INVISIBLE CHILDREN

If child protection means anything, it should mean that a child already traumatized by a lifetime of abuse will not be subjected to another series of poorly made decisions by the adults in his life.

If there is one thing that we do know, it is that adoptees need time and help adjusting to new surroundings, people, life, & everything else that has changed in their O so chaotic little universe.

If there is one thing a nation should stand for, should agree on, could vote for,… it might be providing protection for children seven and under.

Even our coarse, money driven hard bitten society might find a majority to support basic systems to insure that 7 year olds are not sent back into even worse circumstances than they are now experiencing.

What would it take to have put in place services that the Hansen family could have relied on to manage their very serious problems that would have negated casting the boy so harshly out of their home?

Of all the billions we spend on war, medications, beer, football, and advertising, where does Artyom Savelyev and his seven year old counter parts fit in?

From an international perspective, this must look like a three ring circus. From a guardian ad-Litems perspective, the conversation around child protection systems and children’s rights is long overdue.

Let’s move it along. I would really like to hear from the legal world, and stories from people that have found remedies for abused children. Continue reading ‘Deeper Questions About 7 Year Old Russian Boy’

Share this:

How many of us would do well with no long term relationships, friends to fall back on, a family (even a very troubled family) to turn to when life kicked us in the stomach?

NYT article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/us/07foster.htmlrecaps the terrible data that we all know and have been unable to fix for many years.

Why the gangs flourish, schools fail, streets become unsafe & preteen girls give birth.

The last study showed 80% of youth aging out of foster care leading dysfunctional lives.

Blaming children for being born into dysfunctional families would not be a stated public policy, but I have found it to be de facto public policy. Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz has stated that “90% of the youth in juvenile justice have come through the child protection system”.

Every child deserves a chance to obtain the skills necessary to lead a productive life.

It is a much better investment to grow a child than it is a convict, a preteen mother, or an unstable person. Continue reading ‘Fixing Foster Care’

Share this:

In 2005, when I wrote the book Invisible Children in MN there were less than 900 cases of child rape reported in the state I live in (MN). If that were true, I personally knew of about 50 cases, and there were about five hundred guardian ad-Litems besides myself in the state. I know that there were many more cases of child rape in this state that year.

I have attended several law school symposiums that articulated the complexities of prosecuting child rape and come to understand how far away from solving these problems our nations judicial system really is. In one of my GAL cases, a 40 year old man had terribly molested a child over a four year period and was not made a party to the case. He was still in the home accused of molesting another (three year old) child almost ten years later.

The following article from UNICEF in the Huffington Post focuses on adolescent girls in third world nations, but I would point out that child rape in my caseload has been significantly younger than ten years of age. Continue reading ‘International Women’s Day March 7′

Share this:

I am taken by the hard stories and painful facts in Ruben Rosario’s article on Victor Vieth’s dream of ending child abuse in today’s St Paul Pioneer Press

http://www.twincities.com/ci_14437150

As a guardian ad-Litem, I know that most child abuse cases are not reported. Recently an acquaintance of mine admitted to witnessing the prostitution of a very young girl and not reporting it. He had remorse and said that he had felt confused and endangered at the time.

I personally experienced a case with 45 police calls to an abusive home before the girls were removed from the home (where child abuse had been occurring and prostitutes had been arrested). The seven year old had been the victim of extended sexual abuse (I assumed prostituted).

“As a nation, we have done more to address child abuse in the past 30 years than occurred in the first 200 years of our history,” Vieth writes in an academic paper that has been well-received in the child-protection and justice fields but is virtually unknown in mainstream circles. “Unfortunately, the obstacles that remain are nothing less than mountains.”

One of them is the sad reality that many children suspected of being abused are not reported to the child-protection system.

Vieth cites a 2000 study that found that 65 percent of social workers, 53 percent of physicians and 58 percent of physician assistants did not report all cases of suspected abuse.

Most telling are two hypothetical cases involving teachers — not only mandated reporters, but also possibly the one trusted adult a child comes into daily contact with the most outside the home. Of 197 teachers who took part in the test, only 26 percent said they would contact authorities if a child told them that a relative was touching their genitals. Only 11 percent would do so in the second test, which involves a child accusing another teacher of touching their private parts.

Vieth also notes that even when cases are reported, most are never investigated. A government-commissioned national report this year on abused and neglected children found that most cases of maltreated children “do not get CPS (child-protection services) investigation.”

Continue reading ‘Ruben Rosario on Victor Vieth’s Dream of Ending Child Abuse’

Share this: