If not the faith community, then who will care for children harmed by violence?  If not now, when should faith communities take responsibility for the fact that children suffer from so many kinds of abuse and maltreatment? Who are the persons in our society who will listen to hear the “most unheard” voices, the voices of children?  If we cannot hear their stories of pain and believe them, who will? 

Children have vivid imaginations, some would say, able to construct the most absurd stories about what is happening to them. And because hearing the truth is so distasteful to us when it involves the abuse of children, it’s just easier not to hear and let the “secrets” remain hidden. The “best” of families keep those kinds of secrets – the most prominent, the most educated, the most religious families keep those secrets. And that is why children suffer in silence.

I know that reading a list of statistics can be a boring activity, but it is important to know that when children are exposed to violence, they can suffer severe emotional and developmental consequences.

• Approximately 2 million adolescents ages 12–17 have suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—presumably stemming from violent experiences in their past..[i]

• “Preliminary research indicates that, on average, children who experience domestic violence exhibit higher levels of childhood behavioral, social, and emotional problems than children who have not witnessed such violence.”[ii]  They may experience feelings of terror, isolation, guilt, helplessness, and grief.[iii]

• The emotional consequences of viewing or hearing violent acts may be severe and long lasting. Children who witness violence often experience many of the same symptoms and lasting effects as children who are direct victims of violence.[iv]

 

Home can be a very dangerous place.

For the past three years, we have worked with one of the most heartbreaking cases of child abuse we have ever experienced, and at every turn we found ourselves fighting the “systemic abuse” of this client and his two younger brothers. When we first met John (not his real name), he was nine years old, and one of the first things he told us was this: “Why should I tell you anything? You can’t protect me. Every time I tell an adult what my dad does to me, they don’t believe me and then my dad finds out and I just get hurt more by him.”

By John, Age 11

He was right. We couldn’t protect him. In spite of advocating for him with the Judge, with child protective services, with his ad litem attorney, with his school, and even with the Governor and Attorney General of Arkansas, this child and his brothers was repeatedly placed in his father’s custody in spite of eight child abuse reports, numerous domestic violence reports, and even three felony counts of child endangerment and two other felony counts of fleeing and leaving the scene of an accident.

Don’t bother questioning the unfathomable story I have just told you. Just take my word for it: It is true; it is happening all over the United States; and it is not easily remedied.  It is called “court-ordered child abuse” and it is an issue that people of conscience need to pay attention to.  Please learn more about it at this link: http://www.batteredmotherscustodyconference.org/

Watch the two video interviews on this site and follow some of the links for additional information.  What you will learn is that people of faith need to take responsibility to speak out against the abuse of our children by the very systems that are in place to protect them.

You might be thinking that this is not an issue that people of faith can do anything about.  But it is a very real human rights violation when we take better care of our animals in this country than our children. Safe Places is literally the only organization in our state that has the courage and conviction to stand up for the children. Though our advocates were banned from the courtroom by the judge that was handling John’s case, we persisted until we accomplished two things:

1. Securing pro bono expert representation for John’s family from the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project (DV LEAP) led by Joan Meier, who is the Founder and Executive Director of DV LEAP and Professor of Clinical Law at George Washington University Law School. (http://www.dvleap.org/Home.aspx).
2. Getting the case moved from the unresponsive domestic relations court that has had jurisdiction for over two years to our juvenile court that has judges and attorneys ad litem who are trained to be more responsive to the needs of abused children.

John and his two brothers are currently in foster care – not the best place for children to be – but at least they are not with their abusive father. And at least their protective mother will now be heard and given a chance to see them after a five month separation ordered by a biased judge.

Can we legitimately call what we do ministry?  Is it a mission worthy of Alliance support?

We believe that it is definitely a mission that is not for the faint of heart and not for those who require an easy path. It is rather a mission that requires long hours and very little compensation. Our workers receive salaries that look more like stipends without any employee insurance benefits or access to retirement plans.  We can only deduce that the government entities and foundations that fun these kinds of programs still do not value the work of keeping our children safe from harm.

A colleague of mine – a prosecutor in a large city – has often said: “Take care of these children now.  Love them and protect them now. Or incarcerate them later.”

The statistics prove him right:

• Exposure to violence in the home has been found to be one of the most significant predictors of an adolescent’s later use of violence in the community.

• Children raised in violent homes are:

6 times more likely to commit suicide

26 times more likely to commit sexual assault

57 times more likely to abuse drugs

74 times more likely to commit other crimes against persons

• In general 70% of men who abuse their female partners also abuse their children.

