Father accused in girl’s shooting can’t see children

(Paperback)

It is possible to overcome and use what we have learned in abuse into something better in life.  For example, Oprah Winfrey, case in point (her story was on TV recently).  She described a split family, being shunted back and forth (now, this is done forcibly through the courts), and her mother rooming with a cousin, who had a boyfriend, who molested her and beat on the cousin.  Oprah says she bargained — selling HERSELF — to this batterer to refrain from beating on the cousin by having sex with her.  And that she blamed herself for this until her 40s.  She got raped at age 9 (by whom, was not said in this interview).

I was hearing this, and thinking about how would a single black mother support herself in those days, without having some help, for example, a roommate…    She went back to her father who, thankfully, was more honorable, and helped get her straightened out. …  Before this, she had been out of control and promiscuous as a teenager.

Reminds me for sure of this:

http://www.acestudy.org

Are you guys getting tired of this link yet?  I frequently refer to it. 

Think about this:  HOW much of society’s trauma might be stopped if we, as a culture, actually faced the fact that a whole DAMN lot of child-rape goes on and is endorsed by the bystanders and families and schools, and pastors, rabbis, imams, and therapists, too. 

Think I’m kidding?

Here’s TODAY’s New York Times, “National Briefing” (page A11, under Mid-Atlantic — and it’s the ONLY item under Mid-Atlantic Region):

“Delaware:  Review Ordered in Doctor’s Case”

(formal, non-emotional language for THIS):

Gov. Jack Markell said he woudl order an independent review of the handling of investigations involving Dr. Earl B. Bradley, a pediatrician suspected of sexually abusing more than 100 patients.  Dr. Bradley, 56, was the subject or plice investigations in 2005 and 2008, but the state’s medical licensing board (!!!) says it was never notified until his arrest last month.  The police say they tried to file a complaint with the board in 2005 and were turned away.

Arrest of a Pediatrician Followed Years of Complaints

The Delaware pediatrician who prosecutors say may have molested more than 100 patients showed a pattern of inappropriate touching that led to multiple complaints from patients and co-workers, according to court documents released this week.

. . .

Starting in 2005, police investigators received complaints about the pediatrician, Dr. Earl B. Bradley, of Lewes, Del., from eight patients accusing him of abuse as far back as 1999. At least one complaint was sent to a state medical group, but no action was taken to suspend Dr. Bradley’s license and he was not charged, according to the documents.

Dr. Bradley, 56, was charged in December with 32 criminal counts relating to the rapes of at least seven girls, ages 3 months to 13 years. At the time, the authorities said they had received multiple complaints about the doctor roughly a year ago.

But the new documents, which include the accounts of three doctors and a nurse, indicate that concerns were raised far earlier.

In the spring of 2005, the Milford police tried to charge Dr. Bradley with offensive touching after a 3-year-old patient told her parents about his kissing her too much in at least one office visit.

No arrest was made, the Milford police said, because officials in the office of then-Attorney General M. Jane Brady decided they could not win the case, according to the documents, which were first obtained by The News Journal of Wilmington, Del.

A former office manager for Dr. Bradley told investigators in April 2005 that she filed a complaint earlier that year with the Medical Society of Delaware, which is a professional organization that does not license doctors. But officials at the society, as well as at the Delaware Board of Medical Practice, which grants doctors’ licenses, said they never received any complaints from patients or alerts from the police about Dr. Bradley.

State law requires medical professionals to report anyone suspected of engaging in unprofessional behavior.

Please do me a favor.  Read this VERY uncomfortable post, and think about how even that 3 year old KNEW what inappropriate was and wasn’t. 

She didn’t know, like we now do, what a steep road it is to prosecute abuse, how the mandated reporters in most categories, don’t, and how licensing boards which OUGHT to do the right thing, also don’t.  MOST people are interested in how to pass the buck.

After enough generations (this is one of my theories), society itself is so drugged, immune, seeking to NOT address its core issues of a basic lack of love and concern for each other, the collective conscience hasn’t developed too many responses except:

1.  Starting another nonprofit to fix the problem.

2. Various forms of self-medication.

3. Protection of one’s own identity (and responsibility) by victim-blaming and passing the buck.

4.   Basically, just pretending it didn’t occur.  The DOWNSIDE of this “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is that the soul goes numb, and down it goes, another generation.  Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

5.  This is why I really question placing children with relatives when abuse has occurred (either child or spousal) — where were they when that abuse was happening to start with?

