INVISIBLE CHILDREN

The Perfect System; You Raise’em We Cage’em, Everybody Wins (Child Un-Protection)

Mike Tikkanen — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:26:42 +0000

A few years ago, Pennsylvania Judge Mark Ciavarella began his prison sentence for taking commissions for each child he sent into Juvenile Detention Centers.

In 2001, Minneapolis MN arrested 44% of its African American men (no duplicates) under the direction of Police Commissioner Rich Stanek (Google Rich Stanek Resigns Star Tribune).

As a Hennepin County guardian ad-Litem, I’ve become sensitive to MN Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz statements that 90% of youth in the Juvenile Justice System have come through Child Protection Services & that the “difference between that poor child & a felon, is about eight years”.

25% of our youth are charged in adult courts (200,000). I’ve written about eleven & twelve year olds charged as adults. Abused kids that never had a chance. Over 60% of the youth in juvenile justice suffer from mental health issues (fully half of that population suffer from multiple, chronic, and severe diagnosis).

The World Health Organization defines torture as “extended exposure to violence & deprivation”. I witnessed this torture each time I took a new child protection case (read this blog or my book for their stories)

Michigan & Pennsylvania each have almost 400 young people sentenced to life without parole. It was only 5 years ago that America stopped executing juveniles (and those who committed their crimes as juveniles).

Kids condemned to the adult criminal justice system are exponentially more likely to be raped & beat up. They are also almost all children of color and poor and never have the opportunity of leading a normal life.

There is not much in the criminal justice system to protect them. Just like there is very little in America’s child protection system to protect children from the torture that is their home-life.

From a strictly economic perspective, this system is extremely expensive. For 30 years we have maintained a recidivism rate of 66% and today cost average about $50,000 per year per inmate (juvenile justice costs in New York and California have hit $250,000 per year per juvenile).

Calculating costs of just 30 years of institutionalization at $50,000/year is 1.5 million dollars per caged youth (way more than any successful youth treatment program at this time) plus the added costs of crime (1.6 trillion dollars per year per insurance industry estimates) & the less easy to value of safe neighborhoods.

German police fired less than one thousand shots in their entire nation last year.

America has for years maintained the highest homicide rate of all industrialized nations. In some U.S. neighborhoods, 800 shots are fired on a single evening.

The United States now has 5% of the world’s population & 25% of the world’s prison population (2.5 million) not including parolees, juvenile justice kids, or children in child protection services (another 2 million). Over 30% of American youth are arrested before their 23rd birthday.

I could draw your attention to the huge disparity of race in our prison population & war on drugs, or the unfairness of the King Pin laws, or that Minnesota used to have a prison with a very low rate of recidivism (29% at the Shakopee Valley Women’s Prison – but when the successful programs inside the prison were cancelled, the recidivism rate jumped to 66%) or that our small state has half a billion dollar prison budget for under 3000 inmates.

Who’s winning this battle?

Not children, not cities, not schools, healthcare, or parents – You Raise’em, We Cage’em, the American way

(speak up, it is time).

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Juvenile Offenders Sentenced To Life Can Face Harsher Treatment Than Adults: Report

Posted: 05/15/2012 8:49 pm Updated: 05/16/2012 8:15 am

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Juvenile Justice, Juvenile Criminal Justice System, Juvenile Detention, Black Voices News

Bobby Hines was fresh out of eighth grade when he and two older boys confronted a suspected drug dealer in Detroit whom they believed had stolen a friend’s coat. The confrontation turned into an argument and one of Hines’ buddies pulled out a gun and shot and killed the man.

The shooter was later charged with second-degree murder and given the possibility of parole. Hines, who was 15 at the time, was charged with felony murder for participating in a robbery that resulted in a homicide.

Although Hines never pulled a trigger or even held a weapon that day, he was sentenced, under Michigan law, to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was offered a plea bargain deal, with the chance to serve 20 to 40 years if he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree murder. But the middle-schooler simply didn’t understand the deal, according to Deborah LaBelle, who authored a report released on Tuesday about the systematic disadvantages facing juveniles who are placed within the adult criminal justice system.

And today, 22 years later, Hines is still behind bars.

“Juveniles are getting sentenced more harshly than adults because of their inability to negotiate the adult criminal justice system,” LaBelle, the director of the Juvenile Life Without Parole Initiative, told The Huffington Post.

The United States is the only country in the world that sentences juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to experts. And five states — California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania — account for two-thirds of all youths younger than 18 currently serving natural life sentences. This means that they will likely die behind bars.

In Michigan, children as young as 14 who are charged with certain felonies can be tried as adults and, if convicted, sentenced accordingly. Michigan ranks second behind Pennsylvania with more than 370 young people thus far having been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, according to LaBelle’s report, “Basic Decency: An Examination of Natural Life Sentences for Michigan Youth.”

The report, released in conjunction with Second Chance 4 Youth and the American Civil Liberties Union, details wide-ranging differences in the way the states sentence their youth. It also highlights the financial and human costs of juvenile life-without-parole sentences and vast racial disparities.

Juveniles charged with a killing in which the victim was white were 22 percent less likely to receive a plea offer than in cases where the victim was black, according to the report.

In Michigan, 73 percent of youths serving life sentences are racial minorities, even though minority youths comprise only 29 percent of the state’s youth population.

The disparity shows up in other trends. “Nationwide, black youths represent just 28% of juvenile arrests, yet they account for 35% of juvenile defendants who are waived to adult court,” the report stated.

“There is just so much wrong with the original idea of putting youth in the adult system that we didn’t think through as a society,” said Ashley Nellis, a researcher at the Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group that aims to reform sentencing laws. “Now we’re coming to see how many injustices there really are [in] the way we are sentencing youth from the very start.”

In March the Sentencing Project released its own report that compiled data about 1,579 individuals nationwide who had been sentenced as juveniles to life sentences without parole; this sample represented about 60 percent of American juveniles serving such a sentence. The report, “The Lives of Juvenile Lifers: Findings from a National Survey,” documented “high rates of socioeconomic disadvantage, extreme racial disparities in the imposition of these punishments, sentences frequently imposed without judicial discretion, and counterproductive corrections policies that thwart efforts at rehabilitation.”

Young defendants encountered disadvantages from the start, according to the report. The attorneys representing youths sentenced to life without parole in Michigan have been disciplined by the state bar at an extraordinary rate. Some 38 percent of lawyers representing youths sentenced to life without parole “have been publicly sanctioned or disciplined for egregious violations of ethical conduct,” compared with a rate of just 5 percent for other attorneys.

Juveniles also reject plea offers at much higher rates than adults, according to the findings. So often adults receive lesser sentences for comparable crimes. LaBelle and other experts say that juveniles are less equipped to negotiate plea offers as a result of their “immaturity, inexperience and failure to realize the value of a plea deal.” Many of them reported that they didn’t understand the nature of their charges or even the meaning of parole, LaBelle said. When represented by a lawyer who hadn’t been disciplined, juveniles were 43 percent more likely to accept a plea bargain for a lesser crime than those who were represented by an lawyer who had been disciplined.

Jody Kent, director of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, said the current system that allows juvenile offenders to be sent to prison for life has essentially “declared these young people irredeemable.”

“We know that young people are capable of change, and we really need to set up a system that allows us to take their age into consideration,” Kent told HuffPost. “Children are fundamentally different than adults and that difference needs to be placed in the context of sentencing and how we hold young people accountable.”

The report urges lawmakers to strike down life-without-parole sentences for those younger than 18 and to conduct periodic parole reviews and public hearings every five years. It also calls for parole reviews for juveniles serving life sentences with the possibility of parole after 10 years.

“We are compounding the tragedy of serious crime by virtually throwing away the lives of these children,” the Rev. Joe Summers of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, said in a statement. “The idea that youth can never change flies in the face of all that we know and is against any sense of moral redemption.”

Gracie Hines, the mother of Bobby Hines, told a gaggle of reporters, supporters and activists on Tuesday at a press conference in Lansing, Mich., to announce the report, that she hopes and prays that her son will be released from prison one day.

“He has grown and he deserves to be out of there,” Gracie Hines said, according to reports.

“He calls to say, ‘I thought about you,’” she said. “This child left me at the age of 15, and when you visit it’s like you don’t want to leave because that is still my baby, although 38 years old now.”

“He is a very strong young man, and I think very highly of him. I speak very highly of him. And being in the wrong place at the wrong time, yes, got him caught up.”

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to properly cite a report finding: In cases with a white victim, offenders were 22 percent less likely to receive a plea offer than in those with a black victim. A prior version incorrectly contrasted cases with white victims and those with nonblack victims.

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Not Enough

Mike Tikkanen — Sat, 05 May 2012 21:18:24 +0000

The state has agreed to pay $2.85 million to a 21-year-old woman who allegedly endured physical and sexual abuse after a child abuse investigation conducted by the state Department of Social and Health Services.

I accept that the dollar amount sounds impressive, but I challenge the DSHS assertion that this young woman’s life will ever be made whole by the financial settlement. I’ve spent years in child protection and never met a fully recovered victim. Abuse lasts forever and it takes great strength and help to make a happy life. Help is not easy to find, and very expensive. Allot of people just suffer.

This settlement bears a resemblance to the 3.5 Million dollars that was spent to build the mental health facility in Red Lake MN after Jeff Weise murdered his grandfather and killed and wounded 14 others after writing and speaking about homicide & suicide and how his mother told him how she wished he’d never been born.

Why put people through this?

In my experience as a guardian ad-Litem, it is apparent that spending a fraction of this money on the front end, making sure that the suspicions of child molestation, providing drugs to minors, and other heinous acts against his very young child were unfounded, would have been a much better investment. For the county, for the child, and for our larger community.

But the reality was, all the charges were true, but case was closed, & the incest continued for years making a normal life for this child impossible (regardless of the money involved).

Now, just like at Red Lake, a great deal of money has been spent, terrific damage has been done, and no one is happy.

Support child protection programs, train social workers & give them reasonable caseloads & the resources that they need to conduct effective investigations.

Anything less is a waste of money and a direct assault on the weakest and most vulnerable among us.

Tell us your story, comment, or perspective. Think of someone you would like to send this to? Press the “share this” button below.

Lights & Sirens

Go behind the yellow tape with The News Tribune

State agrees to pay $2.85 million to woman in child abuse lawsuit

Post by Stacey Mulick / The News Tribune on May 4, 2012 at 11:52 am with 17 Comments »

The judgement was announced and accepted in Pierce County Superior Court today, the woman’s attorneys reported in a press release. The case had been scheduled to go to trial later this month.

“DSHS believes that the agreement fairly compensates this young woman, who can use the proceeds to meet any special needs she may have in the future,” agency spokesman Thomas Shapley said in a press release.

The woman sued the state in 2009, alleging a state social worker failed to properly investigate allegations of abuse and neglect.

According to the complaint, the woman had been living with her father in 2004 when he was arrested by police in Pierce County on suspicion of child molestation, providing drugs to minors, attempted child molestation and communicating with a minor for immoral purposes.

He was jailed and temporary custody of the then-13-year-old girl was given to her paternal grandmother. DSHS also was notified of the arrest and opened an investigation.

The lawsuit claims the social worker allowed the father to visit his daughter after he was released from jail. He later asked if he could have his children and the social worker said he “could not prevent him from getting an apartment with his children,” the lawsuit states.

The social worker then closed the referral as unfounded.

In a press release, DSHS said the referral was closed after the girl denied the abuse had taken place and a forensic exam for evidence of sexual abuse was inconclusive.

A short time later, the father left Pierce County and took his daughter to Pacific County to live with him.

The lawsuit claims the girl was physically and sexually abused by her father nearly every day. She ran away from home in May 2005 and reported the abuse.

Her father was later charged with 14 counts of incest, molestation and rape. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison.

The lawsuit claimed DSHS took no steps to protect the woman despite “a litany of warnings from members of the community including concerned neighbors, local law enforcement and no less than five other children who report that they too were molested by (the same) abuser.”

DSHS reported that best practice would have been for the social worker to follow up with law enforcement and pursue other information before closing the initial referral.

The state says it has made several changes in the years since, including

* Not just taking a child’s word that they are not being abused or neglected.

* Conducting a more thorough follow-up before closing a case. That includes interviewing family members and others.

* Implementing a higher level of review for all safety plans and improving supervisor training.

* Changing the protocol for responding to critical incidents.

* Strengthening the emphasis on child safety through comprehensive assessments in all child protection and child welfare programs.

Read more here: http://blog.thenewstribune.com/crime/2012/05/04/state-agrees-to-pay-2-85-million-to-woman-in-child-abuse-lawsuit/#storylink=cpy

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ACE Study Highlights

Mike Tikkanen — Fri, 04 May 2012 16:25:52 +0000

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. As a volunteer guardian ad-Litem, I have removed 50 children from their birth homes.

In every case, the parents suffered from serious mental health issues that caused their very young children to be molested, beaten, starved or worse. In a country with the resources and technology we are so proud of, how is it that we can fail to implement early childhood programs to stop these abuses of the weakest and most vulnerable among us?

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).

Pass this blog to a friend or list you belong to. Speak out for voiceless children. *If you know a high profile person that might speak out on this topic, please let them know about KARA.

Download the Amazon Kindle Version of our Invisible Children Ebook for 2.99 (support KARA)

Support KARA’s effort to speak out for at risk children; sponsor a conversation in your community (invite me to speak at your conference) / Buy our book or donate

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This Doesn’t Change What’s Wrong In Kentucky (and elsewhere) For Abused & Neglected Children

Mike Tikkanen — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:32:51 +0000

After great pressure from concerned citizens, Governor Steve Beshear of Kentucky has signed legislation that will help youth aging out of foster care to lead better lives (by one year).

This is a tiny change in a state that allows the destruction and hiding of child protection records because of the bad publicity that would arise if these things were known.

KARA believes that these stories should be told. Please pass this article on to people that have been impacted by these laws and those that would like to see better lives for the 3 million children that are reported to child protection in the U.S. each year. Send us your stories & we will work to bring justice and civil rights to the youngest and most vulnerable among us.

Support KARA’s effort to speak up for at risk children; sponsor a conversation in your community (invite me to speak at your conference) / Buy our book or donate

Governor Steve Beshear, joined by Sen. Ken Winters, children’s advocates and former foster youths, on Monday signed a bill that will enhance protections and support for foster children as they transition to adulthood.

“These are some of our most vulnerable kids – those who are moving from state-sponsored care to the responsibility of adulthood, and we must give them the best chance for a successful transition,” Gov. Beshear said. “In my administration, we have supported legislation to improve the lives of Kentucky children, and this is no different. Kentucky must lend a helping hand to these young people, especially at such a critical juncture in their lives.”

Senate Bill 213, sponsored by Sen. Ken Winters, of Murray, gives youth in state-sponsored foster care an additional six months to seek to continue receiving benefits. Currently, state support for foster children ends when they turn 18, but youth can request to extend or reinstate support to help them make the transition to independent living before reaching the age of 18½.

The legislation gives foster youth more time, until the age of 19, to decide whether to extend support, ultimately affording them additional stability in their living situation and overall health and well-being.

The new law also provides more information and support from the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to help teens as they consider their options regarding the transitional living support services that are available to them through age 21.

Youths can request a transition plan that includes specific options on housing; health insurance; education; local opportunities for mentors and continuing support services; and work force supports and employment services, under the legislation.

The legislation was the idea of former foster youths who are part of a nonprofit group called True Up, a youth-driven movement to help young people in foster care become successful, independent adults.

“Good things can happen when adults listen to kids,” said Chelsea Hoover, leader in True Up and a 19-year-old student at Jefferson Community and Technical College. “Because our leaders in Frankfort listened to us, more foster youth will make better decisions about continuing their education and succeeding on their own.”

“There are so many well-meaning foster kids who want to do well and just do not know how,” said Sen. Winters. “It is my hope that SB 213 will provide a new lease on the rest of their lives.

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Children Murdered In Kentucky, Governor Beshear Hides The Evidence

Mike Tikkanen — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:30:25 +0000

Two infant daughters murdered one year apart in Kentucky, by the same man convicted of fracturing the skull & breaking the ribs of his three month old son a few years earlier.

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear is hiding the records of dozens of dead children (from child abuse) because life for abused children is so awful in his state he wants it hidden from the rest of the nation.

The core issue in this nightmare of crazy people killing and abusing their children is the hiding or destruction of court records.

If you think your state doesn’t live by the same standards as Kentucky, look again.

Many states delete records of horrible abuse after three or four years.

My own state, Minnesota has the problem, Indiana, has the problem (the state known for cancelling funding promised to parents that adopt special needs children).

This is child protection in America. It is safer to be an on duty cop in this nation than it is a child.

Kentucky has the worst child abuse record in the nation. Someone should say something.

Contact Governor Steve Beshear and let him know how wrong it is to hide public records that are critical to the safety of the two year olds in his state;

Contact Governor Beshear

Mailing Address

700 Capitol Avenue, Suite 100
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601

Phone/Fax

Main Line: (502) 564-2611
Fax: (502) 564-2517
TDD: (502) 564-9551 (Telecommunications Device for the Deaf)

State continues to withhold child-abuse records

By Valarie Honeycutt Spears — vhoneycutt@herald-leader.com

Posted: 5:55am on Apr 29, 2012; Modified: 12:34pm on Apr 29, 2012

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/04/29/2168876/state-continues-to-withhold-child.html#storylink=cpy

Despite promises of transparency by Gov. Steve Beshear, state officials are refusing to release child-protection records about a man who was convicted of beating his 3-month-old son prior to the mysterious deaths of his two infant daughters.

The Cabinet for Health and Family Services won’t release records about Jesse Allison, who is charged in Caldwell County, in Western Kentucky, with murder in the 2009 asphyxiation death of his 7-monthold daughter Ariel.

The Lexington Herald-Leader and The Courier-Journal of Louisville have fought the cabinet for access to such documents in Franklin Circuit Court for more than a year. A judge ordered state officials on Nov. 3 to turn over its files on dozens of children who died or nearly died from child abuse and neglect, including Ariel.

After Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd ordered the documents released, Beshear said Nov. 29 that his administration would comply with the order and that “transparency will be the new rule” in the cabinet.

Five months later, most details of how child-protection workers interacted with Ariel and her family before her death remain secret. The only document that has been released is a two-page internal review of Ariel’s death, which Shepherd released in January after forcing the cabinet to turn it over to his office.

In March, the Herald-Leader renewed its request under the Open Records Act for other documents about Ariel and sought documents about her half-sister Erin, who was found dead in her bed of undetermined causes in 2008 when she was 22 months old.

The cabinet denied the newspaper’s request March 7. In its denial, the cabinet said records about Ariel were exempt from disclosure under the law because child-protection workers have never determined that her death was caused by abuse or neglect.

“Until the criminal charge is litigated there is no finding of abuse or neglect that would qualify it as a case which the cabinet may release,” general counsel Christina Heavrin wrote.

That claim doesn’t match the limited information available in the cabinet’s two-page internal review of Ariel’s death. The internal review says the cabinet decided to file in court a “physical-abuse petition on the father regarding this child.” That means Allison would have to answer in court to the cabinet’s allegations that he abused Ariel.

“The cabinet is splitting a hair that is not authorized by the law,” said Kif Skidmore, an attorney representing the Herald-Leader. “The decision to file a physical-abuse petition is sufficient to make the records public — there is simply no requirement of a criminal conviction.”

Kerri Richardson, a spokeswoman for Beshear, defended the cabinet’s decision to withhold additional documents about Ariel.

“The cabinet continues to comply with the directive from the governor, and they continue to release records weekly. However, in this case, a criminal case is pending in the courts, which exempts those records from release under the Open Records Act,’’ Richardson said.

