Strollerderby : abuse

Mom Arrested for Having 555 Pound Son

Brett Singer — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:30:00 GMT

This story is not to be confused with the one Madeline brought us, about the 550 pound woman who gave birth recently.

14-year-old Alexander Deundray Draper of South Carolina had been on the run with his mother, Jerri Althea Gray. Gray had been told by a family court judge to turn her son over to the state because they determined that he "was of the weight where it was decided by medical authorities that he needed treatment that was not being provided for by his mother."

That weight is 555 pounds.

According to CNN, the mother did not appear in court as ordered, "and has concealed the child."

It's one thing to be a little on the chunky side. But when your child is this heavy, clearly some enabling is going on. Barring some bizarre medical condition I'm unaware of, it doesn't seem possible for someone to reach 555 pounds at any age, much less 14, without a diet of nothing but unhealthy food. Hopefully everyone involved in this case will get the help that they need.

Source: CNN

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Does New York City’s Foster System Inadequately Protect Children?

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:00:00 GMT

A tragic case of child abuse has gotten the City of New York in hot water over its allegedly inadequate protections for foster children.

The suit centers around Judith Leekin, a 64-year-old who is now thankfully behind bars for exploiting the city’s foster system to get rich. After learning how much the city would pay her to adopt children with physical and mental disabilities, Leekin adopted 11 children under four different aliases, and then moved to Florida with them.

The approximately $800 to $1,300 per month per child that the city paid Leekin is hardly a windfall for any responsible parent caring for a child who is need of special education. But Leekin spent hardly a dime on the children, keeping them locked—and, in some cases, tied up—in her home, with no access to education, adequate food, or health care. By the time her evil scheme was discovered in 2007, Leekin had collected $1.68 million in government money.

Her former foster children (one of whom is pictured), are now in their teens and twenties and are in foster care and group homes in Florida.

The federal lawsuit contends that the city failed to adequately background check Leekin or to monitor the children under her care. But the Administration for Children’s Services argues that Leekin was masterful at defrauding numerous agencies and professionals, and points out that the city did everything in its power to prosecute Leekin and offer the foster children care and resources after the abuse came to light.

While there must be government accountability for this unthinkably terrible crime, I don’t think that a lawsuit is the answer. Taking money away from New York’s child welfare system, which is already facing severe budget cuts, is hardly the way to improve it. The best way to serve New York’s foster children would be public disclosure of how Leekin managed to get away with such severe child abuse, and a full accounting of the concrete measures the city has taken to prevent such a situation from ever happening again.

Photo: New York Times

American Incest Dad Gets 109 Years In Jail

Brett Singer — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 04:55:00 GMT

Austrian Incest Dad, meet American Incest Dad.

Josef Fritzl's American counterpart, Lindolfo Thibes of Los Angeles, was sentenced to 109 years in prison for having a sexual relationship with his own daughter and fathering three children with her.

"I hope he suffers," the daughter said. "I want him to die in there in jail because that's what he did to me. He confined me." She is 29 now; her father began abusing her when she was 6. He threatened to kill her if she told anyone, and used surveillance cameras to keep track of her. Thibes physically abused her as well.

Well, I guess this time, justice was served. Horrible story but now he'll be off the streets and out of his poor daughter's life. Physically, at least.

Source: Times of India

Image: SXC

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Do You Speak Up When You See a Child Hit in Public?

JeanneSager — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:31:00 GMT

Every April, I get that old Edmund Burke quote stuck in my head: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Or something to that effect.

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, the time when child protection groups across the country start beating that drum again. Speak up, speak up, speak UP when you see something.

Except, I am not that parent. I have a hard time walking up to the mother in the grocery store who has smacked their child across the face and saying, "Hey, lady, knock it off."

I'm more the indignant glare type, the one who will cut you down with my eyes, dark and forbidding from across the dairy aisle, running my cart perilously close to your heels. "I'm watching you," I say with my elbows as I get too close while we're both picking through the tomato pile.

And yet, I am not a proponent of child abuse (is anyone?). I am not even a spanker, preferring to discipline with words and timeouts in part because of my own history of beatings on the butt which left their emotional scars. Nor am I the quiet type. I frankly have a hard time shutting up about most things - hence the blogging job!

So why is it so hard to speak up about child abuse? For one, there's a fine line between outright abuse and a bad day. We've all been horrified by seeing a parent smack a kid, but who knows if that was a heat of the moment, having an awful day, never, ever happened before kind of thing or a normal occurrence in that family's life? We're too afraid of disrupting an otherwise normal family's life with an investigation by child protective services.

There's also a fear that our own closets aren't without their skeletons. Ever been locked out by your toddler? Check. Ever lost your toddler - even for just five seconds - because they wandered off while you were focusing on something else? Again, check. Ever left your child in the car for a second while you ran into the post office? One more time.

