We tell young people to speak up about abuse.
This one did.”

Our global village — it seems to me that approximately one a week, at least nationwide, is occurring.  The police WILL respond, and will sometimes prevent or minimize the fall-out, but more likely (they are only human, they are not omnipresent) they will count and identify the bodies, and speak to reporters, and neighbors.  This is too late for those speaking up.    This can be true when it comes to domestic violence also.

Before you read this post — if you read fast, if you skim well, and if you could commit to read THREE (3) pages of single-spaced, narrative, print, you will understand more: Do NOT pass go.  Click on the centered title “Brave Children Speak Up” Read the first page “intro”, to the bottom, hit “next” or “continued,” then the next page to the bottom, click on “next” and then the 3rd page, to the bottom (individual stories).

Brave Children Speak Up

Alanna’s story is well-known — she finally fled from Northern California to Southern (Los Angeles) and was able to get help.

How I Process (present tense) My Experience (past)

I did not experience abuse as a child. Mine didn’t start til I was almost 40 years old. Yet I will affirm — you are not the same afterwards — your understanding of the world is not the same either, and never will be. You can function, but you sprout antenna, learn to “deal,” test your systems of meaning (all, for the most part, remain suspect), and are much, much, MUCH more alert to the various signals and possible interpretations of almost every one. This is rough on people you wish to maintain friendships, let alone a romantic connection, with. I know that I “tested.’ When my friend passed the test, didn’t blow up, didn’t run away, it frightened me more. I lost so many job situations that (for a period), I began to self-sabotage work rather than experience the forced-out situation again. (Economic control is a primary means of control). I felt like I was another species for a while, and finally accepted that, in some respects, I was. And I was NOT sexually abused as a child. . . . Or beaten. . . . Or deprived.

Negotiating what for others is often an Average situation:

[Leaving home.  Coming back home.   Possibly reporting what happened at home — to be continued. . . ]

One dilemma still up for grabs is a difficult one. I have faith, but I do not trust churches. This affects support systems and for sure sociability. But, I will affirm — there ARE people (both genders) who target these areas, and this IS one area a vulnerable (to being dominated to excess) women can be found. They also take in divorced and needy women, at times, hence, a charming unscrupulous man will find ample fields there.

One has to constantly renegotiate meaning in life. I have come to believe this is an asset. Intuition comes in handy in many fields (particularly artistic ones or ones that deal with group dynamics).

When abuse happens mid-way, or later in life, it is difficult to know what goals to set, in exiting it. It is also VERY difficult to exit it, as by middle age, so many professions, communities, and connections have come. More schooling is not always the answer. What about relationships?

I cannot imagine being a child who has betrayed by an adult.
Mine were (I will testify and do). But I cannot imagine it still, how to callous onesself and just go deal with it.

Again:
Brave Children Speak Up

I cannot think too hard on this one today.  I refuse to abuse substances to turn my mind away.  Each day’s internal parasympathetic (?) wiring stands alone, how much it can handle, but because I know what it’s like to have people “unable to stomach” my truths, I try to process and stomach others’ I read about.  Can you handle this one?  Perhaps you can.  Children in the situation HAVE to.  

I would like to say: It’s  not the gun, but the attitude in the person carrying the gun.  If it was not a gun, it could be a knife, an ax, or as happened recently a sword.  

It’s also another, more communal problem called “denial.”  

February 25, 2009

Police respond to “shots fired” and find family dead in murder-suicide

Editor’s note: This tragic incident is one of several like it that have surfaced recently. Although the exact details are not yet known, the mass violence it reflects needs to be noted.  

. . .  “It’s important to remember that one of the most dangerous persons an officer can face is someone who feels they’ve got nothing to live for and nothing to lose. There are a growing number of those people and that’s a very real threat to officer safety and survival. Now, more than ever, officers need to be highly trained, highly focused and thoroughly prepared to deal with the threats and challenges of doing their jobs in a time of crisis.”

Stay alert, be trained—even if it means taking steps to seek your own training—and remember that even “regular people” who would otherwise seem harmless and unlikely to pose a deadly threat, like the man in this incident, may in fact be extremely dangerous.

— Scott Buhrmaster, PoliceOne Managing Editor

 

RE:  “ someone who feels they’ve got nothing to live for “

My recommended reading:  Viktor Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning.”

There are choices, even in a concentration camp.

Another link that is not always explored, but should be, is the pharmaceutical connection.  I speak as someone whose father in law was on medication (and committed suicide).   Not smart to tinker too much with this chemistry.  My policy is, don’t!  Your body was designed smart:  handle with care.  

---

By Matt Sedensky 
Associated Press       

MIAMI — A 53-year-old man fatally shot his wife and two daughters Wednesday before turning the gun on himself, and a 16-year-old son who survived the attack managed to call 911 as he escaped uninjured from the Miami home, authorities said. . . .

Sarit Betancourt, a 44-year-old school bus driver who lives near the family, said the father is a Cuban immigrant who gave piano lessons at a guitar shop and at his home. Betancourt’s two sons, ages 9 and 10, had been taking piano lessons from him once a week since 2006.

“He was a marvelous person and a tremendous professor,” she said. “People would enter the house, and you just breathed peace.”

[WELL, not for a little girl….]

PLEASE READ THE LINK (above) & THINK.  

 

It cost her -- and her sister -- and her mother - their lives. I speculate that HE could not stand the shame

or public exposure -- that task had been assigned (by him) for HER to carry.  I'll say, assuming the

charges were valid.  One way to cut short THAT conversation, well, see headlines.


"Be Prepared!"  How?  I don't know, but I know I must find out.  So should you.





I cannot editorialize much today. I am processing this one... I have teens.

I also know that the issue is NOT primarily sex.  It's about character, values,
and entitlements.  I do not think we should be suspecting all our neighbors of this
(though clearly it's underreported).  Perhaps we should all make sure that our kids 
have at least ONE other NON-family member they can confide in, and who know them.

And we should all be informed of the overlap between wife abuse and child abuse.
And that our young women are to value, and be able to hold, boundaries.  Unfortunately,
these boundaries are daily violated in so many contexts (including schools), that I'm at
some loss to, as I posted elsewhere, safety a "place."  I think that self-sufficiency has
to be a THING you carry with you.  

As I said, today, there are limits to what can be processed.  But I will not drop the topic.

Are you, reader, aware that in Family Courts across the nation, custody of children, when
contested, it being given to batterers in retaliation for reporting abuse of one form or another.
If you don't believe me, believe the children who reported, and lived to tell:

Jennifer Collins’ Family Fled the U.S. for Safey! From Court-Ordered Child Abuse. She aged out and spoke up. And others.

Related Articles:

 Six die in L.A. family murder-suicide 

 Police: L.A. man kills wife, 5 children, himself over job troubles

 Officials: Financial crisis can lead to violence 

 Police survey links crime spike to economy

 As economy dives, crime fears spike