Skidmore said the exemption that allows a law enforcement agency to withhold criminal investigation files does not authorize the cabinet to withhold its records in the Allison case.

“This is just another example of the cabinet choosing to adhere to a culture of secrecy rather than adopt an approach of maximum transparency,” Skidmore said.

Allison maintains Ariel’s death was an accident, that his daughter got trapped between her mattress and the crib rail. His September murder trial ended in a hung jury. He is scheduled to be retried starting May 29.

Allison’s court-appointed attorney, Jack Faust, said a judge has ruled that incidents involving other children in Allison’s family — including his 2000 neglect conviction in Virginia for beating his infant son — are inadmissible for the trial that begins in May.

Faust said Ariel’s death “was a tragic accident. We certainly put on proof at the first trial that it was an accident.”

Bounced ‘like a basketball’

Nearly a decade before Ariel’s death, Allison was telling police in Virginia how he fractured the skull and broke the ribs of his 3-month-old son.

He pleaded guilty to two counts of child neglect in 2000 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but the sentence was suspended and he served probation instead, according to court records in Norfolk.

In that case, a court document said Virginia social workers began visiting Allison’s home twice a week in February 2000 after physicians saw bruises on his son Matthew.

Allison denied abusing Matthew, but on Feb. 23, 2000, Allison’s now ex-wife Laura Allison found a large bump on the back of the baby’s head after she left him in Jesse Allison’s care to return a video.

In a detailed statement to Norfolk police, Allison told police he hit and punched Matthew and bounced him on the couch “like a basketball.”

“When he was in his colicky mood, I use to pick him up and squeeze his chest, turn him around and hit the back of his head, bounce him on the couch, face down, pinch his toes and his fingers,” Allison told police, according to a transcript of his statement.

A year later, there was another report of possible child abuse involving Allison.

The cabinet’s review of Ariel’s death mentioned that in 2001, Allison “was part of a physical-abuse referral where a child received a skull fracture and a possible fracture of the right femur.”

The review of Ariel’s death does not say where the alleged abuse occurred in 2001, although Faust said it was not in Kentucky. He said he did not know the identity of the child involved.

The review says the 2001 report of abuse was unsubstantiated, but a “general family case” was opened by some entity. The document provides no further details about the incident.

Cabinet officials denied the Herald-Leader access to additional records on the 2001 report of suspected child abuse, saying they were not subject to the Open Records Act.

Erin Allison

Erin Allison was Jesse Allison’s daughter with a woman who died while having a Caesarean section when Erin was born, according to The Paducah Sun.

Erin died in January 2008 at 22 months. An autopsy listed the cause of death as undetermined, according to the cabinet’s review of Ariel Allison’s death.

Jesse Allison found his daughter dead in her toddler bed, according to The Paducah Sun.

The newspaper reported that Erin’s maternal grandmother said that Erin suffered seizures related to fevers and that she had a fever the night of her death.

After Erin’s death, the cabinet initiated a risk-of-harm investigation, but it found that the family was not in need of services, according to the fatality review in Ariel’s case.

Ariel Allison

Jesse Allison found Ariel unresponsive in her crib, according to the cabinet’s review of Ariel’s death. She died Sept. 5, 2009.

“She was found hanging between the mattress and the crib rails with the back of her head against the rail with face pressed against the mattress,” the review said.

Jesse Allison fathered Ariel with his wife at the time, Marae Allison. Marae Allison was in the process of divorcing Jesse Allison when she testified against him at his September trial.

Marae Allison testified that she supported her husband in the days after Ariel’s death. She testified that he had convinced her the baby had a habit of getting stuck in her crib, Paducah TV station WPSD reported.

“I was upset, and that was just all Jesse kept talking about, so I assumed that’s what had happened,” she said, according to the television station. “Once I had time to go back and think about what happened, she couldn’t have been down that far, hadn’t been down that far.”

Two doctors who testified during the trial reached differing conclusions about how Ariel died.

Dr. Deirdre Schluckebier, who performed Ariel’s autopsy, testified that because of the crib’s construction, Ariel should have had additional injuries on her body if she became wedged in it, according to The Paducah Sun. Schluckebier ultimately changed her ruling on the cause of death from undetermined to homicide by intentional asphyxiation.

Dr. George Nichols, the state’s chief medical examiner from 1977 to 1997, testified for the defense that he reviewed autopsy and police reports and multiple photographs, and came to the conclusion Ariel died from being wedged in her crib, the newspaper reported.

In an interview Friday, Nichols said he also examined the crib, which was the subject of a Consumer Product Safety Commission investigation and was recalled by its manufacturer.

“The crib is defective,” Nichols said. “It was dangerous sleeping that caused the child’s death. Not murder.”

Caldwell Circuit Judge C.A. Woodall did not allow any testimony about the Consumer Product Safety Commission investigation or the crib recall during the trial.

Problems with the crib that resulted in the recall were “not the cause of the asphyxiation by the child in this case,” he ruled.

Room for improvement

After Ariel died, the cabinet’s review of how it handled the case said there was room to improve how it researches the backgrounds of alleged abusers.

The review determined that “more resources are needed to be available to search history on families, especially when they have been in or come from another state.”

The review also said “workers need to be made aware of accessing more information, especially how family support records could be of assistance in cases.”

State law does not require cabinet officials investigating a report of child abuse or neglect to check a family’s history. However, a cabinet policy manual requires a check of a state information system that logs abuse and neglect information on children and adults.

Cabinet spokeswoman Jill Midkiff said the Allison family’s history was researched and documented in the cabinet’s records in January 2008, when the cabinet had its first contact with the family.

Still, after a statewide review of child deaths in 2008 and 2009, Midkiff said the cabinet determined that increasing staff training on obtaining a family’s history would be beneficial.

Training was developed in 2009 and largely delivered in 2010. It emphasized the need to gather historical information from in-state and out-of-state sources about allegations of abuse and neglect and criminal history.

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SHOWING 6 COMMENTS

nofirstam

Regardless of what our Governor says, the Office of the Attorney General needs to convene a special Grand Jury in Franklin County. The OAG has the authority to do it, and its mandate should be to investigate the management and workers in the Cabinet for Health and Family Services for Tampering with Evidence and Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice, etc., regarding abused and neglected children in the Commonwealth. That Grand Jury should subpoena every piece of paper and data entry regarding abused and neglected children from the agency, and let a group of citizens decide if indictments are appropriate.

My guess is that the staff and management of the Cabinet who would want a deal of no jail time in exchange for their confessions to negligence to abused and neglected children, as well as having hidden it with false records, would be lined up around the block in downtown Frankfort. They would come from every county in the State. That threat of jail time motivates government workers to come forward and to be forthcoming in their testimony.

Stay with ‘em, Cr Jrnl and Lex Hrld. This is why our society needs media, particularly investigative newspaper journalism.
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DavidTrue

The Honey Moon is over for the new Secretary of the Cabinet.
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KYWoman46

This creep has killed three children. How many more will he gets his hands on before someone actually does something about it? Yes, the Governor is a joke. This is just part of what happens when people vote for someone based on how much better their campaign is run instead of their actual track record.
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sleeting

Our governor is a joke. That pretty well says it all about the governor.
Sidney49

Its no wonder they hide it its a fact that Kentucky has the worst child abuse record in America and some third world countries!
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earlrichards

Well done, Herald-Leader, you are doing the work that the official opposition is suppose to be doing.
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Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/04/29/2168876/state-continues-to-withhold-child.html#storylink=cpy

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2 Videos That You Can Use To Support Abused & Neglected Children

Mike Tikkanen — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 21:24:25 +0000

This first 3 minute video is the medical communities powerful study of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s study) and establishes how child abuse lasts forever and how it shortens and diminishes human life.

The second short video, introduces the powerful Brutal Truths & Best Practices public forum Kids At Risk Action held at Century college, drawing attention to the problems our institutions are having in dealing with the overwhelming issues being faced within our communities.

These two videos provide a world of information that will open the door to the larger conversation that must be held before significant change can occur for abused and neglected children. Please Pass Them On;

KARA public forum

ACE’s Study (short video) ACE’s Study (longer video)

Pass this blog to a friend or list you belong to. Speak out for voiceless children. *If you know a high profile person that might speak out on this topic, please let them know about KARA.

Download the Amazon Kindle Version of our Invisible Children Ebook for 2.99 (support KARA)

Support KARA’s effort to speak out for at risk children; sponsor a conversation in your community (invite me to speak at your conference) / Buy our book or donate

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Guardian Ad-Litem News From Around The Nation

Mike Tikkanen — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 15:15:19 +0000

From time to time I publish news from other sources that is of interest to guardian ad-Litems around the nation.

If you know a GAL please forward this to them.

We need to be informed about the child protection systems around the nation and as we just found out, how 12 million dollars can disappear from the 15 million dollar CASA budget in one year. This is Not In The Best Interest Of The Child.

Story 1, From the Bradenton Herald;

AskTheGAL: A new weekly column for your questions about helping abused, neglected children

AskTheGAL: A new weekly column for your questions about helping abused …
Bradenton Herald
By PAM HINDMAN/Special to the Herald editor’s note: This is the first of a new weekly column in the Bradenton Herald by Pam Hindman, director of the 12th Judicial Circuit Guardian ad Litem Program. Each week, she and a panel of experts will tackle your …
See all stories on this topic »

FBI follows paper trial in Marchan case
Brownsville Herald
The FBI alleges the trail shows payments Marchan made to Limas in return for a guardian ad litem appointment. Brownsville attorneys Charles Willette Jr. and Gilberto Hinojosa could be called as witnesses by the government in the federal government’s …
See all stories on this topic »

Make a positive impact in a child’s life
BlueRidgeNow.com
Soon, someone from the Guardian ad Litem (GAL) program will meet the child and assure him/her that the volunteer is there for the child as an advocate for the duration of the child’s case. The GAL will ensure that the child’s needs are being met, …
See all stories on this topic »

Children in urgent need of help
TCPalm
A Guardian ad Litem (GAL) volunteer is the eyes and ears for a judge and the person who tells the child’s story to the court. These volunteers are needed in every county on the Treasure Coast to help judges make decisions regarding the best interests …
See all stories on this topic »

Columnist | Ask the GAL
Bradenton Herald
Pam Hindman, 12th Circuit Director of the Guardian Ad Litem. GRANT JEFFERIES/Bradenton Herald GJEFFERIES@BRADENTON.COM AskTheGAL is a new column in the Bradenton Herald by Pam Hindman, director of the 12th Judicial Circuit Guardian ad Litem Program.
See all stories on this topic »

Bradenton Herald

Advocates: Kids fare well in budget
WJXT Jacksonville
The Guardian ad Litem program, which represents children in the courts, got its entire budget request. KidCare, the federal-state subsidized health insurance program for children, was extended to state workers who make little enough to qualify.
See all stories on this topic »

FGCU mentoring program graduates 12

The News-Press
Katrice, a foster child, smiles Tuesday as she opens a gift from the staff at the Children’s Network while her guardian ad litem Maxine Carpenter, left, looks on following the Mentoring for Educational Success graduation at FGCU.
See all stories on this topic »

A path to family law improvement

Chanhassen Villager
Judges need the insight a guardian ad litem can bring, and parents frequently (but not always) gain perspective on what is in the best interest of their children. Guardians ad Litem are appointed in virtually every CHIPS case but only 4 percent of …
See all stories on this topic »

Web

5 new results for guardian ad litem

Guardian ad Litem Events & Information – Sarasota, FL – Sarasota …
Guardian ad Litem Information Open House Monday, April 30th, 5 p.m. at St. Thomas More, 2506 Gulf Gate Drive, Sarasota. Full-time Florida residents can learn …
events.heraldtribune.com/sarasota…/8935784-guardian-ad-lite…

Guardian Ad Litems – Topic
It would seem that more often than not, that the guardian ad litem’s recommendation is rubber stamped by the judge. At least with judge’s they are screened as I …
forums.menshealth.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/…/7051028957

Guardian ad Litem | WHQR
I spoke with Lynne Fender, a volunteer Guardian ad Litem. John Taggart, the president of the non-profit Cape Fear Guardian ad Litem Association was with.
www.whqr.org/post/guardian-ad-litem?ft=1&f=

The Cheraw Chronicle – Guardian ad Litem welcomes new director
Guardian ad Litem welcomes new director – COLUMBIA — The Cass Elias Guardian ad Litem Program one of South Carolina’s most prominent advocacy …
www.thecherawchronicle.com/…/article-Guardian-ad-Litem-w…

Guardian ad Litem Volunteers Urgently Needed
They deserve a chance that you can provide by becoming a volunteer Guardian ad Litem (GAL). GAL volunteers are court appointed special advocates for an …
westpasco.communitychatterbox.com/…/1598-guardian-ad-lite…

Golfing For Guardian Ad Litem
WJHG-TV
The proceeds go to Guardian Ad Litem to help pay for camp, graduation items, gymnastics; the things most of us take for granted, but these kids have never had. The Berberich’s also make a donation to the Wounded Warriors Beach Retreat Program.
See all stories on this topic »

Become a Voice for Children
Patch.com
The Guardian ad Litem Program needs volunteers to be advocates for hundreds of children in Pasco County. By Neil Johnson Hundreds of children in Pasco, the abandoned, the neglected and the abused, need someone to be their voice and watch out for them.
See all stories on this topic »

Volunteers raise money for neglected foster kids
WNCT
WINTERVILLE, NC — Advocates for the Pitt County Guardian Ad Litem Program didn’t let Sunday?s cloudy skies keep them from raising money for their cause. (more) WINTERVILLE, NC — Advocates for the Pitt County Guardian Ad Litem Program didn’t let …
See all stories on this topic »

What happens to parents who commit child abuse? AskTheGAL spells it out
Bradenton Herald
When I consulted Jennifer Layton, supervising attorney for the Guardian ad Litem Program, about this question, she said, “The easy answer is prosecutorial discretion.” The state attorney has discretion on what charges to pursue.
See all stories on this topic »

Kate Middleton’s Gets Comment Fit for the Late Mother Theresa
Gather Celebs News Channel
The former Prime Minister, Sir John Major, who held the title of Guardian ad Litem to young Prince William and Prince Harry after Diana’s death, is a family insider. His comments on Kate come after seeing her from a different seat in the world audience …
See all stories on this topic »

Nutter opens Brinkley Morgan office with plans to grow
Sun-Sentinel
With her history as a voice for children statewide as chairwoman of The Florida Bar’s Family Law Guardian Ad Litem Ad Hoc Committee, Nutter has been a volunteer guardian ad litem for more than 19 years in both Palm and Broward counties.
See all stories on this topic »

Sun-Sentinel

Dutka to vie for probate court judge
Sturgis Journal
During his years of professional practice, he has handled hundreds of cases acting as guardian ad litem for incapacitated adults and developmentally disabled children in Probate Court. For a complete story, see the Journal’s Weekend edition.
See all stories on this topic »

Austin woman who beat baby accepts parental rights termination, gets prison time
Austin Herald
According to Alice Snater, guardian ad litem for both of Sean’s children, Sean will give up her parental rights. A termination of parental rights petition has also been filed against both fathers of Sean’s children, and pre-trials will later be set.
See all stories on this topic »

Austin Herald

The system is powerless to protect children
Tampa Bay Newspapers
I am a guardian ad litem in the Tampa Bay area. I want to present a hypothetical case: We have a father who lost his child three times in the last few years. Recently, he has tested positive for drugs, twice, and arrested for DUI and driving on a …
See all stories on this topic »

Web

5 new results for guardian ad litem

GUARDIAN AD LITEM Information Open House | Sarasota Classes …
check out GUARDIAN AD LITEM Information Open House, a Classes & Lectures, Government, Organizations, Religious, Volunteer, and Awareness event at St.
sarasota.patch.com/…/guardian-ad-litem-infomation-open-hou…

Ohio G.A.L. guardian ad litem responsibilities – Adoption.com Forums
In Ohio, here are the responsibilities of a GAL: “Best Interest of the Child” “The guardian ad litem for an alleged or adjudicated.
forums.adoption.com/…/403060-ohio-g-l-guardian-ad-litem-r…

Making & Keeping Connections « Guardian ad Litem
Making & Keeping Connections. Children in Foster Care need to keep connections with family, friends, kin, etc. Even if you are unable to provide placement for …
galcharlotte.wordpress.com/…/making-keeping-connections/

CASA presents child advocate awards
Yuma Sun
BY CHRIS McDANIEL – SUN STAFF WRITER Susan Steenhard, a Court Appointed Special Advocate who works with troubled youths, has been given the 2012 CASA of the Year award — her third since she began volunteering with CASA for Children in 1999.
See all stories on this topic »

Superhero 5K aids Court Appointed Special Advocates of the Coastal Bend
Corpus Christi Caller Times
CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) is a network of volunteers who provide a voice for kids who have no one else. When a child has no mother, father, family, or guardian, a CASA volunteer will determine his or her needs, check on foster care and …
See all stories on this topic »

Wanted: Members for new state child welfare panel
Omaha World-Herald
The commission is to include the following voting members: director of a child advocacy center; administrator of a behavioral health region; community representatives from each of the five Health and Human Services service areas; prosecuting attorney …
See all stories on this topic »

Letter: Change a child’s life
The Republic
As a Court Appointed Special Advocate we have the opportunity to lift up a child’s life with our voice. We are appointed by the court to assure our children are not robbed of the life they deserve and that their basic needs to be loved and protected …
See all stories on this topic »

CASA hoping to extend reach with car show
Chicago Tribune
Court Appointed Special Advocates of South Central Kentucky trains volunteers to be advocates for about 200 abused and neglected children each year and relies on fundraisers to help serve the children involved in the program.
See all stories on this topic »

Human Services Students Release 71 Balloons for Child Abuse Awareness Month
The Paper Magazine
Held in partnership with CASA, Court Appointed Special Advocates for children in Montgomery County, the balloon release events were part of campaign to bring attention to child abuse awareness month in April. LSC-Montgomery is located at 3200 College …
See all stories on this topic »

The Paper Magazine

Lone Star students release balloons for child abuse awareness
Woodlands Online, LLC
Seventy-one blue balloons were released from the steps of Lone Star College-Montgomery’s General Academic Center late last month in an effort to raise awareness of child abuse. Photo courtesy LSC – Montgomery. THE WOODLANDS, Texas –– To raise awareness …
See all stories on this topic »

‘WE ARE THEIR VOICE’
Beloit Daily News
Staff photo by Debra Jensen-De Hart Barbara and Roy Carter volunteer as Court Appointed Special Advocates who work with the Rock County Circuit Court System and represent the best interests of a child who is under a Children in Need of Protection and …
See all stories on this topic »

Child makes ‘near miraculous’ progress after throat-slashing
Houston Chronicle
By Cindy Horswell CONROE – A court-appointed child advocate on Wednesday gave a vivid description of the “near miraculous” progress being made by a 5-year-old Montgomery County boy whose mother said she slashed his throat and stomped his head to …
See all stories on this topic »

CASA leaders encourage new volunteers
The Star Democrat
CAMBRIDGE Community leaders gathered in Cambridge for lunch April 20 to learn more about the good CASA is doing in Dorchester County and the need for more Dorchester residents to become involved in the Court Appointed Special Advocate program.
See all stories on this topic »

Blogs

1 new result for court appointed special advocate

CASA Rally at Indiana State House | Indiana Court Times
Volunteers from Indiana’s Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) programs came from across the state and took part in a rally in Indianapolis on March 5th. Approximately 350 people clothed in blue T-shirts filled the north atrium of the …
Indiana Court Times

Web

5 new results for court appointed special advocate

CASA presents child advocate awards, child, casa, steenhard …
Susan Steenhard (left), a court appointed special advocate, has been named the 2012 CASA of the Year. She is presented the award commemorating her …
www.yumasun.com/articles/child-78647-casa-steenhard.html

National Association of Counsel for Children Nacc Court Appointed …
… National Association of Counsel for Children (NACC) Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), Waiting Children, Parenting, Child Welfare Services, May Is …
www.huffingtonpost.com/…/national-association-of-counsel-f…

What do you know about being a Court Appointed Special Advocate …
How can you be a volunteer if you work during the …
answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid…

Step Up, Speak Out Rally Uses Family Fun To Broach Harsh Topic …
Law enforcement leaders, business officials and children’s advocates led a rallying cry to “step up” and “speak out” against child abuse during a Saturday rally.
www.swtimes.com/…/step-speak-out-rally-uses-family-fun-bro…

Children’s Flag Day program remembers those lost to violence …
Mineral County Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) worker Gina Spriggs noted that the Children’s Memorial Flag – a chalk-line drawing of a child …
www.newstribune.info/…/Childrens-Flag-Day-program-remem…

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A MN guardian ad-Litem speaks to Montana about child abuse.

