As with many of our nation’s most maddening and perplexing social problems, one hardly knows how to fathom the egregious wrongs that occur when a child is abused. Physically, mentally, sexually, neglectfully. Beaten, demeaned, raped, deprived.
So pervasive is the problem of child abuse, so multi-pronged are its causes and effects, that the first tendencies are to declare it unsolvable, to deny its existence and to turn our heads. Even after decades of raised awareness about what use to be an unspoken-of crime, our society too often takes the easiest way out.
Fortunately, as our Lisa Trigg reported to you in last Sunday’s Tribune-Star, local police and local workers in the Indiana Department of Child Services — commonly known as DCS — show every evidence that they are working together with mutual professional respect in our community to help the victims of abuse and curb the occurrence of this crime against humanity. As Terre Haute Police Detective Rick Decker said: “What’s nice about working with DCS,” he said of its director, Pamela Connelly, and her staff, “is I can work on the criminal end of it, and know that DCS will take care of the other end of it. We have an excellent working relationship with DCS.”
That approach would seem to deal with the crime and punishment, but also the personal damage to both victim and victimizer.
Child abuse seems often to be generational: Parents who were abused as children themselves can become abusers. A goal, we are sure, is to break the cycle — to keep the victim from becoming an abuser and, if possible, to keep the perpetrator from repeating the crime, to punish and reform the offender and re-orient the victim to see that a life of abuse is abnormal and avoidable. And that there is recovery.
That, we are sure, is very hard work at both the police and social agency levels. The work must be discouraging in its daily recurrence that would shock the rest of us if we encountered it just once in lifetime. Yet, Decker said the reason he doesn’t get burned out is “that these kids are true victims.”
Our community is well-served by police and social agencies that are so attuned to child abuse and that are working hard to reduce its effects.
It also is well-served by several nonprofit agencies that deal with the child abuse issue, preventatively, as a specialist in the topic addresses in a letter in today’s Readers’ Forum.
April was Child Abuse Prevention Month, but it is a problem every month — weekends, holidays and vacations. It demands our community’s continued attention, awareness and action.
And action is a legal requirement — yes, requirement. Any Indiana resident who knows or suspects that a child is being abused must report it to police or to a hotline: 1-800-800-5556.
No matter the causes that lead to child abuse — drug use, alcoholism, lack of parenting skills, poor examples, unemployment, depression — none can be seen as justifiable excuses.
These are valuable young lives that are being damaged, or worse, wasted.
We can’t turn our heads.
Editorials
EDITORIAL: Fight against child abuse demands ongoing attention
Collaboration best way to help victims
- Editorials
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EDITORIAL: Waging the ‘readiness’ campaign
Almost every Hoosier who starts college intends to finish. Unfortunately, those who arrive on campus unprepared in key academic areas are far less likely to fulfill that aspiration.
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EDITORIAL: Insult to an independent press
Distrust of government secrecy has been elevated to an exceptional level with the disclosure the Justice Department covertly examined two months of Associated Press phone records to determine who leaked details to the AP about a foiled terrorist plot.
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news: Dashing finish for the Sycamores
It’s always thrilling to see Indiana State University’s athletic teams do well in high-level competition, and two specific teams rose to impressive heights last weekend in the Missouri Valley Conference outdoor track and field championships.
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EDITORIAL: Better monitoring needed to prevent local environmental messes
The nasty, hazardous messes lurking in the community raise a bottom-line, red-flag question. Could these environmental problems have been monitored and, thus, prevented?
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EDITORIAL: Memo to U.S.A.: You can ‘SPPRAK’ just as we do in Vigo County
Our kids, truly, are ‘Making a Difference’
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Some words in praise of boring government — Indiana’s
A conservative Republican governor has super majorities in both branches of the legislature. One might suspect such one-party government leads to major changes in public policy. This did not happen in 2013 in Indiana.
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EDITORIAL: Doc’s prescient prescription
Viewed through a 2013 prism, Doc Bowen’s response to the AIDS epidemic looks merely prudent, routine.
