Rescuing the Invisible Child

"The Lord is close to the broken-hearted; and those who are crushed in spirit, He saves". [Psalm 34: 18].

The month of April in the United States is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. I wish every month were child abuse prevention month. . . . This is true the world over, that the silent and forgotten children need to be protected.

There is an old expression that says, "It takes a village to raise a child." This expression supposedly comes from African lore. It speaks of a time when villages were small, and each villager helped to watch over the young ones.

I admit that I used to hate that expression. I did not think that it was very relevant today. I was under the misguided belief that this saying tends to denigrate today's parents, who are only trying their best to raise children in this difficult world. I used to regard this expression as an example of superior thinking. Who does a neighbor or a stranger think they are, telling a parent how to raise their child? How dare they assume that a parent even needs help? Isn't that a little patronizing?

But lately, I have been noticing a lot of reports of child abuse in the media. Is it just me, or have instances of abuse become much more prevalent? Or maybe the rising use of social media and the Internet have made us that much more aware of abuse.

I just did a quick Google search on child abuse, and up popped three instances in the United States, in 2011 alone, of parents charged with felony abuse, for keeping their children in a cage. ( Nebraska, October 2011; Virginia, May, 2011; and Oklahoma, February, 2011).

Are you sick at heart? Because I am. Are you angry?

Perhaps we cannot imagine getting involved in cases like this, because we cannot bear to really look and see. Or we assume that "someone else" is going to take care of it. Or these cases are so extreme, that they do not even seem real.

But, I think of the children involved, and the lifelong effects of abuse-- the feelings of shame, and worthlessness, the depression, the substance abuse that can develop as a means of making the pain go away.

In one case recently, a man was arrested for abusing his young son repeatedly over the course of several years. The child was interviewed after his father's arrest. The child said, "I wanted to die."

In another case, a young girl of about three was standing in her bedroom, crying. Her mother told her to, "Stop crying, or the neighbors will think that I beat you." The little girl could not stop crying. So her mother said, " Stop crying or I will give you something TO cry about." The little girl cried even harder, suddenly afraid of what it would feel like if her mother gave her something to cry about. Then she cried even harder, desperately hoping that a neighbor WOULD wonder what was going on, and come to rescue her.

Except no one ever came. Gradually she shut down. She had trouble sleeping. She would stay awake in her bed until everyone was asleep. She started sleep walking. She had trouble eating. She ate more at school than at home, and hoarded food in her room. She stopped speaking. Why bother to speak? She had given up on humans.

Eventually, she decided that it would be better to become invisible. She floated in and out of a room. She rarely spoke. She became quite thin, as if she wanted to disappear. Sometimes, she even felt as if she could not breathe. Her wounds from the abuse were "explained away". She could not look anyone in the eye. She put up a wall of defenses to keep people out, because no human could be trusted. After awhile, if anyone said hello to her, she was startled. She had actually begun to believe that she really was invisible.

When Middle School teachers asked what was wrong, she told them, "Nothing". Did she really believe that? Or was she scared of retaliation if she told? She figured, if she was truthful, maybe she would be taken away from her family. But if no one believed her, she would have to go home and face her family's wrath. Either way, she was trapped.

There are an untold number of "invisible children" out there, not just in the United States, but all over the world. They remain invisible because abuse thrives in secrecy. Abuse also thrives in the environment of fear that takes hold, after multiple threats of retaliation from the abuser.

The invisible children often do not particularly care about the degree of blame leveled at the abuser, or about the kind of help that these abusers supposedly need. Endless debate about who knew what, and when did they know it, does not rescue the abused child. What these invisible children truly and desperately need -- and dream and fantasize about-- is to be rescued.

Often, the abuse survivor has rescue fantasies his or her whole life. In the best cases, this can result in the formation of healing relationships as an adult. More often, this rescue fantasy can result in the survivor becoming a Rescuer, never the Rescued. That is, the survivor engages in an endless round of attempting to rescue lost souls, and, therefore, an endless round of failed relationships.

I have come to see the real meaning of "It takes a village to raise a child." This expression really means that it takes all of us to notice and rescue the invisible child. It is painful work to really "see" the invisible child. After all, it is a graphic reminder of "man's inhumanity to man".

To turn and walk away, however, is to fail to rescue a soul who is already deeply wounded. By ignoring abuse, will we confirm and even compound the child's deepest fears, that no human beings on the planet can be trusted to love fully and genuinely?

Martin Luther King said, "He who accepts evil, without protesting against it, is really cooperating with it." More starkly still, he said, "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

Rescue me, O Lord, from evil men; protect me from men of violence, who devise evil plans in their hearts and stir up strife every day. . . .O, Lord, I say to You, You are my God." [Psalm 141: 1-6].

[Related posting: "STOP Abuse!", April 14, 2011].

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