As a long time guardian ad-Litem I’ve encountered too many suicides and suicide attempts that are a direct result of child rape.
I have not read the suicide note written by the seven year old foster child that hung himself in Florida, but I have read the most powerful suicide note ever written by a person raped as a child and it is printed below.
Molesters like Sandusky destroy the lives of hundreds of children over their lifetime. The child remains severely damaged year after year until help comes from somewhere (usually nowhere). I’ve said about several of the sex abuse children in my caseload that this child has never had a nice day in her life.
Anxiety, terror, Prozac & Ritalin are predictable parts of the life of an abused child. They feel dirty and often blame themselves for the crime. Not being able to function normally in school makes life miserable and too often criminal or sexually active & a preteen mother or father. Just how does one un-teach sexual behavior to a nine year old without professional help?
The mission of CASA Minnesota is to broadly support volunteer advocacy on behalf of abused and neglected children in our state. We believe that every abused and neglected child in Minnesota court proceedings should have a volunteer advocate working for their best interests. In pursuit of this goal, we do the following:
Assist in the recruitment and retention of Minnesota volunteer guardians ad litem
Provide initial and continuing education and support to Minnesota volunteer guardians ad litem
Increase public awareness about child welfare and guardians ad litem
Provide a network for communication among Minnesota volunteer guardians ad litem
Advocate for legislative change, public policies and best practices that enhance the quality of advocacy and care for abused and neglected children
I’ve written on the police tasering ten and twelve year olds, the growing movement to try very young children as adults, and the chronic over representation of African Americans in jails & prisons everywhere.
In my experience as a guardian ad-Litem, all children want to be “normal” and lead nice lives, but too many of them are born into toxic homes and their communities are quick to punish and incarcerate instead of nurture & enhance their lives.
How can America’s youth ever hope to lead normal lives when so many of them have serious criminal records & drug problems (legal and illegal) by the time they are eighteen?
U.S. states where children are worse off than if they lived in emerging nations. http://boingboing.net/2011/11/02/video-judge-beats-disabled-daughter-for-using-the-internet.html Pass this on & support public advocacy for at risk children (they need your help). Support KARA’s effort to stop punishing children; sponsor a conversation in your community (invite me to speak at your conference) / Buy our book…
It was clear after talking with adoptive and foster families at their annual conference that Indiana’s failure to protect it’s children is due to the politicizing of children’s issues and not the hard work being done by foster & adoptive parents, educators, & social workers that are trying to provide homes, education, and services.
We all know that healthy children become healthy adults & contributing members of our community & that unhealthy children become preteen mothers & juvenile felons that cost our cities and states a fortune over a lifetime.
Wake up Indiana politicians. Your citizens depend on you to understand basic humanity and economics.
Citizens, wake up your politicians (the children can’t do it without your help).
Children have no lobby, no voice, & can’t fight back when a MN Governor* states that “children that are victims of failed personal responsibility are not my problem, nor are they the problem of the State Of Minnesota”.
There’s nothing a five year old can say to the governor of Indiana about the elimination of the state’s newborn screening fund (paid for by birth fees collected from parents), or the retroactive termination of adoption subsidies to the five hundred families that adopted special need children based on the promise that they would have assistance for their special needs children.
I doubt that a nine year old could clearly explain the problem facing California foster children because 1,000 state-licensed facilities match sex offenders’ addresses;
I was impressed with the tenacity and commitment of Indiana’s foster and adoptive parents in the face of this state’s mean spirited children’s politics.
The evening before my talk I listened to story after story of the “fluid” nature of Department of Child Services policy, families not being allowed to question decisions or policy for fear of being blackballed, and what it’s like to watch long established, workable policies disappear to be replaced by whimsy and bullying.
he Indiana Foster Care and Adoption Association (IFCAA) is a statewide non-profit membership organization that supports foster and adoptive families. IFCAA promotes awareness about the needs of children who have experienced trauma and the needs of the foster and adoptive parents who raise them.
The following article brings to light the commonality of for profit youth prisons and I think the abundance of meanness and poor management that combine to further damage the lives of America’s youth.
Cristian hasn’t had an easy life. He’s the same age now as his mother was when he was born. He’s a survivor of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. In 2010, Cristian watched his stepfather commit suicide to avoid being charged with abusing Cristian.
