Protecting Children From Abuse

Recently, a 3-year-old boy in California was strangled by his mother’s boyfriend and a 6-year-old girl in New York was beaten to death by her adopted father.

I came from an affluent home; my parents were prominent citizens in Westwood’s social circles, and I was violently abused on a daily basis. My parents told me I was lucky to have them as parents; they told me that I was bad. And I believed them because you have no other choice when you’re little.

When I was 10 I finally got the guts to tell my parents’ friends what was happening, but I barely got started before they passed it off. They tried to explain that occasionally all children get a little spanking when they’re bad.

No one sees a hearing loss caused by severe beatings to the head; they think the patches of hair missing from your scalp are because you’re a nervous child; no one sees the nightmares of sleeping in a locked closet . . . and no one believes you when you’re small and have upstanding parents. So I never told anyone again.

Today I am an adult with my own family and my own career, and still if I try to tell someone who knew me then, they can’t believe it. They think you’re exaggerating or that you’re simply being dramatic and neurotic about your childhood. Often the response is, “Everyone was hit now and then.”

So where was the little 6-year-old girl to go to prevent her final beating? And how does a 3-year-old boy find out that mommy’s boyfriend shouldn’t strangle him?

Children must be taught in school from an early age that no one has the right to hurt them, even if it’s their parents. And they need to know who they can go to to stop the hurting. I speak for the children of the world who suffer.

LAURIE ANDREWS

Los Angeles