America's child abuse epidemic

[CHIMO]

When I arrived to provide medical care, the four-year-old girl was unconscious. She had multiple bruises, skull fractures, a brain contusion, vaginal and anal tears, venereal disease, and was hemorrhaging from places a little girl should not. The perpetrator? Her stepfather.

I actually sighed with relief when I learned she later died of her abusive injuries in the hospital; at least she was spared the anguish of surviving such brutality. Pediatricians across America have witnessed countless similar tragedies. A new BBC documentary has investigated why the US, one of the most prosperous nations on earth, has the worst child abuse record in the industrialised world. America's child maltreatment death rate is triple Canada's and 11 times that of Italy. Over the past decade, more than 20,000 American children have been killed their own family members – that is nearly four times the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What differentiates us from other countries? The single best predictor of child abuse is poverty. Children raised in families with annual incomes of less than $15,000 are 22 times more likely to be abused. Since the economic downturn, there has been a 30% increase in child maltreatment. The recession is, quite literally, a slap in the face of American children. The vast social programs available to low-income families in other countries are gapingly absent in the US. Social programs are also suffering funding cuts at the hands of Republicans, who persistently paint citizens in need of social programs as manipulative pariahs on the populace.

Since entering the bid for the 2012 presidential election, Gov. Rick Perry has boasted Texas' pseudo-success, bedazzling voters with misleading statistics. His swagger is rooted in the fact that Texas is a low-tax, low-social service state. He neglects to mention that children from Texas are four times more likely to be incarcerated, four times more likely to be uninsured, twice as likely to drop out of high school, and nearly twice as likely to die from abuse and neglect. In order to perpetuate the façade of "traditional family values", Child Protective Services in states with strong Republican leanings prefer to keep the faux family together, even in cases of flagrant abuse, instead of taking custody and removing children from their cruel environment. Nearly half of all Texan children killed by abuse belonged to families investigated by CPS, but the service's myopic political masters would rather leave a child in the hands of a sadistic, torturous family than have a child raised by a gay couple in a safe and nurturing home.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/24/america-child-abuse-epidemic

[villager]

1. America hates its children -- that's resoundingly obvious from its budget priorities

n/t

[Turbineguy]

2. Life

in a Republican Paradise.

It's hell for most.

[BanzaiBonnie]

3. Whenever the conservatives point out their strengths

I say, they're lying. That they support family values is one of the lies.

[valerief]

4. It's a toilet of a nation with nothing more than a facade of bullshit. nt

[bhikkhu]

5. A police officer told me there is no such thing as child abuse without alcohol or drugs

...or in his entire career (and my town is apparently a bad one for child abuse) and in the careers of everyone he works with, every sigle child abuse incident he had to deal with involved parents who were drinking habitually, almost always they were smokers, and slightly less often there were other forms of substance abuse as well.

Not that the substances are all to blame - they are choices in themselves...but I quit drinking and smoking years ago myself, and definitely there is an improvement in mental faculties and conscious discipline. I think there are many people who would read the article and wish they could do something - and stopping smoking, drinking, and drug use is something that could be done.

[Demeter]

6. Would that that were true

He just never got to see the middle class child abuse cases....nor the "elite" ones.

[Hestia]

7. This is the outgrowth of denying abortion coverage through medicaid which stopped

in 1977 when Carter approved it. What else do we expect when we force women to clearly have children they do not want? Who are spawned by men who will not take care of them? Who have no where to turn when they need help? And then to deny comprehensive birth control?

Back in the mid-80s I subscribed to a socialist newsletter which covered this very topic. When girls/women had an abortion through medicaid they usually did not become pregnant again, went to college, became highly paid employees, married when ready and especially had children when ready.

When this option was taken away from women who were pregnant and forced to "care" for a child they resented, forced to take a pittance from AIDC, life becomes a grinding mill. They are thrown to the wolves and their own devices, which seems to be to the same unrelenting cycle - have a child, get a check, take up with some loser, have a child, get a check.

I watched HBO's Central High School 50 years later and was struck with the envy black girls had against the white girls, yes they said that, that the white girls didn't have to go home and take care of a child and was able to study and do extracurricular activies. They talked to a 15 y/o and her mother who had the daughter at 15 y/o. Neither saw anything wrong in the fact that they were both 15 having a child!