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EDITORIAL: Education remains worth the cost
Within the next few weeks, each of the local colleges will have conducted graduation ceremonies. A few days later, a different Class of 2013 will don caps and gowns for commencement — the seniors at five Vigo County high schools. It is still a smart, worthy aspiration for those high school grads to replicate the achievement of those college students by earning a higher-education degree.
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EDITORIAL: Good news for downtown
For decades, it seems, downtown Terre Haute has been in the throes of change
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EDITORIAL: Overall, state budget step in the right direction
For average Hoosiers uninterested in political point-scoring, the budget crafted by the Indiana Legislature inspires only muted, if any, fanfare.
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EDITORIAL: The lessons of organ donation
The range of emotion surrounding life-saving transplantation of a vital organ is extreme. It is the ultimate “good news-bad news” scenario.
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READERS’ FORUM: April 26, 2013
• Pence’s tax cuts benefit wealthiest
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news
This does not qualify as a surprise in any way. But the Wabash Valley’s response to widespread flooding of recent days has been nothing short of impressive, even inspirational.
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EDITORIAL: Still waiting for the jobs reward
The forces in control of Indiana government for most of the past decade need to show some results to Hoosiers in one primary category.
Good-paying jobs. -
MARK BENNETT: Littered with irony: Why do people callously discard their trash, and who are they?
Though they aren’t acknowledged by the U.S. Census Bureau, there are basically two demographic groups of people … Those who would dump their old toilet on the banks of the Wabash River or a rural roadside. And those who wouldn’t.
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EDITORIAL: Doing the dirty work to clean up tossed trash
A first-of-its-kind, coast-to-coast project to remove litter from U.S. roadsides brought the Pick Up America crew through the Wabash Valley two years ago.
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EDITORIAL: Keep school security a local issue
The decision to provide armed security inside a schoolhouse should be made locally.
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news
Indiana’s parks need your help.
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EDITORIAL: The return of terror
Emotions today remain strong and raw in wake of Monday’s terror bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
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EDITORIAL: A solution to distracted driving … stop it … now
You’ve got to stop. You know you do it. It’s a miracle you haven’t caused a tragedy already.
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EDITORIAL: ‘Women of Influence’: 2013 selectees have given much to their communities
For the second year, United Way of the Wabash Valley has teamed up with local sponsors to select and honor a group of women who have made outstanding contributions to their communities, professions and families.
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news: A new honor for our veterans
A commendation goes out today to state Rep. Clyde Kersey, a Terre Haute Democrat who led the charge this week in the Indiana House of Representatives to pay tribute to the nation’s Purple Heart recipients.
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EDITORIAL: Shifting view on marriage
One could argue, as many have, that Sen. Joe Donnelly did the right thing last week when he dropped his support of government-sanctioned opposition to same-sex marriage. It wasn’t a radical move, considering most Democrats have now made the switch.
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MAX JONES: The American Newspaper: Changing? Yes. Dying? No way!
It happened again this past January when all those “looking at the year ahead” stories started popping up on Internet “news” websites and broadcast “news” programs. Under a provocative headline reading something like “Five industries/businesses doomed to tank in the coming year,” there it was, a prediction based on an unsubstantiated “expert” analysis that the newspaper industry will continue in 2013 to suffer its slide into oblivion.
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EDITORIAL: A chance to change our bad cultural habits
The sight of diligent, eager young people dragging trash out of the Wabash River wetlands is both inspiring and sad.
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EDITORIAL: Maintaining high standards
Standards
It’s the raging buzzword in education circles these days. Everyone insists that higher standards must be met. Anything less is, doggone it, unacceptable. -
Noteworthy in the news
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EDITORIAL: Crack down on dumpers
There is a reason it’s called “illegal” dumping. It’s against the law. And there is a very good reason illegal dumping is against the law.
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Season of Day 2s arrives
Calendars in Cincinnati contain one extra holiday — Opening Day, traditionally the first Monday in April.
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Congress fails to recognize problem of education costs
Who hasn’t gotten this message yet? The cost of a college degree has become unaffordable for a wide swath of middle-class America.
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