Pennsylvania, U.S.A. — If a child has spent the summer in an abusive or neglectful home, it may be in the first few days back at school that the tell-tale signs of abuse are most likely to emerge and be recognized, the director of training for the Pennsylvania Family Support Alliance (PFSA) says.

“It may be easier for teachers and other school employees to recognize that something was or is amiss because of the time lapse,” Tina Phillips said. “A child who has been abused or neglected over the summer may look or act dramatically different from when school ended a few months earlier. A returning child also may see school or a teacher as a safe haven and feel comfortable enough to open up.”

Teachers and other school employees are considered “mandated reporters,” which means they have a legal duty to report suspected child abuse or neglect.

“The first few weeks back at school are when teachers need to be attuned to looking for signs of abuse or neglect,” Phillips said. “They may notice behavior or physical signs that suggest abuse. Most kids are coming back from a happy, fun-filled summer, and it shows. Kids that have had a tough time will present a contrast. Teachers need to be alert.”

• Among the suggestive signs are such things as:
• Unexplained bruises, burns, broken bones, or other injuries, or obviously unaddressed medical or dental needs.
• Showing up at school early or staying late and not wanting to go home, or a fearful reaction to parents.
• Behavior that seems overly compliant, withdrawn, or passive, or aggressive behavior towards oneself or others.
• Poor hygiene or clothing that’s dirty or poorly fitted.
• Lack of interest in previously enjoyed activities such as sports, clubs, or playing an instrument.
• Demonstrating sexual knowledge or behavior not typical for the child’s age.

Phillips said the behavior of parents at parent-teacher conferences or school open house nights also can signal problems at home—such indicators as showing little or no concern for the child’s welfare, blaming the child for problems at home or school, requesting harsh discipline, conveying that a child is worthless or burdensome, making demands on a child beyond his or her developmental abilities, or rejecting offers of help for a child’s problems.

“These are some of the signs that something could be wrong—but they are by no means all inclusive,” Phillips said.

Phillips stressed that the law does not require certainty when it comes to reporting suspected child abuse or neglect. She said, “The operative word is ‘suspected.’ It’s not necessary to be absolutely sure. The only threshold is reasonable suspicion.”

She said it’s better to make a report and let Children and Youth Services conduct an investigation than it is to hold back.

Anyone can report suspected child abuse or neglect by calling ChildLine at 800-932-0313.
PFSA is a nonprofit agency that annually trains more than 8,000 professionals, including teachers, in how to recognize and report suspected child abuse.

It supported and helped win passage and enactment of Senate Bill 449, which now requires teachers and other school personnel to receive training on recognizing and reporting child abuse.

PFSA also is the Pennsylvania sponsor of The Front Porch Project, a community-based training initiative that educates the general public about how to protect children from abuse and works with more than 50 affiliate agencies across Pennsylvania to provide information, educational materials, and programs that teach and support good parenting practices.

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Washington, U.S.A. – During a briefing with Congress on Attorney General Eric Holder’s Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence, Justice Department officials and task force co-chairs Joe Torre and Robert Listenbee, Jr. described their comprehensive work since the task force launch in October 2011 and discussed lessons learned through four public hearings held across the country over the last nine months.

The task force is a key part of Attorney General Holder’s Defending Childhood initiative to address children’s exposure to violence and will present policy recommendations in a final report to the Attorney General later this year.

At the briefing, Joe Torre, a Yankee legend, executive vice president of Major League Baseball and founder of the Joe Torre Safe At Home Foundation, described the impact of witnessing abuse as a child.

“It took decades before I finally started to talk about the violence in my childhood,” Torre said. “And as the task force has heard from one person after another, things haven’t changed enough.  Every child deserves a safe home, a safe school, and a safe community.”

The task force held four hearings from November 2011 to April 2012 in Baltimore, Albuquerque, N.M.,Miami and Detroit, and heard personal testimony from 65 people from 27 states and the District of Columbia. These included survivors of violence, young people, social service providers, medical personnel, researchers, practitioners, advocates, tribal and local officials, private foundation representatives, and community residents.

“Violence hurts children across the country—whether they live in urban, rural or tribal communities,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs Mary Lou Leary. “The Department of Justice is committed to reducing this impact and identifying concrete ways to make our children and our communities safer.”

The task force is composed of 13 leading experts, including practitioners, child and family advocates, academicians and licensed clinicians.

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Harrisburg, U.S.A. — The enactment of Senate Bill 449 into law, which now requires teachers and other school personnel to be trained to recognize and report child abuse, is the culmination of nearly five years of effort by the Pennsylvania Family Support Alliance (PFSA)—an effort that began well before the Jerry Sandusky case thrust child abuse into the national spotlight.

PFSA is a statewide nonprofit agency that annually trains more than 8,000 “mandated reporters” in how to recognize and report suspected child abuse. Mandated reporters are professionals who have regular contact with children by virtue of their jobs.

“Pennsylvanians should be grateful to everyone who had a hand in bringing this to fruition—including the members of the House and Senate; Gov. Tom Corbett, who last week signed the legislation into law; and in particular state Sen. Pat Vance of Cumberland County, who got behind this measure from the very beginning,” said PFSA Executive Director Angela Liddle.

PFSA began working with Vance on legislation for required training of school personnel in November 2009.

Final passage came shortly after a series of guilty verdicts in the child sex abuse trial of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

“Obviously we are very gratified that we have finally achieved what we regard as an important milestone in protecting the children of Pennsylvania,” Liddle said, “but we also recognize that there is much more to be done.”

She said PFSA would now work to require training as part of initial and ongoing certification and licensure requirements for professions that regularly come into contact with children.

“It is sad that it took something like the Sandusky case to finally bring the needed attention to the issue of child abuse,” Liddle said. “It is now up to all of us not to let this slip back into the shadows.”

Liddle has repeatedly emphasized that training is key in making sure that vigilance against child abuse is effective. She said school personnel and other mandated reporters, such as physicians and members of the clergy, need to understand how abuse manifests itself and how to make proper reports to the authorities.

The new training law applies to personnel at public schools, charter schools, cyber schools, private schools, nonpublic schools, intermediate units and area vocational-technical schools.