Mike Tikkanen — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:03:38 +0000

Not long ago, a mother with two foster daughters drove from MN to Montana in her old beat up pickup truck to defend her parental rights for her children even though dad had molested the children in their home state of MN.

The husband (now living in Montana) had money and knew the courts very well.

This poor woman, that had stuck her neck out to adopt children, was being sued and required to drive 20 hours to defend her parenting rights against a man whose semen samples were on file in Montana in a sexual abuse investigation of their two year old and 12 year old children.

Dad was guilty, but mom knew that sticking a 2 year old and a 12 year old on the stand as witnesses has never worked. Children are easily confused and not credible witnesses, ask any attorney.

Mom was frightened of the courts, of the man, and of the damage done to her children. No one in the MN child protection system was able to offer any help, she was on her own. I felt sick.

As a guardian ad-Litem, I have witnessed many unfair and disconcerting federal and state acts, but this was truly abhorrent.

Upon investigating her husband, it became clear that he had a history of sex abuse, there was proof on file that he had molested his own young children.

Dad had money to sue for custody and mom had no money. It was an unfair fight.

The fact this mom did not give up, lose her nerve, or commit suicide has always struck me as a testament to her courage and commitment to her children.

When I wrote the book INVISIBLE CHILDREN, half of my cases involved sex abuse of children.

Child sex abuse is the most underreported crime in the nation.

The impact of child sex abuse lasts forever.

MT: Officials Address Child Abuse

KURL8.com April 26, 2012

Law enforcement officials said statistics show survivors of child abuse or neglect are likely to commit a violent crime later in life. A new strategy is being developed to stop both.

In 2010, Montana received nearly $3 million in grants to battle child abuse and neglect. “I’ve been around this business for over twenty years, and I’ve seen some pretty sad cases, and it’s just not good. If we can prevent even one case, then we’re doing our job. I think with a program like this we’re going to see more prevention,” Sheriff Mike Linder said.

http://www.kulr8.com/news/local/Officials-Address-Child-Abuse-149185955.html

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Good-By CASA?

Mike Tikkanen — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:34:36 +0000

National CASA (Court Appoint Special Advocate) lost most of its funding this year and is now just a shell of what it was last year. Abused and neglected children need a voice in the complicated court system that now runs their lives. These children have no voice in their abusive homes and no one in the system speaks for them.

CASA provides that voice. From the National CASA Blog

The National Court-Appointed Special Advocate Association—a nationwide network of volunteer advocates changing the lives of abused and neglected children.

Is anybody paying attention as funding for one of the most vital programs for neglected and abused children is slashed to $0?

Society has an obligation to abused and neglected children. Caring for them is our collective responsibility.

So why does the Administration’s current budget proposalend federal funding of the Victims of Child Abuse Act?

The ratio of expenses to overhead for CASA is among the best in the nonprofit world. A single dollar invested in CASA programs yields $23.40 in savings in the foster care and child welfare system.

So why would anyone allow the $12 million in funding CASA receives through the Victims of Child Abuse Act to just disappear?

Sure, $12 million sounds overwhelming when you think about your family’s budget. But in terms of the Administration’s proposed budget, $12 million amounts to about 3 ten thousandths of one percent of federal expenditures. Put another way: the elimination of funding for CASA advocacy is meaningless in terms of federal deficit reduction.

But those dollars can mean everything to the life of a child in foster care.

How can anyone justify subtracting 3 ten thousandths of one percent from government spending when it means a child could spend more time languishing in foster care… or when a youth might be forced to take psychotropic medication that was never intended for children… or when siblings who could have stayed together end up separated forever? What do we say to the child who is moved three, four or even eight times to different homes and schools?

CASA can be the difference between a life that’s full of broken dreams and a life that’s lived to the fullest potential.

So why would anybody sit by and watch this happen?

I can’t, and I am asking each of you to take action with me.

CASA allies in Congress tell us there is a chance these funds can be restored—if we act now. If we raise our voices, speak loudly and speak as one, we have a chance. But the window of opportunity is closing.

We have mobilized our network. It is vital that everyone reading these words contact their elected representatives. Urge them to restore full funding for National CASA. It will take just a few minutes. And it could change the life of a child. Thank you.

Enter your zip code here for quick, easy links to your elected officials.

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New ACE Study DVD 3 Minute Preview:

Mike Tikkanen — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:06:57 +0000

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.

The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study) is the product of collaboration between Vincent J. Felitti, MD, who founded and directed the Preventive Medicine Department at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego, CA, and Robert F. Anda, MD, MS of the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who designed, analyzed the data and prepared numerous scientific publications from the ACE Study.

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From Child Welfare In The News

Mike Tikkanen — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 23:01:10 +0000

These are important stories copied from the Child Welfare Information Gateway;

Child Welfare in the News

AZ: Money for foster care in Arizona could be cut by more than half

ABC15.com April 18, 2012

The Chandler couple doesn’t understand why state lawmakers would even consider a 60 percent cut to Child Protective Services.

Under one of the two proposed budgets, $49 million used for monthly expenses would be slashed.

The Bartos said their monthly allowance was already cut by 20 percent a year and half ago.

http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_southeast_valley/chandler/money-for-foster-care-in-arizona-could-be-cut-by-more-than-half

AZ: Arizona CPS seeing increase in child-abuse reports

Associated Press April 18, 2012

A record-high number of child abuse reports in Arizona has led the state’s child welfare agency to turn to a special investigative team to help with case management, officials said Wednesday.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/04/18/20120418arizona-cps-seeing-increase-child-abuse-reports.html

CA: Audit slams L.A. County child welfare agency for improper spending

Los Angeles Times April 18, 2012

Forty percent of employees at Los Angeles County’s troubled child welfare agency improperly received mileage reimbursement from taxpayers on days they did not work, according to a random sample of reimbursement reports examined by the county auditor-controller.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/04/audit-slams-la-county-child-welfare-agency-for-improper-spending.html

FL: No Savings Are Found From Welfare Drug Tests

New York times April 17, 2012

Ushered in amid promises that it would save taxpayers money and deter drug users, a Florida law requiring drug tests for people who seek welfare benefits resulted in no direct savings, snared few drug users and had no effect on the number of applications, according to recently released state data.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/us/no-savings-found-in-florida-welfare-drug-tests.html?_r=2

IN: Cutting special needs subsidies bad on balance

South Bend Tribune April 19, 2012

No one argues with Indiana’s Department of Child Services Director James Payne when he says that people should adopt for love, not money.

But it’s hardly the proper rationale for ending financial assistance to parents adopting special needs children.

http://www.southbendtribune.com/news/opinion/sbt-20120419sbtmicha-05-06-20120419,0,6928022.story

KS: Wichita teacher loses license over alleged late reporting of suspected abuse

Wichita Eagle April 18, 2012

A Wichita teacher had her license revoked this week after allegedly failing to report suspected child sexual abuse quickly enough, and some education officials say the punishment was too severe.

http://www.kansas.com/2012/04/18/2302355/wichita-teacher-loses-license.html#storylink=cpy

MA: Mass. faulted on abuse reporting: Report says data on children must be more available

Boston Globe April 17, 2012

A nationwide survey to be released Tuesday that ranks how states report the deaths and near-deaths of children due to abuse and neglect gave Massachusetts a letter grade of C, saying the state could do more to make public how the tragedies occurred, to help combat the problem.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/04/16/mass-faulted-child-abuse-reporting/vjGYqMWf5fIB0ySBEMcs2L/discuss.html

MD: Nonprofit seeks further access to child abuse case data in Md.

Washington Examiner April 17, 2012

A nonprofit that advocates for the victims of child abuse is questioning the access to information Maryland has been granting the organization, even though it says the state has improved in policy on public disclosures of deaths or near deaths in abuse or neglect cases.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/dc/2012/04/nonprofit-seeks-further-access-child-abuse-case-data-md/500916

NE: Nebraska Child and Family Services Director Confirmed

WOWT.com April 18, 2012

Thomas Pristow was confirmed Wednesday on the final day of this year’s legislative session. He will serve within the Department of Health and Human Services.

http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/Nebraska_Child_and_Family_Services_Director_Confirmed_147928485.html

NC: Rowan hires Donna Fayko as county’s new DSS director

Charlotte Business Journal April 17, 2012

Davidson resident Donna F. Fayko was named today as the new director of the Rowan County Department of Social Services.

http://www.salisburypost.com/News/041712-WEB-New-DSS-director-named-qcd

SC: Tribal adoption case’s impact could be far-reaching

Tusla News April 19, 2012

The hearing was scheduled to last 35 minutes, but the oral arguments went on for an hour and a half at the South Carolina Supreme Court.

With the public barred from attending, and both sides under a strict gag order, nobody who was in the room Tuesday can talk about what happened.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20120419_11_A9_CUTLIN952298

TN: Tenn. gets better grade on child abuse disclosures

Stamford Advocate April 18, 2012

Tennessee has improved its grade on the public disclosure of details about preventable child deaths and abuse, two child advocate groups said.

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Tenn-gets-better-grade-on-child-abuse-disclosures-3491331.php

Also: http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/apr/18/tenn-improves-in-abuse-disclosures/

WA: LEGISLATURE: Sexual assault center spared

Bellingham Herald April 18, 2012

Lawmakers spared the Sexual Assault Response Center in Kennewick from a $90,000 cut to services for abused children.

In anticipation of the cut, the center laid off two part-time employees and canceled a trip to Seattle to train local law enforcement officers in child abuse investigation, SARC Executive Director JoDee Garretson told the Herald.

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/04/18/2486151/legislature-sexual-assault-center.html#storylink=cpy

WV: W.Va. Catholics react to bishop abuse allegations

The Associated Press State & Local Wire April 18, 2012

Roman Catholics reacted with disbelief, shock and anger Wednesday after a witness at a clergy-abuse trial in Philadelphia testified that the leader of West Virginia’s 76,000 Catholics committed sexual abuse.

http://wvgazette.com/News/201204180196

International

Canada: Judge orders hearing in child welfare funding case

Winnipeg Free Press April 19, 2012

A judge has ordered the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to proceed with a hearing to determine if the federal government is violating the human rights of aboriginal children with its child welfare program funding.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/judge-orders-hearing-in-child-welfare-funding-case-148056345.html

Also: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/04/18/pol-first-nations-court-welfare.html

Dominican Republic: NJ officials: Child support orders in Dominican Republic will be enforced

New Jersey.com April 18, 2012

“This partnership is historic and signifies important progress for our Child Support system,” said Human Services Commissioner Jennifer Velez, whose department oversees collections and payments. “Child support is an essential anti-poverty component. Custodial parents who receive timely, consistent payments are more self-sufficient and less likely to require state or federal social service benefits.”

http://www.northjersey.com/news/NJ_officials_Child_support_orders_in_Dominican_Republic_will_be_enforced.html

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Child Trauma Academy Newsletter

Mike Tikkanen — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:01:43 +0000

Everyone concerned with the issues of abused & neglected children needs to follow this organization & its newsletter.

Published regularly by the Child Trauma Academy, it deals in the hard facts facing America’s at risk children.

While is geared for the medical and professional community & its format can be a little run together and hard to read at times, there are few sources as deep and thorough as the Academy On Violence & Abuse

IN THIS ISSUE

Supreme Court Considers LIfe Without Parole for Juveniles

Child Trauma Symposium May 31 – June 1

QUICK LINKS

BORN FOR LOVE

EARLY CHILDHOOD NMT RECORDING PACKAGE

NMT TRAINING CERTIFICATION PROGRAMS

Dear mike, Over the last twenty years, the work of the ChildTrauma Academy has often played a role in the creation or modification of more developmentally sensitive, trauma-informed policy. This ranges from the central role Dr. Perry played in the public engagement campaigns regarding the importance of early childhood and brain development to the need for more developmentally sensitive, trauma-informed systems in education, child welfare, mental health and childcare settings. Our work has also informed changes in the juvenile justice system.

This past month, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases which sought to challenge the constitutionality of sentencing those 14 years old and younger to life without parole for convictions of murder (they ruled in 2005 that it was unconstitutional by means of cruel and usual punishment to sentence a juvenile to life for other crimes). 39 States currently have laws that allow the sentence of life without parole to be passed for a person of any age convicted of murder. While the Justices debated several key points, central to their ruling is the question of how developed a juvenile’s brain is at the age of fourteen – or younger – and how to determine at what age a person should be held absolutely accountable for his or her actions. The short commentary below considers this question from a neurodevelopmental perspective – science that the Justices will consider as they debate and ultimately rule on in these very important cases.

Aspects of Neurodevelopment in Early Adolescence

During the process of brain development there are a variety of “micro- architectural” processes that take place to create the final mature and fully functional brain. Some of these processes such as neurogenesis (birth of nerve cells) take place primarily in utero; by the time we are born, for example, the vast majority of neurons we use throughout life are present – though a number of important examples of post-natal neurogenesis are seen in key parts of the brain under a variety of conditions. The process of creating the majority of connections from neuron to neuron – synaptogenesis – occurs primarily in the first years of life; again, by the time you are five, the majority of the neural connections that underlie core functioning in all domains are in place. And again, key sculpting and synaptogenesis take place throughout life, but far fewer than in early childhood. In early adolescence, however, the key microarchitectural process involved in development is myelination. Myelination creates an “insulating” covering of the axons that span the distance from the “receptive” dendritic areas, to the cell body and then down the axon to the pre-synaptic terminal (this is a bit of an oversimplification). In essence myelination plays a major role of increasing the efficiency and speed of existing neural connections; similar to the difference between a “dial-up” (slow) and fiber optic (blazing fast) internet connection. This increased efficiency allows a quantum leap in the speed and complexity of neural network communication that appears to underlie improved cortical functioning – including the improved capacity of the cortex to modulate and regulate the lower more “impulsive” networks/areas of the brain. The process of myelination in key areas of the cortex plays a major role in increase the “executive functioning,” and cortical modulating capacity of the brain. And the balance between the reactivity of the lower and simpler regulatory areas of the brain (which can be increased by trauma) and the strength of the cortical networks that modulate these lower areas is a major determinant of self control, attention, impulse control and a variety of inter-related crucial capacities of the developing child, youth and adult. The more myelinated and mature the cortex the more capable one is of “cortical modulation” (a capacity that can be estimated with the CTA’s NMT Clinical Practice Tools “Brain Map”) and self-regulation – key traits in a successful person. The fact that an adolescent does not yet have these capacities developed is a major factor that the US Supreme Court is being asked to consider in these cases that are challenging the sentencing of youth to life in prison. In 2009, the US Supreme Court decided these neurodevelopmental factors were crucial to their decision to declare the death penalty for adolescents unconstitutional. Dr. Perry participated in the development and writing of Amicus Briefs for both the 2009 and the 2012 US Supreme Court cases. You can read the Amicus Brief outlining some of the key research to be considered by the court here. For review of all of the briefs presented in this case visit this link.

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.”

The ChildTrauma Academy’s Senior Fellow, Dr. Bruce Perry, and CTA Fellow, Dr. Gene Griffin will be participating in this unique event sponsored by their primary academic affiliation, the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University School of Medicine.

Save the Date! The Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and School of Law at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL will be hosting a Symposium on Child Trauma in the Public Sector for Policy Makers, Clinicians, Health Care Providers, Child Advocates, Attorneys, Judges, Probation Officers, and Educators. This symposium will feature headline speakers Dr. Carl Bell, Dr. John Constantino, Dr. Bruce Perry, Bryan Samuels (Commissioner of Federal HHS, Administration on Children, Youth and Families), and Dr. Elizabeth Sowell. Click here to see the event webpage.

New CTA Product – Early Childhood Recording Package – Now Available

The new Early Childhood Recording Package consists of seven recordings — an introduction and six, live clinical case discussions led by Dr. Perry. Each recording is approximately 90 minutes in length and can be stopped, paused and restarted at your convenience. Recordings do not expire.

A case abstract and metric report are included for the six cases – each of which address a specific early childhood issue while highlighting NMT principles. The NMT web-based Clinical Practice Tools are used as well.

For more information including pricing for this package, click here.

Registration Now Open for Fall 2012 NMT Case-Based Training Series

We have just opened registration for the Fall 2012 NMT Case-Based Training Series! The Fall Series will consist of ten 90-minute Sessions and begin on September 21, 2012. All Sessions take place on Fridays from 11:30 – 1:00pm CST, and you may register to participate Live or receive recordings of each session – viewable at your convenience!

And….for anyone who missed the Winter 2012 NMT Case-based Training Series, it is still possible to enroll for the web-recorded versions. This option allows optimal flexibility and the experience is essentially the same as the live session but with the added feature of complete flexibility in when and how often you choose to listen to the sessions. Contact the CTA or click here for more information.

Click here to view the complete Fall 2012 Series information including dates and to register.

A final update: we are moving towards a rolling enrollment process for our NMT Individual and Site Certification Programs. Stay tuned for full details soon.

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Institutional Bullying & Suicide; Bishop Gene Robinson

Mike Tikkanen — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 23:08:57 +0000

The following article by Bishop Gene Robinson draws attention to youth suicide & particularly that seven students in one Minnesota school district have taken their own lives, including three teens.

GLBT issues underly most of the suicide Bishop Robinson writes about.

That life can be made so unbearable for children so young is incomprehensible unless you have been near someone living the nightmare.

A gay 14 year old boy in my guardian ad-Litem caseload was transferred to a Christian mental health facility because of his suicidal behaviors (that began when he was 7).

My young friend was physically restrained for most of his five week stay in a Christian group home (sat on, tied up, & locked up). This organization had promised me that they would deal objectively & rationally with his sexual orientation. Instead they worked day and night to convert him to “straight”.

There was nothing rational about the abusive and humiliating treatment he received at this group home.

As a result of the terrible treatment he received from his birth family & the lack of organized resources available to him through the child protection system, his entire life has been filled with dangerous behaviors & a death wish.

I’ve followed the stories of very young children committing suicide and experienced several first hand suicide attempts as a guardian ad-Litem.

We have treatment protocol to save these children.

Support suicide & mental health programs (yes, with tax dollars – and no, there is not a religion in the world that abandons children, gay or straight - direct your religious leaders to teach tolerance and compassion and give up on those who continue to support bullying and denigrating of queer kids.

There is enough pain in this community without adding to it.

Support KARA’s effort to speak up for at risk children; sponsor a conversation in your community (invite me to speak at your conference) / Buy our book or donate

Bishop Gene Robinson’s Article;

An increasingly popular bumper sticker reads, “Guns Don’t Kill People — RELIGION Kills People!” In light of recent events I would add religion kills young people: gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender young people.

Perhaps not directly, though.

