for a year and how childhood stress can lead to a life of illness and sadness.
The happy part of the book is the research that shows how self-care, exercise, adequate sleep, meditation, safe environment/relationships and smart therapies can heal.
You will finish the book understanding how toxic stress changes a person for life, how genes impacted in childhood develop various illnesses and mental health disorders (and what epigenetics is).
This book repeated the experience of my 65 year old attorney friend who bought me lunch when I wrote the book INVISIBLE CHILDREN in 2005. At Lunch he told me in confidence that he had never spoken to anyone about his abuse by a priest as child. When he was 45 years old, smoking, drinking, overweight and on his 3rd marriage and 4th business partnership he finally sought out a therapist who he sees to this this day (about 30 years).
As a long time volunteer CASA child protection guardian ad-Litem, I am convinced that Donna’s truths are profoundly accurate and they explain the sadness and behavioral problems impacting millions of children, our schools, public safety, crime, and community well being.
At some point, we must recognize the crisis our society faces by the terrifically high number of child abuse reports (6 million children annually) and support Donna’s plea for a new medical paradigm with a system in which physicians offer, “not just a drug, but a recovery plan” would make a huge difference in the lives of at risk youth. Send this article to your doctor.
Child Abuse – Trauma TED talk (the video)
Exposure to early childhood adversity. A powerful TED talk by Nadine Burke Harris;
Suicide, Lung cancer, heart disease, dangerous life styles, dysfunctional lives and child abuse (ACES study). Why children need our attention – the public health approach to toxic stress.
Founder of ACEsTooHigh and ACEsConnection Jane Stevens
The ACEs scoring is hugely important and with attention to and implementation of the programs and disciplines that reverse or mitigate the terrible impact of childhood trauma our communities will see an improvement in graduation rates, a decline in crime and prison populations, much safer and happier neighborhoods.
The opposite side of this approach are DR. Bruce Perry’s words that if these issues are not addressed, “25% of Americans will be special needs people by the end of this generation”. He spoke that sentence 8 years ago. And he & the medical community have more than adequate research to back up that statement.
Jane Stevens s the most informed and articulate person I’ve listened to in this field. She has a unique perspective as a researcher/reporter who has read and studied the huge volume of information not just from a single aspect of child abuse and neglect, but from the various institutional perspectives as well as how different communities within the states are using or not using and the results the states are seeing with the use or non-use of the ACEs research and recommendations.
If you read nothing else today, introduce yourself to www.ACEsTooHigh and http://www.acesconnection.com/
Violence Against Children – A family Tradition (TEDx, Robbyn Peters Bennett)
Violence, a family tradition: Robbyn Peters Bennett at TEDx Bellingham This short (13 min) TEDx video clearly articulates what is wrong with hitting babies & children (and legislators in Kansas lobbying for the right to leave bruises on children). Passed down generation after generation, sticks, paddles, and open hand hitting all leave mental health marks that result in compensating behaviors, poor brain development, and the next generation of parents beating their children. If you know someone that hits their child, or lives in Kansas, send this link to them.
6 million children are reported to child protection services in the U.S. each year Only a fraction of these children receive the help they need to lead productive lives.
(invite me to speak at your conference) / Buy our book or donate Sample 4 minute video of Mike’s awesome talk on child protection in America
Best Videos From The ACE’s Study (short & long)
The ACE’s study bring the science and gravity of the medical community to child abuse. All of these videos are powerful and worth sharing with others.
Best wishes, www.invisiblechildren.org
Growing Up In An Abusive Home (the ACE study) Dr Felitti
We need Congressional Oversight Hearings to review the enormous waste of federal funds that are often used to help dangerous abusers gain custody. We agree the hearings should consider the fraud, corruption and ignorance that waste large sums of money and bankrupt so many litigants. Most important we need oversight about the failure of the courts to protect our most important asset—OUR CHILDREN
We hope everybody will join together in seeking Congressional Oversight Hearings. Sign the Petition and tell your friends about it. Let’s give our children a chance for a safe and healthy life.