So we adopt the "he who is without sin" method of casting stones. We're not perfect, so who are we to judge? Although, we do judge. We glare. We huff. We go home and tell our spouses about the idiot we saw in the grocery store. We are aware that something might not be right, but by and large we are too afraid to do anything.

It's all in degrees, naturally. If I saw a baby sleeping in a backseat on a ninety-degree day with no adult in sight, you know I'd be on my cell phone to 911. If I saw a child battered and bruised with a split lip and a black eye, I'd be calling child protective services. Waiting until it gets to clear child abuse carries with it its risks - we aren't PREVENTING child abuse if we wait that long. We aren't protecting the nearly one million victims of child abuse every year, almost ninety-five percent of whom are abused more than once.

It's where that Burke quote comes into play. We are good parents, but we let bad parents win.

I've done it. You've done it.

Will you be speaking up next time?

Image: ChildAbusePreventionNetwork

Half of Kids Surveyed Think Rihanna Had it Coming

JeanneSager — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:21:00 GMT

I've read some awful survey results over the years. But this?

Almost half of the kids surveyed by the Boston Public Health Commission said they thought singer Rihanna was "responsible" for the beat-down she received from boyfriend Chris Brown.

Forty-six percent the domestic violence case was Rihanna's fault, and fifty-two percent said it was both Rihanna and Brown's fault. Fifty-one percent blamed Brown. The numbers are particularly shocking after reading the good news about teen responses to the issue reported by my colleague Shannon last week. Kids in Chicago are speaking out in a "Beyond Chris and Rhianna" project there that clearly needs to be transplanted to Boston.

Forget "violence is not the answer." That's obviously lost on these kids. What about the simple lesson that no one can CAUSE someone else to hurt them? That it's always the choice of the person doing the beating?

The survey of kids twelve through nineteen in the Boston does not distinguish what kinds of homes the respondents come out of - so there's no way to determine what sort of homes these kids are coming from. What do you want to bet a fair share of those blaming Rihanna in some way aren't the nicest of homes? Because where does violence start? You got it. Different studies put the number of kids who get their first taste of domestic violence by watching their parents around three million annually.

According to the National Center for Victims of Crime, "Constant exposure to violence in the home and abusive role models teaches these children that violence is a normal way of life and places them at risk of becoming society's next generation of victims and abusers."

It also makes them more likely to place blame on the abused rather than the abuser, and for kids to become abusers or be abused. Which means the Boston Public Health Commission may well be seeing half its survey subjects in a social services setting.

Chilling, isn't it?

Image: People

Do We All Have a Right to Procreate?

Miriam Axel-Lute — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:48:00 GMT

Though we would rarely admit it, most of us, upon hearing about some abusive situation, have muttered about requiring a license to parent or "fixing" the offenders so at least no child will have to go through that again. But when push comes to shove would we really think either was a good idea?

Carter Dillard, writing in the Georgia Law Review, is not exactly recommending either (in fact, he speaks, rightly, of parental licensing schemes as "comical"). But he is, very seriously, arguing that there should be no fundamental right to procreate, that there is a duty on prospective parents to be "fit," and that courts should have the right to issue no-procreation orders in certain limited circumstances.

In the narrowest case that Dillard focuses on, it's hard to argue: If, due to egregious harm to previous children, a no-custody order has already been issued, such that any child born is immediately taken into state custody, wouldn't it be better for all to prevent such a pregnancy in the first place with a "no-procreate" order?

Trouble is, this seems to me almost as rife with problems as parental licensing. Much as Dillard wants to separate out the principle from how it would be implemented, I can't.

Dillard never manages to acknowledge that the state does a pretty awful job in most cases of determining "fitness" now, and often gets it wrong (in both directions). Some of that can't be avoided: We need to be able to take kids out of danger, even if we suck at it. But I heard in Dillard's writing a disturbing willingness to expand the definition of "fitness" tests to include finances (how much money is "enough"? does it matter how you spend it?), "pending neglect cases" (and if they were ruled to be unfounded, as many are?). It just seems like a clear slippery slope to pre-emptive sterilization of people who are different, poor, etc.

But even if we do set aside implementation for a moment, Dillard's argument that his "no-procreate" orders could be good for everyone by shifting resources from helping kids who have already been harmed to prevention rings a bit hollow.

For that to work, the no-procreate orders would actually have to substantially reduce the number of children born into abusive situations. But only a tiny fraction of the worst cases already have no-custody orders. And even then, how to ensure the order works? Foricble abortion? Sterilization? (Long sordid history of that already) Court-ordered Norplant (serious side effects for many people)? Criminalizing sex? Imprisoning people? Sending them to a convent?

