Safe Passage for Children of MN helps at risk kids get a voice at the State House. A phone call – an hour of your time at the Capital could make a huge difference this year.to make children safe. A very small investment of your time could change laws and do wonders for abused & neglected children.
All Adults Are the Protectors of All Children
The KARA article below from 2016 about the Mormon & Baptist Church hiding abuse provides insight into how hard it is to achieve transparency and accountability in children’s rights issues. This May 2022 NY Times article captures the fact that not much has changed.
DetailsThis 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).
DetailsBlack girls are 49% of trafficking victims even though they only make up for 19% of
Details37% of children overall and 54% of Black children are reported to child protection services in America by the time they turn 18.
(American Journal of Public Health 1.17)
6 to 12 million children a year are reported to child protection services and in many states,
About 1/3 of foster children are required to take psychotropic medicines
ALL ADULTS ARE THE PROTECTORS OF ALL CHILDREN
DetailsAmerica’s long running fight against sex education has brought our nation the low honors of having the highest STD rate in the world and the highest teen pregnancy rates in the world. We have lots of 13 year old moms with violent boyfriends, drug habits and no parenting skills in our nation (it’s really hard on the children).
North Carolina doesn’t screen teachers = 3 years of abuse for a child & a 30 year prison sentence for the offender.
America’s sex industry thrives of foster children and many states still blame the 13 year old sex slave for a crime.
Our infant mortality rate has been off the scale below other industrialized nations for many years and violence against children fills our newspapers and media airwaves. Add to that the under-reporting of child abuse – the three million reports represent 12 million abused children every year not the six million calculated by including the 150 million families with 0 to 2 children.
U.S. children and teens are 17 times more likely to die from a gun than their peers in 28 other industrialized nations and 32 times more likely to die from a gun homicide
American newborns are also dying because they are sent home with drug addicted mothers. 20,000 two year olds were proscribed psychotropic medications in 2014. Both Johnson and Johnson and Glaxo Welcome paid billions in fines for illegally selling these drugs to pediatricians for use on children (and there are thousands of cases pending. 1/3 of America’s foster children are medicated by Prozac and other powerful antipsychotic drugs.
We also expel more children from daycare and early childhood programs (for violence and behavior problems) than any other nation.
Child protective services are under appreciated, under trained, and under resourced in almost every state with little understanding by state legislators about the core issues. These problems will not improve until we have begun a more open and honest conversation about them.
Euphemizing and obfuscating keeps people from getting too upset (or involved).
I challenge you to read just halfway down on last month’s sad stories page and share it with at least one other person.
After all, things could change if somebody starts talking about these critical children’s issues(why not you?)
All adults are the protectors of all children.
DetailsSexual abuse is likely the most horrific crime a young child can endure.
Almost 10% of children today are exposed to sexual abuse; from rape, incest, pornography, touching, fondling or sodomy.
According to the Childhelp organization, the most common ages that child sexual abuse acts are committed are ages 7 to 13.
Within child protection systems, these percentages are much higher and the children’s ages are lower when the abuse begins.
As a CASA guardian ad-Litem in Hennepin County, about half of the fifty children in my caseload were sexually abused. After almost 20 years as a County volunteer in child protection, I think it is the most under-reported crime in our nation.
Six million children are reported to child protection agencies in the U.S. each year. About 10% of them receive services. The other 90% are left to fend for themselves.
DetailsRepeated childhood trauma does cruel things to children. Things that never go away. Those things (behaviors/thoughts/self-harm/suicide) can be managed with help. Without help, depression, pain and sadness often become overwhelming.
DetailsThese articles reflect current trends in child suicide & self-harm in America today. Only a fraction of child/youth suicides are successful. The vast majority of self-inflicted harm remains invisible. Mental health services are badly needed by young people today as the COVID pandemic is locking children into toxic homes with little or no access to the adults that could help them.
DetailsAfter all these years of Prozac and drugging of children with mental health issues and so little access to mental health services, it’s refreshing to see students and their petition for improving these services in the schools.
Thank you students at Mounds View and Hopkins high schools for speaking out and your effort to create a more compassionate and safe atmosphere for troubled youth.
When child suicides make the news (today’s Star Tribune article), there is a gaping hole where failed suicide attempts and other self harming behaviors of children should be accounted for and reckoned with.
State Ward children so often have dangerous lifestyles – self harming and even life threatening behaviors that we don’t speak of and no one knows but a few people involved in these tragedies.
When foster child Kendrea Johnson hung herself the County Corornor stated that six year old children just did not have the mental capacity to execute a suicide successfully (he called her death an accident – she left a note).
The Star Tribune’s chart showing 5-14 year old children as a tiny part of child suicides would be dwarfed by including their attempted suicides, cutting and other self harming behaviors.
All Adults Are The Protectors of All Children
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