Countywide : Signs Drive Antiabuse Message Home

The poignant message, written in a childlike scrawl on a billboard, is directed to those passing by a school playground in Anaheim:

“No daddy . . . don’t . . . you’re hurting me. . . . Please stop. . . . No . . . stop it. . . . Don’t.”

As part of a campaign to raise awareness of child abuse and recruit foster parents, the Children’s Bureau of Southern California is posting the billboards in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Its goal is to eventually have 400 signs.

“We want people to take a moment and get a sense of what it feels like to be a child in that moment of fear at the time the most important person in their life is about to hurt them,” said Sandy Sladen, director of community services for the bureau in Orange County.

Susan Waddell, the bureau’s spokeswoman, said, “It is disturbing, but child abuse is not a pretty thing. You can’t package it up all nice.”

The billboard in Anaheim is one of three styles now on display at eight locations across Orange County. The advertising space was donated by Gannett Outdoor Advertising and Eller Media Co.

One set of signs reads “Answer your father (SLAP)” and “Don’t talk back to your mother (SMACK).” The third says, “(SLAP) Mommy, please don’t hit me again (SMACK).”

Stopping to read the billboard on Sunkist Street in Anaheim last week, Police Officer Mike Freeman said, “It gets the message across. . . . People who are already abusing their children probably won’t care what the sign says, but if it helps one person stop, I think that’s great.”

A telephone number appears on each billboard, along with the Children’s Bureau slogan: “Give a child a chance.”

People who respond, Sladen said, can learn about free counseling available through the bureau, about parenting and child abuse prevention classes and how to become foster parents.

According to bureau statistics, 3,000 children in the United States are murdered each year by a parent or caretaker.

For 1995, the number of reports of child abuse in Orange County was more than 38,000, according to the Orange County Social Services Agency.

“We’re trying to make child abuse unacceptable,” Sladen said. “It’s just not OK to hurt children.”