Suffer the Children...

I posted a hub earlier tonight about how we, as a society, are sending our kids mixed messages. How we attempt to protect them from society and then turn around and charge them as adults. How we sexualize our children at such a young age. (Ever see the show "Toddlers and Tiaras"? It makes me ill to watch even the ads for shows like this.) And then I find this story. It makes me want to cry.

I've spent a good deal of my life in the company of survivors of childhood abuse, including childhood sexual abuse. I've been trained as an intake worker for a domestic violence shelter. I've had to go to the emergency room of local hospitals to pick up women who have been beaten by their significant others. I've had to help those same women pack up their bags because they chose to go back to their abuser. (It takes most women 5-7 times to actually leave for good.) I've seen women with staples up their entire spine from being jumped on. But this story turns my stomach.

For the last five years or more, this poor girl has been subjected to repeatedly being raped by the man who was supposed to protect her from people like himself. For five years, this child has carried this burden all by herself and no one noticed. How is that even possible? How can everyone this girl had contact with be so blind as to not see signs that she was being sexually abused and raped on a regular basis? Why did it take six months into the pregnancy before anyone notice? This is an eleven-year- old girl! A girl who just started going through puberty. And no one noticed she was pregnant for six months?

We as a society have failed this child as we have failed every other child who is abused. The next time your elected officials talk about cutting budgets to social services agencies, remind him of this precious 11-year-old child who is now a mother because she fell through the cracks of an overworked, overburdened child protective service.