Reporting Abuse

REPORTING ABUSE

The process of reporting abuse is such a simple thing. You call or tell someone in a position of authority that abuse is occurring, a life is in danger, or harmful neglect is taking place. Pretty simple, huh? So, why is such a simple process so rarely ever done by the person suffering the abuse, or by the people who know it is going on? Why does it become so complicated that the most obvious thing to do is, not report it? Why is it that when we do report it “nothing is ever done”, or “they go too far”, or "they don't do enough, or “they should have done this or done that”?

The mechanics of picking up a telephone and dialing a number is a simple thing. A machine could do it. The problem is that we are not a machine. Unlike mechanical devices, like telephones, we are cogitators. We have to think about everything we do before we do it. And if we are motivated by fear we will think about it much more than the average person. We will manufacture mini-movie scenarios in our minds so that we can imagine how bad it may turn out for us if it is discovered that we made the call. More times than not we think ourselves right out of doing what we need to do, because of fear. We immobilize ourselves with the fear that our perpetrator or others may discover that we told on them. We think about it so much that reporting abuse is no longer simple. It becomes a monumental life-threatening task.

The response you receive when you do call to report abuse will depend on what you report and how you report it. There are as many definitions of abuse as there are people, and government agencies, in the world. Everyone sees everything differently. The person taking your call however is going to be asking some specific concrete questions to ascertain whether there is an immediate life-threatening situation. They will want to know not just what you know, but what you have seen and witnessed; how many times the abuse has occurred; does the abuse involve instruments or weapons; where it occurs; who else might know about this. All of these questions are designed to facilitate an initial determination regarding the severity of the abuse or neglect; how they need to plan their response (if law enforcement is required); and if response is necessitated then by-law how fast must they respond.

In my resident state the law requires immediate response and visual contact within one hour if a caller reports physical or sexual abuse has happened or has been threatened. If the caller does not report immediate abuse occurring, but has occurred in the past, the response time to make contact can be within 24 hours. If neglect is reported and no life threatening situations exist the response time can be 24-48 hours. These response times may vary state by state in the USA. I am not aware of other countries child protection laws regarding investigation response times.

To an abuse victim, all of this reporting-triage and procedure may seem insensitive and uncaring, but for a moment consider, on average, 60% of what gets reported is false. For reasons of perception, or spite, or anger reports can at times, literally flood a child protective service office. Some of it can be neighbors reporting on one another simply because they don’t like them and want to embarrass them by having a government social worker knock on their door. You would not believe how much of this goes on. Some of the false-allegations might come from angry families competing over custody of children. It is not rare for entire families to collude and cook up allegations against one another. Occasionally some of these even make it into news media stories. For many reasons child protective services must closely screen all reports of abuse. I have seen months and periods of time when fraudulent reports go as high as 80%. This is very frustrating and exhausting for investigation workers because it takes time away from real cases. It is also extremely dangerous because it becomes easy for an investigator to make the wrong judgement. Disaster can strike quickly when people cry fire in a crowded building when there is no fire. After awhile people refuse to listen.

If you are being abused now or know of someone being victimized you should understand that the abuse will not stop without outside intervention. You may play the odds and survive to become eighteen and move out, depending on the severity of the abuse, but every day there are news stories of those who don’t survive. If you are ready for outside intervention to stop the abuse pick up the telephone and call the police or your local child protective service office. Tell them what is being done to you. Tell them of the latest instance that you were harmed or attacked and describe it in detail. Tell them how long this has been going on. Tell them of anyone else who might know of this happening. Ask for help and protection. Remember, if it's physical or sexual abuse that you report someone is immediately going to be on their way to find you. Be ready. In the mean-time develop a safety plan of action for yourself. Draw a map of your home so that you will know where the windows and doors are. Know if the windows are locked or unlocked. Think of who you could trust if you have to run. Save your pennies and dimes and build an emergency sum of money in case you have to leave suddenly. Write out the exact steps you will need to take to save your life. Memorize them, because if that time comes your mind could freeze up to the point that you will be unable to read anything.

If you are not able yet to pick up the telephone e-mail me and we will talk about it here on-line.

I have worked in Child Protective Services on two different occasions for a combined tenure of around four years and my undergraduate degree is in Social Work. I have reported abuse. I have received reports of abuse. I have investigated reports of abuse and I have worked with abusive families. I have developed safety plans. And I have found safe havens for the victims. I wish you the best and there are lots of us who have survived abuse.

thimpin