The shock of the extreme child abuse discovered last week in Perris has reverberated across America. Thirteen children and young adults, ages 2 to 29, were found to be shackled in an ordinary suburban tract home in Riverside County, apparently starved and tortured by their own parents. Puzzled neighbors lamented, “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this. It’s so sad,” according to news reports. People living near the home told reporters they had no idea what was allegedly happening behind closed doors. One remarked that the kids they did see seemed “so malnourished, so pale,” but no one ever reported any of this to the authorities.
We would like to think this abuse is an anomaly, but, sadly, it is not. In California, there are 60,550 children and youth — newborns to 21 — who are in the foster care system because they suffered abuse or neglect by their parents. Every day, children are removed from their homes, taken to emergency shelters and eventually put into foster placements, usually far from their homes, friends and families. Nearly half of these children are under the age of 5. And, of course, these statistics only reflect the abuse cases reported to authorities.
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But now that they have been removed from their abusive home, we want to be sure that they are given a chance to heal from their trauma, and to find safe, permanent, and loving homes. The children under the age of 21 will go into foster care, and we can only hope that each of them will have a CASA volunteer to help smooth the difficult journey on which they have now embarked.
Lawrence is the CEO of the California CASA Association, representing the network of 44 CASA programs statewide serving 51 counties. An attorney and child welfare advocate, for 20 years, she was president/CEO of Voices for Children, the CASA Program of San Diego and Riverside Counties before joining the state association.
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