The answer, of course, is you don't. You just say it, and if it's violated, it changes to a "no-custody" order and unspecified penalties are applied after the fact. Could that have a deterrant effect? Unlikely. At least for women, if carrying a pregnancy you know you're going to have to give up isn't a deterrant, it's hard to know what would work better. And most men in this situation are unable to pay the child support they already owe and any other penalties may suck for them, but it'll make it even less likely that they end up paying. Pregnancies are not always preventable, and in stressed families like this, are also rarely planned.

Would the orders make a point? Perhaps. But they're not going to make some huge difference in the number of kids who are born to "unfit" parents or who end up abused.

Here's what might work better:

If you want to put resources into prevention—of unwise pregnancies and of abuse—do it. Don't wait for some neat legal principle to make you feel better about it. Fund health care, birth control, abortion, good sex ed, parenting education, respite services, and domestic violence response, etc. and improve access to them. There's plenty of info out there about how to do these things well.
If you want to ensure that babies born to parents with a history of serious enough abuse that they already have a no-custody order in place aren't bounced around from foster home to foster home and maybe-maybe-not back to birth parents sometime (which I agree is not a good plan), make no-custody orders include automatic termination of parental rights for any child conceived after they are issued and allow the kid a permanent adoptive home from day one. It's still subject to errors in judgment, but at least you know it'll have real results. (And, frankly, it might be more of a deterrant than some random legal penalty.) (Note: This suggestion works when both bio parents have the no-custody order. What is the proper response when it's only one of them who is subject to such? I don't know.)

Ick.

Photo by walknboston.

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Oprah Gets It Right On Chris Brown

Brett Singer — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 22:00:00 GMT

My mother and I sometimes disagree (shocking, I know) and occasionally we argue about Oprah. (Not a lot -- don't worry, we're not obsessed or anything. We have far more important things to fight about.) She'll tell me that Oprah said this or that, and oh, isn't it wonderful, and I'll say, feh, Oprah, she's not so great, she's responsible for unleashing Dr. Phil on the world. So when mom told me that the Gayle King's best friend was doing a show about the Chris Brown and Rihanna situation, I was skeptical. Too many celebrities have been talking about the incident and not saying the right things.

For example: Sean Combs (aka Diddy or whatever the hell he calls himself these days) kind of missed the point when he told Ellen DeGeneres, "I don’t think it’s right for anybody to hit anybody…. We know sometimes relationships get ugly (but) we don’t know exactly what’s going on (in this one). It isn't right for him to put his hands on her or her to put his hands on him" -- which to me implies that somehow if Rihanna had slapped Chris, it would be OK if Brown gave her a black eye. Which it isn't. Ellen, for her part, gets it right when she says that she doesn't want any girl to think that "it's OK to go back to a guy that hit her," although she says it in a very wishy-washy manner ("I don't want to judge" anyone, that sort of thing) and lets Diddy to the hook too easily ("I want to dance!"). Yes, her show isn't exactly "60 Minutes," but this also isn't a fluffy issue. If you're going to bring it up, you should be clear how you feel, and if possible get the last word. (Here's a clip if you missed it, which would be understandable. I never watch that show.)

Back to Oprah. I didn't watch the whole segment (hey, I'm busy) but I feel confident that the tone she took with was the correct one based on this quote:

"Love doesn't hurt. And if a man hits you once, he will hit you again."

See, it really is that simple. I understand that the charges against Brown are pending, and as Diddy so brilliantly points out, none of us were in the car with the young couple when the incident occurred. But Brown has shown no remorse at all. More disturbing is the way that many of Brown's peers are defending him, and that anyone thinks his alleged actions are OK. Grammy-winning Rapper T.I. said on Carson Daly's talk show that he told Brown "this too shall pass." He went back on that statement, perhaps when he realized that Daly's show is actually broadcast on television, which is a mistake I can understand. And Usher backtracked on his earlier statement that Brown should "have a little bit of remorse" about what happened, and not hit the jet skis at Diddy's house. (Good thing he apologized -- that's crazy talk!)

Brown dropped out of the Kids' Choice Awards, which was a good PR move, but it's also somewhat irrelevant, since his statement just said something about it being difficult to "focus on the music" with all of this other stuff going on. Oprah used my line (OK, other people said it too) and called this a great "teaching moment." Problem is, I'm not so sure that the right lesson is being taught. It's important to everyone, but especially important to parents, since many of our kids are still young enough to not have formed opinions about this issue yet. (Some of those kids, though, are much smarter than our celebrities, which is always nice to see.)

For me this is a simple issue. While legally what Brown did falls into the category of "allegedly," he hasn't denied it, and in fact has basically admitted that he beat up Rihanna. Rihanna got back together with him and decided not to press charges. Anyone who says anything about this issue in public needs to be very clear because many of Brown's fans are young and for better or worse they sometimes take their cue from celebrities. Hitting your girlfriend is wrong. If your boyfriend hits you, leave. Why is that so hard?

