The Ghosts of the Orphanage

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christinekenneally/orphanage-death-catholic-abuse-nuns-st-josephs

by cwal37 • 8 years ago

38 14 8 years ago

pnutjam3• 8 years ago

Hard to read, but I think we owe a debt to society. We need to make sure these things don't happen again. This is why charter schools, home schooling, and other aspects of society need oversight to protect kids from predators.

hippich• 8 years ago

I think we got that covered already - https://abc13.com/society/woman-calls-cops-on-8-year-old-gir...

EliRivers2• 8 years ago

I think not. If that woman had seen an 8 year old girl in the custody of a religious figure, she'd look the other way.

candiodari4• 8 years ago

The problem is that the oversight itself is almost always the cause of the abuse. In the case of parents, obviously. But of course this was the case in the past, where the church and the state (the social agency referred in the article and it's management, which is the government) were the problem.

Any kind of oversight necessarily puts people in power over others' children, as does the very concept of an institution or orphanage, including of course schools. It is that power, not which geometric shapes the organizing power insists get put on the wall that attracts child predators.

Giving people power over children is the problem. Attempts to "make sure these things don't happen again" so far have massively increased child abuse. The numbers I checked for the Netherlands are staggering: 1 out of every 3 children in child care gets sexually assaulted in the sense that they report it to the police. Roughly half of those gets abused by foster parents or government employees, half by other children (they just put babies with teenagers, then leave them alone due to lack of manpower or outright unwillingness of employees). Suicide rates are almost 10x what they are outside of child care.

And the incredibly sad part is ... once in child care 1 in 3 gets sexually assaulted, but barely 1 in 10 is put in child care because of allegations (usually not even a complaint) of sexual abuse. Mostly it's because of ... hygiene problems.

The problem is that without giving institutions power over children, nothing happens: children will refuse to leave their parents in all but the most extreme cases of abuse, until they are at least halfway through their teens. And the huge problem is that statistics clearly show that that is the right decision to make for the children: outcomes for children with their parents, even when abused, are far superior to outcomes in child care. In terms of education, in terms of living independent as an adult.

Here's some links:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/norways_hidden_s...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/29/rotherham-ch...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_child_abuse_scandal

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/social-services-centre...

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6112955/telford-politicians-ch...

And, of course, the abuse was accepted and reinforced:

http://www.childrenscreamingtobeheard.com/fostering-scandal/

Who turned out to be pedophiles in the past 20 years or so ?

* The social services chief for a large British city. Note: AFTER he was convicted of sexually assaulting children Graham Bould was still put in charge of child services, as well as other social services (no worries: I'm sure he behaved himself much better around adults ...)

* an unspecified number of North Wales psychiatric child care workers at 18 different government facilities for child care (and some foster parents), who sexually abused at least 140 children

* The local councilor of that same city. These 2 worked together to, firstly, allow the local vicar to abuse children, and all 3 worked together to threaten abused children into silence.

* The child psychiatrist in charge of the "Child Expert Commission" for the entire country of Norway, who decide whether children get taken from their parents or not

* a dozen French government psychologists, in charge of diagnosing children in psychiatric care

* hundreds of Spanish government doctors, nurses, and also nuns and priests

* US public school employees, hundreds, from janitors to administrators and social workers

* Sebastian Edathy, a very high level German politician, and a senior cabinet minister in the government of Angela Merkel, Agriculture Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, was fired for protecting him and tipping him off

* Dutch Jehova's witnesses employees and members cooperated to commit and hide child sexual abuse, for decades

* Government day care employees in the Netherlands

* Red Cross and Doctors without Borders aid workers (who did it, with the knowledge of the top of the organizations, for over a decade)

* Public school employees in Holland exploited the children entrusted to them on a large scale (specifically these were promising athletes sent to a special school)

* UN peacekeepers sexually abusing indigenous children in Western Sahara, Mali and other places

* Oxfam rescue workers (who were protected by the board of Oxfam)

* The leadership of an islamic school in the UK, and local politicians

Not pedophiles, but at the very least encouraging child abuse:

* A majority of the British parliament (who voted that private companies would be allowed to pay social workers to give them children they "offer up" for adoption (meaning they sell them))

Quote: "A foster agency receives £20.000 for every single child they sell, adoption agencies £36.000 for every child sold, all with tax payer’s money, most of the agencies are owned by ex social workers. So, are the agencies working with the social services?"

(Needless to say "somehow" these sold children have a disturbing habit to end up in prostitution. I wonder how that happens)

pnutjam3• 8 years ago

This has more to do with a culture of silence. People avoid the uncomfortable.

This is why children need to be part of the community, that's what oversight looks like. Teaches, parents, and social programs.

GW1509142• 8 years ago

Not a one of these examples is less than chilling, even terrifying, and provokes a sense of immense outrage. Like examples of rape, murder and child abuse by total strangers it makes us all feel fearful and powerless, but it also misses a critical point. Most children are abused or neglected by family and loved ones, not distant authorities or strangers. Most people are murdered (including children’ by their nearest and dearest.

It’s important to make those distant authorities which somkften get things wrong be accountable, yet at the same time we have to avoid the bottomless pit of something like Stranger Danger. The examples you cite are sensational, but they’re not typical. The typical case is the child being raped by a family member or family friend, the wife being murdered by the husband, or the friend being murderers by a friend. For every extreme and chilling case of someone far away in a position of power abusing thst power, there are hundreds of much quieter yet no less damaging cases of the same thing being done close to home.

jtbayly• 8 years ago

Parents are the authorities given the responsibility of oversight over their own kids in order to protect them from predators. 99.9% of the time anybody else who tries to stick their nose in will not know better than the parents what is best for the kid. And more than that, the parents are far more likely to care enough about the kids to actually do what is best for them.

What you have here is an example of what tends to happen when parents are missing.

Broken homes are a huge source of unprotected children today.

The Ghosts of the Orphanage

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