Is it possible that the only way we can have help with day care is to put the boys into a police car and make them live in a group home or with a strange family?
This does not seem right.
The cold water pipe had frozen solid in the Minnesota winter & the landlord had turned the hot water heater to “scalding” to compensate for the absence of cold water.
I found this foster child blog to be hard hitting, honest, and compelling. I was a Foster Kid
Her advice to us was to report animal abuse because animal abuse gets investigated & when it is investigated, those people see things that can trigger a social worker saving a child.
This seemed pathetic to me at the time, but now I tell people how important it is.
Except for suicide, decisions are reversible.
You, like me, can try to do many things in life. We both hope to find things that we love and can be passionate about.
You, like me, will meet many people in our lives with the hope of finding a few good people that can become genuine friends.
Life is not easy, but it can be wonderful at times.
The U.S. has been sliding for years from a leadership role in education & other quality of life indices to falling off the charts behind almost all other industrialized nations. Today we compare ourselves to the “emerging” nations so that we can be 32nd out of 64 instead of 32nd out of 24 industrialized nations.…
Daycare workers in the U.S. are paid about as much as food service workers (the lowest paid profession in the nation). American daycare is underfunded, under-trained, and misunderstood.
What do you think about the impact of suicide on the children of the over one thousand MN veterans that have committed suicide? If you know the children of a suicidal parent you know torture.
Standardized tests were corrupted at 44 schools by 178 teachers & principals (over half have confessed) & a former “superintendent of the year” in Atlanta Georgia will not seek extension of her contract. Criminal charges are probable.
The GrandRally will be an historic opportunity to celebrate, create momentum, expand awareness and build upon the success from previous GrandRallies.
For more information, visit www.grandrally.org or email [email protected] or speak with GrandRally staff at 215-844-4744.
We only read about the babies found in dumpsters, or other violent child deaths. NO one reports the thousands of children sexually abused, beaten, or starved.
I know too many of these children & it is a dark stain on America that explains overflowing prisons, failing schools, and unsafe cities.
Blaming severely disturbed people for their crimes is nonsense and solves nothing (it’s counter productive-no steps are taken to solve the problem if that’s all we do).
It would be much more useful to get to know a family that has tried to find help for a very troubled child. As a volunteer County guardian ad-Litem, I came to know many very troubled youth and their parents and other caregivers.
The U.S. and Somalia are the only nations on the planet that have refused to sign the International Rights of Children Treaty.
The Academy has studied and identified the relationship between interpersonal violence and health and could make a profound difference in the lives of abused people if the research, tools, and information they have compiled were to become part of the mainstream medical world. Doctors can make a difference. They need to know about www.AVAhealth.org
I had been noticing that in the paper for the last few years,” Jefferys said. “There are so many babies being killed by boyfriends or husbands while the mother is off to work.”
Minnesota’s racial disparities: a Judge’s view (who will speak for children?)
None of these programs exist in the United States. That is why it is accurate to describe our country as a mamouth incubator for prison inmates. And that is why the US is in 30th place in government tax revenue as % to GDP. We are easily the lowest taxed country of the developed world.
The person that helped me in this cold scary place;
The courthouse, The foster home, The terror of not my family,
God help me I’m so alone,
Hope comes from caring people,
For years now, politicians have made political hay by blaming “civil servants” for a multitude of institutional failures that they themselves are directly responsible for due to the poor understanding of underlying issues and lack of concern for the children and poor families that need help.
12 years in child protection has changed the way I look at grown up abandoned children.
There is not a religion on the planet that would abandon children a second time.
The cost to my community of each child failing to procure the tools to learn & become a productive citizen is far greater than just the drain on schools, crime & institutionalization. Consider the generational impact of their children having families just like the one that brought them into the world. The average number of children born to mothers incarcerated in Cook County Illinois jails has grown from 2 to 4 over the last ten years.
U of M bioethics professor Carl Elliott discusses drug company payments to doctors and the enormous amounts of money drug reps make by pushing profitable drugs and running outright scams on doctors to sell their product.
While this may sound harsh, I see the wisdom in Jonathon Swifts Modest proposal;the children he speaks of lead such miserable lives, that killing them early would be reduce their suffering.
