EVERYTHING
FOR YOUR FAMILY
Editors Note
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I suppose there are no degrees of evil to a killing. You take a life, you've taken a life. Same with abuse. The abused suffer no matter what their situation. Elder abuse is no less a crime because of a life already mostly lived than the abuse of a newborn gasping for breath. But we feel a difference - even though the degree is imperceptible - to those crimes against our youngest. The lives of children hold special significance. The innocent vulnerability; the loss of potential; the extreme pain from an early death. Who would want to threaten a child? That is why the latest news story on life, death and abuse takes on relevance. We've been there before, read the papers, seen the TV reports, but the horror seems so new. In Newark, N.J., three boys were found in a locked room. One, age 7, was dead. His tomb? A plastic storage bin in the apartment of a woman who was overseeing the children because their mother had been jailed on assault charges. The dead twin's brother and another brother, age 4, were hospitalized in fair condition; they had not eaten in days, according to a CNN.com report. The arrested woman is a cousin of the children's mother. The mother had been released from jail last August; she said she futilely searched for the family. She now is hospitalized after being hit by a car. She was en route to a reunion with the surviving two boys when the accident occurred. New Jersey is afire with this story, in part because of alleged negligence by the state's family services agency. Complaints about the family run back 10 years; something should have been done long ago, the community argues. There are no excuses, no matter how wide the blame billows. Family life often is hard because of circumstances. Parents can teeter on the brink of despair from lives already wasted. Or, finances can imperil home and hearth through job loss or the suddenness of becoming a single parent. There is always the avenue for an excuse, but there never is a reason for one. Children hold the hope for a better future, no matter what our station in life. We need to nurture that, despite all odds. As we work through this latest outrage, hopefully a lesson will be learned across the whole community of parents. Do all you can, do everything you must, to ensure that the children survive and thrive. Our outrage should make the story of three young boys locked in a room so sickening, so disruptive to our thoughts of basic decency, that we become ill. Do your part as a community member. If you are a parent, be a parent; if you are a neighbor, be a watchdog. Now to the irony: The cat in that apartment was clean. And well-fed. Oh, the humanity. |
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