Source: Oprah.com

Image from here

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They Say: Abuse Changes a Child's Brain

Kate Tuttle — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:26:00 GMT

Researchers who had previously studied the relationships between stress responses and maternal nurturing in animals have taken their work into a new arena, looking at how human brains are affected, in adulthood, by abuse and neglect suffered in childhood. The study, carried out at McGill University in Montreal, is very small (it compared the brains of 12 suicide victims who had been abused to 12 suicide victims who had not been, against a control group of 12 non-suicide brains) but, many in the field agree, could lead to larger-scale research into how childhood trauma can cause lifelong damage to a person's ability to handle stress.

Like so many studies of how human beings work, this one seems to only confirm the obvious: who among us wouldn't instinctively know that a terrible childhood leaves permanent scars? And yet it goes further than that -- if a biological brain difference is found, therapies could be developed that would offer some hope of healing those previously unhealable wounds. And just as the researchers' previous work had looked at the multi-generational effect of both good and bad animal parenting, perhaps their ultimate goal would be to figure out how to end the cycle of bad human parenting, one formerly abused or neglected child at a time.

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Girl, 3, raised by dogs after her alcoholic mother neglected her.

Cole Gamble — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Social workers in Russia discovered a three-year-old girl in her mother's house, naked and walking on all fours, gnawing bones with the dogs that she clung to for warmth.

The girl, known as Madina, knows only two words: yes and no. Her mother Anna, 23, would frequently disappear of just be too drunk to care for the child. Normally, when Anna ate dinner at the table, Madina ate scraps off the floor with the dogs.

Because of her inability to relate to other children, Madina is an outcast where she lives, only capable of relating to her dog companions. One social worker commented that little Madina has know no other love than that of her mother’s dog.

When police arrived to take the child into care, Anna reportedly claimed: 'I do look after my daughter.'

Despite a life entirely spent in the shadow of neglect, medics say Madina is mentally and physically healthy.

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Twenty-Year-Old Kidnapping Solved

Kate Tuttle — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:59:00 GMT

A California judge will decide today whether Marvin Maple, now known as John Bunting, will be sent back to Tennessee to face kidnapping charges for taking two of his grandchildren from their parents back in 1989. Maple and his late wife had been caring for two of their daughter Debbie's kids while her husband was pursuing a divinity degree out of state. They had sought custody of the children -- at the time, ages seven and eight -- alleging abuse by the parents. When a court found no evidence of abuse, the grandparents took the children and fled, moving to California and renaming the children (formerly Bobby and Christie) Jonathan and Jennifer Bunting.

Now in their twenties, Jennifer and Jonathan Bunting have not spoken to the press about their situation, but it's expected they will meet with their parents and two additional siblings at some point. It's not yet clear what kind of brainwashing Maple carried out when he removed the children from their parents, but it seems likely there was some.

The case, which had languished in the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit, was broken thanks to someone's affection for old, corny television shows. Late in December, a tipster who was watching an old episode of Unsolved Mysteries that mentioned the missing Baskin kids and reported seeing them in the San Diego area in around 2000. Detective Sgt. Dan Goodwin in Tennessee contacted newspapers in the San Diego area and asked them to run stories soliciting sightings and encouraging the public to contact Tennessee authorities. Eventually this led to a email from San Jose, where a neighbor of Maple's had seen the coverage and wanted to right a long-past wrong.

Back when the Baskin children were taken from their parents, there was a national hysteria over abuse, with dozens of false abuse charges -- many involving allegations of Satanic rituals -- clogging the courts. In addition, there was a growing movement of grandparents' rights, in which children were often used as a pawn in power struggles between two generations of adults with different ideas about how kids should be raised. Seen in this context, it's not that surprising that the Baskin case happened -- but it's a wonderful surprise that it was solved. It may take years and tons of counseling to help this family heal from what happened to it, but that process can now begin.

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Survey Time: Infant Feeding Choices

Miriam Axel-Lute — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Jennifer Fegan-Szala, a doula and certified professional midwife from upstate New York, is looking for mothers to complete a survey for her midwifery degree thesis.

It's not the happiest topic in the world: the correlation between infant feeding choices and childhood sexual abuse (as in the mother having a history thereof, not the feeding choices causing abuse). I assume—though like a good reseacher, she doesn't say—that her hypothesis is that those with a history of abuse might be more likely to avoid breastfeeding.

In any case, it seems like it's a good question to be asking, and it's a short, easy survey. She wants to hear from bio moms who both do and don't have a history of abuse, and who made any range of feeding choices, so the field is fairly wide open. Click a few boxes for (social) science!

