For Michigan youth, hard times means more abuse

(photo: Onion via Flickr.com)

In August, three-year old Cody Cross of Kalkaska, a small town in northern Michigan, was found unconscious and covered in bruises from alleged beatings by a man who lived at his home. He died. Cody’s mom, Pamela Buning, 24, had left her son in the care of Sheldon McDonald, a registered sex offender who allegedly beat the boy in what investigators called “a misguided attempt at discipline.”

This week, Buning was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison for her role in the child’s death — behavior that the Kalkaska County prosecutor compared to “knowing there is a tiger in your backyard and letting your child out to play.” McDonald has been charged with murder and will face trial in January.

In southern Michigan, Bill Barst, director of the child protective services agency in  Saginaw County, says such stories are on the rise, thanks to “a poor economy, lack of jobs, inability to meet basic needs, in particular single parents without a support system.”

Hard times are hitting Michigan’s kids the hardest — and that’s no metaphor.

“Everyone is struggling right now, but especially children,” said Mimi Otto, executive director of the Kalamazoo County Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Council.

Otto said that her agency is getting more and more reports from concerned neighbors and others who are worried about children who are being left home alone by parents who cannot afford childcare while they work.

“Clearly, there is a correlation between economic downturns and child abuse and neglect reports,” said Richard Bearup, executive director of the Michigan Children’s Trust Fund which coordinates abuse prevention services statewide.

“There’s not one thing that you can point to that is causing it, such as loss of job or mortgage difficulties,” he said. “There is a combination of many things that create the context for [abuse and neglect] to happen. Scholars and academics have identified 36 risk factors associated with child abuse and neglect.”

The factors include poverty, substance abuse, joblessness, arguing, single or young parents and social isolation. ”A rule of thumb is, if three or more of these risk factors  are present, the risk of child abuse or neglect spike dramatically,” Bearup explained.

Joblessness, a major risk factor, is on the rise. Michigan’s unemployment rate of 9.6 percent is the worst in the nation. In Detroit the official rate stands at 16.2 percent and the reality is probably much higher. According to information from the 2000 census almost half of the children in Detroit live in single-parent households.

As families with children struggle to cope, social service agencies are registering a spike in abuse and neglect cases.

At the Child Abuse and Neglect Council of Saginaw County, CEO Suzanne Greenberg said that overall her agency has seen a 23 percent increase in demand for services over last year.

“Families are experiencing unemployment, poverty and we have seen a dramatic increase in sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect,” she said.

Families are being harmed by layoffs and cutbacks across the county, she said, in rural areas and cities. People of all races and religions are affected.

“We are interviewing more children who have witnessed horrific violence,” she says.

At the council’s headquarters in Saginaw, children speak to professional forensic interviewers In a room painted like a garden with child-sized chairs and tables, as police officers watch through one-way glass. Children as young as two years old “may have a lot to tell us,” Greenberg said.

Many have experienced sexual abuse, she said. “They may have been exposed to pornography, been required to watch or see pornographic pictures, or sexual assault may have happened to them.”

“We have to be aware when we see a parent who seems frazzled or at the end of their rope,“ Greenberg went on. “As a community, we need to offer them help one on one and we also need to be aware of the message of the community — that child abuse is not OK.”

Debora Matthews, CEO of the The Children’s Center in Detroit, reports a similar escalation of need and of violence.

“Many kids come in with PTSD,” she says, referring to post-traumatic stress syndrome. “Our children have just seen so much, they are just traumatized.”

The Children’s Center provides mental health services, parenting classes and referrals to a wide range of services for around 5,000 families each year, Matthews said. Most are raising between three and six children on less than $10,000 per year. When families contact the center, they are often in need of housing, food and clothing. The first step toward arranging help, she says, is calling a taxi to bring them to the center.

Poverty does not inevitably result in child neglect or abuse. One prosecutor who has handled child abuses cases says, ”I know people who are dirt poor who are excellent parents.” But an all-too common scenario, says Matthews, is that parents struggling to make ends meet become depressed and begin to neglect their children.

The unpredictability of the economy makes it even harder for parents to cope, she said. Renters are evicted without notice from foreclosed properties seized by lenders, and temporary housing resources are strained by the numbers of people needing help.

Children’s Center was founded in 1929 by U.S. Sen. James Couzens to help children who were abandoned, abused or alone.

With demand for services up 30 percent over last year, Matthews said she sometimes finds herself reflecting on the Depression-era origins of her agency and the parallels with the current economic situation.

“I’m hoping that times will get better,” she said, a prospect that seems far in the future for Michigan’s most vulnerable children.