Katie Rucke
“I was 9 years old when it happened. I was over my dad’s house in Nashua [N.H.]. My dad was at work at this time, so it was just me, my sister, stepmom and her son and my stepmom’s dad. My sister and I were in the kitchen getting something to drink when all of a sudden my stepmom’s dad came into the kitchen and stood behind me. I didn’t think much of it at first, but then I felt something rubbing against my butt.
“I thought I was just imagining things … I went into the computer room with my stepmom’s son while my sister went into the family room with my stepmom. Shortly after, my stepmom’s dad came into the computer room. I had her son on my lap, he was 4 years old. My stepmom’s dad came behind me and started rubbing my chest. He was smirking and laughing and kept saying to me, ‘Do you like it?’ I was confused at first because I didn’t know what he meant or why he was doing it, especially because his grandson was in the room.
“After he was done rubbing my chest, he grabbed my hand and placed my hand on his private area. When that happened, my eyes got really big. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. I looked up at him and all he did was put his finger over his mouth and told me to ‘Shh.’”
Stories of child abuse like the one above from Melanie, now 16 years old, are unfortunately too commonplace in the United States, which is why since 1983, the month of April has been used to raise awareness and prevent child abuse in all of its forms: sexual abuse, physical abuse emotional abuse and neglect.
According to a report on child maltreatment from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families and Children’s Bureau, it was estimated that in the fiscal year 2011, there were an estimated 676,596 victims of child abuse across the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
A majority of those cases are believed to have been preventable if community programs and systems had been in place, which is why groups like Prevent Child Abuse Minnesota work to educate the public on early childhood development, provide parental support and maternal mental health.
Prevalence
A report from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), found there are more than 3 million reports of child maltreatment by state and local agencies each year, which equates to about six reports every minute, with neglect being the most prevalent form of child abuse.
Becky Dale is the chief operating officer of Prevent Child Abuse Minnesota (PCA-MN). She said child abuse is a very big issue and shared that there are reports of just under 5,000 children a year in Minnesota alone who experience child abuse.
What constitutes abuse? Dale says the definition varies and in Minnesota, the decision to investigate a case is a county-based decision. In short, different counties have different standards. While Minnesota had 5,000 confirmed cases of child abuse last year, the state received many more reports.
Dale says parents who are separated from one another often call authorities and report abuse when the decision on what’s good for the child differs. “A common example is one parent is concerned about the child sleeping in bed with the other parent.” While many of these concerned parents are not alleging any sexual abuse or inappropriate touching, a report from a parent that sleeping in the same bed with a child is inappropriate and counts as a report of child abuse.
Because of the frequency of reports like this, Dale says it’s not entirely known whether child abuse is more prevalent now than it was before.
What’s most concerning for advocates like Dale is that the prevalence of child abuse only tells a small piece of the picture. “We have great data that shows that adverse experiences in child abuse, as well as neglect, are linked to lifelong and community challenges,” she says.
Dale gave a few examples, saying that children who are abused are more likely to have adult onset diabetes, heart disease, poor work performance and are prone to drug and alcohol abuse.
Adverse experiences like child abuse affect a large portion of the population, with 56 percent of adults reporting at least one negative life event. After a traumatic experience, the brain adapts to a dangerous environment, Dale says. This means that survivors of abuse are often constantly on guard, even when they encounter a peaceful, safe environment.
Protecting children
For Melanie, who was sexually abused by her step-grandfather, her abuse stopped almost immediately since she told her father what happened. She says that after her step-grandfather put her hand on his penis, she began to cry and left the room. Eventually her stepmother called Melanie’s father, who asked Melanie why she was crying.
Melanie says she wasn’t able to tell her father or anyone what had happened until her father “spoke the magic words and asked, ‘Did somebody touch you?’
“He asked me who and I told him. He told me to give the phone back to my stepmom and he told my stepmom what I told him. She was so furious. She thought I was lying … She called [my step-grandfather] down and asked him if what he did was true and he shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Pft, no’ and began to walk away.
“I didn’t tell my mom anything until [I was in] fifth grade. When she found out I saw her cry and I felt it was my fault. Till this day I have not seen that man who molested me. I was told he had to move back to Dominican Republic and he could never step foot in the U.S. again.
Melanie is now 16 but is still suffering from the emotional pain. Other survivors like Ron not only suffer from the emotional pain of their abuse, but also the physical repercussions.
Ron was just a small child when his abuse started. Asphyxiation had become a regular part of his bath time routine, with his mother holding a bath towel over his mouth until he screamed that he couldn’t breathe — she’d let go, but then do it again.
