Assignment 16: Anne Nombe

For us high schoolers, our day-to-day life often feels like an endless cycle. We wake up on school mornings. We get ready and come to school. We go to sports or to clubs or to theater or to band, and when we get home, the best of us, at least, ignore the heap of homework we told ourselves we'd do that night. We push it to tomorrow morning and go to bed, ending our day. Or so we thought, then we get a text at 11:30 asking us about the physics we thought was due tomorrow but is actually due at 11:59 that night. It doesn't surprise us since we're used to dealing with this kind of stress. Because of all this, we tell ourselves we hate our continuous circle of a "cycle," but it really isn't so bad. Not compared to others. 

For example, let's talk about a certain cycle that affects a certain group of people in our society. These individuals, they wake up and get themselves ready. They probably go to public school, then come directly home, having no after school activities to partake in. No homework piles up on their desks. Sounds like a pretty good "cycle" right? Better than ours at least. 

But what if I told you that that isn't it? What if I told you that one part to this cycle, one dark, twisted part is obscured from the public's eyes? These individuals don't just live happy, work-free lives with stress-free cycles. The worst part of their cycle doesn't revolve school. It revolves around the treatment they receive at home. It circles around the abuse, the battery, and the neglect. Yes, this is what finishes the cycle of a child in an abusive household. 

In the fall of 2015, this cycle of child abuse came to an end for a 7-year-old boy in Kansas named Adrian Jones. After months of being forced to stand outside in the cold in only his t-shirt and jeans, being forced to rummage through his own trashcans for food, and being forced to stand in his parents' filthy pool overnight, all while they documented his torture, everything revolving around Adrian's abuse came to a stop. Why? Because his parents had abused to the point of death. And when they were done, they fed his remains to pigs. 

Unfortunately, Adrian's story isn't the only one of such cruel, inhuman treatment of children. Take the case of Alize Vicks. She was only 2 years old when her foster mother ended her life by throwing her 5 feet, head-first, into a coffee table. Both stories are clearly connected by extreme neglect and abuse, but also by the lack of action. In both Adrian and Alize's stories, the most shocking, pitiful fact is that some had actually seen the abuse and alerted child protective services in the state. The outcome: no help for Adrian or for Alize from the organizations that are supposed to save children like them. 

The story of these two children, whose miserable day to day lives were terminated by death instead of by CPS, is becoming much too common. NPR's National Desk Correspondent Pam Fessler reported that approximately 1,500 child abuse victims died in 2013. In 2015, the Child Welfare Information Gateway, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found that this number increased to 1,670. The Child Welfare Information Gateway equated this to the death of five children every day. Five children who could have grown up to make incredible contributions to our nation, had they been rescued from their violent cycles. 

I'm sure you didn't know any of this before I relayed the facts to you. And that is one of the largest problems with child abuse cases. They simply do not get enough coverage to the public or care from the government to force a change in the child protective system. While "major news"-worthy topics such as tax plans and Donald Trump's tweets run rampant through our headlines, child abuse fails to make the front page. This lack of awareness can be deadly. For instance, the Lexington Herald Leader found that in our state of Kentucky, cases of child neglect have increased from roughly 10,000 cases in 2012 to over 15,000 in 2016. 334 of these cases have resulted, or nearly resulted in death. Yet many Kentuckians don't even know these overwhelming statistics, because they are pushed aside for more "newsworthy topics and policies". In the words of Louisville State Representative Tom Burch, our state will "pass legislation against abortion all day long, but once the babies are born, they’re on their own." 

So victims of child abuse don't make the headlines. They have Child Protective Services to rely on, right? No. While that should be the case, programs such as the Department of Children and Families and other child welfare groups often fail to act upon serious child abuse cases, such as in the case of Adrian Jones. The boy's biological mother and her family had reached out to the Kansas DCF numerous times, and Adrian's trauma was even documented by doctors, yet none did anything to save him from his inevitable death. These child welfare programs, as stated by the Denver Post, are often times disjointed, as the case in Colorado. Colorado social work is determined by county, and because of this, "state officials cannot pinpoint the average workload of caseworkers, and cannot fire or discipline a county employee". The flawed system failed to protect young Alize Vicks when neighbors called to warn CPS because the social workers didn't follow through with child welfare protocol. Even though they knew of her situation, the social workers deemed it not serious enough for intervention until she was found dead. 

Both the lack of awareness from the public and the ineffectiveness of child rescue organizations are dangerous factors that when combined, often result in the loss of a young life. 

These factors are always combined. 

It’s time to fix the problems with child welfare. I know I spent a lot of time detailing the problems with CPS, and though I may have led you to believe that the poor work done by social services is why cases of child abuse continue to grow in severity, it’s not entirely true. It’s not just the duty of the state to protect children, but the duty of our citizens and schools as well. We need to teach our children more aware of child welfare policies, and to encourage them to speak up when they feel unsafe at home. “Screening” or pushing away calls of child abuse, should be eliminated, as half the children in 2007 who died due to neglect were "screened calls". We need skilled, responsible social workers to respond to every possible instance of abuse that gets called in rather than dismissing a case because it doesn't sound imperative. We could do this a number of ways, but I believe the best action is to have our Congress pass new legislation that instills child welfare education in schools and establishes new, national requirements and tests for state social workers. Through all of this, even though child abuse may not get a bigger spot in the daily news, we can do our best to end these perilous cycles of abuse through working harder as a country to save child victims rather than allowing death to do it for them. 

Page BreakWorks Cited 

Blewett, Kate, and Brian Woods. Innocents Lost. Innocents Lost (Child Neglect Documentary) - Real Stories, True Vision, 1998, www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWLVyi7Fv48. 

Cheves, John. “Child Abuse and Neglect up 55 Percent in Kentucky since 2012.” Lexington Herald Leader [Lexington], 3 Feb. 2017, www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article130535059.html. 

“Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities 2015: Statistics and Interventions.” Numbers and Trends, 2017, www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/fatality.pdf. 

Fessler, Pam. “Child Abuse And Neglect Laws Aren't Being Enforced, Report Finds.” NPR, National Public Radio, 27 Jan. 2015, www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/27/381636056/child-abuse-and-neglect-laws-arent-being-enforced-report-finds. 

Osher, Christopher N, et al. “Abused Children’s Cries for Help Were Ignored.” The Denver Post, www.denverpost.com/2012/11/10/abused-childrens-cries-for-help-were-ignored-2/. 

Schmidt, Samantha. “Boy, 7, Was Tortured to Death and Fed to Pigs. State Agencies Failed Him, Says Lawsuit.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 1 Sept. 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/09/01/boy-7-was-tortured-to-death-and-fed-to-pigs-state-agencies-failed-him-says-lawsuit/?utm_term. 

Skeen, Sarah, and Mark Tomlinson. “A Public Health Approach to Preventing Child Abuse in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Call for Action.” International Journal of Psychology, vol. 48, no. 2, 2013, pp. 108–116., doi:10.1080/00207594.2012.737467. 

YouTube, NBC, 1970, www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbEkt66OjEA.