FACING EACH DAY DIFFICULT FOR ABUSED CHILDREN

Child abuse hot line

The Indiana Chapter of the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse offers the CARE Line, a toll-free information and referral line concerning child abuse and neglect. It's (800) 962-2798.

Warning signs consistent and visible in behaviors of abused according to local social workers and sociologists.

It's 7 a.m. You awake to a bleeping alarm and instinctively shut it off. You don't want to get up to another day and face your parents. Just getting down to breakfast takes most of your courage. Then, it's off to another day of humiliation and disappointment in school. You don't know if you can manage to make it through the day, and you're not sure if you want to. . . .

This might be your daily routine if you were one of the 32,000 abused or neglected children in Indiana.

"They have a pretty dismal outlook on life," said Sheldon Siegel, chairman of the governor's Commission on Abuse and Neglected Children and Their Families.

Commission members Mary Roth and Peggy Eagan concurred and said abused kids tend to have low self-confidence, are often fearful and shy, sometimes have low performance in school or even retreat into their own fantasy world.

Concerning school performance, Eagan added: "Abuse does change behavior. . . . It might be a student who's a very good student, comes to school every day and is really very interested and active in class, and all of a sudden they start having absenteeism or they sleep through class.

"Or they become very quiet, when maybe they've been outgoing. So usually, any major change in the way they act is . . . an indicator."

According to our three interviewees, abused children also tend to have trouble building trusting relationships because, for most of their life, the people that they were supposed to trust and love (usually parents) could not be trusted.

On the other hand, these kids learn to be very perceptive. Eagan said: "Abused children often learn to read people very well, because their life depends on it sometimes. They have to know if people are in a bad mood or in a good mood, or what's gonna make someone angry."

The problems of abused children aren't limited to their childhoods. According to Siegel, there is a direct link between the severity of abuse and problems in adult life _ the greater the abuse, the greater the problems.

Many people who have been abused as children turn to crime and substance abuse. According to Eagan, as many as 80 percent of America's criminal population were abused or neglected as children. In fact, in a study conducted in Oregon, 100 percent of that state's male inmates on Death Row were severely abused as children, she said.

Mental illness can occur, too. "One hundred percent of people with multiple personality disorder were abused as children," Eagan noted.

What's more, the cycle of abuse often doesn't stop with one generation. Roth explained: "All children who have been abused do not abuse their children. But people who abuse their children _ the majority of them have been abused."

All three agreed that early intervention is the best way to help abusers and their victims.

"The important thing is to get it identified early, to get some treatment so that the child realizes that it's not their problem, they didn't cause it. And then to go on with their normal lives," Eagan said.

Early prevention

Siegel agreed: "Like with any problem, if you catch it early enough, then the effects aren't going to be as severe. And hopefully if you catch it early enough, then the family can be helped, 'cause it isn't just a problem of the youngster.

"I mean, the youngster is the victim in terms of child abuse, but since it doesn't happen by itself, it's an issue with the mother, the father _ both parents. And hopefully, if you intervene early enough, you can help the whole family."

When an abusive or neglectful parent or environment is discovered, the child is not automatically separated from the family, because that is very traumatic for the child. Roth said, "Your first choice always is that you keep the child at home and work with the family."

But prevention is preferred to even the best treatment.

"Trying to mend a child once they're broken is no better than trying to put a Band-Aid on an open wound," Eagan stated.

Don't run away

If a child is being abused at home, he or she should definitely NOT run away. If children run away from abusive homes and are found by the police, they often are treated as though they are the ones at fault, Eagan said.

Even if they are not found, they could be putting themselves at a greater risk. "Once they get out here, they have no way to survive, and they turn to prostitution," she added.

"What they need to do is go to someone _ a trusted adult like a teacher or a counselor or maybe their minister or a trusted neighbor."

Although child abuse is a terrible problem in today's society, there is still hope for the future if all of us wake up and do something about it.

Siegel pointed out: "It isn't the other guy. It could just as easily be us. . . . It's Pogo (a popular cartoon opossum) who says, "We've met the enemy and they is us.' "