“She’d do it over and over, for what felt like hundreds of times,” Ron said. Soon, asphyxiation became a regular part of Ron’s daily life. His mother attached a padlock on his bedroom door and would keep him locked in his room for hours.
“I’d be locked in there so long, eventually I’d have to relieve myself on the burgundy carpet,” he said.
“If we wet the bed, she’d hit us with a closed fist and kick us out of the house in the middle of the night,” he said.
Eventually, Ron was taken in by various family members because “his mom doesn’t want him around” — a statement he knew and heard repeated over and over again by those around him. But since his aunts and uncles had their own children to take care, Ron found himself back at his parents house. When Ron was 13, he moved in with his 20-year-old cousin.
Ron shared that a friend of his cousin worked at a gas station across the street from Ron’s apartment and was often at their house. At 300 pounds, the friend dwarfed young Ron and consistently bullied him, and would sometimes touch his genitals. Ron recalled sitting on the couch in his apartment and his cousin’s friend came in, pulled down his pants and put his buttocks on Ron’s face.
“Do you know what that does to a child? To have that happen in the place that they are supposed to call ‘home?’” Ron said.
Then one day after stopping by the gas station, his cousin’s 300-pound friend threw Ron on the concrete floor. Ron’s cousin pulled down Ron’s pants and spread Ron’s ankles, while his 300-pound friend sodomized Ron with an air hose that was intended to fill car tires.
Blood spewed out of Ron’s mouth when the trigger of the air hose was pulled. His gallbladder and appendix were so severely damaged they had to be removed and doctors said they were amazed that he even survived such a horrific event.
“I should be dead now from the things that were done to me. I truly believe it is because of God that I am still here,” said Ron, who know suffers from many health problems following this incident, and shared that he now has to wear adult diapers during any strenuous activity.
Ending the abuse cycle
What Ron experienced may have been avoided had he been able to get help. Dale agrees.
“Thirty years ago the big effort was to get people to talk about [child abuse],” she says. “Now there is a fair amount of research in how do we talk about it.”
Ron believes that the key to ending abuse is telling someone. “I know it’s very hard when you’re being abused to trust someone. Are they going to call my mother and father to verify what I’m telling them?”
Ron’s family knew what was happening to him, but nothing was ever done for fear that they would get their own family in trouble. Because of this very situation, Ron suggests reaching out to someone you trust outside of the family for help, like a police officer, a teacher or a firefighter. “Once people know what is happening, something can be done to stop it.”
He also has advice for those that, like him, have gone through abuse and trauma: “Get help. I held it in for so long, but finally started to tell people my story.”
Dale says thanks to the prevalence of child abuse stories in the media, many cases are reported on, but says now the challenge is helping people overcome the feeling that there is nothing they can about the abuse or neglect.
To break the cyclical cycle of abuse, Dale says we have to be willing to help abusers. She shared that after a high-profile abuse case, one of her co-workers, a child abuse survivor, was outraged that someone could abuse their own child.
“We are conditioned to punish,” Dale said. She shared that since human beings are conditioned to want to punish, we respond to stories of abuse by asking what’s wrong with the abuser.
“We need to shift from ‘what’s wrong with them’ to ‘what happened to them,’” Dale said. While Dale is not saying that abusers get off scot-free for their actions, she says many abusers were abuse victims themselves.
“The more we can start to think what happened and open ourselves to hearing peoples desire for help – not everyone’s there – need to protect the children — no matter what they’ve done we have to be open to that.
“When children are abused we have a great deal of empathy and concern. When they grown into adults we lose that empathy and concern,” Dale said, even though it’s the same child.
“Hurting people hurt people. People who are healing, help others heal,” Dale said.
Another tactic PCA-MN believes will help lessen child abuse is parental knowledge, including things parents can do to ensure they can be the parent they want to be.
Sharing her own experience as a parent, Dale says learning what was normal child behavior helped her and her family.
Dale says when her son was in kindergarten he refused to sit at the table. “As a parent you feel it’s your job to teach your kids to do something,” Dale said, but when they don’t you may an “emotional reaction, such as ‘why can’t I get my kid to behave?’”
When a child fails to listen to a parent, Dale says many parents stress about what other people will think when they are out in public. Dale’s situation with her child didn’t escalate into abuse, but she says she may not have handled trying to get her son to sit at the table in the best way because she wasn’t well-versed in normal behaviors of a 5-year-old.
At a conference with her son’s kindergarten teacher, Dale received information about normal development stages of children. Under the age of 5 category, Dale says she noticed it said “rarely sits or sits sideways.” It was that moment that dale realized that her son was going through a normal part of the development process.