Sequim Gazette Editorial and Letters to the Editor

I love to write about child abuse.

It feels so good when I stop.

Child abuse -- be it emotional, physical or sexual - turns the child/parent relationship inside out. The adult to whom the child looks for protection instead delivers pain or perversion.

I was not abused as a child, but I've suffered from it nonetheless. Child abuse affects not only the children but the innocent persons whose lives become interwoven with them.

I'd never imagined that an adult male would sexually molest a toddler until my wife and I tried to adopt a 5-year-old girl I'll call Jackie.

Jackie had been removed from her mother's care in California because the mother's boyfriend had abused her. Authorities placed her with her grandfather and step-grandmother who lived not far from us in Snohomish County.

What Washington's Department of Social and Health Services didn't know was that the grandfather began molesting Jackie on "fishing trips" they'd take in his camper.

Jackie, now our foster child, proved to be a difficult girl who tried hard to make herself unlovable. She also showed a strange fear of police officers, going rigid with fright when she met one on the street or when a patrol car followed us on a drive around town.

As we discovered, Jackie's grandfather had promised to send her to jail if she ever disclosed the nature of those "fishing trips."

Eventually, my wife and I - with the concurrence of our caseworker - decided that Jackie needed a home where she'd have siblings. She was placed with a larger family who lived in the Cascade Mountain foothills. The last we heard, she was doing well.

I can't recall a sadder sight than Jackie waving goodbye to me from the back of the caseworker's car as she was driven away.

It took years for us to gather the courage to try adoption again. This time, we took in a 3-year-old girl who, like Jackie, had been removed from her mother.

That hadn't happened, however, until the girl I'll call

Laura twice had been hospitalized for malnutrition and failure to thrive. Laura's case notes revealed that her mother had taken drugs while she carried her daughter and while she breast fed her - a whole new definition for a witch's brew.

Laura didn't reach a safe environment until her mother was arrested for forging checks to support her addiction. The mother told authorities her daughter was in a rundown

motel with some "friends."

As authorities drove into the motel parking lot, a band of motorcyclists rode away. Child Protective Services workers found Laura in a motel room.

Her arm was broken and cigarettes had been used to burn her feet.

Despite her history, we adopted Laura, hoping that love and a stable home could reverse the physical and emotional trauma she had suffered.

But by the time Laura was 5, she had twice tried to kill herself.

And, yes, they were serious attempts.

Laura continued trying to harm herself - and others. As her brain disorder deepened, despite a succession of therapists and multiple medications, she dropped out of high school and ran away to live on the streets of Corpus Christi, Texas, where we lived.

Bouncing in and out of homeless shelters, she had one daughter and returned to live with us. She married a man who proved to be addicted to crack cocaine. Nonetheless, she had another daughter and a son by him.

My wife, Dana, and I eventually left Texas and traveled to Clallam County. Laura divorced her husband who, at least, never had harmed the children.

That was left to a boyfriend whom Laura found molesting her oldest daughter - age 3.

Dana and I returned to Texas twice, once to remove our granddaughters, once to remove our grandson, from the foster homes where they'd been placed.

While the girls were living with us, Dana found the elder daughter molesting the younger one - just as she said she'd been molested.

All three children now have been adopted and their parents have moved to another state.

Laura, still in Texas, continues cycling between periods of stability and of emotional chaos. She's been in and out of the hospital and in and out of the jail.

And Dana and I? Well, we try hard to salvage the few happy memories of caring for these tortured children.

Today is the first day of National Child Abuse Prevention Month.

I usually don't make much of the calendar of causes. For this month, I make an exception.

In times of economic stress, people's worst behaviors

grow and authorities are bracing for spikes in their caseloads even as public and private sources of revenue are shrinking.

Last Thursday, law enforcement agencies, pediatricians and abuse fighters released a report from the crime-prevention group Fight Crime: Invest in Kids Washington.

It said Children's Hospital and Harborview Medical Center in Seattle treated 35 cases of serious head trauma to children in 2008, compared to nine cases in 2007. Spokane's Sacred Heart reported a similar trend - 40 nonaccidental trauma cases in 2008 compared to 22 cases in 2007.

The officials urged an increase in voluntary visits to the homes of pregnant women and new parents.

However, Gov. Chris Gregoire's proposed 2009-2011 budget eliminated funding for such programs, despite evidence of its success.

If any of this has moved you, please call or write your legislator to urge that those funds be restored - even raised.

Contribute to Healthy Families of Clallam County and/or to First Step Family Support Center, both of which do their best to fight abuse -- and to help heal its victims.

If you know of a child who remains with his or her abuser, call the police, the sheriff or Child Protective Services.

And if you have great amounts of love and courage, consider becoming a foster parent or a respite foster parent to give full-time foster parents a much-needed break.

Do whatever is in your power to end the terror and trauma for children who have been betrayed by the very people who are supposed to love and nurture them.

There now. I can stop writing about child abuse.

So why won't the pain go away?



Jim Casey is editor of the Sequim Gazette.