It allows school employees to receive credits toward their continuing profession education requirements for taking the training. A minimum of three hours of training is required every five years.

Statistics compiled by the state Department of Public Welfare (DPW) confirm that schools are by far the largest single source of child abuse reports from mandated reporters. More than 24,000 reports of suspected child abuse were filed in Pennsylvania in 2011, according to DPW, and of those more than 3,400 were substantiated. DPW said 34 children died from abuse in Pennsylvania in 2011.

In addition to providing training for mandated reporters, PFSA is the Pennsylvania sponsor of The Front Porch Project, a community-based training initiative that educates the general public about how to protect children from abuse.

PFSA also works with more than 50 affiliate agencies across Pennsylvania to provide information, educational materials, and programs that teach and support good parenting practices.

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After twenty-one hours of deliberation the jury in the Jerry Sandusky trial found Sandusky guilty on forty-five of the remaining forty-eight counts against him. His sentencing could be over four hundred years. These guilty verdicts prove that the jury rejected the defense’s claim that the victims were lying to win money in a civil suit.

The biggest fear for the victims and their families was that Sandusky would be found innocent, according to ABC News.

Victim 1′s mother stated, “it was very hard on [my son]. Even after therapy, he doesn’t feel comfortable saying what happened to him to me.” Victim 1 was the first to come forward in this recent investigation of Sandusky. Another investigation began in 1998 but was later dropped.

The mother of Victim 1 said that her son has been seeking out counseling at the foundation “Let Go…Let Peace Come In.” According to the director of the foundation, Peter Pelullo, “what people don’t really understand is when we’re touched like that as a child… part of our brain just shuts down and we need mental help and care to connect those brain stems, which were completely burned out.”

Sandusky was found guilty of forty-five of forty-eight child molestation related charges. Originally he was charged with fifty-two but one was withdrawn by the prosecution and three were dismissed by the judge. The charges range over ten victims and fifteen years.

The jury seems to have been unconvinced by the testimony of Dottie Sandusky. She appeared as a loving and loyal wife but refused to admit that the abuse was going on.

Sandusky’s lawyers claim that they will try to appeal the verdict citing several different reasons as grounds. The defense lawyers tried to have themselves removed from the Sandusky case at one point and also claimed that they did not have enough time to prepare their case. Perhaps the only grounds that would be considered by the courts is a tape that was misleadingly edited by NBC; however, ABC News claims the video will most likely be called a harmless error.

Juror Joshua Harper stated after the trial, “I looked at him during the reading of the verdict, and the look on his face, no real emotion, just kind of accepting, you know, because he knew it was true.” After the trial the jurors heard that Matt Sandusky had come forward during their deliberations to say that he was also a victim of his adoptive father. Harper stated, “we were all basically told at the same time, we heard about it at the same time, and we were just looking at each other like we had suspected that but we had no evidence of it. It just solidified our decision.”

Now that Sandusky has been found guilty it is likely that Penn State, The Second Mile, and Sandusky will be sued by the victims and their families. During the case it was revealed that Head Coach Joe Paterno as well as Vice President Schultz at Penn State knew about Sandusky’s crimes. The only action Penn State took was to take away Sandusky’s keys to the locker room and to tell his foundation The Second Mile; no one called law enforcement.

Image Courtesy of   marsmet551

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After staying silent for more than six months Dottie Sandusky broke her silence on June 19 in defense of her husband, assistant coach for the Penn State football team Jerry Sandusky. Jerry Sandusky has been charged with forty-eight counts (four counts were dismissed) of sexual abuse with ten different victims and will serve five hundred years in prison if found guilty.

Dottie Sandusky, born Dorothy Gross, met Sandusky in Washington, Pennsylvania and the couple got married shortly thereafter in 1966. They were unable to have children of their own so they adopted six children together. She maintains her husband’s innocence and claims that she never heard or saw anything suspicious.

Paul DerOhannesian, a defense attorney from Albany, New York, claimed that Dottie Sandusky would provide, “a more favorable image of Sandusky as someone attracted to his wife, as someone who had a genuine care and interest in children, and to portray more elements of Sandusky’s life than the jury has heard.”

However, after the witness testimony from the defense many agree with experts that she may have been unaware or in denial of the abuse. Dr. Martin Finkel, a pediatrician who has worked for more than thirty years with sexually abused children, says that Dottie Sandusky could be denying her suspicions because she is afraid of the humiliation and the loss of financial security. Finkel added, “none of this stuff that happens to kids ever happens in the public arena. It always has to happen in the context of secrecy. It has to happen out of sight. The intent on the part of the perpetrator obviously is not to get caught.”

Several victims have mentioned Dottie Sandusky in their testimonies. Victim 9 claimed that he screamed for help during at least one of the abuses from Sandusky while he was in the basement of the Sandusky home. Victim 9 claims that he stayed in the Sandusky home basement around one hundred times during which time Sandusky fondled him, forced him to have oral sex, and raped him. Dottie Sandusky said that not only did she never hear anything but that the basement is not soundproofed at all and that she has good hearing, implying that Victim 9, now eighteen, is lying.

Another victim claimed that Dottie Sandusky walked in on Jerry Sandusky trying to force the victim to perform oral sex in a hotel bathroom at Alamo Bowl in San Antonio. Dottie Sandusky claims that the victim is lying and that they both were fully clothed.

After nine days of trial the jury began deliberations on June 21. Since the jury has forty-eight counts of abuse to sift through they will probably be deliberating for quite a long time.

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The grand jury in Lavaca County, Texas decided that a Texas man would not be indicted for killing Jesus Mora Flores, 47, with his bare fists after he found Flores sexually molesting his five-year-old daughter. The police, although they investigated the death as a homicide, agreed with the conclusion the grand jury made.

The father, twenty-three, is not being identified by the press to protect the identity of his daughter.

On June 9 a witness saw Flores forcibly carrying the five-year-old girl to a remote area near the family’s barn; the witness then ran to find the girl’s father. The father caught Flores in the act of sexually molesting his daughter and pulled the man off of her, beating him around the head and neck.

