Commentary: Billions for defense, but only red tape for abused children

Commentary: Billions for defense, but only red tape for abused children
By Seema Jilani | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Sunday, May 30, 2010

~snip~

The inconceivable becomes plausible, however, after you see a nine-month-old boy test positive for mommy's crystal meth and Shaken Baby Syndrome render a six-month-old girl blind, or after treating the burns on a young girl who was dipped in boiling oil and the cigarette burns on her sister's back in the shape of a marijuana leaf. When a 13-year-old boy dies from heat stroke because he was chained to a tree overnight, "Proposition McSterilization" starts to make sense.

Three million reported cases of child abuse and neglect result in 2,000 deaths in the U.S. annually, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Since 2001, 30,000 American children have been killed in their own homes, taken their own lives or been murdered in their own neighborhoods, according to Every Child Matters, a child advocacy organization.

Why does the U.S. lead the world's richest democracies in child abuse fatalities, with death rates that are three times higher than Canada's are and 11 times higher than Italy's? This doesn't even account for the fact that as much as 60 percent of child abuse goes unreported.

Now the nation's and the states' financial crises are leading to budget cuts of as much as $89 billion next year, cutting child services in more than 40 states. In Hawaii, Every Child Matters reports, funding for a child abuse reduction program was slashed so much that two years after serving 4,000 families, it can afford to serve only 100. In South Carolina, five state-run homes for children were closed. Child Protective Services is severely understaffed, with caseload ratios as high as 60 to one in some regions.

Nearly half of all the Texas children who are killed by abuse belonged to families that had been investigated by Child Protective Services. In order to keep families united, CPS attempts to place children with safe family members. While its motives are admirable, CPS should put a higher priority on protecting children from monsters and sexual predators than it does on keeping families together.



unhappycamper comment: Yet another reason to bring them home.

...working, where they belong. That's the American way !!!!