And religion is certainly not the only source of anti-gay sentiment in the culture. But it’s hard to deny that religious voices denouncing LGBT people contribute to the atmosphere in which violence against LGBT people and bullying of LGBT youth can flourish.

The news is filled with the tragedies of teenage boys who were gay and decided to end their living hell by committing suicide. Maybe they weren’t even gay, but merely perceived to be by their peers, who harassed, taunted, and threatened them unmercifully.

These were real kids with real names. Asher Brown, an eighth grader in Texas, shot himself in the head after endless bullying by classmates and despite attempts by his parents to get school authorities to take his harassment seriously. Seth Walsh hung himself from a tree in his California backyard after relentless bullying by classmates. Asher and Seth were 13-years-old.

Billy Lucas, a 15-year-old high school freshman from Indiana, was only perceived to be gay. But the unrelenting bullying ended with him taking his own life. Seven students in one Minnesota school district have taken their own lives, including three teens.

With the exception of Brown in Texas these suicides are not happening in Bible Belt regions of the country, where we might predict a greater-than-usual regard for religious thought. Instead, they are occurring in states perceived to be more liberal on LGBT issues: California, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

The case of Tyler Clementi is especially instructive about how far we have to go in accepting our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender children. Clementi was an 18-year-old freshman at Rutgers University whose roommate secretly filmed a sexual encounter he had with another male student and then posted it on the internet.

Think about it. If Tyler had been heterosexual and instead filmed having sex with his girlfriend, it would still be an inappropriate invasion of his privacy and tasteless to post the video online. And it certainly would have been embarrassing for Tyler and the girl. But chances are he would have been the recipient of some congratulatory remarks from friends about what a stud he was. And if he was straight he likely wouldn’t have contemplated — not to mention successfully accomplished — his own suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

No, Tyler was a victim — not of an inner disturbance of depression or mental illness–but of an external and in part religiously inspired disdain and hatred of gay people.

Despite the progress we’re making on achieving equality under the law and acceptance in society for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, why this rash of bullying, paired with self-loathing, ending in suicide? With humility and heartfelt repentance I assert that religion — and its general rejection of homosexuality — plays a crucial role in this crisis.

On the one hand, Religious Right hatemongers and crazies are spewing all sorts of venom and condemnation, all in the name of a loving God. The second-highest-ranking Mormon leader, Boyd K. Packer, recently called same-sex attraction “impure and unnatural” in an act of unspeakable insensitivity at the height of this rash of teen suicides. He declared that it can be cured, and that same-sex unions are morally repugnant and “against God’s law and nature.”

Just as many gay kids grow up in these conservative denominations as any other. They are told day in and day out that they are an abomination before God. Just consider the sheer numbers of LGBT kids growing up right now in Roman Catholic, Mormon, and other conservative religious households. The pain and self-loathing caused by such a distortion of God’s will is undeniable and tragic, causing scars and indescribable self-alienation in these young victims.

You don’t have to grow up in a religious household, though, to absorb these religious messages. Not long ago I had a conversation with six gay teens, not one of whom had ever had any formal religious training or influence. Every one of them knew the word “abomination,” and every one of them thought that was what God thought of them. They couldn’t have located the Book of Leviticus in the Bible if their lives depended on it yet they had absorbed this message from the antigay air they breathe every day.

Add to that the Minnesota Family Council’s Tom Prichard recently saying that the real cause of the suicides is “homosexual indoctrination,” not antigay bullying, and that the students died because they adopted an “unhealthy lifestyle.”

Susan Russell from All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, points out how ludicrous these statements are in her “An Inch at a Time” blog:

Thirteen and fifteen year olds are not ‘adopting a lifestyle,’ they’re trying to have a life! They’re trying to figure out who they are, who God created them to be and what on earth to do with this confusing bunch of sexual feelings that they’re trying to get a handle on. They need role models for healthy relationships — not judgment and the message that they’re condemned to a life of loneliness, isolation and despair.
On the other hand, what’s the role of more mainline, more progressive denominations such as mainstream Christianity, Judaism, and Islam in these recent tragedies? Mostly silence. And just like in the days of the AIDS organization Act Up, “silence equals death.”

It is not enough for good people — religious or otherwise — to simply be feeling more positive toward gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. Tolerance and a live-and-let-live attitude beats discrimination and abuse by a mile. But it’s not enough. Tolerant people, especially tolerant religious people, need to get over their squeamishness about being vocal advocates and unapologetic supporters of LGBT people. It really is a matter of life and death, as we’ve seen.

I learned this in my dealing with racism. It’s not enough to be tolerant of other races. I benefit from a racist society just by being white. I don’t ever have to use the “n” word, treat any person of color with discourtesy, or even think ill of anyone. But as long as I am not working to dismantle the systemic racism that benefits me, a white man, at the expense of people of color, I am a racist. And my faith calls me to become an anti-racist — pro-active, vocal, and committed.

Some progressive religious groups — the United Church of Christ, Unitarians, Metropolitan Community Church — have long been advocates for LGBT people. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America has recently made great strides in welcoming gay clergy. And my own Episcopal Church has put itself at great risk on behalf of full inclusion of LGBT people in electing two openly gay priests to be bishops.

Still, even in these progressive churches, there is much to be done.

Cody J. Sanders, a Baptist minister and Ph.D. student in pastoral theology and counseling at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas, recently wrote on the Religion Dispatches website about how important it is for churches to act:

Ministers who remain in comfortable silence on sexuality must speak out. Churches that have silently embraced gay and lesbian members for years must publicly hang the welcome banner. How long will we continue to limit and qualify our messages of acceptance, inclusion and embrace for the most vulnerable in order to maintain the comfort of those in our communities of faith who are well served by the status quo? In the current climate, equivocating messages of affirmation are overpowered by the religious rhetoric of hatred. Silence only serves to support the toleration of bullying, violence and exclusion. In the face of what has already become the common occurrence of LGBT teen suicide, how long can we wait to respond?

As good Christians and Jews we must work to change the religious thinking, rhetoric, and practice that communicates to our LGBT children that they are despised by their Creator. We must learn to object to anti-gay jokes the way we learned to tell our friends that we would not tolerate racist jokes. We must demand that our schools not only have antibullying policies, but that they follow through on stopping the practice of bullying. We need to lobby our congressional representatives for the Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA, H.R. 4530, S. 3390). And we must proclaim openly, loudly, and often that we love our children unconditionally in the way that God does — always wanting the best and most healthy lives for them.

These bullying behaviors would not exist without the undergirding and the patina of respect provided by religious fervor against LGBT people. It’s time for “tolerant” religious people to acknowledge the straight line between the official anti-gay theologies of their denominations and the deaths of these young people. Nothing short of changing our theology of human sexuality will save these young and precious lives.

The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson is the Ninth Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire and a visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Washington, D.C.

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It Can’t Happen Here

Mike Tikkanen — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 01:21:20 +0000

I live in Minneapolis/St Paul, and am disturbed that my community thinks that terrible things being done to children are rare here.

They are not.

3,000,000 children each year are reported to child protection in the U.S. I have taken 50 children from their parents because of the terrible things done to them.

I’ve seen far more violence against children in my city than I believed possible before I entered child protection services.

Told to me by a friend when I related my experience of the 7 year old girl (my guardian ad-Litem case in the March 31^st blog) who had been prostituted;

Rich lived next door to a girl of the same age (7) and he could hear her screams as she was raped (he saw multiple men entering over time) and because he was horrified and fearful of how “no one would believe him about a prostituted 7 year old” said nothing.

It’s odd to hear this sort of thing but I do know what went through my friend’s mind about the “oh, let’s not get into this with police & disbelief” and the fear that accompanies such charges. Law enforcement has trouble with this too.

I know what child rape equals in the years to come, as I have friends in their 60’s & 70’s who have shared their child rape experiences with me and I am an ardent follower of the medical science at the academy against violence & abuse (the medical community) www.avahealth.org .

There can be no overstatement of the impact child rape has on the adult survivor (read this suicide note if you think otherwise).

An older lawyer friend related his story of what might have been a single sexual encounter with a priest as a young boy who 30 years later sought help after recognizing that 3 marriages, and 3 business partnerships were a sign that he had trust & mental health issues. At 80 he still sees a therapist.

Violated children feel dirty and guilty as if they are evil and it was somehow their fault.

As long as our friends & neighbors accept that trillions are reasonable for war & military spending while billions are too much for young families and helping at risk children, our prisons will remain full, our schools failing, and dangerous / unhappy communities will fill the media & our minds with fear.

For God’s & your own sake friends, let’s do what the KONY 2012 movement has done for Ugandan children.

Speak up.

Support KARA’s effort to speak up for at risk children; sponsor a conversation in your community (invite me to speak at your conference) / Buy our book or donate

Bill Zeller, Princeton Grad Student And ‘Brilliant’ Programmer, Dies In Apparent Suicide

First Posted: 01- 7-11 08:40 AM | Updated: 01- 7-11 03:16 PM

Bill Zeller, a Princeton Ph.D candidate and renowned internet programmer, died Wednesday from injuries sustained in a suicide attempt. He was 27.

Zeller stunned the programming community with a 4,000-word suicide note detailing a childhood of physical and sexual abuse, which he had never before disclosed to anyone.

“I’ve never been able to stop thinking about what happened to me and this hampered my social interactions,” Zeller wrote. “… I wondered what it would be like to take to other people without what happened constantly on my mind, and I wondered if other people had similar experiences that they were better able to mask.”

According to the Daily Princetonian, Zeller posted the note on his website and e-mailed it to friends before taking his own life. The note in full can be seen below.

Zeller was a programming whiz kid, responsible for creating applications such as Graph Your Inbox, which visualizes Gmail use over time, and myTunes, which enables users to download others’ iTunes music. Zeller made the latter program while an undergraduate at Trinity College.

Zeller’s death has prompted an outpouring of grief on the internet, from those who knew him and those who didn’t.

“I’d first encountered Bill online years ago when he made a blog posting app, and then re-meeting him at a Princeton event last year, he’d begun by saying, ‘You probably don’t remember…,’” One user wrote on MetaFilter. “But we immediately reconnected about the cool project he’d done back then. More amazingly, he was doing super, super brilliant work at Princeton, which I found really inspiring and was so excited to see how far this young guy had come from such promising roots.”

Zeller’s note:

I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I assume I’ll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right decision. Maybe it’s true that anyone who does this is insane by definition, but I can at least explain my reasoning.

I considered not writing any of this because of how personal it is, but I like tying up loose ends and don’t want people to wonder why I did this. Since I’ve never spoken to anyone about what happened to me, people would likely draw the wrong conclusions.

My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly. This has affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation. In kindergarten I couldn’t use the bathroom and would stand petrified whenever I needed to, which started a trend of awkward and unexplained social behavior.

The damage that was done to my body still prevents me from using the bathroom normally, but now it’s less of a physical impediment than a daily reminder of what was done to me.

This darkness followed me as I grew up. I remember spending hours playing with legos, having my world consist of me and a box of cold, plastic blocks. Just waiting for everything to end. It’s the same thing I do now, but instead of legos it’s surfing the web or reading or listening to a baseball game. Most of my life has been spent feeling dead inside, waiting for my body to catch up.

At times growing up I would feel inconsolable rage, but I never connected this to what happened until puberty. I was able to keep the darkness at bay for a few hours at a time by doing things that required intense concentration, but it would always come back. Programming appealed to me for this reason. I was never particularly fond of computers or mathematically inclined, but the temporary peace it would provide was like a drug.

But the darkness always returned and built up something like a tolerance, because programming has become less and less of a refuge.
The darkness is with me nearly every time I wake up. I feel like a grime is covering me.

I feel like I’m trapped in a contimated body that no amount of washing will clean. Whenever I think about what happened I feel manic and itchy and can’t concentrate on anything else. It manifests itself in hours of eating or staying up for days at a time or sleeping for sixteen hours straight or week long programming binges or constantly going to the gym. I’m exhausted from feeling like this every hour of every day.

Three to four nights a week I have nightmares about what happened. It makes me avoid sleep and constantly tired, because sleeping with what feels like hours of nightmares is not restful. I wake up sweaty and furious. I’m reminded every morning of what was done to me and the control it has over my life.

I’ve never been able to stop thinking about what happened to me and this hampered my social interactions. I would be angry and lost in thought and then be interrupted by someone saying “Hi” or making small talk, unable to understand why I seemed cold and distant. I walked around, viewing the outside world from a distant portal behind my eyes, unable to perform normal human niceties.

I wondered what it would be like to take to other people without what happened constantly on my mind, and I wondered if other people had similar experiences that they were better able to mask.

Alcohol was also something that let me escape the darkness. It would always find me later, though, and it was always angry that I managed to escape and it made me pay. Many of the irresponsible things I did were the result of the darkness. Obviously I’m responsible for every decision and action, including this one, but there are reasons why things happen the way they do.

Alcohol and other drugs provided a way to ignore the realities of my situation. It was easy to spend the night drinking and forget that I had no future to look forward to. I never liked what alcohol did to me, but it was better than facing my existence honestly. I haven’t touched alcohol or any other drug in over seven months (and no drugs or alcohol will be involved when I do this) and this has forced me to evaluate my life in an honest and clear way. There’s no future here. The darkness will always be with me.

I used to think if I solved some problem or achieved some goal, maybe he would leave. It was comforting to identify tangible issues as the source of my problems instead of something that I’ll never be able to change.

I thought that if I got into to a good college, or a good grad school, or lost weight, or went to the gym nearly every day for a year, or created programs that millions of people used, or spent a summer or California or New York or published papers that I was proud of, then maybe I would feel some peace and not be constantly haunted and unhappy. But nothing I did made a dent in how depressed I was on a daily basis and nothing was in any way fulfilling. I’m not sure why I ever thought that would change anything.

I didn’t realize how deep a hold he had on me and my life until my first relationship. I stupidly assumed that no matter how the darkness affected me personally, my romantic relationships would somehow be separated and protected. Growing up I viewed my future relationships as a possible escape from this thing that haunts me every day, but I began to realize how entangled it was with every aspect of my life and how it is never going to release me.

Instead of being an escape, relationships and romantic contact with other people only intensified everything about him that I couldn’t stand. I will never be able to have a relationship in which he is not the focus, affecting every aspect of my romantic interactions.

Relationships always started out fine and I’d be able to ignore him for a few weeks. But as we got closer emotionally the darkness would return and every night it’d be me, her and the darkness in a black and gruesome threesome. He would surround me and penetrate me and the more we did the more intense it became. It made me hate being touched, because as long as we were separated I could view her like an outsider viewing something good and kind and untainted. Once we touched, the darkness would envelope her too and take her over and the evil inside me would surround her. I always felt like I was infecting anyone I was with.

Relationships didn’t work. No one I dated was the right match, and I thought that maybe if I found the right person it would overwhelm him. Part of me knew that finding the right person wouldn’t help, so I became interested in girls who obviously had no interest in me. For a while I thought I was gay.

I convinced myself that it wasn’t the darkness at all, but rather my orientation, because this would give me control over why things didn’t feel “right”. The fact that the darkness affected sexual matters most intensely made this idea make some sense and I convinced myself of this for a number of years, starting in college after my first relationship ended. I told people I was gay (at Trinity, not at Princeton), even though I wasn’t attracted to men and kept finding myself interested in girls.

Because if being gay wasn’t the answer, then what was? People thought I was avoiding my orientation, but I was actually avoiding the truth, which is that while I’m straight, I will never be content with anyone. I know now that the darkness will never leave.
Last spring I met someone who was unlike anyone else I’d ever met. Someone who showed me just how well two people could get along and how much I could care about another human being. Someone I know I could be with and love for the rest of my life, if I weren’t so fucked up. Amazingly, she liked me. She liked the shell of the man the darkness had left behind. But it didn’t matter because I couldn’t be alone with her.

It was never just the two of us, it was always the three of us: her, me and the darkness. The closer we got, the more intensely I’d feel the darkness, like some evil mirror of my emotions. All the closeness we had and I loved was complemented by agony that I couldn’t stand, from him. I realized that I would never be able to give her, or anyone, all of me or only me. She could never have me without the darkness and evil inside me. I could never have just her, without the darkness being a part of all of our interactions.

I will never be able to be at peace or content or in a healthy relationship. I realized the futility of the romantic part of my life. If I had never met her, I would have realized this as soon as I met someone else who I meshed similarly well with. It’s likely that things wouldn’t have worked out with her and we would have broken up (with our relationship ending, like the majority of relationships do) even if I didn’t have this problem, since we only dated for a short time. But I will face exactly the same problems with the darkness with anyone else. Despite my hopes, love and compatability is not enough. Nothing is enough.

There’s no way I can fix this or even push the darkness down far enough to make a relationship or any type of intimacy feasible.
So I watched as things fell apart between us. I had put an explicit time limit on our relationship, since I knew it couldn’t last because of the darkness and didn’t want to hold her back, and this caused a variety of problems. She was put in an unnatural situation that she never should have been a part of. It must have been very hard for her, not knowing what was actually going on with me, but this is not something I’ve ever been able to talk about with anyone.

Losing her was very hard for me as well. Not because of her (I got over our relationship relatively quickly), but because of the realization that I would never have another relationship and because it signified the last true, exclusive personal connection I could ever have. This wasn’t apparent to other people, because I could never talk about the real reasons for my sadness. I was very sad in the summer and fall, but it was not because of her, it was because I will never escape the darkness with anyone.

She was so loving and kind to me and gave me everything I could have asked for under the circumstances. I’ll never forget how much happiness she brought me in those briefs moments when I could ignore the darkness. I had originally planned to kill myself last winter but never got around to it. (Parts of this letter were written over a year ago, other parts days before doing this.) It was wrong of me to involve myself in her life if this were a possibility and I should have just left her alone, even though we only dated for a few months and things ended a long time ago. She’s just one more person in a long list of people I’ve hurt.

I could spend pages talking about the other relationships I’ve had that were ruined because of my problems and my confusion related to the darkness. I’ve hurt so many great people because of who I am and my inability to experience what needs to be experienced. All I can say is that I tried to be honest with people about what I thought was true.

I’ve spent my life hurting people. Today will be the last time.
I’ve told different people a lot of things, but I’ve never told anyone about what happened to me, ever, for obvious reasons. It took me a while to realize that no matter how close you are to someone or how much they claim to love you, people simply cannot keep secrets. I learned this a few years ago when I thought I was gay and told people.

The more harmful the secret, the juicier the gossip and the more likely you are to be betrayed. People don’t care about their word or what they’ve promised, they just do whatever the fuck they want and justify it later. It feels incredibly lonely to realize you can never share something with someone and have it be between just the two of you.

I don’t blame anyone in particular, I guess it’s just how people are. Even if I felt like this is something I could have shared, I have no interest in being part of a friendship or relationship where the other person views me as the damaged and contaminated person that I am. So even if I were able to trust someone, I probably would not have told them about what happened to me. At this point I simply don’t care who knows.

I feel an evil inside me. An evil that makes me want to end life. I need to stop this. I need to make sure I don’t kill someone, which is not something that can be easily undone. I don’t know if this is related to what happened to me or something different. I recognize the irony of killing myself to prevent myself from killing someone else, but this decision should indicate what I’m capable of.
So I’ve realized I will never escape the darkness or misery associated with it and I have a responsibility to stop myself from physically harming others.

I’m just a broken, miserable shell of a human being. Being molested has defined me as a person and shaped me as a human being and it has made me the monster I am and there’s nothing I can do to escape it. I don’t know any other existence. I don’t know what life feels like where I’m apart from any of this. I actively despise the person I am. I just feel fundamentally broken, almost non-human. I feel like an animal that woke up one day in a human body, trying to make sense of a foreign world, living among creatures it doesn’t understand and can’t connect with.

