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I've been reading a lot of different articles lately and the ones that trouble me the most are those that involve children. I can't really see how people can do what they do to children. From sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect, it all seems so hard to comprehend. What bothers me even more is how these horrible, horrible things seem to fall through the cracks. What you always hear is, "No one knew this was going on."

I don't believe that for one minute. I think in almost every one of these cases people knew or suspected what was going on but no one had the courage to get involved. As a result they put what they see in the back of their minds and later one day they come around and say to someone that will listen, "I thought things weren't right." So If that's what they thought then why didn't they do anything?

Heres something that happened to me about 8 years ago. I was in a supermarket in a small town in Washington. I was there with a friend doing some shopping when I saw this child pick up a box of something or other and then saw her father strike her on the back of the head so hard she fell to the floor. The girl was little more than a toddler. I looked around shocked that of the four people there, I seemed to be the only one who noticed what was going on. I watched as he yelled at the child (who was laying on the floor crying). It was when he raised his hand up to hit the little girl again that I stepped in and grabbed him. He threatened to have me thrown in jail and for some reason that upset me even more, I had a hold of his wrist so I twisted it behind his back and pinned him to the aisle. I don't know what the reason behind doing this was really, though I suspect it was because if I had let him go I would have busted his nose.

I remember looking at the little girl and seeing her more afraid of me than her father and I felt a little bad but what made it worse was the fact that she seemed to think it was perfectly normal for her father to strike her like that. I was the bad guy stepping in breaking up what was a normal part of her life. It was about that time when one of the managers came up and asked what was going on? I explained that he had just hit his child so hard that he knocked her to the floor. He denied it and we began to argue. Store security came and stood with both of us while the manager went and reviewed the security tape. It was all there on the tape luckily. So in the end the police came and took the child away to stay with relatives and the father went to jail. The cops debated charging me with assault charges but decided against it. I got lucky in hind sight, Washington state is a lot different than Florida, I wouldn't suggest doing that here or you would sit a couple years in prison.

I 'm also amazed how people are unable to distinguish between normal and abnormal behavior. Case in point, a man I knew in Washington walked in to his neighbors apartment to find his neighbor holding his 9 year old naked step daughter in his lap. My friend asked some of us what we thought he should do and we all said he should report him to be safe. He called Child Protective Services, they investigated and decided that there was nothing bad going on. Which after hearing the whole story I believe it to be true. Even so, It always bothered me that he didn't just call them? I mean seriously, seeing a man holding a naked child in his lap, wouldn't that ring odd to anyone. There may have been nothing going on but I think to most people it would send up some flags or maybe I'm just paranoid.

I asked an acquaintance of mine who works with Department of Children and Families how people seem to get away with abusing children and she told me that many times the child is afraid to tell anyone. Furthermore adults are afraid to tell anyone either for fear of being wrong and causing the parents pain, even worse they might be sued or prosecuted for what they say. Even more disturbing is that many refuse to report suspected abuse because being proven wrong would be embarrassing for them. This stunned me to hear. I can't imagine that someone would be afraid to do the right thing because doing the right thing might hurt someones feelings or embarrass them. I mean seriously it blows me away that people could have the mind set.

I had a friend of mine tell me how she saw some of her neighbor hood kids smoking behind her house. I asked her why she didn't tell the kids parents and she said, why bother, they aren't her kids. This seemed to be the main consensus with most of the mothers there and yet once again I am amazed. Does it take a life or death situation before things become important enough to get involved?

Again it comes down to the "me, me," syndrome in America. People have this idea that everything is about them, and even though it might concern someone else, the final decision will always be based on how it affects them the most. Some people seem unable to act with out seeing if there are benefits in it for them. If there are none, then so be it, let someone else get involved. So tell me, if everyone begins to have this mindset, what happens then?

You remember the woman in Austria held hostage by her father and raped repeatedly, she gave birth to 7 children with one of them dieing. Neighbors all said something was odd but they didn't get involved because it just was not socially accepted to pry in others lives. People don't get involved in other peoples business in Austria. In fact you can know a man for 40 years and he will still call you, "Herr Smith" or "Frau Grisom" as a sign of respect . It's also to say, I don't know you well enough for you to get involved in my life.

I think that's what's happening in America, people are becoming socially ambivalent towards others, for much of the same reason too. We no longer live in houses with big yards, we are right next to each other, sometimes our houses are feet away from our neighbors. It cuts into our privacy, as a result we decide to cut ourselves off from the neighborhood around us. We might know our neighbor's names but we don't know them, nor do we really care to anymore. It's all about retaining what privacy we have left in our little worlds. To do this we ignore whats going on around us and we expect others to do the same. That is until someone else does something that might shatter this little bit of home we have created. To me this seems wrong on so many levels.

I grew up knowing all my neighbors, and honestly, I just had to sit in the kitchen with my mother and her neighbor friends. In under 10 minutes I would know everything going on for the whole block. It seemed nosy but at least then people seemed to care about what was going on in their neighborhood. It was the odd person that didn't care or didn't get involved. Instead of how it is now, being ostracized for caring, in the old days you were shunned for not caring.

I even remember times when my brother and I were caught doing something wrong and the person who caught us in the act would take us to our parents and tell them what we were doing wrong. O.K. so I'm getting a bit nostalgic here about the, "good ol' days." Still I won't say it was some sort of urban utopia in those days, because a lot of the bad things I've talked about here went on then and was ignored as well for much the same reason.

Yet today we supposedly know better, and these horrible things still get swept under the rug by people who just don't want to get involved or even worse just don't care. That brings us around full circle, anyone got an opinion?

I remember a post on the blogs here not to long ago where someone child was threatened and they commented about the boy who threatened their child with something to the affect of, "Everyone knew that boy, he's from a bad family. They need to throw him in jail." My question is If he's in a bad family and you knew that they were doing bad things, did you ever talk to anyone about it before it affected you and your child? If not, why? I'm not blaming anyone for anything just curious how far things have to go before people do get involved?

Anyone Have any story's on how they got involved or didn't and wished they had when they saw or suspected something bad was going on with a child?

Sageman's Blog

Child Abuse: Are We Involved?

Sageman

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