The father called the police to try to save the man’s life but the dispatcher could not find the remote ranch outside of Shiner, Texas. During the five minute call the man began to get more and more upset about the dispatcher not being able to find the ranch. The father, in his frustration, began cursing and yelling at the dispatcher saying, “Come on! This guy is going to die on me! I don’t know what to do!” At points the father gets so upset that it is impossible to tell what he is saying. Toward the end of the call the father says that he will put Flores in his truck and drive him to the hospital himself.

When the police arrived they found Flores with his pants and underwear down around his feet. The daughter was taken to the hospital and examined for sexual abuse. Doctors found evidence that she had been raped, corroborating the witness’ and father’s story.

Flores was not a U.S. citizen but he did hold a green card. He was working for the family, helping them with their horses.

V’Anne Huser, the father’s attorney, said that the family would never be willing to give interviews to the public. Huser also commented on the father’s character saying, “He’s a peaceable soul. He had no intention to kill anybody that day.”

The family’s neighbor Michael James Veit, 48, also commented on the man’s character stating, “[He was] just like a regular kid, went to dances, drank beer like the rest of the kids around here… never been in trouble. Never, ever. You know, I think justice is served. It’s sad a man had to die, but I think anybody would have done that.”

For Shiner, Texas, a town that had only six homicides in the last eight years, these events have been shocking. However, many understand the father’s actions. Gail Allen, a Shiner resident, stated, “The father has gone through enough. The little girl is going to be traumatized for life, and the father, too, for what happened. He was protecting his family. Any parent would do that.”

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The Sandusky trial has heard the testimonies of several victims who met Sandusky through his charitable organization for at-risk youth, The Second Mile. Sandusky has been charged with fifty-two counts of sexual abuse over a ten year period and will serve five hundred years if he is found guilty. The victims, although identified by name in the trial, do not wish to have their identities revealed.

Victim 5 was only abused once by Sandusky in 1998. He was referred to The Second Mile to improve his spoken English. Sandusky invited the boy to some football games and then to work out with him. After working out for a short time, Sandusky suggested they take a shower. According to the victim, Sandusky “threw some soap at me and started lathering my shoulders. I crept forward a little bit more, as did he, and I felt his body on my back. I kept lurching forward but I didn’t have anywhere to go.”

Victim 6 met Sandusky in 1998 around the age of eleven. His interactions with Sandusky resulted in an investigation in 1998 but no charges were filed. According to the victim Sandusky “bear-hugged” him in the locker-room shower after practicing wrestling moves with the coach for about fifteen minutes. The victim testified “I felt uncomfortable with it, but it was Jerry Sandusky so I didn’t want to make him move.” When Sandusky started to soap him up he felt even more uncomfortable stating, “at that point, it just was escalating the uncomfortableness but I was just trying not to make him feel that I was feeling a bit awkward about it.” Shortly after the bear-hug the victim claims he blacked out. “[the bear hug] is the last thing I remember about being in the shower. It’s all black.”

Victim 6 maintained contact with Sandusky including texting him on Father’s day, borrowing his car, getting tickets to games, and going on a mission trip to Mexico. The Penn State police investigated Sandusky after the boy’s mother became suspicious; however, no files were charged and there was no further sexual contact reported.

Ronald Schreffler, a former detective for Penn State, said that he eavesdropped on conversations with Sandusky and the boy’s mother and heard the assistant coach tell her, “I wish I could ask for forgiveness. I know I will not get it from you. I wish I were dead.” Shortly thereafter Schreffler recommended to Sandusky that he should not shower with boys again; Sandusky agreed saying he had used “bad judgment.”

The defense claims that although Sandusky has acted somewhat unseemly and inappropriately, he is not a molester. Instead, the defense claims that all of the victims are lying to get money from the university and Sandusky. Sandusky’s defense originally attempted to dismiss the letters from Victim 4 as evidence. Now the defense is using the letters to explain that Sandusky is mentally ill, claiming that they will “explain that the words, tones, requests, and statements made in the letters are consistent with a person who suffers from a Histrionic Personality Disorder.”

The National Institute of Health states that people with Histrionic Personality Disorder “act in a very emotional and dramatic way that draws attention to themselves.”

Image Courtesy of  Richard Paul Kane / Shutterstock.com

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The Sandusky trial, which began June 11, has heard the testimony of eight victims. The trial ended June 14, earlier than expected, but with plenty of testimony and evidence presented by the prosecution. Jerry Sandusky is charged with fifty-two counts of sexual abuse over a ten year period. He will serve five hundred years if he is found guilty of all of them.

Although the victims are identified by name in the trial, none of them wished to be revealed in the public. The Toonari Post will only refer to the victims by numbers.

Victim 1, currently 18, met Sandusky through Sandusky’s charitable organization, The Second Mile, a charity for at-risk youth. Victim 1 claimed that he stayed in the basement at Sandusky’s house more than one hundred times. Sandusky would come down to the basement to say goodnight and began making contact with the boy by kissing him on the cheek or forehead. Sandusky’s contact eventually escalated to more explicitly sexual contact when Victim 1 testified that Sandusky “rub[bed] underneath my shorts” and “put his mouth on my privates.” The victim testified that Sandusky said, “’it’s your turn’” and then the victim added, “he made me put my mouth on his privates.”

Mike McQueary, the assistant coach of the Penn State Football team, testified that he saw Sandusky performing what he believed was anal sex with a boy in the team showers. The victim, known as Victim 2, has not been found by authorities, according to Fox News. The incident reportedly took place in February 2001, although McQueary originally believed it was 2002. McQueary told school officials about the incident but never actually used the phrase ‘anal sex’ because he was too “embarrassed.”

Victim 3 testifed that he slept over at Sandusky’s house over fifty times in a three year period (1998-2001). The boy met Sandusky when he was eleven years old. He stated that the coach would tickle him, blow on his stomach, kiss his shoulder, and would sometimes touch his penis. He testified that at one point Sandusky “pinned me to the floor, pulled down my gym shorts, and started to perform oral sex on me.” Victim 3 also stated that he showered with Sandusky in the Penn State University showers and that Sandusky would soap him up and bear-hug him from behind and from the front. After the victim was put into foster care, he stopped hearing from Sandusky.