This well written article on the success of early aggressive treatment for autistic children AAUTISM CURE CITY PAGES 1.26.11 makes the overarching logical, ethical, and financial argument about the wisdom of treating children early on with proven methods and saving 18 years of special ed, additional health care, and the very real costs of home, social, and school disruption and personal pain.
The public reaction when a baby dies or is found in a dumpster should be one of sadness and a desire to see that children are safer in their community. Something like, “what can we do to see that this does not happen again?”
children that are the victims of failed personal responsibility are not my problem, nor are they the problem of the state of MN (Tim Pawlenty)
Children traumatized by violence and neglect have serious developmental disabilities that don’t go away with age. 80% of youth aging out of foster care are leading dysfunctional lives.
Adding to the 3 million children reported to child protection in America each year, are the 3.5 million children on stimulant and anti-psychotic medications. Recent studies indicate that almost half of U.S. youth have mental health issues. About 2/3s of the youth in juvenile justice are diagnosed with mental health problems; half of them have multiple, serious diagnosis.
A great online forum for adoptees to share experiences and perspectives run by truly committed people and worth investigating;
While the child abuse/child neglect crisis is one of major national concern, it also is of particular significance in the top 12 states that are above the national average for child abuse/neglect deaths (2.33 per 100,000 children): Florida 4.62; Nebraska 3.80; New Mexico 3.78; Tennessee 3.72; Oklahoma 3.42; Texas 3.32; Arkansas 2.99; Missouri 2.95; Louisiana and Ohio (both at 2.71); Georgia 2.67; and Colorado 2.65.
The equation works like this; if fewer cases are investigated, that must mean there are fewer cases of child abuse, which leads to less funding and fewer resources for terrified and traumatized children.
As a volunteer guardian ad-Litem, I have spoken with too many frustrated social workers, CASA workers, educators, birth, foster, and adoptive parents that have experienced gaping holes in our child protection systems.
I’m pleased that Sarah Palin chose a title that would stress heartfulness & compassion.
I’m looking forward to reading her constructive ideas for helping America’s weakest and most vulnerable citizens.
85 percent of all juveniles who come into contact with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate. So are 60 percent of all prison inmates. Inmates have a 16 percent chance of returning to prison if they receive literacy help, as opposed to 70 percent for those who receive no help
I’ve come to know many children in child protection taking psychotropic medications. The data on children in child protection on these drugs is also overwhelming (and a well kept secret). Four and seven year olds behaving in extremely dangerous ways and trying to kill themselves should be extremely rare in any civil society.
I did not find it rare among the children in my caseload in child protection.
America is way behind other advanced societies in dealing with mental health issues and it is killing poor vulnerable children and way too many veterans.
Goodbye Tom, you were a great friend and I will miss you.
Most of us would agree that caring for vulnerable children is a worthwhile endeavor.
What can we do to make suicide less of an option for abused and neglected children?
As budgets shrink, more states and counties have fewer resources to save abused and neglected children from the immediate dangers they face in their homes and the future problems that come along with the abuse (preteen pregnancy, adolescent felons, dropouts, chronic illness & mental illness).
My experience in the CASA guardian ad-Litem program was impacted by the harsh realities that become part of an abused child’s life after experiencing the trauma of extended exposure to violence and deprivation. Their lives are damaged in a manner that makes it hard to make friends, learn in school, or lead a productive life.
* Foster children are twice as likely as war veterans to develop PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder);
* 25% of U.S. youth in the Juvenile Justice System are tried as adults;
* 50-75% of U.S. youth in the Juvenile Justice System have a diagnosable mental illness;
* 25% of high school graduates in the United States are illiterate;
* Most states are growing prison spending much faster than higher education spending;
* firearms deaths of children in the U.S. are more than 10 times higher than all the other industrialized nations combined.
* a mentoring program; pairing an adult over 55 years of age with each youth between ages 9 and 13. The mentor spends at least two hours per week with the child doing recreational activities, providing tutoring, counseling, and assistance with community service (Across Ages, 2010).
* each youth spends one to two hours every week performing community service.
* social competence training; 26 weekly lessons that teach cognitive and behavioral approaches to dealing with problems and decisions. In particular, these skills are applied to the prevention of substance abuse and high-risk sexual behavior.
* involvement in family activities; Across Ages hosts monthly events that engage the youth, their families, and their mentors to strengthen the relationships between the children and the adults in their lives (Across Ages, 2010).