• Being abused or neglected as a child increases the likelihood of arrest as a juvenile by 53 percent and of arrest for a violent crime as an adult by 38 percent.[v]

• On average, abused and neglected children begin committing crimes at younger ages. They also commit nearly twice as many offenses as non-abused children and are arrested more frequently.[vi]

• 85% of adult batterers watched domestic violence occur in their own home and/or experienced abuse as a child.

• Of all boys aged 11-20 who are arrested for murder, 63% have killed the man who was abusing their mother.

(Most of the preceding statistics are taken from the report of the U.S. Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services 1999 National Summit on Children Exposed to Violence.  On June 22, 1999, Attorney General Janet Reno and Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala, with the leadership of Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, brought together 150 practitioners and policymakers in a National Summit on preventing and reducing the negative impact of children’s exposure to violence.)

Jeremy and Crystal (not their real names) are 10^th grade students, both with a long history of exposure to domestic violence.  Jeremy remembers his mother being severely beaten by his father. When he tells his story, he says, “I remember those beatings from when I was real little. Then when I was in fourth grade, I got hurt one time trying to get him to stop.”

Jeremy spends most of his days in our Judicial District’s Juvenile Detention Center. The word that best describes Jeremy is “enraged.”  His behaviors arise directly out of that rage. His mother asks if there is any hope at all for him. She asks his teachers and school counselor. She asks his probation officer. She asks the juvenile judge and the Department of Children and Family Services caseworker. She asks again and again: “Is there hope for Jeremy?”

Crystal lives with constant depression, often feeling suicidal, and more often feeling angry. When she is able to express herself, the despair begins to lift and she is able to figure out to do with all of the anger and hatred she feels inside.

My Dad hurt my Mom all the time. But he hurt me more. It wasn’t just the beatings that he gave me. Mostly it was the sexual stuff. I really hate him. I hate him so much I wish I could kill him. I can’t kill him, so that’s when I feel like I want to hurt somebody. It don’t matter who. I just want someone else to hurt for a change, not just me all the time feeling all that crap inside me.

Crystal and Jeremy are great kids. Both of them have a great deal of potential to make a good life for themselves. Hope tells us that they will still be able to do that. Reality tells us that it won’t be easy, because each of them were exposed to violence and terror for over ten years. We are left with few solutions and many questions:

Because the violence in their homes began when they were very young, how did that terror imprint their lives?  How will that imprint affect the rest of their lives?  Do they have the inner resilience to move beyond their present circumstance?  What protective factors can we help them build for themselves?

These are questions we will continue to explore. That is what violence prevention is – sticking with a young person until the violent imprint begins to fade and they have developed the resilience they need to prevent violence in their own lives.

When a child experiences violence and abuse at a young age, some of the child’s necessary incremental and developmental milestones simply do not occur. When a child is violated, in a very real sense, that child’s boundaries are violated.  When a child is violated repeatedly over long periods of time, the child is unable to create the normal boundaries that humans instinctively create. Those boundaries are every individual’s protective shield. Boundaries, once created, last throughout life as a means of protecting the psyche from harmful invasion. Chronically abused children do not develop adequate boundaries, and if the child is sexually or physically violated, it is likely that the child develops no boundaries at all.

“What makes you think you can change a bad kid into a good kid?”

There is strong emotion underneath that question that was asked by a fourteen year-old boy in one of our Transforming Anger classes for adolescents.  “Who said you were a bad kid?” was the immediate response. And that was just the first question our prevention educator asked. Dozens of questions followed, because questions invite exploration and personal reflection. Personal reflection is something that these high-risk children have learned not to do. It hurts too much. They are convinced that the best course of action for survival is to teach themselves not to feel anything. In reality, that is a very adaptive action to take. When a child is captive in a hurtful and dangerous environment, one of the ways the child copes is to numb the emotions. When one does not feel at all, one cannot feel pain. So a young person must first be in a safe environment to begin an emotional exploration.

That is the kind of situation we try to create in our Transforming Anger classes. We do not teach anger management classes. Rather, our philosophical premise is that a human being, particularly a child, cannot manage anger. Managing anger is an act of the will, a type of behavioral management. Our premise is that managing behavior does not necessarily result in children that are not angry. In fact, it may well be possible that a child’s efforts to manage behavior actually creates an internal rage that continuously intensifies each time the child fails to “manage” his or her behavior. Our observations of children exposed to violence clearly shown that a most children simply do not have a “will” strong enough to succeed in managing their anger. To require a child to use “strength of will” or self-control may well be setting up the child to fail, particularly if the child’s environment includes violence and abuse. A child in a violent environment has likely not developed strength of will because of the helplessness the child experienced in the environment.