Victim 4, who is now 28, -like most of Sandusky’s victims – also met Sandusky through The Second Mile. Victim 4 stated that he had no parental supervision before Sandusky entered his life. This is similar to the situations of the other victims according to statements they made about foster care and absent fathers. Victim 4 claimed that he regularly gave Sandusky oral sex in the showers stating, “it would have to be forty times, at least.” Sandusky also tried to penetrate him in the shower and would caress him and kiss his thighs. The victim also claimed that Sandusky would buy him cigarettes and drove him to buy marijuana. “He treated me like a son in front of other people. Outside of that, he’s treating me like a girlfriend.”

Victim 4 claims that the abuse began at the age of fourteen and occurred in the athletic building at Penn State, Toftrees Golf Resort and Hotels, and trips to Florida and Texas for football games. Sandusky wrote letters to Victim 4. One states: “I know that I have made my share of mistakes…My wish is that you care and have love in your heart. Love never ends.”

The star linebacker for Penn State, Arrington, knew Victim 4 well and originally denied the allegations against Sandusky. However, after hearing the details of the trial Arrington wrote an apology in the Washington Post stating, “I hate everything that has happened, and now I must admit I feel even worse, knowing what allegedly was happening so close to me, and that I was unaware…All I can do is hope that Victim 4 finds this entry and can see that I’m offering my sincerest apologies. I am so sorry this happened.”

Image Courtesy of  Richard Paul Kane / Shutterstock.com

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Zambia is a country found in the southern region of Africa and has a population of about 13 million people .The change of government in Zambia last year has changed many things, including the way the news is reported.

At the beginning of the year the media opened up many issues that were not publicly discussed previously and one of these includes the issue of gender violence and child sexual abuse, legally defined in Zambia as Child defilement. These issues are frightening to most parents because they are no longer comfortable to leave their children, especially their girl children, alone with any male relative or stranger, as is the custom with most Zambian families.

More and more cases of child defilement have been reported by the local media, with shocking reports of adult men raping children as young as one month old. Offences of defilement have continued to rank amongst the highest; numbers of those reported are very across the country.

This has prompted the Zambian government and ordinary citizens to demand stiffer punishment for culprits. Current punishments for perpetrators of child defilement includes jail sentences of a minimum of 9 years, but this has not deterred the rising cases of defilement, prompting calls for even more hefty prison sentences, hence the need to increase the sentence to 15 years.

However, for many parents their greatest fear is their children’s risk of contracting HIV should they fall victim of being raped. A common belief among some people suffering from HIV/AIDS is that if they have sex with a minor, then they will be cured of HIV. Most children who are sexually abused, later on test positive to HIV. This phenomenon is a destruction of the future generation, even though every adult has the responsibility to protect it. Nevertheless morals have fallen so much that children are not given a chance.

Stakeholders such as churches, and community workers have been lobbying the Ministry of Education to introduce child defilement education in the school syllabus so that children are aware of the danger of child rape and when children are victims they can seek help from social welfare for those who are not in school and to the teachers and counselors for those who are in schools. This education will help children to know when it is wrong.

The children who have been defiled are abused by close members of the child’s family such as uncles, cousins or grandfathers, and in some cases by their own biological fathers or step fathers. According to Save the Children, Cage the Rapists Posted by AllAfrica on January 11, 2012 we are told that civil society, the Church and all activists should lobby authorities so that appropriate remedies could be considered to deal with what can only be described as an epidemic of dangerous proportions.

Image Courtesy of   Espen Faugstad

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Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Regina Brett says child abuse is “always the saddest story you’re going to write.”

Brett, author of The New York Times best‐seller “God Never Blinks: 50 Lessons for Life’s Little Detours” and the recent “Be the Miracle: 50 Lessons for Making the Impossible Possible,” will be the keynote speaker at the “Protecting PA Kids, Preventing Abuse” annual breakfast on April 3 at 8 a.m. at the Harrisburg Hilton.

The event is the kickoff for the observance of Child Abuse Prevention Month in Pennsylvania and is sponsored by the nonprofit Pennsylvania Family Support Alliance (PFSA).

Brett said one of the lessons in her recent book is to “get busy on the possible.” A problem like child abuse can look so big that people wonder how they can do anything to make a difference. “We stop it one child at a time, one house at a time,” she said.

In her years as a reporter, Brett wrote many stories about child abuse. “We have to do more to protect our children – and they are all our children,” she said.

Brett has written several columns about the child sex abuse allegations involving former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. “What broke my heart is that nobody ever reached out to that boy in the shower,” she said.

What allows child abuse to continue, she observed, is “the silence of those who can do something.” Those who witness or suspect child abuse shouldn’t be reticent about speaking up, she said. “Err on the side of helping the child. Err on the side of reporting. We all have the power to do something.”

A friend, a single mom, once confided to Brett that her boyfriend had punched her 10-year-old son in the face. Brett reported it and Children’s Services intervened. The boyfriend moved out. Brett said it was a difficult decision, but, “how could I not do anything?”

PFSA Executive Director Angela Liddle said, “Brett’s words about always choosing the side of helping the child get to the heart of what we preach in our training and in our programs. We look forward to hearing more of what she has to say on April 3.”

Tickets for the breakfast are available online at http://www.pa-fsa.org/ or by calling (717) 238‐0937.

PFSA is Pennsylvania’s leader in training mandated reporters to recognize and properly report suspected child abuse. Mandated reporters are professionals such as doctors, teachers, and police officers who come into frequent contact with children and are legally required to report suspected abuse.

PFSA also works with more than 50 affiliate agencies across the state to provide information, educational materials, and programs that teach and support good parenting practices. In addition, PFSA serves as thePennsylvania sponsor of The Front Porch Project, a community-based training initiative that educates the general public about how to protect children from abuse.

For more information, visit the PFSA website at www.pa-fsa.org.

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Earlier this week a Duke university study concluded that one in four HIV patients were sexually abused as children. Over 600 patients, aged 20-71, were involved in the two-year long study.

The majority of the patients in the study, titled the Coping with HIV/AIDS in the Southeast (Chase), had at one point in their lifetimes been victims of sexual or physical abuse. In addition, fifty percent of the patients were found to have suffered three of more traumatic life experiences, such as sexual or physical abuse, and also domestic violence, the loss of a child, or a loved one’s suicide attempt or completion.