I have accepted that the darkness will never allow me to be in a relationship. I will never go to sleep with someone in my arms, feeling the comfort of their hands around me. I will never know what uncontimated intimacy is like. I will never have an exclusive bond with someone, someone who can be the recipient of all the love I have to give.

I will never have children, and I wanted to be a father so badly. I think I would have made a good dad. And even if I had fought through the darkness and married and had children all while being unable to feel intimacy, I could have never done that if suicide were a possibility. I did try to minimize pain, although I know that this decision will hurt many of you. If this hurts you, I hope that you can at least forget about me quickly.

There’s no point in identifying who molested me, so I’m just going to leave it at that. I doubt the word of a dead guy with no evidence about something that happened over twenty years ago would have much sway.

You may wonder why I didn’t just talk to a professional about this. I’ve seen a number of doctors since I was a teenager to talk about other issues and I’m positive that another doctor would not have helped. I was never given one piece of actionable advice, ever. More than a few spent a large part of the session reading their notes to remember who I was.

And I have no interest in talking about being raped as a child, both because I know it wouldn’t help and because I have no confidence it would remain secret. I know the legal and practical limits of doctor/patient confidentiality, growing up in a house where we’d hear stories about the various mental illnesses of famous people, stories that were passed down through generations.

All it takes is one doctor who thinks my story is interesting enough to share or a doctor who thinks it’s her right or responsibility to contact the authorities and have me identify the molestor (justifying her decision by telling herself that someone else might be in danger). All it takes is a single doctor who violates my trust, just like the “friends” who I told I was gay did, and everything would be made public and I’d be forced to live in a world where people would know how fucked up I am.

And yes, I realize this indicates that I have severe trust issues, but they’re based on a large number of experiences with people who have shown a profound disrepect for their word and the privacy of others.

People say suicide is selfish. I think it’s selfish to ask people to continue living painful and miserable lives, just so you possibly won’t feel sad for a week or two. Suicide may be a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but it’s also a permanent solution to a ~23 year-old problem that grows more intense and overwhelming every day.

Some people are just dealt bad hands in this life. I know many people have it worse than I do, and maybe I’m just not a strong person, but I really did try to deal with this. I’ve tried to deal with this every day for the last 23 years and I just can’t fucking take it anymore.

I often wonder what life must be like for other people. People who can feel the love from others and give it back unadulterated, people who can experience sex as an intimate and joyous experience, people who can experience the colors and happenings of this world without constant misery. I wonder who I’d be if things had been different or if I were a stronger person. It sounds pretty great.

I’m prepared for death. I’m prepared for the pain and I am ready to no longer exist. Thanks to the strictness of New Jersey gun laws this will probably be much more painful than it needs to be, but what can you do. My only fear at this point is messing something up and surviving.
—
I’d also like to address my family, if you can call them that. I despise everything they stand for and I truly hate them, in a non-emotional, dispassionate and what I believe is a healthy way. The world will be a better place when they’re dead–one with less hatred and intolerance.
If you’re unfamiliar with the situation, my parents are fundamentalist Christians who kicked me out of their house and cut me off financially when I was 19 because I refused to attend seven hours of church a week.

They live in a black and white reality they’ve constructed for themselves. They partition the world into good and evil and survive by hating everything they fear or misunderstand and calling it love. They don’t understand that good and decent people exist all around us, “saved” or not, and that evil and cruel people occupy a large percentage of their church. They take advantage of people looking for hope by teaching them to practice the same hatred they practice.
A random example:
“I am personally convinced that if a Muslim truly believes and obeys the Koran, he will be a terrorist.” – George Zeller, August 24, 2010.

If you choose to follow a religion where, for example, devout Catholics who are trying to be good people are all going to Hell but child molestors go to Heaven (as long as they were “saved” at some point), that’s your choice, but it’s fucked up. Maybe a God who operates by those rules does exist. If so, fuck Him.

Their church was always more important than the members of their family and they happily sacrificed whatever necessary in order to satisfy their contrived beliefs about who they should be.

I grew up in a house where love was proxied through a God I could never believe in. A house where the love of music with any sort of a beat was literally beaten out of me. A house full of hatred and intolerance, run by two people who were experts at appearing kind and warm when others were around. Parents who tell an eight year old that his grandmother is going to Hell because she’s Catholic. Parents who claim not to be racist but then talk about the horrors of miscegenation.

I could list hundreds of other examples, but it’s tiring.
Since being kicked out, I’ve interacted with them in relatively normal ways. I talk to them on the phone like nothing happened. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I like pretending I have a family. Maybe I like having people I can talk to about what’s been going on in my life. Whatever the reason, it’s not real and it feels like a sham. I should have never allowed this reconnection to happen.

I wrote the above a while ago, and I do feel like that much of the time. At other times, though, I feel less hateful. I know my parents honestly believe the crap they believe in. I know that my mom, at least, loved me very much and tried her best.

One reason I put this off for so long is because I know how much pain it will cause her. She has been sad since she found out I wasn’t “saved”, since she believes I’m going to Hell, which is not a sadness for which I am responsible. That was never going to change, and presumably she believes the state of my physical body is much less important than the state of my soul. Still, I cannot intellectually justify this decision, knowing how much it will hurt her. Maybe my ability to take my own life, knowing how much pain it will cause, shows that I am a monster who doesn’t deserve to live.

All I know is that I can’t deal with this pain any longer and I’m am truly sorry I couldn’t wait until my family and everyone I knew died so this could be done without hurting anyone. For years I’ve wished that I’d be hit by a bus or die while saving a baby from drowning so my death might be more acceptable, but I was never so lucky.
—
To those of you who have shown me love, thank you for putting up with all my shittiness and moodiness and arbitrariness. I was never the person I wanted to be. Maybe without the darkness I would have been a better person, maybe not. I did try to be a good person, but I realize I never got very far.

I’m sorry for the pain this causes. I really do wish I had another option. I hope this letter explains why I needed to do this. If you can’t understand this decision, I hope you can at least forgive me.
Bill Zeller
—
Please save this letter and repost it if gets deleted. I don’t want people to wonder why I did this. I disseminated it more widely than I might have otherwise because I’m worried that my family might try to restrict access to it. I don’t mind if this letter is made public. In fact, I’d prefer it be made public to people being unable to read it and drawing their own conclusions.

Feel free to republish this letter, but only if it is reproduced in its entirety.

Support KARA’s effort to help at risk children; sponsor a conversation in your community (invite me to speak at your conference) / Buy our book or donate

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Guardian ad-Litem Training

Mike Tikkanen — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 14:18:44 +0000

Shana was 6 months old when her 6 year old cousin placed her in the bathtub to wash 3 day old poopy diapers & stink off of her. This was a common parenting act for the seven year old child whose mother sat for days all cracked out along with her sister, letting the kids fend for themselves.

It would not have been a disaster had the cold water pipes of this poorly maintained tenement not frozen shut on this January day. The landlord turned the water heater up to (161 degrees) as he thought this would compensate for the lack of cold water.

No cold water mixed with the 161 degree scalding water and the skin on this baby’s legs and bottom suffered third degree burns. To be scarred for life with reptilian looking legs is just one more cruel event in the life of this neglected and abused girl.

My second guardian ad-Litem case was a 7 year old boy (Andy) taken from his crack using mom at birth (she had spent 90% of her life institutionalized). He was raised by a loving foster family to the age of four & then the judge returned him to his father – even though the father had a court order to stay away from young boys because of what he did to them.

Andy was covered with bruises when he became my guardian ad-Litem case in 1996. He had been tied to a bed, sexually abused, beaten, and starved for four years.

What’s it like to be four years old, beat up, left alone in an apartment for days at a time, no food, & no place to turn for help . My young friend developed many troublesome behaviors, received no consistent mental health therapy and way too many psychotropic meds.

He once asked me as we play miniature golf, “when will I be normal”?

A few years later he asked me to support him in his request of the County for a sex change operation. Guardian ad-Litem training did not prepare me for these questions. We still talk, 16 years later; he has AIDS now & has not lived a happy life.

Another case came to me after 49 police calls to a metro home before 2 girls were removed from their mother. Drugs, prostitution, & gunfire were these girls normal environment.

The only reason the girls were placed in protective care was that the 7 year old tried to kill the 4 year old by jumping on her neck in front of the police.

I asked the juvenile officer at the scene why these children were not removed before the 49^th call to the house as violence, crime, and terrible child abuse were obvious. The officer’s answer was painfully insufficient, but it is certain that in my county, children have to be near death to receive protective services from the County. The oldest girl had been prostituted and suffered for life. I don’t know how the younger girl faired.

My longest and most tortured case was to be removing 8 children over a 12 year period (in many separate cases) from a mom who had been horribly abused as a child herself. She used her children as a shield in violent relationships with men. The children could not be placed together in foster homes because they were sexually active when together. One more great sadness in the lives of these terribly abused children.

The same man that sexually abused the first four children (and kicked the oldest so hard that she went into convulsions) was still abusing children in that home 12 years later when the 3 year old was found to have cocaine in his system and had been sexually abused. That man had never been made a party to any court proceeding concerning child abuse. He had been charged with murder in criminal court.

I accidentally sat next to him at a court hearing (he did not know that I was trying to send him to prison). . Guardian ad-Litem work can be challenging.

From time to time I will submit stories from my guardian ad-Litem cases. Please feel free to comment & submit your stories. There are many flaws in our system & we should all work to make it better.

Please do not send diatribes against teachers, social workers, troubled parents, or any of the other people working in the field.

It is the lack of awareness, resources, training, support, & systems that have made child protection so painfully dysfunctional.

Everyone I have worked with in the system has worked extremely hard. When they fail it is because the task is simply too great to be handled by this poorly understood & terribly under-supported institution. The answer lies in our caring enough about these children to help troubled families, hire great people, and support the institutions doing the work.

Ps… the federal CASA program lost almost all of its funding this year. Many state programs are struggling.

Support CASA National Support CASAMN

Talk about these stories & help KARA raise awareness of children’s issues

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The Commonality Of Child Sex Abuse

Mike Tikkanen — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:45:37 +0000

As a long time volunteer guardian ad-Litem, I have witnessed too much child sex abuse. About half of the children in my caseload had been victimized. One as young as 2, several at 4 years of age, and most of the older children had been abused for over 3 years.

This is a violent crime that both stigmatizes and terrorizes the child and becomes the twisted fibers in the brain that become the adult.

Without extensive & professional guidance to help the child understand that he or she did not cause the abuse, is not guilty of anything, or even able to have prevented what happened, lives are lived never saying a word or dealing with the violence & trauma that go on to impact every hour of every day.

This from the Founder of a site dedicated to fighting child sex abuse; http://facsafoundationvirtualexpo.ning.com/

Please Share and Re-Post

Like many small towns and families, people do not like to deal with child sexual assault and child abuse, in their communities and/or in their homes.

Despite the fact, that 1 in 3 girls, and 1 in 6 boys will be abused before their eighteenth birthday; despite the fact that only 10% tell and the other 90% are still living in a cloak of denial and secracy; despite the fact that 5 children die a day, due to child abuse and child sexual assualt!

As someone who rarely asks help from anyone, I am asking you today, to commit this day to helping me fight against child abuse, against child sexual assault, and in honor of, and in memory, of all of those who have lost their lives!

Stand Up and Fight For The Cause of No More Silence, No More Abuse, No More Shame, No More Pain, Not One More Multi-Generational Legacy of Child Abuse and Child Sexual Assault!

For this Day, I stand and fight! No longer will I fight alone, but I will fight with my neighbors, my community, my fellow advocate and supporter brothers and sisters, and with friends and family, that have the GUTS and the COURAGE to say ENOUGH! We will not be silent any longer! We refuse to be silent any longer!

THIS IS NOT OUR GENERATION!!!

Connie Lee/FACSA Foundation
/Founder/President
facsasavethechildren@hotmail.com

facsasavethechildren.com

http://facsafoundationvirtualexpo.ning.com/

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The State Of American Schools (& Stop Blaming Teachers)

Mike Tikkanen — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 13:30:41 +0000

Average reading level of America’s Senior High Students; 5th grade proficiency

Math questions for Georgia grade school children;

“Each tree had 56 oranges,” the first question starts. “If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?”

The next question went a step further, referencing violence. ”If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?”

Hiding the truth about Georgia’s terrible test results (teaching teachers to lie)

Science in Tennessee public schools (soon Indiana, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, & Missouri) GOD Made It All

Not one third of Kansas City’s elementary students read at grade level.

No nation will maintain leading status in the world without a workable educational system. No educational system will succeed in meeting even essential goals if a great number of students do not have the basic skills to learn when they begin their schooling.

How bad has the situation in the United States become? Roughly 18% of children are not familiar with the basic rules of printing or writing. However, when looking at children with mothers who did not obtain their high school diplomas, this number increased drastically to 32%. In contrast, only 8% of children with mothers who have college degrees struggle with the basic rules of writing (Siegel & Welsh, 2006, p. 336).

Just like investing in the stock market or tax increment financing, putting money into early childhood programs brings solid financial and social returns back into a community.

As a negative example, just look at states and nations that have not (failing schools, filled prisons, high crime, poverty, preteen pregnancies, & unsafe communities).

The world’s most advanced technical and military power, greatest economic engine (California ranked fourth highest GDP among nations at one time) & rather than fund education & support the people doing the work, too many politicians are choosing to build prisons instead of children. We know how that works now & we need to stop.

25% of U.S. high school grads are functionally illiterate upon graduation, our drop out rates are the worst in the industrialized world. Our Crime rates are also the worst in the world (5% of the world’s population & 25% of the world’s prison population & growing).

Children that can’t read by the third grade have a huge chance of not graduating & simultaneously a much greater chance of living a dysfunctional life.

Denying children what they need to succeed serves no nation, no community, no families, & there is no religion that abandons the weakest & most vulnerable.

As a long time CASA guardian ad-Litem, I have seen far too many children fall through the cracks, drop out of school, & spend a lifetime with drug, alcohol, violence, and the institutionalization that accompanies it.

It is expensive, cruel, and counterproductive for any nation to continue short changing its children.

Vote for schools, early childhood programs, libraries, & child friendly programs. Anything less adds to prison populations and unsafe streets.

Compare the quality of life indices degradation America has experienced among the industrialized nations and see if you don’t agree.

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The Laws We Live By

Mike Tikkanen — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 11:51:02 +0000

George Zimmerman, if not prosecuted in Florida for killing 17 year old Trayvon Martin, has started a whole new world of hate, violence, & death for America’s children.

Similar to Brazilian police randomly murdering street children last year, American vigilantes can now murder at will the children they deem not fit to live. The harm will fall mostly on poor Blacks & Hispanics if history is an indicator.

Now that virtually anyone can conceal and carry a gun on the street in America, the fact that a self-defense claim works in all instances (in Florida) means that murder is a much easier crime to commit.

Just be sure there are no witnesses.

Trayvon was armed with skittles and soda.

If that passes for a weapon that frightened George into killing this 14 year old boy, there is no end to how easy murder has become in our communities.

“She was carrying a string of licorice” will be an adequate defense; Click here

Please read this note from Trayvon’s parents;

Mike,

Our son Trayvon Martin was killed because he looked “suspicious.” His confessed killer is still free. Join 900,000 people to call on Florida law enforcement officials to prosecute the man who took away our son.

Sign our Petition

Our son didn’t deserve to die. Trayvon Martin was just 17 years old when he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman. Trayvon wasn’t doing anything besides walking home with a bag of Skittles and some iced tea in his hands.
What makes Trayvon’s death so much harder is knowing that the man who confessed to killing him, George Zimmerman, still hasn’t been charged for Trayvon’s killing.

That’s why we started a petition on Change.org calling for Zimmerman’s prosecution and trial. We aren’t looking for revenge, we’re looking for justice — the same justice anyone would expect if their son were shot and killed for no reason.

Click here to join 900,000 people who have already signed our petition calling for justice for our son Trayvon.

No family should ever have to go through this nightmare. The law should protect everyone, regardless of where they live, how much money they make, or what color their skin is.

With our petition at 900,000 signers so far, we’ve made important progress toward making some sense out of what happened. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement will investigate Trayvon’s death, and so will the FBI and Department of Justice.

But Trayvon’s killer is still free. The surest path to justice runs through Sanford, Florida, and through the office of State’s Attorney Norman Wolfinger, who is responsible for bringing charges against Zimmerman. With your help, we believe he’ll have no choice but to give Trayvon and his killer their days in court.

Please sign our petition calling on Florida authorities to prosecute our son’s confessed killer.

Thank you so much.

- Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton

Pass this blog to a friend or list you belong to. Speak out for voiceless children. *If you know a high profile person that might speak out on this topic, please let them know about KARA.

Trayvon Martin case: 16-year-old girl recalls last phone conversation minutes before Martin was shot dead: report

Teen says Martin tried to escape, asked man ‘What are you following me for?’

Comments (289)

BY PHILIP CAULFIELD / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

FAMILY HANDOUT/AP

Trayvon Martin in an undated family photo. A 16-year-old friend says she was on the phone with Martin just minutes before he was shot dead by George Zimmerman n Feb. 26.

POLICE HANDOUT

George Zimmerman, 28, shot and killed Martin, 17, after a confrontation in a gated community in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26.

A 16-year-old girl said she was on the phone with the Florida teen shot by a neighborhod watch volunteer moments before he was killed, and that he feared he was being stalked.

Trayvon Martin tried to shake the man following him just minutes before the fatal confrontation that left the unarmed high schooler dead, the unidentified femalesaid, according to ABC News.

The 16-year-old told Martin’s family attorney she was on the phone with Martin on the night of Feb. 26, ABC News reported, and they talked just moments before he was shot to death by George Zimmerman.

FEDS PROBE SHOOTING AMID NATIONAL OUTCRY

The pair’s phone logs, obtained by ABC News, show they spoke just five minutes before police responded to reports of a shooting at the gated community in Sanford, Fla.

Recounting her conversation with Martin, the teen girl said, “He said this man was watching him, so he put his hoodie on. He said he lost the man.”

“I asked Trayvon to run, and he said he was going to walk fast. I told him to run but he said he was not going to run,” she said.

After a few minutes, the girl said, Martin thought he was safe. But eventually the man appeared again.

“Trayvon said, ‘What are you following me for?’” the girl said. “And the man said, ‘What are you doing here?’ Next thing I hear is somebody pushing, and somebody pushed Trayvon because the [phone’s\] headset just fell.”

The line went dead, the girl said.

“I called him again and he didn’t answer the phone,” she said.

Martin’s parents, Tracey Martin and Sybrina Fulton, told ABC News that the logs and the girl’s story showed their son wasn’t looking for trouble.

The 17-year-old high school junior had been watching the NBA All-Star game at his father’s house and stepped out to buy a bag of Skittles and an Arizona Iced Tea when he was killed.

“He knew he was being followed and tried to get away from the guy, and the guy still caught up with him,” Tracey Martin told ABC News.

“That’s the most disturbing part,” he said. “He thought he had got away from the guy and the guy back-tracked for him.”

Zimmerman admitted shooting Martin but maintains he did it in self-defense after the teen came after him.

The case has attracted national attention, and rallies and protests were held across Seminole County on Monday calling for Zimmerman’s arrest.

On Tuesday, State Attorney Norm Wolfinger said a Seminole County grand jury would investigate the case.

The Justice Department announced it would open an investigation on Monday.

Legal experts say Zimmerman could benefit from Florida’s liberal self-defense laws, which allow someone who feels threatened to “stand his or her ground” and use deadly force without backing down.

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Stop The Rape & Abuse of America’s Children – Get Involved In Invisible Children’s Mission

Mike Tikkanen — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 20:56:36 +0000

WOW & amazement for Jason Russell’s Invisible Children Campaign to stop Joseph Kony’s rape & militarization of voiceless Ugandan children.

