We Are Our Children’s Keepers

The nation’s capitol is the world’s “superpower.”  It houses the world’s most sophisticated fighting forces and spends billions to protect U.S. citizens, property, and confiscated oil around the world.  The District of Columbia has virtually the highest paid teachers, as well as scores of agencies, courts, and law enforcement agencies that are all charged with protecting children.  Yet, children can’t depend upon adults to keep them safe from predators and murderers.  Children die in plain sight with no one caring enough to save them—not school officials, not neighbors, not relatives, no one.  I am talking about the four children who died recently at the hands of their own mother, Banita Jacks.  Her four children were starved, stabbed, and strangled.  Their decomposed bodies lay for months in the upstairs bedrooms where they were murdered.  The smell coming from their row house was stifling, but not enough to raise alarm.

Actually, someone did care.  A social worker from a charter school where one of the children attended called the D.C. Child and Family Service agency and told officials that she believed abuse was occurring at the Jacks home, but the agency closed the case anyway.  One less folder to bother with.  Out of sight and out of mind.  You might say, well that’s just one family.  But there were 34 violent deaths of children in 2006 in D.C.—all African-American.  Even one child should not suffer with the great powers all around us and are available to stifle the pain.

Sure, the bureaucracy of D.C. failed.  I have been in this city some 25 years, and its record for protecting children has always been dismal.  But there should be a higher principle at work than bureaucracy.  It is something called love.  We are parents, teachers, neighbors, coaches, meter-readers, mail-carriers, mall-watchers, etc., etc., etc.

Usually in abuse cases, there are signs before a tragedy occurs.  Maybe, it was a parent that began acting crazy; or a child arriving at school unkempt, hair uncombed, bruised, or hungry; or maybe you see a child being punched by an adult in the mall.  Say something.  Do something.  Blaming things on the system that are put in place to protect children might make us feel better, but bureaucracies are often hiding places for scoundrels.  All of us must be our children’s keepers.  We must rid ourselves of a culture that is hostile to children.  We must become a society where children can trust us to keep them safe.  If we can’t ensure the safety of our children, we do not deserve the status of a “superpower.”  While we protect others across the world, we are allowing the neglect of our own children, which is a crime, a sin, and a shame.

That’s my point and I am Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds.  With me to discuss more about violence against children are panelists Eunita Winkey, an Arlington Virginia high school teacher; Mertine Moore, a mother and elementary school administrator; and Valencia Mohammed, a reporter for the Afro-American newspaper, who has had two children murdered in Washington, D.C.  Later Kate Sylvester, who is Executive Director of DC Action for Children, will join us.

Factoids on child killings.

575 children under the age of 5 were killed in 2005. Of all children under age 5 that were murdered from 1976-2002:*

·         31% were killed by their fathers

·         30% were killed by their mothers

·         23% were killed by male acquaintances

·         6% were killed by other relatives

·         3% were killed by strangers

Of those children killed by someone other than their parent, males killed 82% and the majority of children killed were males.

* Source: the U.S. Department of Justice