One Hundred and Thirty Seven Times?
2010-10-22 - by
When Zahra Baker – who is 10-years-old – showed up with bruises and black eyes her friends and relatives reported their concerns she was being abused by her parents to the Department of Social Services.
Then, a week ago, Zahra’s disappeared.
And now the police, saying it looks like homicide, have jailed her stepmother for writing a phony ransom note.
As for the Department of Social Services it isn’t saying a word. It claims under state public records laws its lips are sealed. But, last weekend, the Charlotte Observer reported that what until now sounded like one child’s a tragedy may be a lot worse because, according to the Observer, over the last five years 137 children have died in cases “where abuse or neglect is suspected” – and DSS had received complaints or had contacts with the families in each case.
It’s not hard to understand how normal government foolishness can lead to the Department of Transportation bungling the paving of I-40, so the just laid asphalt has to be torn up and repaved costing millions. Or how, in the middle of a recession, the governor can waste $25 million building the grandest fishing pier anyone ever heard of at Nags Head.
But it does seem when a relative calls andsays a child is being abused that even the most hard-bitten politician or bureaucrat (once he saw the 10 year old child’s black eye) would think, We have to get this one right.
What malady festers in the bowels of government that allows this to happen one-hundred-and-thirty-seven-times?
One Hundred and Thirty Seven Times?
2010-10-22/
When Zahra Baker – who is 10-years-old – showed up with bruises and black eyes her friends and relatives reported their concerns she was being abused by her parents to the Department of Social Services.
Then, a week ago, Zahra’s disappeared.
And now the police, saying it looks like homicide, have jailed her stepmother for writing a phony ransom note.
As for the Department of Social Services it isn’t saying a word. It claims under state public records laws its lips are sealed. But, last weekend, the Charlotte Observer reported that what until now sounded like one child’s a tragedy may be a lot worse because, according to the Observer, over the last five years 137 children have died in cases “where abuse or neglect is suspected” – and DSS had received complaints or had contacts with the families in each case.
It’s not hard to understand how normal government foolishness can lead to the Department of Transportation bungling the paving of I-40, so the just laid asphalt has to be torn up and repaved costing millions. Or how, in the middle of a recession, the governor can waste $25 million building the grandest fishing pier anyone ever heard of at Nags Head.
But it does seem when a relative calls andsays a child is being abused that even the most hard-bitten politician or bureaucrat (once he saw the 10 year old child’s black eye) would think, We have to get this one right.
What malady festers in the bowels of government that allows this to happen one-hundred-and-thirty-seven-times?