Children are suffering from a hidden epidemic of child abuse and neglect. Every year 3.3 million reports of child abuse are made in the United States involving nearly 6 million children (a report can include multiple children).
The United States has the worst record in the industrialized nation – losing five children every day due to abuse-related deaths.
Quotes and chart From : Child Abuse in AmericaNational Child Abuse Statistics/Child Help
Today's Topics
*Comparing Martin Luther King Jr. to President Obama
* MLK would be ashamed of the actions of Obama
* Obama and US government fail to protect children
*USA does not recognize the designation of " child soldiers"
*USA courts treat children as adults
*Child who shot and killed abusive Neo-Nazi father convicted of murder
Obama The War President "MLK Would Be Ashamed"- David Swanson Interview
Does an abused child have the right to fight back against his abusers even if the abuser is a parent or is a child the property of the parent and therefore has no rights.
One wonders if this happened in Iran or North Korea would American politicians be anxiously flooding the media with the story to prove how depraved those societies are.
Once again Americans don't disappoint and prove their own fanaticism in dealing with a child who kills an abusive father. The fact that this child was raised by a Neo-Nazi hate preaching and violence justifying father we could therefore predict that he too would at some point either rebel or take to his father's ideology and to not just preach hate but to put that hate into acts of violence. The father was not in any way a good father but was abusive and taught his children his own hate-filled conspiratorial violent racist bigoted ideology.
At ten years old the child did what he thought was the only way to stop the abuse was to use violence to pick up a gun and shoot his father which was as he was taught the only way to resolve an issue or problem .
He committed this act of violence at age ten and yet the courts in America refuse once again to empathize and sympathize with this child who was in fact a victim of long term abuse to which he responded in the only way he new how.
In more enlightened nations the child would not be treated as an adult but as being a child who was the victim. Instead in the good old USA the child is treated as being a criminal and a murderer . The question is why would the justice system treat a child in this outrageous manner.
But this fits America's pattern when it comes to other issues involving children such as "Child Soldiers" which is an internationally recognized designation for combatants aged 15 or under. A child soldier is supposed to be treated not the same as adult combatants. Instead the child soldier is to be treated as a victim who is in need of rehabilitation and education and therapeutic help til he is ready to re-enter society as a responsible human being.
But according to Americans children while in the care of their parents are the property of the parents and so have no independent legal rights. So if a child is being abused the child must keep silent and endure the abuse??? If the child is being used for prostitution the child still has no rights or if they are trained to become soldiers by their parents than the child must submit unless he 's captured by US officials soldiers or FBI or CIA then the child is treated the same as an adult captured armed combatant ie incarcerated , abused and tortured and denied any legal rights or standing.
For example the USA and one other country Somalia refuse to sign onto defending the rights of children
" Why Is the U.S. Against Children’s Rights?" By Lawrence J. Cohen and Anthony T. DeBenedet, M.D. at Time.com. Jan 24, 2012
Recently the U.N. special representative on violence against children called on member countries to ratify two optional protocols to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child which would help prevent the sale of children, child prostitution, child pornography and the involvement of children in armed conflict around the world. The Convention was adopted in 1989 to promote basic human rights for children everywhere, but the latest effort to extend those protections underscores a disturbing truth: the United States is one of only two U.N. member countries not to have ratified the original Convention (the other country is Somalia — which doesn’t have a functioning government.) The Convention was drafted during the Reagan and Clinton administrations — with a great deal of influence from the United States — but has never been presented to the Senate for consent, which is the final step to ratification. Why?
The message it sends to other victims of abuse is chilling . For instance a woman who is being abused , beaten, raped by her husband if she reports this and nothing is done and she takes matters into her own hands and murders the SOB in America the sympathy goes to the abusive man and not the abused woman. The notion many people in America have is that the woman is supposed to be submissive to her husband because the Bible says so and so should just keep quiet and learn to live with such abuse.
So what is supposed to be the message to other children in America suffering abuse to remain in the abusive situation because the Bible says to honor your father and mother no matter what.
Are there accessible programs for a child to enter or a crisis center to call for help or is the view that children as the property of their parents just have no rights.
So like a rape victim who fights back and kills her attacker is imprisoned for life or even executed. Or is it only if she kills the attacker by accident during their struggle. But if the victim after being raped gets a weapon confronts her attacker and kills him then suddenly its first degree murder.
This is extremely hypocritical in a culture which promotes guns and violence which says that even in a public place a shopping mall or church if you feel threatened you can pull out your gun or whatever weapon you have and stop that person by wounding, maiming or killing them. Yet a ten year old boy gets no such breaks from America's notorious system of injustice. The injustices are especially aimed at women and children and minorities ie Blacks and Latinos etc.
" Boy who shot neo-Nazi dad is convicted of murder The defense argued that growing up in a racist, abusive household gutted the child of moral agency" By Natasha Lennard at Salon.com, Jan. 14, 2013
Two years ago a 10-year-old California boy shot his father, a neo-Nazi, at point blank range in the head. On Monday, the child, now 12, was convicted of second-degree murder and could remain in jail until he is 23-years-old.
The boy’s father, Jeff Hall, was a regional leader of the National Socialist Movement and, the court learned, brought his son up in a household plagued with violence and abuse. Although the judge determined that the boy shot his father with premeditated intent, the trial focused on whether the boy could possess moral agency. In neo-Nazi a household, in which a child learns that it is acceptable to abuse and kill perceived threats, can this child be expected to understand “right” from “wrong?”
As the LA Times reported, “Public Defender Matthew Hardy focused on the boy’s abusive home life, where gunplay and neo-Nazi gatherings were commonplace. Witnesses testified that Hall beat his son repeatedly, often in drunken or drug-addled rages.”
According to the AP, “The boy said in a videotaped interview with police that he didn’t think he’d get in trouble because he saw an episode of Criminal Minds in which a child killed an abusive father and wasn’t arrested.”
Although the judge recognized the defendant’s history of abuse, he ruled that the child was in a position to make a moral judgement. “Even with that background, the court must look at the facts of the case,” the judge said.
A separate hearing will be held to determine whether the boy should be sent to a juvenile detention center run by the state Department of Corrections, sent to an alternative treatment facility or placed on probation.
As the New York Times noted in 2011, the shooting “cast fresh light on the fringe group to which Mr. Hall devoted his life: the National Socialist Movement, the nation’s largest neo-Nazi party, whose message stands in surreal juxtaposition to the suburban, workaday trappings of many of its members.” Based in Detroit, the NSM has about 400 members in 32 states. Prior to Hall’s shooting, the Times were investigating the racist group and witnessed “virulent, hate-filled rallies as well as barbecues and baby showers in the backyard of Hall’s Southern California home,” where the young, newly convicted boy was raised.
Child abuse statistics at Child Help.org
A report of child abuse is made every ten seconds
*More than five children die every day as a result of child abuse.
Approximately 80% of children that die from abuse are under the age of 4. 1
It is estimated that between 50-60% of child fatalities due to maltreatment are not recorded as such on death certificates.
More than 90% of juvenile sexual abuse victims know their perpetrator in some way.
Child abuse occurs at every socioeconomic level, across ethnic and cultural lines, within all religions and at all levels of education.
About 30% of abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children, continuing the horrible cycle of abuse.
About 80% of 21 year olds that were abused as children met criteria for at least one psychological disorder.
The estimated annual cost of child abuse and neglect in the United States for 2008 is $124 billion.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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