Who's your daddy?

I know many of you want to strangle or slowly torture perpetrators of crimes against children. It was an issue I had before I transferred to that department. Doing Adult Protective Services was harrowing enough. More than once I found myself face to face with a hostile, unstable, drug-ridden grandson who did not want me to cut off his gravy train from his grandmother. He loved her, of course, but he also exploited and abused her.

But crimes against children seem more hideous, don't they? I was concerned about sitting down with 350 lbs of hostile, guilty Bubba and asking him what he did to that little girl. I was also concerned about my reactions to his responses. I learned fast.

Think for a moment about today's abused child. Children do what they learn from their adults. If you light up a cigarette, you child will likely imitate that behavior with glee, as it is a grown up thing to do. They do what we do, not what we tell them. So if you beat your child, or touch that child inappropriately, the child learns that this is normal behavior.

So today's abuser is yesterday's abusee. Many of the perps I talked to knew their behavior was wrong. Many regretted it with their whole hearts and cried. Some told me that their daddies beat them/abused them/neglected them and look, see, they came out just fine, right?

Some are mentally ill. I can't condemn a person who is unable to understand something is just wrong. Try telling a Munchausen's by Proxy mother that it is not acceptable to give dangerous medication to a child to get attention for herself. She will be able to rationalize to hell and back why she did that.

Depression is a huge factor. The house with the maggots drowned in the old grease on the stove? That house was so filthy and disgusting that the police told me it was the worst they had ever seen. I think they wanted to jail the parents and have me remove the children on the spot. The mother was crying, putting trash into bags after facing the disgust of the police officers. The father, borderline retarded, was scared. He felt cleaning was "women's work" so he refused to help. I asked them to take the kids to family members and get the house cleaned up with helpfrom family so I wouldn't have to remove their children. The mother had just started getting therapy. They needed the assistance of an agency to teach them to discipline the children and maintain a home, not jail or losing their children. I shook their hands when I left that day. The police officers refused, even though they had on leather gloves.

Let me say here that I ran into many, many compassionate members of law enforcement. Most went above and beyond the call of duty to work with me on cases, including using their own money to buy meals for kids.

I am not saying that I approve of abuse or neglect. I am saying I can understand how it happens. We need not to condemn people who find themselves in bad situations, we need to offer a helping hand and the tools to move on to become better citizens. No one wants to hurt children. Some people just don't know how to stop.