These traumatic experiences, particularly ones in childhood, were also linked to worse health overall among the patients.

By checking and following up on the patients intermittently for a two year period, researchers were able to find links between traumatic experiences, HIV-related behaviors and poorer health conditions.

More traumatic experiences were also linked to patients engaging in unprotected sex, missing proper, antiretroviral medications, trips to the emergency room and hospitalizations. Patients who had been victims of trauma were much more likely to have their health decline or to pass away during the two-year period.

“For whatever outcome we looked at, psychological trauma ended up being a predictor of worse medical outcomes and poorer health-related behaviors,” said lead author Brian Pence, a Duke associate professor of community and family medicine and global health.

Pence went on to say these findings stress the significance of judging a patient’s trauma history when being given HIV care. The results, Pence hopes, can help HIV programs be structured into an environment that advocates safer sex practices, stricter adherence to medicine and better health results for patients receiving aid.

The most surprising part of the study was that the effects of past trauma on recent behavior and health was unable to be explained by normal factors.

“We would expect people with a history of exposure to trauma to have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression or other mental health concerns, like drug abuse or poor coping skills, and that these things in turn would more fully explain why they had lower adherence to their medications and worse health,” Pence said.

“But, we found that trauma history was still associated with bad health outcomes independent of mental health status, drug use or coping styles. So we have more to learn about exactly how past traumatic experiences exert influence on behaviors and health outcomes years down the road.”

The study is set to appear in the April 1 edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (which can be found online here), with a supplementary editorial. The National Institute of Mental Health helped support the study.

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Last year, as part of Propublica ongoing investigation into the troubled state of death investigation in America, PBS “Frontline,”ProPublica and NPR took a closer look at what can be the most troubling and difficult cases — suspicious deaths of young children.

Propublica discovered a growing awareness in the medical community of a variety of diseases that can mimic the symptoms of child abuse, including hereditary blood disorders, leukemia and vitamin K deficiency.

One doctor Propublica spoke to — Dr. Michael Laposata, a pathologist and blood-clotting expert at Vanderbilt University who co-published a 2005 study on diseases that can mimic abuse — is pioneering a new blood testing regimen to rule out these types of disorders.

“If you’re lucky, most places … do the three routine tests: PT, PTT [both blood-clotting tests] and a platelet count, and that’s it,” Dr. Laposata told FRONTLINE in a phone interview. “It turns out most of the kids that have a bleeding problem have something other than that.”

Laposata and his colleagues have devised a system to make blood testing as foolproof as possible for doctors in cases of potential abuse: They created a tiered series of blood tests, known as a “Non-Accidental Injury Coagulation Panel,” which can identify underlying disorders that are more common in children. The panel can be performed with a small amount of blood, which is key when the patient is a baby.

“I think it’s the most comprehensive evaluation for a bleeding disorder that anybody has put forth to date,” Laposata said.

The panel is expected to be introduced soon at Vanderbilt and Dr. Laposata hopes to study its efficacy and to follow cases through the system over the years.

Because blood tests like these can only be performed on living patients whose blood is still flowing, a gap remains in diagnosing underlying conditions from autopsies. Laposata hopes that advances in genome testing could someday help close it, allowing for hereditary disorders to be better identified.

He said he also hopes his coagulation panel “will spur doctors to invent similar panels to evaluate bone injuries and skin changes that are also misdiagnosed as child abuse.”

Laposata was one of a number of doctors and other experts to offer testimony during the appeals process of Ernie Lopez, a Texas man convicted in 2003 of sexually assaulting 6-month-old Isis Vas. Isis, who had bruising and bleeding in the brain and vagina, later died. Lopez was sentenced to 60 years in prison.

After reviewing lab tests performed on Isis before her death, Laposata concluded that they contained ”clear abnormalities” and suggested that Vas suffered from a bleeding disorder known as disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). He gave an affidavit in the case in 2010. Last month, the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals voided Ernie Lopez’s conviction, saying Lopez received ineffective counsel because his attorneys did not adequately challenge the prosecution’s medical evidence.

Potter County District Attorney Randall Sims says he will retry Lopez. Take a look at Dr. Laposata’s PowerPoint presentation highlighting the difficulty in diagnosing abuse cases. On one side is a photo of a child with bruises from a bleeding disorder; on the other, a photo of a child who was abused.

“I’ve been looking at patients with bleeding problems for years, more than two decades,” he said. “And if you show me the two children with the bruises on their legs, I couldn’t tell you that that one is the bleeding disorder. I’d have to do the blood test to find out.”

by Gretchen Gavett, Special to ProPublica, Feb. 21, 2012, 3:16 p.m.

Gretchen Gavett is a digital associate producer for Frontline. “The Child Cases,” Propublica’s film on questionable convictions in child death cases, can be watched anytime online.

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Nearly 150 police chiefs, state’s attorneys, sheriffs, leaders of police officer organizations and crime survivors signed a letter to Governor Pat Quinn and the leaders of the General Assembly urging them to protect funding for children’s programs in the 2013 state budget.

“Investing in kids pays off. Communities have less crime, kids get better outcomes in life, and taxpayers save money. There are some programs that are simply too valuable to cut any more than they already have been,” said Channahon Police Chief Joe Pena.

The law enforcement leaders called for the restoration of last year’s cut to the state’s preschool program, and funding for after-school programs and home visiting programs that prevent child abuse to be maintained at current levels. These programs have been cut significantly over the last 3 years, and law enforcement is concerned about the fiscal and public safety consequences.

“We want the General Assembly and the Governor to know going in to the budget debate that law enforcement sees these programs as essential tools in the fight against crime,” said Ogle County State’s Attorney Ben Roe. “We all must share the burden of the state’s tight budget, but if we’re not strategic and thoughtful about what we’re cutting and by how much, we are jeopardizing the safety of our communities.”

“Cleaning up after crime is extremely expensive. Protecting programs that reduce the chance that a child will ever become involved in crime means taxpayers save a significant amount of money- and we save lives,” said Morgan County Sheriff Randy Duvendack.