A Fantastic TED Talk (learn a whole new perspective on healing)
Jane McGonigal’s TED talk takes an approach to life and trauma that is very different, uplifitng, and perhaps the most remarkable insights I have experienced on this topic in years. When game designer Jane McGonigal found herself bedridden and suicidal following a severe concussion, she had a fascinating idea for how to get better.…
I Wish You’d Never Been Born & Other Adverse Childhood Experiences (Videos)
These are the most powerful videos from the Academy on Violence and Abuse www.avahealth.org They go a long way in explaining our nations consistently low graduation rates, terrifically high murder rates, prison populations, chronic illnesses and leading the world in sexually transmitted diseases.
All of these videos are powerful and worth your time.
PTSD & Abused Children
Children in child protective services are twice as likely to suffer from PTSD as soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan
Child Abuse And The Most Important Public Health Study Ever
The ACE Study – probably the most important public health study you never heard of – emerged from an obesity clinic on a quiet street in San Diego.
It was 1985, and Dr. Vincent Felitti was mystified. The physician, chief of Kaiser Permanente’s revolutionary Department of Preventive Medicine in San Diego, CA, couldn’t figure out why, each year for the last five years, more than half of the people in his obesity clinic dropped out. Although people who wanted to shed as little as 30 pounds could participate, the clinic was designed for people who were 100 to 600 pounds overweight.
What David Brooks Didn’t Say
FYI, the World Health Organization defines torture as “extended exposure to violence & deprivation”. Every child in my CASA guardian ad-Litem caseload suffered from being tortured (half of them had been sexually abused). This explains why children in child protection suffer from PTSD at twice the rate soldiers returning from Iraq & Afghanistan do, why 2/3 of the youth in juvenile justice have mental health diagnosis (and why fully half of them have multiple, serious, & chronic diagnosis) & why 80% of youth aging out of foster care lead dysfunctional lives.
Mr. Brooks, please continue your research & writing on this issue because no other big time news people are & this is why our prisons are full, schools are troubled, & so many communities are becoming unlivable (Flint Michigan no longer has a police presence after 5pm – and they really need one).
ACE Study Highlights
The ACE study over 8 years & 440,000 people proves beyond doubt, that social workers, teachers, psychologists, judges, & pediatricians can not fix the millions and millions of American children suffering from adverse childhood experience.
These youngsters will continue to fail in school & life until we as a society agree to provide resources that will end the inter-generational transmission of child abuse.
Failure to care for children has cost America its leading nation status in most quality of life indices and certainly, safety and trust within our communities has made living in many American cities painful and dangerous for adults as well as children.
For a real learning experience, visit the people who created the ACE study, www.avahealth.org but by all means,
Watch the short version (at the end you can view other segments).
New ACE Study DVD 3 Minute Preview:
Last night KARA boardmember Bob Olson & I attended the Academy on Violence and Abuse in Bloomington & viewed the powerful information the medical community has assembled on the consequences of Adverse Childhood Experiences. Their information is a stunning revelation of how critical and long-lasting abuse is over a persons lifetime.
The Academy on Violence & Abuse’s demonstrates the importance of preventing child abuse and the direct cost of failure in disease, dysfunction, & shortened life expectancy.
Watch this video & visit www.avahealth.org for their comprehensive and stunning research on child abuse.
Child Trauma Academy Newsletter
Symposium on Child Trauma in the Public Sector: May 31 – June 1, 2012
“Many children experience stressful events that challenge their coping resources. Some children experience a single harrowing event or multiple adverse events which impact their development and their behavior. Everyone whose work brings them into the lives of children needs to understand the latest research and policies regarding child trauma.”
International Symposium on Human Nature and Early Experience at Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame’s Department of Psychology and Center for Children and Families invites you to a multidisciplinary symposium entitled “Human Nature and Early Experience: Addressing the ‘Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness’” October 10-12, 2010. This symposium brings together an international audience interested in innovative approaches to human development, children, families, parenting, and human evolution. Speakers will present their research on the relationship between caregiving practices and outcomes.
The Evidence Is In
The years of hard research this organization has done to quantify the impact of abuse on children as they become adults is as incontrovertible as it is moving.
Economics 101
A recent ACE study proved that almost 70% of the serious and violent crime committed by juveniles in Ramsey County was committed by children living in 2 to 4% of Ramsey County families.