“CHILD ABUSE: OUR NATION’S LARGEST PUBLIC HEALTH

PROBLEM

The first time I heard Robert Anda present the results of the ACE study, he could

not hold back his tears. In his career at the CDC he had previously worked in

several major risk areas, including tobacco research and cardiovascular health.

But when the ACE study data started to appear on his computer screen, he

realized that they had stumbled upon the gravest and most costly public health

issue in the United States: child abuse. He had calculated that its overall costs

exceeded those of cancer or heart disease and that eradicating child abuse in

America would reduce the overall rate of depression by more than half,

alcoholism by two-thirds, and suicide, IV drug use, and domestic violence by

20

three-quarters.

It would also have a dramatic effect on workplace performance

and vastly decrease the need for incarceration.

When the surgeon general’s report on smoking and health was published in

1964, it unleashed a decades-long legal and medical campaign that has changed

daily life and long-term health prospects for millions. The number of American smokers fell from 42 percent of adults in 1965 to 19 percent in 2010, and it is

estimated that nearly 800,000 deaths from lung cancer were prevented between

2000.21

1975 and

The ACE study, however, has had no such effect. Follow-up studies and

papers are still appearing around the world, but the day-to-day reality of children

like Marilyn and the children in outpatient clinics and residential treatment

centers around the country remains virtually the same. Only now they receive

high doses of psychotropic agents, which makes them more tractable but which

also impairs their ability to feel pleasure and curiosity, to grow and develop

emotionally and intellectually, and to become contributing members of society.” The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk

The idea has been in the back of my mind, the front of my mind, and out of my mouth for many years, due to my own experience, that somehow we have to stop passing on our nightmares to the next generation. The thing is, how? I couldn’t reach beyond survival for so very long. How could I have any fruitful impact on anyone?

To read these words brought tears to my eyes also, for my children and their children and all the generations that do not address this epidemic.

In my day, it was nobodies business what you did to your children or spouse, as long as you didn’t kill them. At my book signing at the Brocton, NY Museum a few people told my sisters and I that it was known that terrible things happened on our farm, but what could they do? I like to think that attitude is changing, but until children are no longer considered property to be raised as any random parent sees fit, or unfit, the futures of vast numbers of children will be bleak at best.

I have been put down, rejected, called looney for speaking out about my own life. But things do not change until people are made aware of the need, and no one sees the need until enough people speak it.

Even then, there seems to be a blind spot when it comes to abuse, rape, incest, or domestic violence.

It is a silent epidemic perhaps because the children often have no safe person to tell, and the adults who know keep silent out of shame.

I cannot keep silent. What most people have no clue about, is the enormous, long lasting effect on children’s lives as their bodies grow to adulthood while their minds and emotional stability never catch up.

It has been said that I made up my story to excuse my failed, badly lived life. It is a common theme among nay-sayers. It has been said that as a bi-polar person I made up the stories of incest, as bi-polars are prone to do.(Bi-Polar people are not actually prone to claim incest) But I do not fit the DSM criteria for Bi-Polar. A story was concocted that I made up one claim so I would not be stuck on the farm with my aging parents. Another made up the story about me being molested by the minister, but he never touched me.

People have all sorts of ideas of who I am, but notice none have spoken to me directly. Please, spare me any truth or sense of reality!

Abused children are silenced, lied about, and left behind. It is true. It is deadly.