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They Say: More Abuse, Neglect Among Bottle-Feeding Mothers

Kate Tuttle — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:01:00 GMT

The nutritional and health benefits of breastfeeding are, of course, well-known, as is the general medical recommendation that nursing is the overall best method of feeding one's baby. Most research on breast versus bottle focuses on physical health and wellbeing, from allergies to asthma to obesity -- but what if the choice has ramifications beyond the actual realm of feeding?

A new study out of Australia reports that failure to breastfeed one's baby is associated with higher levels of infant maltreatment, including neglect, emotional and physical abuse, and sexual molestation. Researchers looking at a longitudinal study of nealry 6,000 mothers and their children found that mothers who did not nurse were 3.8 times more likely to mistreat their children than those who did, and that the duration of breastfeeding had an effect on those numbers.

From the article:

They found that of the 1421 women who did not breastfeed their children in the group, 102 women - or 7.2 per cent - neglected or abused their child in some way. This compared with 4.8 per cent of the 2584 women who breastfed for less than four months and 1.6 per cent of the 2616 women who breastfed for more than four months.

What are we to make of this? Does the very act of nursing a baby elicit feelings that would tend to mitigate against any otherwise present urges to hurt or neglect her? Is the bonding that takes place over a Boppy really that powerful? Or is it a case of correlation, not caustion, with mothers in the groups least likely to breastfeed -- poor, young, less well-educated -- also at risk for abuse and neglect for environmental reasons?

I'm as big a proponent of nursing as anyone I know, but even I have a hard time believing that breastfeeding alone is the decisive factor in whether or not one mistreats a child. And while I'd like to see data from studies like this used to help promote breastfeeding among populations where strong advocacy is useful, I'm worried it will be used, instead, to further alienate or villify those mothers who are most in need of hearing positive reasons to breastfeed. What do you think? Is there a way to read this that doesn't feel judgmental and divisive?

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Does Obama's Election Mean Black Kids Now Have "No Excuses"?

Kate Tuttle — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Op-ed contributor Charles Blow, writing in the New York Times, recently assailed comments by South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn that, in a post-Obama age, "every child has lost every excuse." In other words, if a blak man can become president, you -- black child, Latino child, poor child -- can scale every mountain, too. I can see what Clyburn meant, that his aim was to both exhort and inspire (and he spoke these words at a BET event, which I think is significant), but Blow's right: "no excuses" is a vast overstatement of how even the playing field now is.

The statistics Blow cites can make you cry: 60% of black kids grow-up in low-income homes, half of them in what the government offically calls "poor" households (believe me, what the Feds call poor is several steps more grim than what you or I would). Black kids are twice as likely as their white and Latino counterparts to be the victims of mistreatment, ranging from neglect to physical abuse. They are far more likely to be raped.

I don't think it's an excuse to say that the circumstances in which a child grows up have an overwhelming influence on her or his opportunities to lead a happy, healthy life. Nor do I think that acknowledging the inequalities that still exist in our society is in any way throwing a damper on the incredibly inspiring story of Obama's rise to the presidency, nor on the real-world solutions all of us hope his adminstration can bring to bear on them. And while I like Clyburn's old-school call for kids to overcome whatever obstacles they face, I cringe at how a slogan like "no excuses" sounds in the mouth not of a black warrior for equal rights, but yet another clueless white conservative pundit. So yes, I hope that President Obama means, among many other things, that nobody will ever again assume a black child can't get there, but I also hope it means we can all work together to improve the chances that she or he will be able to.

And besides, it didn't seem to me as if having a President Bush in office prompted academically sub-par rich white kids to stop making excuses.

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Dad Shackles Overweight Daughter to Bed to Stop Her Eating

JeanneSager — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:33:00 GMT

It started with chains and locks on the cabinet doors of the family home to keep his daughter away from the food. When Robert Blue found his fifteen-year-old was getting past them, police say he decided to chain the girl to her bed and beat her with a stick.

The problem? The teen was twenty pounds over the weight her father thought appropriate.

Theres's no excuse for it, but the extreme methodology to make a child lose weight may not be that uncommon.

Obese kids are often at risk of being treated poorly by their peers - and obese adults by other "skinnier" adults. Then throw in the stigma for parents of obese kids. Malnutrition and neglect are most often linked to the words "child abuse," but these days childhood obesity is earning parents the stinkeye - for being too permissive and putting their kids at significant health risks. Two years ago, a British mother was told to put her eight-year-old on a diet or she'd lose custody.

So what are parents doing? Mostly uneducated themselves about proper nutrition and weight loss (studies have also shown most obese kids have at least one obese parent), they go to extremes. They enforce strict diets and padlock the cabinets. They impart little knowledge of how to eat well, exercise and modify their lives, instead believing they can discipline away the fat - which, any of us who have ever lost weight know, doesn't work.

