Kids At Risk Action writes and reports on child abuse issues
& provides a passionate voice for at risk children
All Adults Are the Protectors of All Children
Support KARA’s Public Service Announcements
Imagine as a child, living in a home where every day there is forced sex or beatings by adults. Mom is a teen or preteen parent with a violent boyfriend, mental health issues and no parenting skills.
This is America’s generational child abuse problem.
Mom, and mom’s mom also came from abusive homes. It’s their normal.
Dad’s and boyfriends are often violent, uses drugs. You have seen your mother beaten and raped.
Watching your mother beaten or raped is as traumatic to a child as being beaten or raped.
Half of the 50 CASA guardian case children I worked with as a County volunteer CASA guardian ad litem were sexually abused.
All of them under 10, four of them under five when the abuse started. The oldest child usually experienced 4 years of that abuse.
Sex, drugs and violence were their normal.
The World Health Organization defines torture as
“Extended exposure to deprivation and violence”.
Every child in my CASA guardian ad Litem caseload was tortured.
Abused children reach their teens believing that their 2nd and 3rd grade school mates live in homes like theirs.
Children gradually wakes up to how different – very different they are from everyone else in the classroom and it hurts.
Things that were normal to them are not normal. Many of my case kids used the word “freak” when describing themselves.
Pre-Covid, there has been a teacher or counsellor for a child to speak to about their home life. Only some children ever do give voice to their fears, trauma and home life terrors.
There is no way out of repeated trauma for a child except for the awareness of a community safety net person for the child.
In many cases, the reports of mandated reporters are being ignored by a child protection system that is overwhelmed.
There has never been adequate protection, transparency, or accountability in the world of an abused child.
Social workers have almost always had large caseloads and minimal resources to help interrupt the abuse and heal the children in their care.
Think about it;
Today’s pandemic has closed schools and kept children locked in toxic homes for months
Keeping them from safety and the help mandated reporters (counsellors, doctors & teachers) can provide.
Imagine you as a child living with daily forced sex or beatings unable to escape even for a school day.
This is the world of abused children during the pandemic.
When schools do reopen, it is likely that many parents,
Especially those who have been abused and continue to abuse, will keep their child in distance learning.
Children have no voice in their homes, the media or the State House.
All Adults Are the Protectors of All Children.
How to be a voice for children;
Share this post with your State Representative in the Legislature
“What we do to our children, they will do to society” (Greek philosopher Pliny, 2000 years ago)