Illinois’ preschool program, Preschool for All, has been cut by 15 percent since 2009, and tens of thousands of 3- and 4-year olds have lost their spots in preschool. Research shows quality preschool, like the state’s Preschool for All program, reduces future crime and saves money.

One long-term study of the publicly funded Chicago Child-Parent Centers found that kids left out of the program were 27 percent more likely to have been arrested by age 28 than those who participated. The Child-Parent Centers saved $10 in reduced crime and other costs for every $1 spent.

The law enforcement leaders requested that funding for child abuse prevention programs, known as home visiting, be maintained. Any cuts to funding for home visiting programs in the Department of Human Services budget could cause Illinois to lose a federal grant that requires states to not go below FY 2010 funding levels for these programs.

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The attorneys for Dinizulu Law Group on Tuesday filed litigation on behalf of the victim in a 1997 molestation investigation in which the 11-year-old girl’s attacker went free, because Harvey, Illinois, police failed to submit the rape kit to the state crime lab for testing.

As a result, the accused, Robert Buchanan, who was working as a Cook County corrections officer at the time, returned to the family home and continued the abuse. He was subsequently charged in the attack last fall after the rape kit – discovered with some 200 untested rape kits at the Harvey police station during a raid by law-enforcement in 2007 – provided overwhelmingly evidence of his guilt.

The victim, now 25, is seeking unspecified damages in a seven-count lawsuit that names Buchanan and the City of Harvey. Specifically, the complaint accuses Harvey officials of failing to protect her rights under the Illinois Domestic Violence Act of 1986; infliction of emotional distress; willful and wanton neglect; and fraudulent concealment.

After telling her mother of the abuse, the victim was examined that same day at a local hospital. Doctors followed protocol, collecting DNA samples for the Illinois State Police Sexual Assault Evidence Kit and handing it off to Harvey police. The victim was notified by an investigator for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office last spring that the kit was never tested.

“After being failed at home, this young woman should have been able to trust that local police would follow through with their most basic levels of investigation,” said her attorney, Yao Dinizulu. “The abuse could have ended there had police done their jobs. There is a pattern of gross negligence in the City of Harvey that has led to the suffering of countless other victims. We’re asking a jury to send a strong message that such egregious malfeasance won’t be tolerated.”

The victim is identified in court documents as “Jane Doe” to shield her identity. She has been diagnosed with suppressed memories and is currently receiving therapy, Dinizulu said.

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The total lifetime estimated financial costs associated with just one year of confirmed cases of child maltreatment (physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse and neglect) is approximately $124 billion, according to a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in Child Abuse and Neglect, The International Journal.

This study looked at confirmed child maltreatment cases, 1,740 fatal and 579,000 non-fatal, for a 12-month period. The lifetime cost for each victim of child maltreatment who lived was $210,012, which is comparable to other costly health conditions, such as stroke with a lifetime cost per person estimated at$159,846 or type 2 diabetes, which is estimated between $181,000 and $253,000.  The costs of each death due to child maltreatment are even higher.

“No child should ever be the victim of abuse or neglect – nor do they have to be.  The human and financial costs can be prevented through prevention of child maltreatment,” said Linda C. Degutis, Dr.P.H., M.S.N., director of CDC′s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Child maltreatment has been shown to have many negative effects on survivors, including poorer health, social and emotional difficulties, and decreased economic productivity.  This CDC study found these negative effects over a survivor’s lifetime generate many costs that impact the nation’s health care, education, criminal justice and welfare systems.

Key findings:

• The estimated average lifetime cost per victim of nonfatal child maltreatment includes:
• $32,648 in childhood health care costs
• $10,530 in adult medical costs
• $144,360 in productivity losses
• $7,728 in child welfare costs
• $6,747 in criminal justice costs
• $7,999 in special education costs
• The estimated average lifetime cost per death includes:
• $14,100 in medical costs
• $1,258,800 in productivity losses

Child maltreatment can also be linked to many emotional, behavioral, and physical health problems. Associated emotional and behavioral problems include aggression, conduct disorder, delinquency, antisocial behavior, substance abuse, intimate partner violence, teenage pregnancy, anxiety, depression, and suicide.

Past research suggests that child maltreatment is a complicated problem, and so its solutions cannot be simple. An individual parent or caregiver’s behavior is influenced by a range inter-related factors such as how they were raised, their parenting skills, the level of stress in their life, and the living conditions in their community.  Because of this complexity, it is critical to invest in effective strategies that touch on all sectors of society.

“Federal, state, and local public health agencies as well as policymakers must advance the awareness of the lifetime economic impact of child maltreatment and take immediate action with the same momentum and intensity dedicated to other high profile public health problems –in order to save lives, protect the public’s health, and save money,” said Dr. Degutis.

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A leading ‘abuse case’ lawyer is challenging the Catholic Church to open its secret archives of documents for independent examination in order to discover the truth about child abuse by its priests.

Richard Scorer, a Partner and specialist in child abuse cases at Manchester law firm Pannone, says, “Every Catholic diocese has a secret archive which is kept locked and has in it secret documents. In the words of the Code of Canon Law, these documents are to be ‘protected most securely’ and contain, ‘matters of morals’ and ‘criminal cases’.

Only the bishop is allowed to possess the key and the archive is only to be opened in a case of ‘true necessity’. It is my feeling and that of many of my legal peers that this moment of necessity is here.” Says Mr Scorer, “It is like something from a Dan Brown novel, but this is not the Da Vinci Code, it is the Code of Canon Law and it has a bearing on the lives of hundreds probably even thousands of people.

In every one of those archives there will be evidence of past scandals, if the Catholic Church really wants to help those children its priest’s may have abused in the past, it should open up its secret archives to independent investigation now and cleanse itself of its culture of denial and cover-up. ”

Canon489 of the current code of Canon law provides:

‘There is also to be a secret archive, or at least in the ordinary archive there is to be a safe or cabinet, which is securely closed and bolted and which cannot be removed. In this archive documents which are to be kept under secrecy are to be most carefully guarded.’

Canon law forbids any documents to be removed from the secret archive under any circumstances and only the bishop is permitted to have the key thereto. Accordingly, as only the bishop will know what is in the secret archive, it is obviously unsatisfactory for anyone else to make the disclosure statement.