What a terrific example of what one person (Jason) can do.

It is stunning that in just a few short years www.InvisibleChildren.com (not Invisiblechildren.org )has raised the awareness of millions of Americans to the tragedy taking place in Africa destroying the lives of thousands of Northern Ugandan children.

Jason’s efforts are absolute proof that individuals can create awareness & powerful change. KARA has been working for 7 years now to bring the same kind of awareness and change for America’s abused & neglected children.

As a County volunteer guardian ad-Litem that worked with and reports on my city’s raped (repeatedly) beaten (often), murdered, & tortured children (many as young as 3 years old), It hurts me that there is so little discussion & awareness about the nightmare that is child protection in America.

Suicidal 4 & 7 year olds, prostituted preteens, scarred & psychotic very young children were my constant companions in the County Court System. In this nation at this time, the only awareness & coverage they get is when one of them is found tragically murdered, or commits a horrid act.

30,000 Ugandan children murdered, & many thousands more captured & tortured by Kony, and until Jason Russell’s viral video & successful efforts to bring it to our attention, no one knew. This is the kind of awareness that can bring change.

George Clooney is now involved (and arrested) for African children. This is big news. A high profile public spokesman will add to the momentum to bring Joseph Kony to justice and end the militarization & torture of Ugandan children.

How many American’s know or care about the 3,000,000 voiceless children reported to child protection services in this nation each year, or the millions that develop severe and lasting problems that destroy their lives? Our children are much like the Ugandan children; they are militarized at a young age, have no voice in toxic homes or protective services, & they suffer terribly and no one knows until we bring the same attention to the children as did KONY 2012.

If only we could bring George’s (or another celebrity) attention to America’s abused and neglected children & the millions of school children recruited by the United States military & those enrolled in military schools within America.

If only we could recruit mentors/volunteers to help America’s neediest children.

Did you know that Military recruitment is the only reason America has not signed (we are one of only two nations in the world – the other is Somalia) the International Rights of the Child Treaty.

Add this sad reality to the many millions of America’s children reported to child protection systems each year and the depth and scope of the violence being done to our youngest citizens becomes apparent. This explains why our prisons are full, too many of our schools are failing, & so many city streets are unsafe.

KARA’s is calling out for volunteers/mentors/helpers to make one small effort to save America’s most vulnerable children.

Pass this blog to a friend or list you belong to. Speak out for voiceless children. *If you know a high profile person that might speak out on this topic, please let them know about KARA.

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/the-pentagons-child-recruiting-strategy/

THE PENTAGON’S CHILD RECRUITING STRATEGY

Investigative Research

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By Gary Evans, MD

The human family consists, for the most part, of wonderfully ordinary people who work hard to care for themselves and their children. However, there are a few people who aspire to positions of power, and then work to use their authority to manipulate and control all the others.

This nation’s teenage children are currently being tracked, targeted, and sometimes captured by a global dominance military-industrial-media complex under orders of an exceptionally callous neo-conservative group now in control of the US government. The people in power today systematically use armed services recruiters – motivated by rank and bonus – as the agents of control and manipulation of US youth.

Parents of teens and preteens are seldom aware of how their children are at increasing risk of being systematically targeted, manipulated into recruiter offices, and psychological remodeled for use within the war machine. Military planners, hungry for new recruits, commission psychological research and carefully read neuro-psychiatric literature as it pertains to adolescent behavior. They then apply that research information to their recruitment efforts that focus on the vulnerability of the teenage mind.

As the 9/11 wars continue and as the numbers of dead and disabled young men and women climb, civilian doubts over the purpose and direction of the conflict has evolved and grown. As a result, convincing new potential recruits to enlist has become an increasingly difficult task. The Pentagon addresses this recruitment problem by spending thousands of millions of our tax dollars on programs designed to deceive, seduce, and to capture our youth. Military recruiters have been granted full access to our children at home, at school, and wherever else they can be tracked. The Pentagon has invaded our movies, our televisions, and our minds, and has invited our children to play violent, and damaging video games while feeding them emotionally charged materials designed to manipulate and reformat them into replacement soldiers.

A Brief & Recent History Of US Military Recruitment

Ending the Draft

The Vietnam War was fought by a generation of young men whose teen experiences were distorted by a persistent and disruptive force – conscription. That constant threat helped fire the tremendous social unrest that attended those war years. As the war came to its painful end, Pentagon planners moved to eliminate future reliance on draftees. The recommendation was tendered and Congress agreed to end the draft, replacing it with an all volunteer armed services system.

Building and maintaining an all volunteer military during peacetime worked reasonably well. The process during war however, has proven to be problematic. After years of war and violent occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq, public perception of military life has gradually soured. And, as civilian jobs – albeit low paying for many – continue to be available, the recruiting process has become increasingly difficult. The Pentagon has responded by offering, or giving the appearance of offering, a set of incentives to potential enlistees. Bait has since included cash and promises (frequently unfulfilled) of job training, educational funding, and future medical care.

Teenagers Increasingly Targeted

After recent Pentagon research revealed that the desire and intention to enlist is highest among younger recruits (six in ten current US soldiers entered the military as teenagers),1, 2, 3 a level of subtlety, or rather subterfuge has been employed to guide teens toward recruiter offices. As one example of the many available: the US Army sponsors a website labeled “eCybermission.” It offers “web-based science, math, and technology competition” for 11, 12 , and 13 year olds, and the services of on-line uniformed Army personnel “CyberGuides.”4

Since 2002 the Pentagon has developed a massive teen data base gleaned from sources, including records obtained via the “No Child Left Behind Act.” That information is filed in JAMRS, the “Joint Advertising and Marketing Research & Studies” system – a giant Pentagon run, privately subcontracted (Equifax) database containing contact and identification data on over thirty million 16-25 year olds.5

Plummeting Numbers / Plummeting Standards

Despite recent reports of an increasing rate of suicides among US troops,6 and despite news reports of “stop-loss” troop recycling and declining troop moral, the Pentagon’s recent recruiting and retention report for 20077 implies success. The facts underlying the statistics offered, however, tell a different story: “The number of wavers granted to Army recruits with criminal backgrounds [125,000] has grown about 65 percent in the past three years…,”8 and the percentage of minimally qualified recruits has quadrupled since 2002.9

Representative Martin T. Meechen, Chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight: “The data is crystal clear; our armed forces are under incredible strain, and the only way that they can fill their recent quotas is by lowering their standards.”8

Recruitment Funding

Pentagon spending on recruitment has increased dramatically over the past few years, approaching $4 billion by 2003.10 As of 2006, there were over 22,000 recruiters nationwide,11 charged with signing up between 180,000 and 200,000 new active duty recruits,10, 11 and approximately 120,000 new reservists per year.11 In 2000, the US House of Representatives determined that $6400 was being spent to sign up each marine,12and by 2005, the military spent approximately $16,000 in total promotional costs to enlist each new recruit.11, 13

Despite the enormous sums spent attempting to maintain an all volunteer military during these times of growing anti-war sentiment, the armed forces have been unable to meet new recruit sign-up quotas. There is always a way, however, and here the balance sheets have been righted by dropping ballast, also known as “standards,” and by implementing military contract fine-print: Executive Order #12728, dated 8/22/90 referring US Code, Title 10, section 12305 and Title 3, section 301, better known as “Stop Loss,” which allows troops to be returned to battlefields again by delaying their removal from active duty indefinitely. In this way, military statisticians have forced the claim that recruitment quotas are being fulfilled.14

TARGETING THE ADOLESCENT BRAIN

Adolescence has long been recognized as a time when impulsive and risk-taking behaviors increase. As adolescence gives way to adulthood, learning to gauge risk with greater precision gradually proceeds. Modern neuroscience tools, including Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanning techniques have now shown that adolescent stereotypic behavior is based on a phase of structural brain development.15, 16, 17

In a recent study,15 multiple high-tech scans were collated over time, and were combined with serial assessments of neuro-developmental function. It was discovered that the adolescent brain exists as a structurally and functionally distinct entity from that found earlier in childhood, or later in adulthood. The adolescent brain develops structurally enlarged, but functionally immature prefrontal and limbic grey matter areas. Those structural features appear to result in a change in balance between limbic reward and prefrontal higher executive assessment functions, and helps to explain typical adolescent behaviors of increased novelty and sensation, or thrill-seeking on the one hand, and limited consequence analysis on the other. By the early twenties, as the structurally enlarged areas decrease to typically adult volumes, brain function settles into adult patterns. These changes are accompanied by recognized adult thought processes and behaviors.

It is during adolescence, when changes in brain structure and function result in the characteristic behaviors of that age, that teens are actively recruited toward and into the military. The techniques employed by military recruiters directly target the unique functional brain development characteristics of the adolescent; that targeting is undoubtedly purposeful.18, 19

HIGH SCHOOLS AS “MARKETS”

“No Child Left Behind” – Section 9528

The Bush Administration wrote and signed into law the “No Child Left Behind Act,” January 8, 2002,20 with subsequent reauthorization in 2007.21As is now widely known, included in the 670 pages of that voluminous act – within section 9528 – is a provision enabling military recruiters to access high school students’ records, and to access the students themselves as they attend high-school campuses throughout the country. Students and/or their parents are offered the choice to “opt-out” of this demand, but they must actively do so, requiring of course, that they are first informed of this option. As will later be documented, this is often not the case. If school districts otherwise fail to provide military recruiters with the required information and access, millions of dollars in federal funding for that district can be cut.

Military recruiter manuals then provide guidance on how to maximize the effect of the law on targeted adolescents.22 Here are a few examples of advice given to recruiters:

School Recruiting Program [SRP] Handbook22 (Excerpts)

From section 1-4 c: “The objective of the SRP is to assist recruiters with programs and services so they can effectively penetrate the school market. The goal is school ownership that can only lead to a greater number of Army enlistments. Recruiters must first establish rapport in the schools. This is a basic step in the sales process and a prerequisite to an effective school program. Maintaining this rapport and establishing a good working relationship is next. Once educators are convinced recruiters have their students’ best interests in mind the SRP can be effectively implemented.”

From section 2-4: “Some influential students such as the student president or the captain of the football team may not enlist; however, they can and will provide you with referrals who will enlist.”

And from section 5-1-f-4: “Don’t forget the administrative staff…. Have something to give them (pen, calendar, cup, donuts, etc.) and always remember secretary’s week, with a card or flowers.”

Using computers fed with socioeconomic census data, past recruiting numbers, and other demographic information, recruiters target specific schools where students are less likely to go on to college and are more likely to sign up with the military.23, 24 Then, school yearbooks, newspapers, and any other pertinent local informational sources are scrutinized, allowing recruiters to simulate familiarity and interest in a few of the more popular kids on campus. As those kids are approached and befriended, others are attracted to the social bait and, seeking approval, gather around.

Once a student swims anywhere near the hook, recruiter anglers use every trick available.11 Students are phoned and written to without end, and are offered visions of a virtual cornucopia of money, education, training, and adventure.25, 26, 27 All responses are, of course, tracked.28

ASVAB “Realize your strengths. Realize your dreams.”

The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB)29 is a three hour test, offered to, and taken by nearly one million high school students every year. It is placed before them ostensibly as a helping hand – as a way to explore their career potentials, and to guide them toward appropriate life choices. The offer and the test are scams.

Here is what the military tells the parents of teenage students in this confidence game:

“The ASVAB Career Exploration Program includes eight individual tests covering verbal and math skills, mechanical knowledge, electronics, and several other areas. It also produces three Career Exploration Scores for Verbal Skills, Math Skills, and Science and Technical Skills. These three scores serve as one of several pieces of information about your child that can aid in the exploration of a wide variety of career options.” 30

Recruiters, on the other hand, understand the ASVAB recruitment tool quite well. From the Commander, Navy Recruiting Command, Policy and Programs Division, 2002 – Recruiting Manual:

“The ASVAB is used by the Armed Forces for recruiting purposes… The ASVAB’s ability for determining civilian job skills has not yet been proven.”31

Because the ASVAB is exempt from the provisions of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, students are given the test and information acquired is released to the military without parental consent.32 Furthermore, military recruiters are free, at the option of school administrators, to contact test takers – even if the student, or their parents opted-out of Section 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act.27, 32

Exam information is then forwarded to the DoD JAMRS database for further analysis.5, 31

The JAMRS Database:

In 2002, the Pentagon joined forces with the corporate database industry and began gathering, organizing and analyzing personal information on the military’s “market” of teens and their families. The Joint Advertising and Marketing Research & Studies (JAMRS) database now includes the records of over thirty million US 16 – 25 year olds.5

As families soon discovered they were unable to control the records collected on them, an ACLU lawsuit was brought against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Under-Secretary of Defense David Chu, and JAMRS Program Manager Matt Boehmer in April 2006.33 It was settled a few months later, and became effective January, 2007, specifying that families have the power to opt-out of the database.34 To date, as both the database and the option to opt-out of it is known to only a handful of families, opt-in remains the rule.

A Department of Defense survey taken November 2004, found that “only 25 percent of parents would recommend military service to their children, down from 42 percent in August 2003.”35 The Pentagon responded with a media campaign featuring faux-parents and their faux-children discussing enlistment in a positive light.36 In addition, the Pentagon tasked JAMRS with studying “influencers,” – parents, teachers, clergy, and the like – in the hope of minimizing and/or neutralizing their interference.5

JROTC:

The “Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps” system was created through the National Defense Act of 1916. It offers high schools federal subsidies in the form of funding, equipment, and supplies,37,38 which appear to be a good deal for cash-strapped school districts. In fact, this too good to be true deal turns out to be – just that. After a short time, schools discover they have ended up on the red side of the balance sheet – paying out more than they receive. Hidden costs include additional insurance coverage, new facilities construction and maintenance, a portion of JROTC instructors’ salaries, benefits, taxes, etc. In short, school districts and the children they support are ripped-off by the program. 39

In exchange for the faux-benefits offered, school districts must allow retired military personnel to act as instructors, and they must allow instructors to offer students a course of training that is authorized by the military, as opposed to local school boards. 37, 38 Classes can be taught by either accredited or non-accredited instructors, and reading and study materials have been found to include racist versions of history, and which stress a military approach to social and political change.37

JROTC courses are now offered in over 3000 high schools as of June 2003,40 and bend the minds of over 500,000 teenage children toward the military.39 Former United States Secretary of Defense William Cohen described the JROTC program as: “one of the best recruitment programs we could have.”39 And, true enough, forty percent of those entering the program go on to enlist.38

THINGS RECRUITS AND RECRUITERS PROMISE

Recruits and the Military Contract

A promise is a promise, unless it is offered by a military recruiter. After a recruit is promised the moon, they are asked to sign on the dotted line, most often missing the fine print:

“Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay, allowances, benefits, and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/reenlistment document.”41

In other words, recruits may be promised specific training and assignments, lofty jobs, or anything at all. The only contract made – despite any oral or written promise – is that the recruit will serve under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ)42 rather than under civilian Constitutional law until full and final discharge is allowed (sans “Stop-Loss”). Any other statements, assurances, or promises – written or otherwise, do not apply.

The Mirage of Jobs and College Funding

Congress and the Department of Defense have long understood that as civilian jobs and educational opportunities decline, the military option becomes more attractive to potential recruits. Military Recruiters – and a vast expanse of advertisement copy – hammer the idea home that joining the military and serving it for a few years will open to an oasis of educational and job opportunities. The oasis is a mirage.

A typical recruitment advertisement reads: “Join the Army and earn up to $70,000 for college.”27 The truth is, nearly all enlistees join the Montgomery GI Bill on entering the military, but only one in twenty qualify for the higher Army College Fund or Navy College Fund benefits.43 In fact thirty percent of those joining the program receive nothing from it,44 and the rest, nearly always receive only a fraction of the benefits promised.43, 45

There are conditions:

In order to be allowed entry into any of the college fund programs, recruits must first pay $100 per month for the first twelve months of service. That $1200 is fully non-refundable.44,46
A full honorable discharge from the military is required.27, 46 One in four fail to achieve that condition.27

For those who do achieve full honorable discharges, the payout is tricky: it is made over a total of no more than 36 months of educational expenditure (9 month academic year x 4 years = 36 months). If, as is typical, a veteran is unable to take full course loads over each of those 36 months, the payout is less, and will still be terminated after a total of 36 months in any case. So, for example, if a war-traumatized veteran is able to maintain only a one-half coursework load, the total payout would be – at a maximum – only one-half of that originally promised.47 Most veterans (56%) using the Montgomery GI Bill begin by attending community colleges or vocational schools spread out over time, and therefore receive only a fraction of the maximum promised for full time, full coursework study.47
The cost of education has continually increased while educational benefits have increased less rapidly. As benefits lag further and further behind the inflation curve, the value of the original promise is equally degraded with time.47
In summary, recruits rarely collect on the military’s “big print” promise to provide significant educational funding.

RECRUITMENT TOOLBOX: Movies, Toys, TV, & Computer Games

Blackhawk Helicopters on High School Campuses

As US families pushed back against the slogans “Be All You Can Be,” and “An Army of One,” and as potential new recruits increasingly said “no” to joining up, military planners moved new people into command chairs, ramped up their efforts, crafted new slogans, and basically pulled out the stops.27 Fully camo’ed military recruiters now land Blackhawk helicopter warships on elementary, middle and high school campuses around the country, and issue promises of fun, excitement, and glory to the overwhelmed kids.

Children as young as 6-8 years old are sometimes invited to these landing events, where they are rewarded with tiny black (hawk) footballs after they gather close around recruiters. 48,49

______________________________________

Photo Credit: Kent Porter / The Press Democrat

18-Wheeler “Recruiting Vans,” on high school campuses

The US Army, in a well-funded effort to recruit children, has decked out seven “Cinema Vans” with multiple slide projectors, viewing screens, and rock-climbing walls. Another 18-wheeler, the “Army Adventure Van,” features a helicopter simulator, an M-1 Tank simulator, and an M16 Machine-gun simulator, allowing high school kids to practice and to visualize cutting enemies to pieces. Other vehicles include a “Nuclear Power Van,” an “America’s Sea Power Van,” etc. Together, these propaganda shows on 18 wheels visit nearly 400,000 of America’s children each year.50

“‘The vans zero in on our target market, and that’s in high schools,’ explained Fred Zinchiak, Public Affairs Specialist in the Sacramento Army Recruiting Battalion.”50

The targeted markets – this nation’s teenagers – are offered a vision of military life as being sexy and exciting. The reality of post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, and traumatic brain injury suffered by over one-third of a million troops returning from the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan51 is ignored.

Recruitment via Television

As of March 2008, over 11,000 schools have contracted with “Channel One,” an organization which promises to provide schools with free television equipment and wiring in exchange for a mandatory daily viewing of the programs produced, edited, and broadcast by them.

