Category Archives: child advocacy

Losing people

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A few days ago I received an email from a family member–normal right?

I could tell this person’s email account had been hijacked because s/he and I do not have a family relationship anymore. S/he joined the ranks of friends and family who were so chagrined by me that the relationship could not be repaired.

Close relations of crime victims often inflict terrible secondary wounds.

They are ashamed of me and my story and to preserve their “normal” life they do really wretched things.

Friends can be equally painful. They stop being friends, shrinking quietly into the shadows, not calling, not inviting our family to events. That familiar blanched look of fear…silence…gone….

I had a friend who was a sister to me. Unlike many she stuck with me through the shock, grief, and early period of survival, but she deeply disapproved of my public efforts to draw attention to what happened to us. Too public…to noisy…

She is gone. It hurts.

The list gets longer and more erratic after that–people who make their money from shepherding other people–gone or worse–cruel.

You start to rethink people. The world seems increasingly lonely.

Yesterday the Christian Post asked if it’s readers experienced loneliness. A bunch vehemently denied it–

Never! I have God! Ditto!!! Double that!

But of course I have to be the lone dissenter. I said,

Jesus experienced loneliness, why shouldn’t I?

That is my motto and I am sticking to it. But I won’t lie to you–I wish I had kept my mouth shut for my children.

They had a shot at “normal,” if it weren’t for my big mouth.

The truth will set us free…no one said it would make us look normal.

Normal is the lie.

For all of us…not just mouthy me.

The Practice of Justice

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When I mull over the latest horrendous story of a child being exploited or murdered I think–somewhere in the multiverse there is a version of me who writes a blog on great chili recipes.

I hate this beat.

But I write about it because I know that exploited children are forgotten, marginalized, stigmatized, and dismissed.

How do I know? Because my children are crime victims. It has been a lonely road for all of us. We have lost family and friends. People react with distance at best. I am not going to catalog “at worst.”

But here is the thing–my kids–the crime victims are vibrant, intelligent, compassionate, wise beyond their years.

I write for them in belief that many other children who have been victimized deserve to heal with dignity.

They deserve a voice.

If you say you are “against child abuse” but then sideline, stigmatize, and ignore actual victims you drive home a message of silence, oppression, and injustice that indeed speaks louder than words.

It all comes down to who you actually invite to your party. That is the test of justice. Ironically it is also the measure of love.

The Age Factor: Ahlittia North

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Sometimes in the effort to write about extremely difficult stories I cut corners in my clarity of purpose.

It is hard to face so many tragedies.

But this time I need to be painfully explicit:

If the news report is correct, Ahlittia’s mother was a mother by 14. Her current partner is 46.

13 year olds do not decide to have sex for kicks (with other 13 year olds). They are more likely to be the sexual targets of older men. That is rape.

When I was 13 I knew a young woman who was pregnant as a result of incest–raped by her step-father. I hope he went to jail for it, but I am not optimistic.

I do know that my schoolmate was brave and deserved more support and help than she received. To carry a pregnancy at 13…to walk through the aggression of rape by a family member…

Her child is 30 now.

When I say, good folk did nothing, I mean this–

Whatever the story of Ahlittia’s murder, her life proves that her very young mother was a victim as well.

Baby girl is gone, who will help Lisa North? And more to the point–who could have helped before her kindergartener was murdered?

What happened to Lisa was a crime.

What happened to her daughter was unspeakable. But we must learn to speak it.

Make yourself uncomfortable. Ask the hard questions. And treat the Lisa Norths of the world like kin.

Because, to quote Carson McCullers–the life you save may be your own.

–praying for Lisa.

Gizzell Kiara Ford

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I went to the Vietnam memorial with my father once. He never said much about his time in the war but I knew it was a game-changer. He combed the wall in silence looking for a name, names…when he found the one he was looking for he touched it in silence. Memories of the dead.

This is my Vietnam memorial. Gizzell Kiara Ford is on it. Beautiful child. Lost.

Alittia North–Another Child in the Trash?!

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I tried repeatedly to post the Amber alert for Alittia North. Facebook did not allow it. I can’t tell you why I did not blog about her other than a lack of information and a sinking feeling.

