I love to write about child abuse because it feels so good when I stop.
I’m too familiar with crimes against youths who often can’t call for help while their childhoods are torn to shreds.
I wasn’t abused as a child, but I’ve fostered, adopted and grandfathered children who suffered or saw too much.
My horror stories aren’t unique. They’re old news to anyone who’s worked with abused children. But I’ll share them briefly.
My foster daughter was removed from her parents after being severely sexually abused. She was placed with her grandfather — who also abused her.
A short-term foster son was placed in our care after his former foster mother horsewhipped him — with a real horsewhip — for wetting his bed.
My adopted daughter came into care with a broken arm and cigarette burns on her feet. Largely because of the mental damage done to her, she couldn’t cope with her own daughters. Among the things they witnessed was their father smoking crack cocaine to get high.
When he came down, he beat their mother.
Now 2-year-old Roseanne and 14-month-old Lynette live with my wife and me. Those aren’t their real names. At the least, they deserve some privacy.
So when Dave Workman, spokesman for the Department of Social and Health Services, asked if I’d write about child abuse, I reluctantly said yes.
I’m not writing because April is Child Abuse Prevention Month.
For children who can’t sleep safely tonight, a month of prevention won’t be enough.
*
Enough of that. What’s the child-abuse situation in Clallam and Jefferson counties?
Growing, according to Maureen Martin, director of the Port Angeles office of Child Protective Services.
CPS filed 24 “dependencies” — allegations of abuse or neglect — in 2004, she said. With only a quarter of the year gone of 2005, it has filed 15.
“We will double, maybe triple what we did last year,” Martin said.
Children have fared better in Jefferson County, according to CPS Director Bill Nesmith. Last year his office filed five dependencies; this year, only one.
Nesmith credits a Jefferson County public health program of nurse visitation to at-risk homes for preventing abuse before it must be cured.
And “sexual abuse has just plummeted nationwide,” Martin said.
Still, more than 100 children remain in out-of-home care supervised by the Port Angeles CPS office.
An additional 20 are supervised from Forks.
Fourteen are in foster homes in Jefferson County.
Three options
The agency can follow one of three routes when it finds that abuse or neglect has occurred or the police place a child or children into CPS protective custody.
* Return the child or children to the parents.
* Get the parents to work with the agency to recover custody.
* Go to Dependency Court and take the child or children by court order.
Martin, a 21-year veteran with CPS, can’t pinpoint why a parent or caregiver would abuse a child.
“I’d be a whole lot richer if I could say, ‘This is the cause,”‘ she said.
Instead, she cites “a multitude of factors” that include isolation and poverty, lack of social support, lack of family support, hard living and family background.
“It’s a small, small number of people who intentionally harm a child,” she said.
Still, she cites one common factor in many situations: methamphetamine. It figures into 80 percent to 90 percent of cases, she said.
Martin is a member of the Clallam County adult drug court.
“Business is good,” she said.
“With methamphetamine, families fall apart quickly.”
An addict loses his or her house, job and family within six months, according to Martin.
“It’s just a wicked, wicked drug,” she said. “We’ve watched it destroy adults before our eyes, physically destroy them, mentally destroy them.”
Domestic violence
Domestic violence is a frequent partner of meth abuse, she adds.
However, roads lead out of methamphetamine addiction, especially for abusers who seek support.
“People have to be clean and sober before you can address the other issues,” Martin said.
“Early intervention is a key as much as possible.”
Martin said abusive parents need empathy, not censure.
“It’s having empathy for those people whose doors you have to knock on,” she said.
“We are their clean-and-sober support until they can find clean-and-sober support in the community.
“We have a willingness to walk together with our clients.”
But aren’t addicts notorious backsliders?
Not necessarily, said Martin.
“It’s absolutely the last thing they want to have happen,” she said.
“Parents just feel terrible about where they are” when they find themselves in court.
Even relapsed addicts do better, she said, because they have learned where to turn for parenting skills and support. Clients receive inpatient treatment in facilities similar to halfway houses, then intensive outpatient counseling.
The children, too, get therapy from Peninsula Community Mental Health. They also receive medical and dental care.
At Evergreen Family Village in Port Angeles, parents can live up to two years while they find jobs and reassemble their lives. The village has a daycare.
The village is too small, however, said Martin. “There’s always a waiting list.”
Parents whose children have been removed from their care must undergo lengthy counseling, but the process seems to work, Martin said.
“We have a pretty high rate of returning children to their parents after years of supervision,” she said.
Of all the cases her office investigated in 2004, only 6 percent resulted in removing the child or children. Of that small share, only 1 percent became permanent.
The Port Angeles area has a network of good foster parents, Martin said.
“I feel we work really well together,” she said.
“I think the state has better screening to prepare potential foster parents for the type of child they’ll take.”
Can such children be saved from the effects of the abuse they’ve suffered?
Martin said she knows victims who have completed high school and gone on to graduate from college.
“If I didn’t believe so, I wouldn’t be able to do this job,” she said.
*
OK, I can stop writing now.
What I can’t stop are my visions of children whose memories house horrors beyond most adults’ imaginations.
All I can do is be on the lookout for signs of abuse or neglect in every child I meet. If I see such signs, I must summon CPS or police. I hope you’ll do so, too.
Just imagine the happy childhood you hope every child will have — turning to terror at the hands of that child’s own parents.
As Martin says: “It’s not a state issue. It’s a neighborhood and a family issue.”
I’d feel so good if I could stop writing about child abuse — for good.
Staff writer Jim Casey can be reached by e-mail at jim.casey@peninsuladailynews.com.