With that philosophy and a great deal of research and practice with children and adolescents in crisis, we were able to move our prevention program beyond curriculum, learning objectives, pre and post testing, and all the other stuff that professionals typically rely on. We have learned that preventing violence requires much more than professional tools.

Certainly violence prevention education imparts knowledge. At times, violence prevention even changes behaviors and attitudes. But preventing violence has more to do with transformation – transforming violence, transforming a society that often provides social supports that enable violence to flourish, transforming lives, transforming families.

Transformation is the work of faith communities.

If we cannot prevent the violence or end it, perhaps we can ease it. If we cannot remove a child from an abusive environment, perhaps we can help her develop protective factors that helps her survive. If we cannot take all the hurt away from a child who had been harmed, perhaps we can make sure the child is never harmed again. If we cannot have certainty that a child will make it through violence and abuse, we can have hope. As people of faith that care for children, we must have hope. When everything else is stripped away, hope is what endures – even in the face of terror. Hope is the only thing that can possibly lead to transformation.

Victor I. Vieth, director of the National Child Protection Training Center at Winona State University, has written a paper entitled, Unto the Third Generation: A Call to End Child Abuse in the United States Within 120 Years.  His proclamation is compelling, filled with hope. There are many scoffers, to be sure, who hear his call as a wishful platitude and respond that such a thing is not possible. Vieth counters with these words:

I am not carelessly joining the throng of those who speak wistfully but insincerely about ending this nightmare. I really mean it. We can end child abuse and we can do so within the lifetimes of our great grandchildren.

 

When I say “end” child abuse I mean we can achieve the sort of victory we have in the fight against polio. There will be re-occurrences and I can think of no means to prevent rage, mental illness or other factors from always contributing at some level to the abuse and neglect of children. We can, though, end cyclical child abuse and reduce from millions to thousands the number of children victimized over the course of any decade.

As people of faith, we must always hold out hope. We must always believe that we have the ability to protect our children. From a theological perspective, I doubt if any of us are willing to say that protecting children from violence and abuse is not “God’s will.”  We may, in fact, recall some fairly troublesome words about having a millstone placed around our necks and being thrown into the depths of the sea.

We will not end violence against children if we continue to believe that it cannot happen to “our” children. We will not end violence against children if we believe the lie that it is so enormous a social problem that solving it is out of reach. We will not protect our children if we do not seriously commit ourselves to that high calling. We will not end violence and abuse of children unless we intentionally listen to children’s voices.

Safe from the Start: The National Summit on Children Exposed to Violence was a three-day meeting held in June of 1999.  For 3 days, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services (HHS), with the leadership of U.S. Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, convened 150 practitioners and policymakers to build on their commitment to a common goal, think through the problem of children exposed to violence, and create a framework for a national blueprint for action.

Conclusions from the Summit confirmed that responding to the tragedy of violence against children will require a long-term commitment and determined coordination among professionals. The Summit also cited the critical need for a comprehensive range of community service providers. This was the list generated at the summit:

• ­  police
• ­  child protection workers
• ­  school personnel
• ­  domestic violence advocates
• ­  physicians
• ­  legislators and policy makers
• ­  lawyers
• ­  therapists
• ­  judges
• ­  researchers

Where is the faith community represented? Where are the clergy and the religious educators and youth ministers? Where are the rabbis? Where are the people of faith? Is not the problem of violence and abuse among children such a severe social ill that it will require the unique perspective of the faith community to solve it?

 

The summit report emphasized that no one program has the resources or the expertise to develop an effective and comprehensive response to children and families experiencing violence. And yet, the faith community was not included on the list of critical players in the battle against child abuse and family violence. I cannot help but believe that the community of faith is an essential component in the task of protecting our children. When others have given up hope that we will ever see an end to violence, we of all people should hold out hope until we have made sure that every child is safe, nurtured, protected, and cherished.

 

This may be one of those societal battles that will require us to literally “push” ourselves in. If we are not invited to work for this mission, we should insert ourselves and assume our part of the responsibility to protect the children. If we are not already inspired and compelled to do so, perhaps we need to again hear the words of Victor Vieth:

 

“We must be dedicated to overcoming any roadblock that separates children from justice.” - Victor Vieth

Someday, somewhere, somebody will write the history of our nation’s victory over child abuse. When that history is written, may it be recorded that the beginning of the end occurred in the early part of the twenty-first century when thousands of child protection professionals [and faith leaders] from every region of the country joined forces to lead the charge.

If we act now and for the rest of our lives as a testament to the invisible attributes of faith, hope and love, a later generation may one day see with their eyes what our hearts tell us is our nation’s destiny. Child abuse will end. [vii]

May God use us to make it so.

ENDNOTES: