[Mb-civic] Children in Torment By BOB HERBERT

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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March 9, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Children in Torment
By BOB HERBERT

Two little boys ‹ toddlers in Yonkers ‹ died horrible deaths last July when
they were left alone in a bathroom with scalding water running in the tub.
The water overflowed and flooded the room. The children, in agony, were
unable to escape as the water burned and blistered their feet and ankles and
kept on rising. One of the boys struggled to save himself by standing on his
toes, but to no avail.

Authorities said that when the boys were found, they were lying face up in
the water on the bathroom floor, their bodies all but completely scorched.
They had burned to death.

The boys ‹ one was nearly three years old and the other 20 months ‹ had been
left in the bathroom (which had a damaged door that was difficult to open)
by David Maldonado, the live-in boyfriend of the boys' mother. Police said
he was the father of one of the children.

The two adults had taken heroin. While the children suffered and died, the
grown-ups, according to the authorities, were lying in bed, lost in a deep
drug-fueled sleep. Both have pleaded guilty in connection with the deaths,
and have been imprisoned.

I've been reading (and sometimes writing) stories like this for many years.
Every few months or so, some horrifying child abuse case elbows its way onto
the front pages, and there is a general outcry: How could this have
happened? Where were the caseworkers? Lock up the monsters who did this!
Let's investigate and reform the child welfare system.

And then the story subsides and we behave as if this murderous abuse of
helpless children trapped in the torture chambers of their own homes has
somehow subsided with it. But child abuse is a hideous, widespread and
chronic problem across the country. And despite the sensational cases that
periodically grab the headlines, it doesn't get nearly enough attention.

What some adults do to the children in their care can seem like behavior
left over from the Inquisition. According to the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, nearly 1,500 children died from abuse or neglect in
2003, the latest year for which reasonably reliable statistics are
available. That's four children every day, and that estimate is probably
low. Record-keeping in some states is notoriously haphazard.

Authorities in Michigan reported the heartbreaking case of a 7-year-old,
Ricky Holland, who begged his school nurse not to send him home to his
adoptive parents. "Let me stay in school," he pleaded.

He was later beaten to death with a hammer, prosecutors said, and his bloody
body was dragged away in a garbage bag. His parents were charged with his
death.

The deaths, as horrible as they are, don't begin to convey the enormity of
the problem. In 2003, authorities were alerted to nearly three million cases
of youngsters who were alleged to have been abused or neglected, and
confirmed a million of them. The number of cases that never come to light
is, of course, anybody's guess.

What's remarkable to me is that we've been hearing about this enormously
tragic problem for so long, decades, and yet the reaction to each sickening
case that makes it into the media spotlight is shock. How many times are we
going to be shocked before serious steps are taken to alleviate the terrible
suffering and prevent the horrible deaths of as many of these children as we
can?

We know some things about child abuse and neglect. We know that there is a
profound connection between child abuse and substance abuse, for example. We
know that abuse and neglect are more likely to occur in households where
money is in short supply, especially if the caregivers are unemployed. A
crisis in the home heightens the chances that a child will be abused. And
adults who were abused as children are more likely than others to be abusers
themselves.

Child-abuse prevention programs are wholly inadequate, and child protective
services, while varying in quality from state to state, are in many
instances overwhelmed and largely unaccountable. The child protection system
has broken down ‹ or was never up and running at all ‹ in state after state
after state.

"There are no consequences to violating policy," said Marcia Robinson Lowry,
executive director of the advocacy group Children's Rights. "There are no
consequences to violating the law."

The kids who are most frequently the victims of abuse are from the lower
economic classes. They are not from families that make a habit of voting.
There is no real incentive for government officials to make the protection
of these kids a priority.

They couldn't be more alone. They are no one's natural constituency.

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