6.  Dissociation.  Compartmentalization of one’s conscience to survive.

7.  Tribalization, and all kinds of linguistic tricks to NOT talk about the truth honestly.

That’s just off the top of my head.  What I liked about “Transforming Abuse” (not ALL of its premises that I accept) were the chapters talking about witnessing our stories, versus Quarantining.

In the Social Sciences field (FYI), this type of quarantining is also frequent.  As I hoped to illustrate in that AFCC Conference page (which would be a good page to study both personnel AND language used) — the “experts” have literally quarantined themselves off from the ugly, nasty, street-level direct input from those experiencing the trouble. 

 They (YES, I said “they” even though I have by some miracle been able to attend or sit in on some conferences, in person and by web) speak about our blood, mud, begging realities (which don’t confine themselves to an “awareness” month) in sanitized situations and in sanitized terms.

There are too many parallels with the sanitary circumlocuation of the Nazi’s and the Holocaust.  Or any other genocide.  ALWAYS watch the language.  It’s key.

Last quote for today — and you are welcome for a shorter post… —

George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” 1946

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

. . . .

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

(so much for the cult of predictability, experts, and social engineering…)

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into accoun

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer.

But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

 

Yet to come — I should just get honest and do this:  A blog viewing these social issues (family court matters, etc.) in light of the language of the Bible.

For example, the first woman-blamer was Adam.  (God:  Where are you?  Adam:  I hid.  God:  Did you eat of that fruit I told you not to?  Adam:  THE WOMAN  YOU gave me, er, ah. . . . . . and, (hopefully having distracted God by the time he gets to his confession), I ate of it.)

It was a YES/No question.

Ideally, we should be able to fluently speak a variety of languages, including metaphorical, religious, and political.  Unfortunately, there are political forces that feel this is economically not expedient, and wish to unify an entire culture under one paradigm, while saying they are actually tolerant.

Best to read the eccentrics and outcasts, I say — might at least learn something.

For example, (United States public educational system.  Is there anyone left YET who doesn’t know what influence teachers’ unions have with state governors?).

ART is a metaphor for life.  Funny thing how the arts are really suffering in this school system, and are shelved for focus on “core” subjects.  Result?  More gangs, and still falling behind in those core subjects too.   more arts and less other stuff MIGHT just lead to children being actually heard as individuals, and LESS violence.  Just perhaps. ….

The real message is the values system in there, which is essentially, herd mentality and survival of the fittest.  Authoritarianism, and not much free time left for the average student, or parent.

Note:  Due to limited Internet access these days, I don’t typically respond to comments or pingbacks, I’ll approve a comment but don’t have time for the pingbacks.  If your comment appears to be an attempt to market your site for an unrelated theme, I won’t bother to approve it either.  I also am a poor tagger (don’t take the time to label my own posts).

Have a nice day, and may your family and personal budgets balance.   Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but Truth is that which doesn’t change so substantially generation after generation, like Ecclesiastes (above) says.

Sometimes parables and stories can get closer to truth than “analysis,” which often times is just pure obfuscation.

Also, EDUCATION is obtained, and as to “schooling,” well, fishes (those closer to the bottom of the food chain) run in SCHOOLS.  Think about it.  There is a difference between SCHOOLING and obtaining self-discipline for a cause one deems worthy or a meaningful goals.

Failure is often a better teacher than success for those who have a will to learn and keep it up a lifetime….Like authors accumulationg rejection slips, be sure to accumulate a series of “failures” in life in order to actually learn something.  Thomas Edison did…. 

We should spend less time grilling kids to fear failure than to love learning.  They should love SOMETHING worthwhile.    The headlines in (California) are still blaming the parents.  Give me a break! The bulk of my country are graduates of this school system, any more (i’d guess).  So to blame parents, in one sense, is in effect to blame onesself, when that blame is coming from “educators.”

Like the above pediatrician, some people come to education (and religion) to serve, and others for the unmonitored access to vulnerable youngsters.  It’s time we faced this.