Now the information is grim.

No one should ever throw a child away. No one should ever treat a human life like a discarded gum wrapper.

Years ago I taught in a neighborhood where a little girl was found in a trash bin. There are no words to describe the pain of knowing a beloved child has been treated so abominably. It lowers the value of all human life and raises the haunting question–why?

It seems to me our modern record is becoming mired in the bodies of our children–young, defenseless, abused, and murdered.

Do not turn away. Do not pretend this is some kind of statistical inevitability. In every case like Alittia’s someone did something terribly wrong to a child and…a whole bunch of regular folk did nothing to stop them.

Stan Who Had Two Dads

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Dearest Boy,

After I read about you I wrote a bunch of stuff. Then I walked, prayed, and cried. Some people won’t tell your story out of fear; others only out of fear.

But what I am afraid of is this–that no one will be there to heal the damage, that no one will tell you

none of this is your fault, and little of it needs to define you.

You deserve to survive this. You deserve birthday parties and pony rides, rock climbing and ice cream. You deserve to sit at a table with people who see you, know your story, and say I love you, Stan. You are a great kid..

Just because you were raised by wolves…doesn’t mean you are one.

No, dear, Lamb, you are a boy. Loved by a real Dad…the only one who can heal us all from the monsters, smiling in the picture: so broken.

A Word for Trayvon

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My heart aches for Trayvon’s family. A guilty verdict would not have summoned him back.

That is what a parent wants when their child dies.

They don’t care where the jewelry came from, they go over and over and over everything that happened… they wish they could have a do-over.

A do-over: keep Zimmerman’s ass in the car…convince the boy to stay home and play a video game…something…something that would have kept him alive.

No jury can do that. No judge can raise the dead.

Which is one more reason for all of us to mourn.

Why Do Women Have Abortions?

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In the struggle for some kind of life in every abortion story one out of every two people loses. A child dies each time.

Why? seems to matter.

The big google-able voices on this subject are funded by rabidly pro-abortion concessions. You will forgive me if I do not trust their stats or their lugubrious attempts to make the death of a child sound like a mani-pedi.

One thing they say strikes me–1 in 3 women have had an abortion.

Wow.

Just as with all abuse of children, the stories of abortion are often the stories shared in community. But we keep them our secrets because we have no adequate forum for telling them.

These are my community’s stories (a fraction, I am sure, of the whole)–

The college student who aborts her child under pressure from her boyfriend who is a cadet at a military academy.

The wife of a professional who aborts their third child because “two is enough.”

The young woman (who was herself adopted) who decides to have a late-term abortion because the baby may be a Downs child.

The teenager who lives in a no-abortion country who flies to the US to abort a child.

The woman who is pressured to abort because her child has a 3% chance of a medical condition. (Multiply this story by at least 4.)

A young professional who lives in a country with family planning laws. She aborts to avoid legal penalties.

The woman who is in her early forties, married, but surprised by a late-in-life pregnancy. She just doesn’t want a child in her early forties…

The untold story of abortion is a story about value and pressure and time. It is a story about how valuable the life of a child is, and it is a story of what it costs to remove that child.

Each aborted child leaves a George Bailey-esque hole in the life of their community.

Why would we sanction that?

And how could we face God if we did?

Is More Better? Polyamory and the Murder of Alanna Gallagher

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Okay….this seems like it should be bigger news than it is.

While I appreciate everyone’s efforts to validate this family’s decision to pursue a polyamorous relationship, I just keep thinking about my latest parenting theory gone bust–

We have resident barn swallows who are very protective of their young. Sometimes the family consists of mom, dad, and babies, but sometimes there is an additional parent–presumably a second adult male.

All the parents are very attentive. I admit I have envied them a bit–thinking that, quite frankly, adult male sexual partners are a pain in the a…, but a super-attentive manny would be nice.

The police seem to be at a dead end in solving the brutal murder of a little girl, but one thing is sure–all three of Alanna Gallagher’s “parents” failed her utterly.

She would have been better off with the barn swallows.