The methods described by Blue's local Nevada TV station are nothing short of criminal - and clearly abusive. But how many parents are just a few steps short of this themselves? Sadly, studies have actually proven child abuse can be a trigger FOR obesity into adulthood. Which points directly back to the Blue case. Child abusers break down a child's self-esteem, upping their chances of overeating. And what happens then? More abuse.

Image: Fox News Vegas

Teaching Teens to Recognize Abusive Relationships

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:49:00 GMT

A recent study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that a full third of college students were involved in an abusive relationship at some point before they started college. And a survey of 1,000 children found that 25 percent of kids aged 11 to 14 had been harassed and verbally degraded by their boyfriend or girlfriend through phone calls or text messages, often late at night when their parents were sleeping.

One of the main reasons for these alarmingly high numbers is that teenage romance is bound to be sticky and confusing, so youth are often blind to behaviors that could be a harbinger of violence. High school boys are often so shy or wary of commitment that a boy who calls all the time or is possessive can be seen as confident and romantic, not dangerous. “Few adolescents understand what a healthy relationship looks like,” according to Dr. Elizabeth Miller, who has been studying teen dating violence for a decade.

Fortunately, many states are implementing programs to help teach teens about healthy dating, and to help parents, educators, and police officers recognize the signs of dating violence or verbal abuse. Texas has started requiring schools to include prohibitions against dating violence in school safety codes, and Rhode Island requires schools to teach grades 7 through 12 about dating violence and abuse. Indianapolis has started training police officers in public schools to recognize the early signs of abusive dating.

Deborah Norris (pictured), the mother of a teenager killed by her boyfriend, has started heathersvoice.net in an effort to teach teen girls about healthy romantic relationships. Loveisrespect.org is another widely utilized resource for teens seeking a way out of an abusive relationship.

These programs are a great start, but I would argue that we shouldn't focus only on teaching teen girls (who are overwhelmingly the victimes, not the perpetrators, of violence) to recognize an abusive relationship; we should also be teaching teenage boys how to be in a respectful, healthy relationship. As Harvard psychologist William S. Pollack puts it, "Usually when adolescent boys get involved with girls, they fall into the societal model which we call ‘macho,’ where they need to show they are the ones in control." It's way past time we offered these boys a different model.

Photo: New York Times

Mother Sues OB Who Said She "Deserved Pain"—And Gave It to Her

Miriam Axel-Lute — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Catherine Skol, former Chicago cop and mother of five, is suing her OB for abusive treatment during the birth of her fifth, nine months ago. If you've heard of the case, and the arguments that she's "just suing over rudeness" and should quit it because she's going to make malpractice rates go up, I suggest you go here, and read the details of the allegations.

I don't suggest you read it if you are pregnant and about to head into a hospital delivery however.

According to the suit, defendent Scott Pierce, who was filling in for the Catherine Skol's primary OB, was so incensed that she hadn't called him before heading to the hospital (an instruction her main OB had never given her) that he decided she "deserved" pain, refused an epidural, put her in intentionally painful positions, insisted she push before she was sufficiently dilated, kept telling her she was going to hemorrhage, wouldn't give her enough anesthesia before stitching her up and told her husband to "hold her down" instead, and talked loudly and crudely on a cell phone about an abortion in the room. There's more. It's truly astounding, in a nauseating kind of way.

(Confidential to "Linka" who called Skol a wimp for complaining about not getting her pain meds: I'm no fan of routine epidurals and had my kid with none, but I would never claim to know out of context when one was appropriate. And I'd like to see you get stitches for a severe laceration on your vulva without anesthesia, not mention all that other crap.)

As much as I've heard plenty of horror stories about OBs and their attitudes, I have to say that this is a category all its own, and sounds to me like the sort of extremely aggressive behavior that arises when people are on something illegal or are having, shall we say, certain brain chemical imbalances. Not that there aren't people out there who are just that awful, but they don't generally keep a job like doctor very long.

In fact, his behavior bothers me less than the commenters who say that because she and the baby are physically healthy, she should shut up and deal. Aside from being cruel, the behavior described was dangerous. If it's anything like she described, he should have his license revoked. People sue all the time for doctors failing to prevent problems they couldn't have prevented—that's one of the reasons our c-section rate (and malpractice insurance) is so high. Here's a case where the doctor was actually in the wrong rather than just getting the blame for a tragedy. This is what lawsuits are for.

Photo by Bloomsberries.

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Teacher Beats Student to Death for Late Homework

Cole Gamble — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:00:00 GMT

There are few things I am certain about. Okay, there is nothing I am certain about...except this. My kids will never, ever attend public school in Egypt. Was this ever a consideration? Probably not, but after hearing this bit of news I am sure it will never happen. What news, you ask? The news an Egyptian teacher beat a student to death for turning in math homework late.

Haitham Nabeel Abdelhamid, 23, is accused of beating Islam Badr Ibrahim with a ruler before taking him outside the class and hitting him savagely in the stomach.

