Sigrid Bachmann

Century College held a talk by Sigred Bachmann from the Center for Victims of Torture on the impact of torture last night. She is a bright and articulate lady who lived through the horrors of nazi concentration camps, and made a new life for herself as a pediatrician, and now a speaker and helper for victims of torture.

There is a striking similarity in the language used to describe war torture victims and victims of child abuse.

“Repeated or prolonged exposure to violence or deprivation”, is what happens to abused children and torture victims.

Children in American child protection systems are only removed from their homes if their lives are in imminent harm. The average length of child sex abuse in America is four years.

Abused children and torture victims suffer from the same kinds of trauma. They exhibit many of the same kinds of problems. They need the same kinds of long term mental health therapies to allow them to rebuild their traumatized mental states, learn coping skills, and how to function in our communities.

The concept of trust, that is so easily taken for granted, is one of the significant long-term barriers to recovery. Children are violated and deprived by their own mothers and fathers. Many children never rebuild a level of trust sufficient to have a spouse or even a close friend.

Abused Children have the problem of self-loathing overcome because they subconsciously believe they are responsible for the abuse they have suffered.

War torture victims don’t have this problem. They know the inherent evil of their torture.

There is no book a child can go to that explains what normal is or the terrors that are being done to them. They have no one to turn to, they can’t even tell their parents.

Today’s war torture victims are finally finding Centers for Victims of Torture to help them rebuild their lives. It takes years of therapy and hard work to function again. Sigrid felt seven years was about the average length of time for a victim of torture to be rehabilitated.

Each year, about six hundred thousand abused and neglected American children are removed from their homes, placed into group homes, foster homes, and adoptive homes with minimal mental health counseling and often not much history or training provided to the new care giver. These children are expected to adjust well into society, succeed in school and with their peers

What we are now doing is not working. Ask any teacher, social worker, mental health worker, or juvenile police officer that seek better results from the institutions they work in.

Unfortunately, many educators and child workers have become jaded to the negative public image of the system and do not believe that there are viable answers to overcome the problems that are ruining these children and our schools and communities.

America has suffered from years of educational failures, high crime and high rates of incarceration, unsafe schools and communities, and growing urban blight.

“The difference between that poor child and a criminal is about eight years”, MN Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz.

We have the skills, resources, and knowledge to successfully treat the mental health problems of abused and neglected children. Today, we simply need the awareness and the will to do so.

www.invisiblechildren.org

Mental Health Issues

Minneapolis Star Tribune, 5.7.05, reporting on a National Institute of Health mental health study;

“One-quarter of all Americans met the criteria for having a mental illness within the past year, and fully a quarter of those had a “serious” disorder that significantly disrupted their day-to-day lives, according to the largest and most detailed survey of the nation’s mental health…The numbers suggest that the United States is poised to rank Number One for mental illness globally.

The article goes on to articulate the chronic condition of mental illness and the importance of expert medical attention.

As a long time guardian ad-Litem and student of the impact of American institutions on abused and neglected children, I would offer that the harshest consequences of America’s untreated mental health problems are suffered by chronically poor families that have histories of abuse and neglect.

One million American children annually are placed in Child Protection systems because they meet the criteria under the Imminent Harm doctrine for having their lives endangered by their parents.

By definition, abused and neglected children have been traumatized (generally for years) and then torn from the only home they have ever known. Very few of these children receive adequate mental health therapy. Instead, they are placed into group homes that are over crowded and understaffed, and foster and adoptive homes that vary widely in their ability to deal with the serious needs of the children they serve.

The data from children under county protection is negative. School failure, illiteracy, crime, and early pregnancy are all too common. One percent of children living in foster homes goes on to college.

90% of the children in the Juvenile Justice system have come out of Child Protection. Over 90% of the adults in the Criminal Justice System have come out of the Juvenile Justice System. Over fifty percent of the children in the Juvenile Justice system have diagnosable mental illness.

The social workers, teachers, and therapists that tend these children try with their best efforts to make life better for their young charges and cannot to be criticized for not having the resources or framework to accomplish their tasks. It is we the people, the voters, the politicians that have made sure there are inadequate services

Abused and Neglected children are abused two times. Terrified and tortured by their parents, and secondly when they are handled like the problem they are to the counties that must deal with them. Many abandoned children spend the majority of their lives in state institutions, never having overcome mental health traumas suffered in their birth homes.

Abused and neglected children are sent to schools where they are disruptive and unable to learn. Many abandoned children are taking psychotropic medications like Prozac and Ritalin. They disrupt classrooms, make life unbearable for public educators, and have brought graduation rates to 53% in the Minneapolis Public Schools (Roosevelt graduated 28% of its class last year.) 25% of American high school graduates can’t read.

This should not be a political issue. No religion allows for the abandonment of the weakest and most vulnerable among us.

50 years ago, senior citizens were eating dog food out of cans and living under bridges. Media attention and public outrage created AARP and finally an adequate social security for seniors.

Can’t we do the same for children?


www.invisiblechildren.org or participate in my Webb dialogue,

Intelligent Design

As a guardian ad-Litem speaking for voiceless children born into toxic and violent homes, placed in overburdened child protection systems, and finally into court systems and prisons, I have been thinking about public policy making.

Designing public policy to accomplish certain goals is an important and difficult process that needs public discourse. Institutions are defined by what they actually do (as opposed to what we claim they do.) We the people, as in the voting citizenry need to appreciate our role in the political process that creates public policy.

Schools, Juvenile Justice, Child Protection, Police departments, Courts, and Criminal Justice systems are supposed to work together to foster the development of children and keep our communities safe and livable.

44% of African American men living in Hennepin County were arrested in 2001. No duplicate arrests (in fact 58% of those men went on to be rearrested within two years.) With only 4% of the worlds population, America has 25% of the worlds prison population. America’s prison recidivism rate remains at about 66%.

Five of America’s largest cities have African American adult male populations with a 50% unemployment ratio. Those same cities have an ex offender ratio of over 50% among the same population.

Almost 13% of all African American men can’t vote because they are felons. It’s almost impossible for a felon to procure meaningful work at decent wages.

48% of African American High School boys dropped out of Minneapolis Public schools in 2001.

Almost half of African American boys are in special needs classes or treated for emotional or mental health problems.

The cost of one child dropping out of school into a life of crime is estimated at between one million five hundred thousand dollars and ten million dollars.

Creating public policies that help ensure literacy and high school graduation is within our grasp. Twenty other industrialized nations have done it much better than we have.

Minnesota spends 5.3 times more money per prisoner than per public school student and we have one prison staff member for each 5.4 inmates. Minnesota prisons have been growing faster than almost any other segment of our state these last few years (averaging over 12% growth per year for the last 2 years.)

America ranks 91st among the other nations in staff to student ratios (there are only twenty other industrialized nations.)

Is this an intelligent design for our institutions or a fair approach to public policy?

If the idea is to create systems that fill our courts, prisons, and public schools with people of color with poor educations and mental health problems, then we are doing very well indeed.

I have made this arguement at greater length in my book INVISIBLE CHILDREN, at www.invisiblechildren.org