The twelve minute programs, aired daily, are interspersed with two minutes of “corporate sponsorship” messages, half of which are paid for by US taxpayers c/o the Department of Defense, and in the form of military recruitment pitches to the captive children who are required to watch.27

From the Channel One Network website: “Nearly 30 percent of all American teens are in classrooms that show Channel One News.” In other words, over six million middle and high school students are presently forced to receive daily military recruiter pitches during classroom time.52,53,54

Recruitment via Hollywood Movies
The Pentagon has had a cozy relationship with the entertainment industry for many years, providing open door base access, material, and consultation to movie studios… for a price.55

“We may think that the content of American movies is free from government interference, but in fact, the Pentagon has been telling filmmakers what to say – and what not to say — for decades. It’s Hollywood’s dirtiest little secret.”56

It is now widely known that the Pentagon has influenced film producers and studios for years – trading access to military resources for censorship rights. Under authority of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, the Pentagon’s film liaison office trades script changes – acceptable to the brass – with access to otherwise impossibly expensive military material, locations, and expertise. In the end, we the taxpayers pay for our own propagandizing. Recent movies that were given a “hand” by the Pentagon include: “Stripes,” “Black Hawk Down,” “Pearl Harbor,” “Top Gun,” “The Great Santini,” “The Right Stuff”, “Apollo 13,” and many others.56,57 From David Robb’s book “Operation Hollywood: “… the Pentagon is quite candid about why it provides this assistance to Hollywood. According to the army’s own handbook, A Producer’s guide to U.S. Army Cooperation with the Entertainment Industry, this collaboration must ‘aid in the recruiting and retention of personnel.’”56

Recruitment via Video Gaming

The Pentagon has vigorously supported development of PC war game software after discovering their use as both recruitment and as military training vehicles. Take, for example, the Microsoft X-Box game “Close Combat: First to Fight” – created by and for the military, but soon ported directly to “T” for Teens.57

Another “success” story, in terms of the number of teens and young adults participating, is the US Army’s video game project “America’s Army,” accessed by several million “players” as of 2007.58“America’s Army” is a highly graphic, fast paced and graphically violent battle simulation for youthful players. The army states that the game is for growing adults, but it is freely available on the Internet without age restriction and is widely distributed to children.59

It has been argued that “America’s Army” is blatant government propaganda pitched to those who are least able to understand the effects of exposure to its various subtle and not-so-subtle messages.60

VIOLENT VIDEO / VIDEO GAMING IS HARMFUL TO CHILDREN

Despite the overwhelming raft of data documenting ill effects in children and adolescents exposed to violent video and video games, the military services continue to support delivery of those images and experiences to children, seen only as potential future recruits.57

From the Committee on Public Education of the American Academy of Pediatrics:

“The American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes exposure to violence in media, including television, movies, music, and video games as a significant risk to the health of children and adolescents. Extensive research evidence indicates that media violence can contribute to aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, nightmares, and fear of being harmed. Pediatricians should assess their patients’ level of media exposure and intervene on media-related health risks. Pediatricians and other child health care providers can advocate for a safer media environment for children by encouraging media literacy, more thoughtful and proactive use of media by children and their parents, more responsible portrayal of violence by media producers, and more useful and effective media ratings.”61

From the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry:

“Studies of children exposed to violence have shown that they can become: “immune” or numb to the horror of violence, imitate the violence they see, and show more aggressive behavior with greater exposure to violence. Some children accept violence as a way to handle problems. Studies have also shown that the more realistic and repeated the exposure to violence, the greater the impact on children. In addition, children with emotional, behavioral and learning problems may be more influenced by violent images.

“Youth who exposed themselves to greater amounts of video game violence saw the world as a more hostile place, were more hostile themselves, got into arguments with teachers more frequently, were more likely to be involved in physical fights, and performed more poorly in school. Video game violence exposure was a significant predictor of physical fights even when respondent sex, hostility level, and weekly amount of game play were statistically controlled.”62

Summary of the Evidence: Exposure to violent video, whether in the form of video games, television, or theater movies is linked to, and causal of, increases in aggressive cognition, affect and behavior.63,64,65,66,67,68,69

STUDENTS, PARENTS, SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES RESPOND

Here is a small sampling of student, parent, school, and community responses to predatory military recruiters and the tactics they employ:

Vallejo, Ca. School Board Addresses The Opt-Out Clause

2008 – Vallejo, California: The Vallejo School Board voted to end the practice of providing military recruiters with complete and unrestricted access to student information. District spokesman Jason Hodge: “This action brings the school district into compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act which requires parents and students be given the option to ‘opt out’ of having military recruiters gain access to their personal information.”70

Berkeley, Ca: City Council Resolution

2008 – Berkeley, California: The Berkeley City Council passed a resolution that initially stated Marine recruiters were “uninvited and unwelcome intruders.” The council later issued a clarification, stating that the recruiting center retains the legal right to exist, but telegraphed to citizens that vigorous protesting of the center’s existence is also a protected right.71

Seattle’s Garfield High School Pta: “No” To Recruiters

2005 – Seattle, Washington: The Garfield High School PTA voted to adopt a resolution stating in part: “public schools are not a place for military recruiters.”72

National PTA Position: Protect Students’ Privacy

2005 – “National PTA seeks to increase awareness and community sensitivity about the collection and dissemination of information regarding students and believes that such records should respect the rights to privacy and be relevant to a child’s education.

“National PTA will continue to support legislation and policies [that] would change current law by providing for an ‘opt in’ policy where interested students and families can instead choose to request contact from military recruiters. Parents and students deserve to know who has their information, and parents should be involved in the important decision to enlist in military service.”73

High School Students Take Action Against The Asvab Scam

2006 – Lindale, Georgia: Two seventeen year old Pepperell High School students confronted recruiters, the school board, and the school’s administration, who had insisted students were compelled under law to take the ASVAB military (recruiting tool) test. As the result of their ad-hoc plan to distribute anti-ASVAB flyers to their fellow students and despite the argumentative efforts of local recruiters, an estimated two-thirds of the eligible students present refused to be “tested.”74

CONCLUSION

Military recruiters have been given legal authority to openly recruit adolescents on high school campuses, and tacit authority to recruit both adolescents and younger children through more subtle means. Techniques employed include those that are known to be harmful to children, including repeated exposure to violent games and images. Recruiters rely on the immature status of their prey to capture them with false promises, and subterfuge. Military recruitment of children must be understood for what it is: predatory.

The highest calling of any society is to protect its young from harm. Our society is failing to heed this call.

With many thanks to Rick Jahnkow, Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities.

Gary Evans MD is a practicing pediatrician and activist in Sonoma County California. He maintains a website – www.ringnebula.com – dedicated to peaceful activism.

FOR MORE INFORMATION (in alphabetical order):

American Friends Service Committee: Youth & Militarismhttp://www.afsc.org/youthmil/default.htm
Code Pink: Women for Peace
http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?id=3911
Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft
http://www.comdsd.org/
National Network Opposing Militarism In Our Schools
http://www.nnomy.org/joomla/index.php
Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities
http://www.projectyano.org/

OPT-OUT FORMS:

No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB):

English: http://themmob.org//lmca/lmca_forms/Opt_Out_Form_Schools.pdf
Spanish: http://themmob.org//lmca/lmca_forms/lmca-e.pdf

The Joint Advertising and Marketing Research & Studies (JAMRS) Database:

Note: ”Opt-Out requests will be honored for ten years. However, because opt-out screening is based, in part, on the current address of the individual, any change in address will require the submission of a new opt-out request with the new address.”

English: http://themmob.org//lmca/lmca_forms/JAMRS_OPT_OUT.pdf
Spanish: http://themmob.org//lmca/lmca_forms/lmca-pentagon-espanol.pdf
____________________________

REFERENCES

1. Population Representation in the Military Services, Fiscal Year 2004; Table A-1: DoD new recruits ages 16 – 17 = 22.22%, age 18 = 23.53, age 19 = 14.48 (tot = 60.23%): http://www.defenselink.mil/prhome/poprep2004/download/2004report.pdf,http://www.defenselink.mil/prhome/poprep2004/download/2004appendices.pdf

2. “America’s Child Soldier Problem”; In These Times, May 17, 2007: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3199/americas_child_soldier_problem/

3. “Pentagon’s Teen Recruiting Methods Would Make Tobacco Companies Proud”: http://www.alternet.org/story/51889/

4. US Army’s e-Cybermission Website: http://www.ecybermission.com/base_public.cfm?url=38500C5F40530E011C27501A1D4A564C

5. DoD’s “Joint Advertising Market Research & Studies” database website: www.jamrs.org

6. “’Epidemic’ of military suicides investigated,” The Seattle Times, Nov. 17, 2007:http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004019358_aliciacol17.html

7. “DoD Announces Recruiting and Retention Numbers for FY2007,” U.S. Department of Defense, News Release No. 1202-07, Oct. 10, 2007:http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=11398

8. “Army Giving More Waivers in Recruiting,” New York Times, Feb. 14, 2007: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/us/14military.html

9. “Recruiters struggle to find an Army,” The Seattle Times, Nov. 12, 2007:http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004008540_recruit12.html

10. ”MILITARY RECRUITING: DOD Needs to Establish Objectives and Measures to Better Evaluate Advertising’s Effectiveness;” GAO 03-1005:http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d031005.pdf

11.: “MILITARY RECRUITING: DOD and Services Need Better Data to Enhance Visibility over Recruiter Irregularities;” GAO 06-0846, Aug. 2006:http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06846.pdf

12. Hearings On National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001—H.R. 4205 and Oversight of Previously Authorized Programs Before the Committee On Armed Services – House of Representatives, 106 Congress, 2nd Session, Full Committee Hearings on Authorization and Oversight; Feb. 10, 2000: http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/security/has041000.000/has041000_0f.htm

13. “Army Recruiters Take Show On Road,” CBS News, Mar. 16, 2005:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/16/eveningnews/printable681055.shtml

14. “MILITARY PERSONNEL: Preliminary Observations on Recruiting and Retention Issues within the U.S. Armed Forces;” GAO 05-419t (released Mar. 16, 2005): http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05419t.pdf

15. Article: “The Teen Brain: Insights from Neuroimaging” by Jay N. Giedd, MD (Nat. Institute of Mental Health); Journal of Adolescent Health, Volume 42, Issue 4, April 2008

16. Editorial: “Adolescent Brain Development: Forging New Links?” by Elizabeth R. McAnarney, MD; Journal of Adolescent Health, Volume 42, Issue 4, April 2008

17. “In vivo evidence for post-adolescent brain maturation in frontal and striatal regions”; Nature Neuroscience 2, 859 – 861, 1999: doi:10.1038/13154:http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v2/n10/full/nn1099_859.html

18. Re: military recruitment and sensation-seeking propensities and risk-taking propensities; National Research Council. Evaluating Military Advertising and Recruiting: Theory and Methodology. Committee on the Youth Population and Military Recruitment—Phase II. Paul R. Sackett and Anne S., pg. 25:http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10867

19. “Attitudes, Aptitudes, and Aspirations of American Youth: Implications for Military Recruitment”: http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10478&page=R1

20. NCLB of 2001, signed 1/8/02 (Contained in § 9528 of the ESEA (20 U.S.C. § 7908), as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (P.L. No. 107-110), and in 10 U.S.C. § 503, as amended by 544 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002 (P.L. No. 107-107):http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/107-110.pdf

21. NCLB Reauthorization 2007: http://www.ed.gov/nclb/overview/intro/reauth/index.html

22. United States Army Recruiting Command: USAREC Pamphlet 350-13; 2004: http://www.nodraftnoway.org/public_html/USAREC%20Pam%20350-13%2020040901.pdf

23. “Military Recruits by High School, Zip Code, Community, State,” Bulletin, National Priorities Project, Nov. 1, 2005:http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=9492

24. Pentagon Creating Student Database, Washington Post, June 23, 2005: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/22/AR2005062202305.html

25. “Army Offers $40K Recruiting Bonus to H.S. Grads,” NPR, Feb. 5, 2008: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18710386

26. “Earn Money For College” (US Navy): http://www.navy.com/benefits/education/earnmoney/

27. “Army of None,” David Solnit & Aimee Allison, Seven Stories Press, 2007

28. “Modeling the Individual Enlistment Decision: Final Study Report” (June, 1999); US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences:http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA364946

29. The ASVAB Program: http://www.asvabprogram.com/
30. “Parent Fact Sheet” from the ASVAB program website: http://www.asvabprogram.com/downloads/ASVAB_factsheet-parents.pdf

31. Navy Recruiting Manual 1130.8F, pg 2-59 (2I-2-5a): http://usmilitary.about.com/od/navyregs/p/usmilitary.about.com/library/pdf/navrecruit.pdf

32. ASVAB Counselor Manual; Nov. 2005, pg. 13:
http://www.asvabprogram.com/downloads/asvab_counselor_manual.pdf

33. ACLU Complaint/Lawsuit re: JAMRS: http://www.nyclu.org/files/hanson_v_rumsfeld_complaint_042406.pdf

34. DoD’s Answer to ACLU – Revised JAMRS Plan, Jan. 9, 2007: http://www.nyclu.org/files/jamrs_revised_rules_notice_0109007.pdf

35. “Growing Problem for Military Recruiters: Parents,” New York Times, June 3, 2005: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/nyregion/03recruit.html?oref=login

36. “Army, Marine recruiters shift focus to wary parents,” USA Today, Apr. 4, 2005: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-04-04-recruiters-parents_x.htm

37. “Making Soldiers in the Public Schools,” American Friends Service Committee, 1995: http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/militarism-in-schools/msitps.pdf

38. “Recruiting the Class of 2005”; Mother Jones, Jan-Feb, 2002: http://motherjones.com/news/feature/2002/01/rotc.html

39. “Trading Books for Soldiers: The True Cost of JROTC,” Philip Clark; American Friends Service Committee; 2000: Summary available at:http://web.archive.org/web/20000816192857/www.afsc.org/youthmil/html/issues/schools/jrotcost.htm)

40. “Feeding the military machine: JROTC expansion and inner-city academies mark recruiting incursion into U.S. public school classrooms, critics say”; Mar. 28, 2003, National Catholic Reporter: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_21_39/ai_99849547

41. Enlistment Contract: DD FORM 4/3, Oct 2007, page 2, section C. 9(b): www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/infomgt/forms/eforms/dd0004.pdf

42. Uniform Code of Military Justice Legislative History (and general information): http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/UCMJ_LHP.html

43. “Joining the Military is Hazardous to Your Education”: http://www.objector.org/before-you-enlist/gi-bill.html

44. “Lawmakers Urge GI Bill Extension,” Military.com website, May 9, 2007, : re: 30% of veterans cannot or do not use benefits:http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,135109,00.html

45. “Why aren’t military vets going to college?,” Orange County Register, Mar. 10, 2008: http://www.ocregister.com/news/veterans-college-state-1995807-people-military

46. US Dept. of Vet. Affairs, Montgomergy GI Bill – CH30 Pamphlet (honorable discharge required):http://www.gibill.va.gov/pamphlets/CH30/CH30_Pamphlet_General.htm; (For the entire program, see US Dept. of Veterans Affairs, GI Bill Website:http://www.gibill.va.gov/GI_Bill_Info/benefits.htm)

47. “GI Bill falling short of college tuition costs,” Boston Globe, Feb. 10, 2008:http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/02/10/gi_bill_falling_short_of_college_tuition_costs/

48. “Hanna grad flies Blackhawk to school,” Sonoma Index-Tribune, Mar. 20, 2008:http://www.sonomanews.com/articles/2008/03/21/news/doc47df124d179b9525933769.txt

49. “Black Hawk touches down at schools,” Press Democrat, Mar. 15, 2008:http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080315/NEWS/803150397/1033/NEWS&template=kart

50. “Mobile Recruiting 2001”: http://www.objector.org/awol/mobile.html

51. “One In Five Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Suffer from PTSD or Major Depression”; RAND Corporation, Apr. 17, 2008 News Release: http://rand.org/news/press/2008/04/17/

52. “Why Go to College, When You Can be Cannon Fodder?,” Counterpunch, Feb. 17, 2005: http://www.counterpunch.org/whitehurst02172005.html

53. “Fast Facts,” Channel One News website: http://www.channelonenetwork.com/corporate/fast_facts.html

54. “FAQS,” Channel One News website: http://www.channelonenetwork.com/corporate/faqs.html

55. “The Pentagon Goes Hollywood,” Time Magazine, November 24, 1986: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,962933,00.html

56. “Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies”, David Robb, 2004; “Operation Hollywood” author David Robb interview here: http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/09/09_403.html

57. “The Complex,” Nick Turse; Henry Hold & Co., New York (2008); ppg. 115-117

58. “Gamers Downloading America’s Army,” Jan. 12, 2007: http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2007-01/2007-01-12-voa35.cfm

59. US Army’s “Official Army Game” website: http://www.americasarmy.com/

60. “Army’s War Game Recruits Kids” Joan Ryan; SF Chronicle, (Orig. pub. Sept. 24, 2004): http://www.twincitiesvfp.org/army_09_11_04.htm

61. “Media Violence,” American Academy of Pediatrics, Policy Statement, Pediatrics, Vol. 108#5, Nov. 2001, pp.1222-1226:http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;108/5/1222[Full Article]

62. “Children and Video Games: Playing with Violence,” American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Facts for Families: No. 91:http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/children_and_video_games_playing_with_violence; also No. 13, “Children and TV Violence”:http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/children_and_tv_violence

63. “An update on the effects of playing violent video games,” Anderson CA; Journal of Adolescence, 2004; 27: 113-122

64. “The Effects of Violent Video Game Habits on Adolescent Aggressive Attitudes and Behaviors,” Lynch, Paul J.; University of Oklahoma Medical School; Gentile, Douglas A., National Institute on Media and the Family; Olson, Abbie A., University of Minnesota; van Brederode, Tara M., University of Minnesota Institute of Child Development (Paper presented at the Biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (Minneapolis, MN April 19-22, 2001)

65. “Short term and long term effects of violent media on aggression in children and adults,” Bushman BJ, Huesmann R.; Arch Pediatr Adolesce Med., 2006; 160:348-352.

66. “Television and adolescent aggressiveness,” Chaffee SH. In: Comstock GA, Rubinstein EA eds. “Television and social behavior: a technical report to the Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior,” Vol. 3. Television and adolescent aggressiveness (DHEW Publication No. HSM 72-9058). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972; pp. 1-34).

67. “Deciding to defect: the effects of video game violence on cooperative behavior,” Sheese BE, Graziano WG.; Psychol Science, 2005; 16:354-357.

68. “The effects of violent video game habits on adolescent hostility, aggressive behaviors, and school performance,” Gentile DA, Lynch, PJ, Linder JR, Walsh DA; Journal of Adolescence, 2004; 27; 5-22

69. “Exposure to violent video games increases automatic aggressiveness,” Uhlmann, E, Swanson J.. J.Adolescence, 2004; 27:41-52

70. “Vallejo School District Votes To Shut Out Military Recruiters,” NBC.com, March 20, 2008:http://www.nbc11.com/newsarchive/15655946/detail.html

71. “The Military vs. Berkeley,” Newsweek, Feb. 13, 2008: http://www.newsweek.com/id/110911

72. “Rift Over Recruiting At Public High School,” Christian Science Monitor, May 18, 2005: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0518/p02s01-ussc.html

73. “Military Recruitment in Schools,” Military recruitment in schools and DOD database information, National PTA, August 2, 2005:www.pta.org/documents/military.pdf

74. “Teens Frustrate Military Recruiter’s ASVAB Scam,” Antiwar.com, Nov. 24, 2006: http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=10055

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The Most Powerful Suicide Note Ever

Mike Tikkanen — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 14:06:48 +0000

Two of my friends have killed themselves this year and I want badly to know how to help others deal with suicidal thoughts and depression with more than psychotropic medications.

When I wrote INVISIBLE CHILDREN in 2005, a 70 year old friend asked me out to lunch. After the meal he explained how he told no one of his abuse at the hands of a priest when he was a twelve year old boy and how finally at 45, after 2 failed marriages and several failed business partnerships, he sought out a therapist.

He was still seeing that therapist 25 years later.

Of the children I’ve worked with as a guardian ad-Litem, a high percentage of them have been sexually abused. I have seen the horror of child sex abuse and how 10 or 25 years later, a troubled being still fighting the darkness every day.

