WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- Commentary: The Children Left Behind
by Kathy A. Gambrell
President George W. Bush on Wednesday celebrated the one-year anniversary of his "No Child Left Behind" education reform program, but what the administration has failed to acknowledge is that not only have hundreds of thousands of U.S. children been left behind, they have been summarily trampled in the process.
An excellent example of the New Jersey children found Saturday in a dirty, fetid basement in Newark who had been starved, beaten and forgotten. The boys told Newark Mayor Sharpe James that they have never been to school.
So the nation again listened this week as police detailed the death of a child at the hands of a caregiver - beaten, starved and crammed into a Samsonite.
New Jersey has launched a sweeping investigation of its child welfare agency after Raheem Williams, 7, and his brother, Tyrone Hill, 4, were found malnourished and suffering from abuse in the basement of a home in Newark. A third child, Faheem Williams, Raheem's twin brother was found dead, stuffed in a trunk.
Bush's administration once held the promise of admitting the abuse of children in their homes was a national travesty. During his inaugural address Bush declared " whatever our views of its cause, we can agree that children at risk are not at fault. Abandonment and abuse are not acts of God, they are failures of love."
Somewhere during the last few years that focus was lost. Children were invited to the White House South Lawn to play tee ball and roll Easter eggs, but what about those who have only seen a bat as it was being wielded against them? And what about those children who would give anything to have one of those eggs for breakfast because they have not been allowed food for days or weeks?
The issue of child abuse and neglect has reached epidemic proportions with health experts such as Howard Dubowitz, physician and co-director of University of Maryland Medical System Center for Child Protection, calling it a public health issue.
The problems within state child protection agencies are common from state to state: A high staff turnover rate, high caseloads, poor training and dismally low pay for caseworkers and badly written policy with little real guidelines for decision-making. When these cases emerge, the factors cited are always the same.
Wade Horne, chief of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Children and Families division told United Press International that the Bush administration opposed any type of database that would track these children from initial complaint, through the court system and into foster care. He also said that the administration did not want to interfere with the states by imposing federal mandates on or "micromanaging" how caseworkers do their jobs.
The agency states that the rate of child abuse and neglect victims per 1,000 children in the population had been decreasing steadily from 15.3 victims per 1,000 children in the population in 1993 to 11.8 victims per 1,000 children in the population in 1999. The victimization rate increased slightly to 12.2 per 1,000 children in the year 2000.
"Child abuse and neglect continues to be a significant problem in the United States. These statistics can help us understand the scope of the problem, who is affected, and what type of services are being provided by State and local agencies," the agency's Web site reads.
Bush in October held a White House Conference on Missing, Exploited and Runaway Children in Washington. During the summit featuring child advocates and business leaders, the president decried the abduction of children and wailed that the exploitation of kids via the Internet must stop.
But the president has failed repeatedly to address the thousands of children who are burned, beaten and battered in their own homes - something that has become one of America's dirty little secrets that the White House is loath to admit.
When a UPI reporter tried to talk with a Bush domestic policy advisor about the issue in October, the White House cancelled the interview citing work that had to be done for the then-upcoming mid-term elections. Clearly this issue is not a priority for the administration.
Texas father Eric Horridge would likely believe his son Collin's death would be considered much more than a "significant problem." After repeated calls to St. Mary's County, Md., child welfare workers reporting his 19-month-old son was being abused, Horridge received a call telling him his son was dead. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. No one has been held accountable for the death.
In Germantown, Md., a severely malnourished kindergartener Richard Holmes, had been confined to the room for up to 23 hours a day, fed a diet of hot peppers and whiskey by his father, Alan, a volunteer firefighter, and his father's girlfriend, Alba Scarpelli. Richard's legs and arms had been bound with duct tape for so long he couldn't walk.
In Richard's case, administrators and teachers at Lake Seneca Elementary School, which he attended, filed more than a dozen complaints detailing their suspicions. The boy was fishing food out of garbage cans. His nails had been cut so short they bled. He was black and blue with bruises and ligature marks. Finally, he stopped coming to school.
The teachers said they never heard back from caseworkers about what was being done to help the boy. As it turned out, caseworkers had done absolutely nothing.
These cases surface in a media firestorm calling for explanations, investigations and firings. The groundswell is fast, intense and emergent, but recedes as quickly as it appears. Child advocates blightly say they've heard it all before and many have become jaded to the hope that anything will change.
Randy Burton, founder of Justice for Children, called children the victims of terrorism, saying that as many as 1,500 youngsters die each year from abuse and neglect. Because those numbers are often under-reported, Burton said, it is likely double those figures -- as least as many as those who died on Sept. 1l, 2001, in the terrorist attacks.
In the case of the Williams brothers, Collin Horridge and Richard Holmes, and the thousands of other children who long for the chance to go to school if only to escape being burned and beaten, or to get a hot meal they are denied at home, these are the youngsters left behind.
And America's most shameful secret.