Among the documents which must be kept in the secret archive for varying periods of time are:

- Documents from historic criminal cases (i.e. within Canon law) concerning matters of a moral nature

- Documentary proof of canonical warnings or corrections when someone has been about to commit an offence, or is suspected of having         committed one, or has been guilty of scandalous behaviour

- Documents relating to preliminary investigations for a penal process that was closed without a formal trial

- Documents relating to any other matters the bishop considers secret.

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As the national news media continues to focus on the Sandusky and Syracuse child abuse allegations, a coalition of national experts applauded a bill introduced this week by U.S. Senators.

John Kerry (D-MA) and Susan Collins (R-ME) and U.S. Representatives Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) and Joseph Crowley (D-NY), who were joined by ten members of the House Ways and Means Committee, proposed a bill that could make a significant impact towards reducing fatalities resulting from child abuse and neglect, and make improvements throughout the child welfare system.

More than seven children die from abuse and neglect every day in America – some 2,500 a year – reflecting the estimated 50 percent undercounting in the officially estimated figure of 1,560. A child is abused or neglected every 36 seconds in the United States, yet only 40 percent of abused children with substantiated cases receive services, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Representatives of the National Coalition to End Child Abuse Deaths (NCECAD) expressed concern that the current national media attention being paid to the Sandusky and Syracuse child abuse allegations would not create the needed additional pressure on Congress to deal with wider child death and abuse problems.

Such focused attention on specific abuse cases often obscures the need for wider attention to the problem, according to the NCECAD experts. Pointing to the need for multi-faced solutions, NCECAD members applauded the recently introduced Protect Our Kids Act, which would establish a commission to study and evaluate federal, state, and local public and private child welfare systems.

Protect Our Kids would also develop a national strategy and recommendations for preventing child abuse and reducing fatalities resulting from child abuse and neglect.  The full text of the legislation is available online at www.endchildabusedeaths.org.

Kimberly Day, spokesperson for the National Coalition to End Child Abuse Deaths, said:  ”It is important that the media is covering the most recent high profile and horrific child sexual abuse cases, but it is also important that the public understand that what they are hearing is only part of a larger problem of child abuse and neglect in the United States.

The proposed bill will provide a national strategy for improving our child protection system by recommending practices that protect children and prevent abuse and neglect”. ”This legislation in an important step that Congress and our nation need to take in order to better protect our children from abuse and neglect,” said Senator Collins.

“This is not a Democratic or Republican issue – this is an American issue – one that we can’t wish away, but that we must face head on and work to eradicate. Our legislation would establish a commission to develop a comprehensive national strategy for reducing child abuse fatalities.  An increased understanding and awareness of child abuse and neglect can lead to improvement in agency systems and practices and help prevent future child abuse fatalities.”

Rep. Doggett, ranking member of the Human Resources Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over this issue stated, ”Addressing this ongoing tragedy requires a better understanding of the causes of abuse and neglect and a determination of the most effective steps to prevent maltreatment. This bipartisan commission offers a way to develop a more coordinated, national response.”

“As a father to three young kids, it breaks my heart to hear the thousands of stories of children suffering from abuse or neglect every day. What’s worse is the alarming number of children who die each year from mistreatment. The simple fact is, even one child’s death from abuse, neglect or maltreatment is one too many,” said Rep. Crowley.

“This is an issue of grave concern and one that deserves a national focus. That’s why I’m proud to fight alongside tireless advocates like the National Coalition to End Child Abuse Deaths, and I am glad to have worked with them and my colleagues in creating legislation that will help determine how we as a nation can better protect our children.”

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Bishop Robert Finn and the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese have been indicted for failing to report the suspicion of an abusive clergyman. After discovering child pornography on the computer of one priest, Father Ratigan, Finn withheld the truth of his findings for five months before alerting the police. The prosecutors have charged the bishop and the diocese with the class A misdemeanor of child endangerment.

Jackson Country prosecutor Jean Peters-Baker told the CNN that “the fact that this is a misdemeanor complaint should not diminish the significance of this charge [...] This is a significant charge. To my knowledge, a charge like this has not been leveled before.” Peters-Baker is right about the unprecedented nature of this indictment — a US bishop has never been held responsible for the misconduct of their clergy.

According to a Vatican expert, this represents a “new willingness to go after the highest officials in the church and hold them accountable,” reports CNN. The Kansas City bishop has pleaded not guilty to the charges, promising to fight the allegations ‘vigorously’.

“Today, the Jackson County Prosecutor issued these charges against me personally and against the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph,” he told the press. “For our part, we will meet these announcements with a steady resolve and a vigorous defense.”

After the eruption of the Catholic sex abuse scandal in 2002, a selection of regional grand juries have been reviewing how bishops handle abuse claims against their priests and recently, questions have been raised about the discipline of these reviews.

According to ABCnews.go.com, church leaders promised to take clergy members who were under credible suspicion out of commission but recent cases, including that of Father Ratigan, suggest that some leaders have neglected their responsibility.

Being the first US Catholic bishop to be criminally charge, Finn is not the only one who’s been caught over clerical misconduct. However, other bishops have made deals with their local authorities to avoid prosecution. If convicted, the Kansas bishop faces a maximum penalty of one year behind bars and a $1,000 fine. The diocese would also be reliable to pay a $1,000 fine.

According to ABCnews.go.com, the bishop have admitted to finding the incriminating images on December 16, 2010 but the incident was not reported until May 11, 2011 after a parish principal had raised concerns about Father Shawn Ratigan’s inappropriate behavior around children.

Ratigan was charged with “three state child pornography counts” in May and with “13 federal counts of producing, possessing and attempting to produce child porn” in June, wrote the ABC news report. He remains jailed on a not-guilty plea.

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Former Delaware pediatrician, Dr. Earl Bradley was sentenced on August 26 to 14 life sentences without the possibility of parole. He was convicted of 14 counts of rape and received an additional 160 years for sexually abusing 103 of his patients from 1998 to 2009.

He was originally indicted for 470 counts of rape, sexual assault and sexual exploitation of a child; that number was later consolidated to just 24 through negotiations with lawyers. During his career from 1994 to his arrest in 2009, he received a number of complaints from patients, parents and colleagues, and was the focus of two police investigations.