Child sex abuse may be the most under-reported crime in America. It could also be the most under-treated horror in America. As a guardian ad-Litem, my first visit to a hospital suicide ward to visit a four year old girl that had been horribly abused was never made public, or when I worked with the seven year old that had been prostituted, or any of the family members that practiced child sex abuse.

There are successful sex abuse recovery programs, but our local governments and state agencies don’t support them in a large scale, and the under-reporting of abuse means most children do not receive the help they need. As these children age, the damage from abuse does not disappear – it is often magnified and becomes a serious behavioral problem.

The medical people at http://www.avahealth.org/ are working to make the discovery and treatment of child abuse a normal part of medical examinations (support them). This would be a big first step in identifying the scope and scale of the problem and making treatment available to those that need it.

This is the longest and most powerful and articulate suicide note I’ve ever read and it has great meaning to me for its power to relate these two incomprehensible sorrows (abuse & suicide).

I could not read Bill Zeller’s last letter without feeling the terror, physical and mental impediments, and daily reminders of his childhood nightmares, adult confusion and suicide.

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Bill Zeller, Princeton Grad Student And ‘Brilliant’ Programmer, Dies In Apparent Suicide

First Posted: 01- 7-11 08:40 AM | Updated: 01- 7-11 03:16 PM

Bill Zeller, a Princeton Ph.D candidate and renowned internet programmer, died Wednesday from injuries sustained in a suicide attempt. He was 27.

Zeller stunned the programming community with a 4,000-word suicide note detailing a childhood of physical and sexual abuse, which he had never before disclosed to anyone.

According to the Daily Princetonian, Zeller posted the note on his website and e-mailed it to friends before taking his own life. The note in full can be seen below.

Zeller’s death has prompted an outpouring of grief on the internet, from those who knew him and those who didn’t.

Zeller’s note:

The damage that was done to my body still prevents me from using the bathroom normally, but now it’s less of a physical impediment than a daily reminder of what was done to me.

I wondered what it would be like to take to other people without what happened constantly on my mind, and I wondered if other people had similar experiences that they were better able to mask.

Their church was always more important than the members of their family and they happily sacrificed whatever necessary in order to satisfy their contrived beliefs about who they should be.

Feel free to republish this letter, but only if it is reproduced in its entirety.

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Bad Teacher, It’s All Your Fault

Mike Tikkanen — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 14:02:06 +0000

As a longtime volunteer (CASA) guardian ad-Litem, I observed how really troubled children behave in school & understand just how impossible they can be in a classroom. Suicidal behavior, sex in school, stabbing, biting, & other violence were common among them.

The blaming of teachers for poor student performance or failing schools is working directly against the possible fixing of the problem. Just like social workers, they are attacked from all sides, provided inadequate resources to do the job & expected to manage the unmanageable.

Private schools and other non-public education can and do show better all around performance because they can manage the number of really troubled youth they let in. Public schools are now handling the vast majority of the 3 million children reported to child protection services in this nation each year. Abused and neglected children are very disruptive and their mental health issues generally have serious impact on school performance.

Today’s “AM I A BAD TEACHER” article in the Star Tribune gives a personal insight from a maligned teacher on the unfairness we are visiting on people that are working the front lines in our troubled nation.

There is no question that our schools have been failing (in comparison with the rest of the industrialized world) for many years now. Allowing schools to fail assures that America will never regain its top tier status in the quality of life indices that we maintained for so many years.

Blaming teachers for failed schools is like blaming the social worker when a baby is found in a dumpster (it is wrong on many levels).

What is it like to oversee a classroom of 35/40 students, several with severe behavioral problems & often on psychotropic medications?

How is it that we offer almost no mental health services to our most troubled youth until after they have done horrible things, or that several states have eliminated mental health services in their schools and send all those children to jail.

America sends 25% of its youth into the adult criminal justice system & leads the world in incarceration & crime (we now have 5% of the world’s population & 25% of the world’s prison population).

Dr Bruce Perry has done 30 years of studies on the topic and holds that 25% of Americans will be special needs people by the end of this generation if these problems are not addressed now.

Our disrespect and lack of support for social workers & teachers when the the number of at risk children in our schools is tremendous & growing guarantees an end to America’s leading nation status.

As Pliny The Elder said 2500 years ago; “What we do to our children, they will do to society”

They need our help.

Pass it on.

Download the Amazon Kindle Version of our Invisible Children Ebook for 2.99 (support KARA)

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Confessions of a so-called bad teacher

Article by: WILLIAM JOHNSON
Updated: March 7, 2012 – 7:47 PM Minneapolis Start Tribune

I am a special-education teacher. My students have learning disabilities ranging from autism and attention-deficit disorder to cerebral palsy and emotional disturbances.

I love these kids, but they can be a handful. They struggle on standardized tests, frustrate their teachers and find it hard to connect with their peers. As high school students, their disabilities are compounded by raging hormones and social pressure.

Beyond the challenges posed by my students, budget cuts and changes to special-education policy have increased my workload drastically.

On top of all that, I’m a bad teacher. That’s not my opinion; it’s how I’m labeled by my city’s Education Department.

In June, my principal at the time rated my teaching “unsatisfactory,” checking off a few boxes on an evaluation sheet that placed my career in limbo. That same year, my school received an “A” rating. I was a bad teacher at a good school. It was pretty humiliating.

Like most teachers, I’m good some days, bad others. The same goes for my students.

In May, my assistant principal at the time observed me teaching in our school’s “self-contained” classroom. A self-contained room is a separate classroom for students with severe learning disabilities.

In that room, I taught a writing class for students ages 14 to 17, whose reading levels ranged from third through seventh grades.

When the assistant principal walked in, one of these students, a freshman girl classified with an emotional disturbance, began cursing. Then she began lobbing pencils across the room.

Was this because I was a bad teacher? I don’t know.

I know that after she began throwing things, I sent her to the dean’s office. I know that a few days later, I received notice that my lesson had been rated unsatisfactory because, among other things, I had sent this student to the dean instead of following our school’s “guided discipline” procedure.

I was confused. Earlier last year, this same assistant principal observed me and instructed me to prioritize improving my “assertive voice” in the classroom.

But about a month later, my principal observed me and told me to focus entirely on lesson planning, since she had no concerns about my classroom management. A few weeks earlier, she had written on my behalf for a citywide award for “classroom excellence.”

Was I really a bad teacher?

In my three years with the city schools, I’ve seen a teacher with 10 years of experience become convinced, after just a few observations, that he was a terrible teacher. A few months later, he quit teaching altogether.

I collaborated with another teacher who sought psychiatric care for insomnia after a particularly intense round of observations. I transferred to a new school after being rated “unsatisfactory.”

Teachers care a great deal about our work. At the school where I work today, my “bad” teaching has mostly been very successful.

Even so, I leave work most days replaying lessons in my mind, wishing I’d done something differently. This isn’t because my lessons are bad, but because I want to get better.

Dozens and dozens of teenagers scrutinize my language, clothing and posture all day long, all week long. If I’m off my game, the students tell me.

They comment on my taste in neckties, my facial hair, the quality of my lessons. All of us teachers are evaluated all day long, already. It’s one of the most exhausting aspects of our job.

Teaching was a high-pressure job long before the current debates about teacher evaluation. These debates seem to rest on the assumption that, left to our own devices, we teachers would be happy to coast through the school year, let our skills atrophy and collect our pensions.

The truth is, teachers don’t need elected officials to motivate us. If our students are not learning, they let us know. They put their heads down or they pass notes. They raise their hands and ask for clarification. Sometimes, they just stare at us like zombies.

Few things are more excruciating for a teacher than leading a class that’s not learning.

Good administrators use the evaluation processes to support teachers and help them avoid those painful classroom moments — not to weed out the teachers who don’t produce good test scores or adhere to their pedagogical beliefs.

Worst of all, the more intense the pressure gets, the worse we teach. When I had administrators breathing down my neck, the students became a secondary concern.

I simply did whatever my assistant principal asked me to do, even when I thought his ideas were crazy. In all honesty, my teaching probably became close toincoherent.

That said, given all the support in the world, even the best teacher can’t force his students to learn. Students aren’t simply passive vessels, waiting to absorb information from their teachers and regurgitate it through high-stakes assessments. They make choices. I know I did. When I was a teenager, I often stayed up way too late, talking with friends, listening to music or playing video games. Did this affect my performance on tests? Undoubtedly. Were my teachers responsible? No.

My best teachers, the ones I still think about today, exposed me to new and exciting ideas. They created classroom environments that welcomed discussion and intellectual risk-taking.

Sometimes, these teachers’ lessons didn’t sink in until years after I’d left their classrooms.

I’m thinking about Ms. Leonard, the English teacher who repeatedly instructed me to “write what you know,” a lesson I’ve only recently begun to understand. She wasn’t just teaching me about writing, by the way, but about being attentive to the details of my daily existence.

It wasn’t Ms. Leonard’s fault that 15-year-old me couldn’t process this lesson completely. She was planting seeds that wouldn’t bear fruit in the short term.

That’s an important part of what we teachers do, and it’s the sort of thing that doesn’t show up on high-stakes tests.

How, then, should we measure students and teachers? In ninth grade, my students learn about the scientific method. They learn that in order to collect good data, scientists control for specific variables and test their impact on otherwise identical environments.

If you give some students green fields, glossy textbooks and lots of attention, you can’t measure them against another group of students who lack all of these things. It’s bad science.

Until we provide equal educational resources to all students and teachers, we can’t say — with any scientific accuracy — how well or poorly they’re performing.

Perhaps if we start the conversation there, things will start making a bit more sense.

———

William Johnson is a teacher at a public high school in Brooklyn. He wrote this article for the New York Times.

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Thank You Judge Kevin Burke

Mike Tikkanen — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:52:52 +0000

for the clearest writing I have seen on the topic of children that need and deserve help within our community. Today’s Star Tribune Article, below.

He shares a letter from an 8 year old outlining his plans to escape with his toddler brother should the parents reunite (the swearing & fighting are violent & unbearable).

I’ve written about the 7 year old that hung himself and left a note & the 4 year old I visited at the suicide ward in Fairview hospital (as a volunteer guardian ad-Litem).

Judge Burke quotes letters from children that are not in the child protection system & draws our attention to the needs (and I would offer “civil rights”) of the large numbers of children that suffer because their communities don’t offer effective child protection services.

There are millions of U.S. children that are not deemed worthy of child protective services but need and deserve help.

Nowhere in America is a child watching his mother beaten or raped qualify for CHIP’s protection. 20 years ago MN voted to allow these children to receive services, but this statue was abandoned because the caseloads doubled & saving children from this hell was deemed too expensive.

As a CASA guardian, I have seen too many cases of children living through these violent traumas as a regular part of their life.

The World Health Organization defines torture as extended exposure to violence and deprivation. My experience as a guardian ad-Litem is that every child I met inside the system had spent way too long being made crazy/tortured by violent or otherwise truly dysfunctional parents (the average is 4 years for the oldest child).

Again, Judge Burke is writing about children deserving help who do not today qualify for child protection & the numbers are staggering.

In America, 3 million children a year are reported abused or neglected (and fewer of them are receiving services today than they would have five years ago – budgets are tight).

He draws attention to the value of guardians ad-Litem for children not in the CHIP’s system and argues that these kids need a guardian ad-Litem champion.

I offer that a guardian ad-Litem should be a civil right for all children living in traumatic environments.

We are not saving any money by denying these children of a chance to lead normal lives.

Instead, generation after generation and their children cost our community a fortune as preteen moms & adolescent felons and decades of crime, violence, & institutionalization.

This is a moral issue as well as a burden to our schools, courts & communities.

Early childhood programs & concern for other people’s children will make our community a much happier place to live. www.invisiblechildren.org

Article by: KEVIN BURKE
March 4, 2012 – 5:33 PM

The letter was to the point: “Dear Judge, I am 16 and self-reliant. I have been employed in some way for nearly a year. I have been emotionally and psychologically damaged from the events surrounding and the aftermath of my parents’ divorce. Although I believe I am healed (not fully of course) there is an excess of emotional trauma I have to cope with. I have night terrors, anxiety, paranoia, depression, and insomnia and have trouble paying attention in school. These symptoms have all built up on each other since I was in sixth grade. Now I deal with pent-up repressed emotions. I am technically ‘homeless’ at the moment. I have been a pawn in this ridiculous legal battle between my parents for years and I am ready to voice my opinion and wishes. I would like to be emancipated, gaining full rights to myself.”

Over the past two decades, a mass of information has been developed about the effects of stress on children. A certain amount is natural, but extreme and persistent stress can affect brain development in lasting ways. The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard explained, “This condition literally interferes with developing brain circuits, and poses a serious threat to young children, not only because it undermines their emotional well-being, but also because it can impair a wider range of developmental outcomes including early learning, exploration and curiosity, school readiness, and later school achievement.”

The letter from the 16-year-old is not an isolated example of what we put children through. There is an 8-year-old who experienced the recent deaths of a grandparent, a dog and a younger brother. The child now assumes a caretaking role within the family, reporting that it is his “job” to keep his toddler brother safe. He says that he is “strong enough” to do so. He describes a volatile relationship between his parents, including fighting, yelling and lots of swearing. He is adamant that he does not want them to ever reunite and has a detailed escape plan in the event they do that involves taking his younger brother in the night to go stay with his aunt so that they will both be safe.

We need a goal: Minnesota must be the best place in the nation for a child to live. It won’t be achieved overnight, but failure is unacceptable.

A centerpiece of Kathleen Blatz’s tenure as Minnesota’s chief justice was the Children’s Justice Initiative. It focused on improving how Minnesota dealt with child protection, or CHIPS, cases. It made the legal system quicker and provided that there were guardians ad litem in every case. Neither the child who wrote the letter nor the boy with the escape plan is in the child-protection system. More often than not, children’s fates are determined not in CHIPS cases but in a private custody battle or perhaps never in a court proceeding. A recent Legislative Auditor’s report illustrates we can do better in CHIPS cases. Common sense says we must do better with a lot of children who will never be in the CHIPS arena.

Things have actually gotten worse for many kids. The Legislature, for example, repealed the requirement that counties provide neutral custody evaluations. Every county but Hennepin eliminated the service. The legal process is too slow and can be too acrimonious. Mediation of custody conflicts is good, but few counties outside of Hennepin have the service. Children in homes plagued by domestic violence or high levels of conflict need a champion. There are guardians ad litem in virtually every CHIPS case and only 9 percent in the custody battles.

Parental conflict can hurt children’s performance in school, increase anxiety and short-circuit social skills. The solutions, however, are decidedly not found in jingoistic calls to “save the family.” Lots of parents never did get married, and their children are entitled to effective parents, not necessarily married parents. Not all parents learn how to cope in a way that keeps them from being a burden on their children.

For this to be the best state in which to be child, several things must occur. The Children’s Justice Initiative should be promptly expanded; judicial, human-services and educational leaders can make that happen. Custody disputes take too long and too often never really end; political, legal and judicial leaders can make that improve. There can be access to mediation and counseling for family units in trouble. The Legislative Auditor’s report on the flaws in child protection cannot succumb to “this is the new normal” due to budget constraints.

We need no more letters from 16-year-olds asking to be freed from their parents, nor from 8-year-olds with an escape plan.

Kevin Burke is a Hennepin County district judge.

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Shout Out To Mitch Daniels & the YMCA Volunteers With Special Needs Kids I saw this morning.

Mike Tikkanen — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:55:25 +0000

First, Thank You to the YMCA volunteers donating the most valuable thing they have to give, their time.

Week after week I see special needs children getting a chance to shoot hoops & walk treadmills because these kind & generous people donate their Saturday to bring children who otherwise would not have the opportunity to participate in all the fun things at the Y.

You are truly the best citizens our community can hope for.

A different kind of shout out to Mitch Daniels (Indiana’s Governor) for Terminating the state adoption subsidies to 500 families that adopted special needs children based on the state’s promise of transportation & other specialized needs help these children lead more normal lives.

What a cruel & possibly illegal act.

I met with adoptive families in Indiana a few months ago & don’t understand why a class action lawsuit has not graced this state’s heartless & hypocritical legislature. Could they even be sued personally by the children & families that executed adoptions based on existing legal documents?

This was a direct promise from the state to lower & middle income families that have put their future on the line because they saw a great need abandoned children (wards of the state) were facing because of mental or physical health issues and parental neglect & abuse .

What a cruel & potentially illegal act to break that promise.

Call Mitch Daniels 317-232-4567 & James Payne 317.234.139 & ask them if they can imagine what it’s like to be a 12 year old adopted child with disabilities knowing that you are a burden to your adopted family because the state redirected funds promised your new family for your education, transportation, & well being.

Download the Amazon Kindle Version of our Invisible Children Ebook for 2.99 (support KARA)

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National Center For Youth Law

Mike Tikkanen — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 21:04:46 +0000

It hurts me to think that babies and very young children need to have lawyers to enforce their rights in my community, but it has been my experience.

One of my first CASA cases was a badly burned little girl whose cousin placed her into a tub of 161 degree (scalding) water when she was a little baby (because her mom was all cracked out and her diapers were 3 days old and very poopy & her 7 year old cousin could not know that the landlord had let the cold water pipes freeze & compensated by turning up the hot water heater to “scalding” to compensate).

My friend Bob mentioned that if this were any other child (and not a ward of the state), this girl would have some legal recourse.

In the end, as a CASA guardian, Bob helped me arrange a lawsuit & the girl was awarded the limits of the policy (almost 300,000 dollars). Not enough to compensate a now teenage girl with scales and disfigured legs that she will have forever, but perhaps a better education when she turns 18 and a memory that someone cared enough to make it happen.

I recently spoke in Indiana where 500 families adopted special needs children with the promise that the state would provide funding for education, health care, & other special needs services, only to find out after the adoptions were completed, the governor redirected those funds away from children into a fund to pay bonuses to state employees that cut the most from their programs. This is an example of a class action lawsuit that needs to happen.

Many states are making remarkably cruel and short sighted decisions about how to treat at risk children. These decisions continue to fill our prisons & juvenile justice centers with adolescent felons and preteen moms. If our legislators continue to pass boarder-line criminal legislation, they should hear from those of us that represent the children they are abusing.

Note to CASA’s: Contact KARA & the National Center for Youth Law with those cases you think deserve legal attention.

Youthlaw.org 510) 835-8098

Download the Amazon Kindle Version of our Invisible Children Ebook for 2.99 (support KARA

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Sports, & Entertainment Vs Children, Education, & Public Safety

Mike Tikkanen — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 14:42:25 +0000

Public appetite for early childhood programs, education & mental health has proven to be far short of their obvious and growing needs.

MN owes its schools 2.4 billion dollars & the last round of budget cuts impacted children in many other ways;

Library hours & services were cut back & the waiting list for daycare & health / mental health services is by many measures profoundly out of wack (see Michael Swanson’s story) and social services are operating of budgets reduced from their already severely underfunded levels.

This article from Paul Udstrand in MN Post points out just how over the top our need for entertainment is in comparison to educating children & creating safe communities;

The subsidy being considered for the Vikings is around $700 million.

The largest public subsidy in Minnesota history was the Northwest Airlines subsidy in the mid 1990s. The NWA subsidy amounted to around $600 million. In 1992, NWA employed around 11,000 people in the state; average salary of $40,000 a year.

The Vikings directly employ fewer than 130 people, only a handful of which work year-round, and 53 of whom are athletes.

The Metrodome employs 19 full-time workers.

Does the NFL really deserve the largest subsidy in Minnesota history?

By Paul Udstrand | 02/27/12 MINNPOST

I would add; 700 Million dollars would provide thousands of daycare workers, health and mental health services, teachers, & other desperately needed services for at risk children.

This is not a glowing example of great public policy & needs to be rethought.

Learn more about the guardian ad-Litem program in your community; Support CASA

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