The boy then collapsed in a faint and was taken to hospital - but he died of heart failure.

The attack, which took place in October at the Saad Othman primary school near the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, caused national outrage in a country where people are already skeptical about the state.

Many believe this horrific incident is a product of Egypt not having enough teachers. So take note, politicians. If you don't fund education evidentially the teachers will start murdering our kids.

UPDATE:

Haitham Nabeel Abdelhamid was found guilty on Christmas Day and sentenced to just six years in prison.

The Case Against Stricter Sex Offender Laws

Miriam Axel-Lute — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:08:00 GMT

In a passionate post, author Judith Levine takes on Vermont's proposed stiffening of sex offender laws. It's a very hard thing to be against, but Levine makes a strong case. Basically, she makes three points:

Evidence is lacking that any of these measures, which have been tried elsewhere, will do much good. It's not like we're starting with weak laws against this stuff.
The measures will cost a lot at a time where there isn't a lot of money to go around.
There is a very clear correlation with poverty and increased physical and sexual abuse, so the money would be better directed to anti-child-poverty programs that are currently being cut (and which these measures will cause to be cut further).

She writes: "The laws will accomplish only one sure thing: They will shield the Democratic legislature from charges that it is soft on pervs, at least until the next gruesome crime."

But can we the non-poor contain our fear and our lust for revenge enough to demand that our governments do what would actually protect the largest number of kids?

Photo by Oslo in the Summertime.

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Teacher In Mexico Ties Up Student for Hours

SunnyChanel — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:45:00 GMT

Note to self, when it’s time to look for schools for my daughter, don't enroll her in a school in the city of Cuernavaca, Mexico. Fortunately, I live thousands of miles away from there. But for those who live there, you might want to move, home school or start escorting your child to school, and staying there the entire time. The reason? According to the AP, a human rights watchdog has claimed that a teacher, who has been on strike, tied up an 11-year old 5th grader for hours. His parents believe it wasn’t for something trivial, like say throwing spit balls or giving another kid a wedgie. Rather they are under the assumption that the teacher was “retaliating against them for joining a movement against the strike.”

The reason there was a strike in the first place? Because there was a nationwide reform that “prohibits educators from inheriting their jobs from relatives.” Hmmm, sounds like this might be part of the problem. Maybe the teacher is really a ranchero and should actually be tying up cattle than teaching kids.

Via Salon/AP

Missing Toddler Found Live and Well Under Floorboards

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Let me warn you that this story, which should simply be happy, has an unexpectedly tragic ending.

While staying with his children at his parents’ home, an Oregon father woke up the other night around 5 a.m. and discovered that his one-year-old daughter, Kate, was not in her bed. Lawrence Higgins, Jr. woke up his parents, who helped search for their granddaughter. When they could find no sign of her, they called the police. Since Kate can’t walk yet, the family feared she had been kidnapped.

What actually happened was much more unbelievable—and much less terrifying. After searching the house and surrounding areas for hours, police heard the sound of a child coughing in the bedroom. Realizing the sound was coming from underfoot, they tore up the floor and found the toddler, filthy but unscathed, underneath the floorboards. Police decided that Kate must have fallen off the bed in her sleep, gotten wedged in a small hole in the flooring, and wiggled her way under the house.

Her enormously relieved parents took Kate to the hospital, where she was pronounced safe and sound.

Here’s the sad part. The Department of Human Services investigated the Higgins’ home and determined it was unsuitable because, according to an officer, it was “just too dirty.” The Higgins’ three children were taken away from their parents and placed in protective custody.

Either the article that I’m quoting is giving woefully incomplete information, or DHS has behaved in a shamefully rash manner. No child should have to live in a filthy home, but dirty countertops are certainly not grounds to take a child away from its parents. The more sensible, and less traumatizing, solution would have been to call in a caseworker to speak with the parents about creating a safe living environment and to evaluate their parenting before making the monumental decision to break up a family.

Photo: KPTV.com

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Eight-Year-Old Charged with Murdering His Father

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 18:59:00 GMT

An eight-year-old Arizona boy is facing two counts of premeditated murder for the deaths of his father and his father’s friend. Police are investigating whether abuse played a role in the murders, even as they continue with plans to prosecute the child.

Soon after 29-year-old Vincent Romero and 39-year-old Timothy Romans, who was renting a room at the Romero house (pictured), were fatally shot, the boy went to a neighbor’s house and said that he believed his father was dead. Police immediately arrived on the scene, and claim to have gotten a confession from the child. But the boy’s lawyer is charging that officers questioned him too severely without the benefit of a parent or representative at his side. (The boy’s father had full custody, with the mother visiting from out-of-state on the weekends.)