The Medical Board of Directors in Delaware was supposedly contacted a number of times in regards to his unprofessional conduct with his patients, but the Medical Board insists it never received any allegations concerning Bradley until after his arrest.

The two initial police investigations were never granted permission for a search warrant, and so without any physical evidence, the Delaware police were unable to continue their investigations. Despite the complaints lodged against Bradley while he was a licensed pediatrician, the truth of the harm he was doing to his patients was beyond what anyone suspected.

When the police finally were able to get a search warrant after a two-year old girl complained to her mother about Bradley hurting her genitals, they were able to seize 83 tapes and DVDs showing Bradley molesting young children.

In the trial, one of the police officers involved in the case testified that the average age of his victims was only three years old, because they were not as verbal as older children. He would often force the children to perform oral sex on him, and then give them colored ice to cover up any blood or swelling.

Additionally, in the videos he is seen sometimes grabbing a child by the head and throwing the child on a couch after forcing the child to perform sex acts. As the horrific details of this case begin to come out, people are questioning how this pediatrician was allowed to practice medicine for so long without his more sinister actions being found out.

Following Bradley’s arrest, Governor Jack Markell asked Linda L. Ammons, the dean of the Widener University School of Law, to compile a report reviewing the current laws and policies in place. Her 62-page report outlined 68 recommended changes, while avoiding placing blame on any single organization or practice.

Following the report, Gov. Markell passed nine laws that would help to prevent misconduct like this to continue undetected by tightening regulations and encouraging both the medical and police communities to work together with suspected physician misconduct and child abuse.

Billed by Ammons’ report as the “pedophilia case of the century,” the atrocities uncovered during this case have encouraged other states to review their reporting policies regarding physicians as well.

As Earl Bradley begins his permanent internment in prison, the families and victims of those he hurt have found some measure of justice for the actions incurred upon them and now have the task of healing from the damage caused by Bradley’s insidious actions.

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Denmark – a small Scandinavian country in the Northern part of Europe, sporting around 5.6m people and known for an extensive welfare state, windmills and design. This country has in modern days kept a quiet, peaceful society and has been described as the ‘happiest place in the world’.

But as a native, I dare you not to take this idyllic image at face value. In February alone this year, three cases of horrific character have splashed the front pages in the small country. First there was the case of a 44-year-old man who killed his three children aged 2, 8 and 10. The motives are unknown but the police explained that the man, who is divorced from the children’s mother, had shot the children with a hunting riffle during the early hours of February 9. Before during so, he texted his ex-wife with the message that he was taking the children on a ‘journey’. Fearing that he might leave the country, the mother alerted the police who upon arrival to the house found all the children dead.

It was reported that the man had tried to commit suicide afterwards but this was soon rejected by the investigation. The initial interrogation was conducted behind closed doors and the man remains in custody at a psychiatric ward. The motives are still unclear and considering the gun control laws in Denmark, the use of a riffle is unusually dramatic.

The second case was of a 29-year-old man who contacted the police, explaining he had found his 22-year-old brother dead. When arriving to the scene, the police came to suspect that the man had in fact killed his younger brother himself and took him into custody. At the hearing, which was done behind closed doors, the 29-year-old was charged with strangling his younger brother do death with an unidentified string on February 16. The man refused to give a statement to the police and the court but pleaded not guilting before the hearing. He did not however appeal the court’s decision. In this case, the motives were also left unclear.

Finally, a gruesome case in the lines of the Fritzl case in Austria saw a 41-year-old father and 38-year-old mother and step-mother being charged on February 18 for gross neglect of their nine children. According to the public prosecutor, the children had been living for years in an accommodation filled with animal and human feces and without adequate sources of water and heat. The neglect of the children was so severe that a former chief psychologist with many years of experience in abusive violence admitted to never having reviewed a case so bad in an interview with the Danish newspaper Morgenavisen-Jyllandsposten.

The children were all subjected to a weekly regiment of violence – regular beatings, torture and depravation with an instance of boiling tomato soup being poured down the throat of one of the young boys. However, the main target was the oldest daughter who’s biological mother lives elsewhere. The investigation showed that she had been forced to eat animal feces, to shovel snow barefoot which had given her incipient gangrene, been raped repeatedly by the father – who also tried to get strangers to rape her. On top of this, the father forced the other children to beat her with objects and made them a part of the sadistic abuse of their sister.

This case is one of the worst known instances of child abuse in Denmark and has also been highlighted for the severe failures on behalf of the authorities who had been notified several times by concerned citizens about the state of the children. It was not until the now 20-year-old eldest daughter escaped that the police intervened and arrested the parents while handing the rest of the children over to child services.

Something is rotten in Denmark – just as it is in many other places. To be a small country does not mean that we are safe from evil, it only means that evil is less publicized outside of our borders.

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The upcoming election in New South Wales (NSW) Australia is set to be a memorable one, with many of the polls predicting a Liberal government will be in power for the first time in decades.

Current Labor Premier Kristina Kinneally has been campaigning in a series of interviews, advertisements and public policy announcements.

Opposition Liberal leader Barry O’Farrell has recently received positive publicity from two high profile charities in NSW with an announcement that a Coalition government would begin policies to bring children out of care homes.

Ms Jane Woodruff CEO of UnitingCare Burnside said that the removal of children from their homes can often be highly traumatic.

“We welcome an approach that aims to work closely with families to reduce
the number of children in care.

“It is important, however, that policy changes do not provide any obstacles to
removing those children in need of care and protection. Any child that needs
to be removed from their home should be – that is not negotiable,” Ms
Woodruff said.

The Association of Children’s Welfare Agencies (ACWA) also expressed its strong support for the proposed policy changes.

ACWA CEO Andrew McCallum said that reducing the number of children in care should be a priority for the government.

“Reform in this area is long overdue.

“Increasing the non-government sector’s role in service delivery, combined with a significant investment in prevention and early intervention services, will go a long way to  breaking the cycle of child abuse and neglect in our community and ensuring that removing a child from their family remains a solution of last resort.”

The election will be decided in NSW at the end of March.

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