Stories that Needed to be Heard

The next class on our list was about different behaviors children will have because of the abuse or neglect. This was a class that I wish no human would have to go thru. The class revolved around hearing horror story after horror story about children that were put in horrible situations by their own family members. The entire class made me view the world differently....it jaded me even more than I thought it could. To know there were adults out there hurting children in this way made me wonder how our society got so evil. Where had we gone wrong that we needed to hurt children?

The first story was about a child that was brought into a foster home and she would take food and water and hide it in her room. The foster mother figured it out because of the smell that was coming out of the room from the food roting. When the foster mother asked her why she took the food the little girl lied and said she hadn't taken anything that it must have been one of the other kids in the home that left it there. The foster mother let her lie about not taking the food because she knew the child's history but as they started to clean out the food from underneath the bed they found bags and bags of bread, cheese, glasses of water and cookies. The child had been deprived of food and water as a way of discipline. She never knew when she would be able to eat or drink again when she lived with her biological family. When they first brought her into the foster home the child would eat until she literally vomited at the table because she didn't know when or how to stop. She took the food from the foster family even tho she was being fed as much as she wanted or needed because she wasn't sure when they would "stop" feeding her. The foster family had to come up with ways to teach this child that she could eat whenever she felt like she was thirsty or hungry. And they had to build her trust so she knew that the food and water wouldn't go away. They gave her a water bottle that she could carry with her and she could fill it whenever she needed to and they always made sure she had healthy snacks with her name on them in her back pack or in the cupboard. It took them a year and half before she stopped hoarding food. It is hard to imagine a child in this country going hungry but even worse to know the child was hungry not because mommy and daddy didn't have money but because they chose not to feed her.

The same year we were taking these classes the biggest children's sex ring operation in town had been busted up by the police. When they figured out who the ring leader was in this operation they figured out he had a 5 year old daughter. In talking to the little girl she began to tell them the stories of her up bringing and how ever since she was two her daddy would sell her for 5 dollars and she had to be a good little girl and let the men do bad things to her. I couldn't imagine hearing these words from a 5 year old's mouth. As a social worker hearing this how could you keep it together and not just want to kill that father? Social services soon came to figure out that it was one man that had approached the father about selling his little girl and he needed the income so he took the pedophile up on his offer. When the father figured out how much money he could make off giving this child to pedophiles he started his own business of selling her and the progressively got other children in on the operation. The terror this child must have gone thru because her daddy was sick minded. She will never be able to overcome the abuse she will just learn how to live life after what she has been thru.

There were many stories we heard that day. From babies that were never touched and never learned to bond to children that were made to sit in boiling water for peeing their pants at age 4. All of them just as heart wrenching as you would imagine. At one point I was so nauseated that children were being treated this way I left the room so I could take a break from the details.

The purpose of this training was to have us hear the terrible stories to bring to light what social services deals with daily. And also to see if we could handle what we were hearing as a group. They told you the worst of the worst to see if you could stomach what you heard. These stories weren't Law and Order Episodes they were true life stories of children being tortured. We weren't listening to stories of children in third world countries that didn't have a government that watched out for their needs. We were listening to stories of children in the United States of America.....

The statistics show that 4 children die everyday as a result of child abuse in the United States. An estimated 906,000 children are victim of abuse or neglect every year and children ages 0-3 are more likely to be abused because they can't tell anyone.

Who is watching out for these children was all I could think about? It wasn't their parents...usually one or both of the parents is the abuser. How were we letting this happen? But more importantly what could my husband and I do to help one child not have to live like this?