"They became very accusing early on in the interview," attorney Benjamin Brewer said. "Two officers with guns at their side, it's very scary for anybody, for sure an 8-year-old kid."

Although the boy’s home was unknown to Child Protective Services, police had responded to domestic violence calls there in the past. The judge has ordered a psychological evaluation.

Under Arizona law, children as young as eight can be charged with crimes. Even though the town’s police chief understands that an eight-year-old does not “just decide that he’s going to shoot his father and shoot his father’s friend for no reason,” police are pushing to have the boy tried as an adult.

To me, the fact that the boy immediately alerted neighbors of the deaths indicates that he lacked the moral reasoning necessary to understand the emotional complexity and consequences of his acts. No one, no matter how young, should be excused for committing murder, but I will be heartbroken if this boy, well before his mental capacities are fully formed, faces murder charges as an adult.

As a defense attorney uninvolved in the case commented, “[S]ociety has to make a decision as to whether they want to start using the criminal justice system to deal with 8-year-olds. That doesn't mean you don't have a troubled kid."

Photo: AP

Woman goes to jail for adopting children to get money

Brett Singer — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I know times are tough, but if I ever say to my wife, "Hey honey, I know how we can make some extra cash. Let's adopt a few kids!" I hope she dropkicks me into next week.

Judith Leekin, a 63-year-old woman, made over $1 million – yes, one MILLION dollars – from the subsidies offered to parents who adopt. She actually targeted "only special-needs children," because they brought the most money from NYC Children's Services. $55 a day.

So what's the problem? No law against adopting kids, right? Well, according to WCBS-TV, she was hideously abusive: the 11 children were, "handcuffed, battered, deprived of food and medicine and locked in a room." She never sent them to school, and hid them from anyone who came to her home. The money was used to keep up a "lavish lifestyle." This went on from 1988 until mid-2007; by that time she had moved the kids to Florida after adopting 11 children in New York City.

When first arrested last year, she denied the charges, and her lawyer claimed that she "loved and nurtured the children." Her biological son also defended her, saying that she was a good mom. A New York judge decided not to believe any of them, and she's been sentenced to "nearly 11 years" in prison. That doesn't seem long enough, but it was a plea bargain, so that's the way it goes.

So how exactly does this happen? No idea. She used fake names, went to different adoption agencies, and I suppose has some level of intelligence since she did things like forge report cards to appease NYC officials. An earlier story says that she might have been doing this since the 1970's, but that doesn't appear to factor in to this week's jail sentence.

Where are the kids now? Some are in foster homes, one is old enough to support himself and live alone, and another one may have died while in Leekin's care.

Nasty, nasty stuff, but at least she's been caught and punished.

image/source: wcbstv.com

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Children of Polygamy Cult Returned to Parents

Cole Gamble — Mon, 26 May 2008 17:00:00 GMT

A dozen of the children removed from the FLDS Polygamy cult in Texas are being reunited with their families. Said parents and children will be allowed to live together under state supervision until a verdict comes down from the Texas Supreme Court. They may not, however, return to their Yearning For Zion ranch for the time being.

Last Friday an appeals court ruled the state had no right to take the children into custody. On one hand it's hard to fault the authorities in their raid. The heard of the underage marriages to older men, heard many other stories of highly questionable behavior with minors, and galloped in to “rescue” all the children. Unfortunately the legality of the matter is messier than that. It may be proven not every single child was endangered. Yes, an odd thought considering the stories about what went on behind the walls of that compound. Though there are children of the cult too young to have been asked to bear children and therefore may not technically qualify as abused, to teach those young children that this is normative behavior is, in my mind, abuse enough.

Photo: AP

Court Seriously Clamps Down On Homeschooling in California

Kelly Mills — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:32:00 GMT

In a move that has stunned the homeschooling movement, a California appeals court ruled this week that parents must send children between the ages of six and eighteen to full-time public or private school, or have them taught at home by a tutor with a state credential. This means that about 166,000 homeschooled kids are now considered truants and their parents could be held liable. Our governor the Terminator immediately declared he's gonna fight this one.

The court decision actually came out of a child welfare case, involving a family that homeschools their eight children. When a family court examined a complaint of mistreatment of a seven- and nine-year-old at the hands of their father, Philip Long, the judge found the children were poorly educated, but said parents have a right to homeschool their children. However, the appeals court rejected this, and also excluded the private Christian school the Long's said supervised the kids' education because it was "was willing to participate in the deprivation of the children's right to a legal education."

Some say this case doesn't change the law, and others say it has big ramifications. I feel very torn: On the one hand, I believe children should have a right to a quality education, and parents who homeschool should be held to standards of accountability. However, there are serious flaws in the public school system in California, and private schools can get away with even more crap because of their status. I'd be interested to hear some opinions on this one, pro and con.

Photo: SF Chronicle/Michael Macor