On Our Experience With The Duty To Warn About Our Suspicions Of Abuse.

[Gman]

One has to have a strong fact based suspicion such as a conversation with someone that talked with the victim in order to have a duty to warn about abuse. For example, when our daughter was in seventh grade, my wife and I were told by our daughter that one of her friends was having sex with her step-brother and had been having sex since she was in 5th grade. Her step-brother was in his early 20's at the time. A couple of months earlier, when I picked up our daughter at her friend's house, I noticed that the child was overly friendly toward me if not outright flirtatious. At the time I just dismissed it since we've know the girl since she was small. But when we found out she was in essence being raped by her much older step-brother and had been since she was about 10 years old, the flirtatious incident made more sense and we felt we had no choice but to report what we heard to our parish priest. (This was in a Catholic school.) We knew that by reporting this the girl would be put under a lot of pressure and that we would potentially be in a position where we should "mind our own business". Nevertheless, we still reported the abuse. The girl's mother hasn't spoken to us now for 3 years. Apparently it wasn't hard for the mom to figure out that we had reported the abuse.

Another time, one of the students in the Catholic religious education class my wife and I teach for 7th and 8th graders, one of the girls was exhibiting some really destructive behavior. For example, when we asked them to draw picture on paper about the subject we were talking about, instead of drawing something related to the topic, the girl drew a picture of her step-father hanging by the neck from a gallow and herself standing off to the side with her saying "I hate you!". We were also told by a couple of the kids in the class that she told them that she wanted to die. My wife pulled her aside during the next class and tried to talk to her about what was going on in her life. The girl said some things and avoided answering other questions. But the girl said enough that we had a strong suspicion that she was being sexually molested. We bounced what we knew off a certified counselor who advised us that we were "real close to the line" on whether or not we had a legal duty in our capacity as teachers to warn. He went on to explain that as persons in positions of authority such as a teacher, we had a legal duty to warn and could be prosecuted if we know something and we did not report it. We did report our suspicions. Ultimately it seems we were not the only people that were noticing something. The girl did get help through counseling and therapy. The following school year we noticed that she was remarkably different. The girl was a lot more upbeat and had a much better overall attitude.

From my own experiences, let's be clear about one thing. Dennis Hastert and the rest of the Republican House leadership were nothing less than irresponsible, if not outright criminal when they completely dismissed, for the sake of power, the reports that Foley was doing inappropriate things with teen-age pages. The people that had the duty to warn did their duty by reporting the things they were made aware of by the kids that were being approached by Foley. Hastert et al intentionally let the system break down by failing to act. In my opinion that is intolerable. Even as I type this, Dick Durbin is live on CNN talking about the duty Hastert and others had to take action against Foley and didn't. This is not political talk. This is being responsible.

On occasion we talk about politics ending at "the water's edge" meaning there are some things that are off limits for politics. These are things that everyone unanimously agrees on because it is only right and decent. One of those things used to be whether or not to go to war and to protect our country. The GOP effectively ended that in 2002 when they refused to delay voting on the Iraq War Resolution until after the November elections. War actually became a tool to be used as a political weapon against the Democrats. At last the elder Bush had the decency to delay the Gulf War I vote until after the 1990 elections.

Now we find ourselves in a country where even sexual abuse of children is not off limits to politics to the point where the GOP leadership is closing ranks in support around their own leadership that had the duty to take action against one of their own to protect the children they had responsibility for, and didn't. While I was personally outraged by the politicizing of war in 2002, I am outraged and outright disgusted with the lack of humanity in the people that purport to be the leadership of this country. I couldn't have lived with myself had my wife and I chosen not to report our daughter's friend that was being raped. Nor could I have lived with myself had we chosen to ignore the obvious warning signs of abuse our student showed. Somehow this "leadership" has no problem living, much less thriving despite knowing they did nothing when told abuse was occurring.

Once again, the only solace I find is the hope that his country still has the good common sense to do something about it. Unfortunately we still have to wait another month to find out. I do feel that regardless of what happens this November, this country will eventually wake up and realize how wrong things are much like the people of Germany realized how wrong they were after Hitler was defeated. I just hope it doesn't go as far as it did in Germany.