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Column
Retribution, neglect deprive children of hope
By DIANA L. HAYES
Having recently returned from the
Youth Ministers/Ministry Conference in Denver, I found myself thinking about
the state of our children. What I found most challenging about the conference
was the presence of so many young adults, eager to participate in our church
but also seeking and open to guidance from those of us who attempt to serve
them in youth ministry.
Attempting to respond to their questions about the future gave me
pause, however, as I thought of the many young people not represented or
present there. They were absent from this and many other church gatherings for
far too many reasons. Many have no experience of life in the Catholic or any
other church, be-cause they have not been exposed to a life of faith. Others
find themselves in soulless neighborhoods where cynicism is rewarded over
faith, and in homeless shelters, foster homes, juvenile detention centers, and
increasingly in adult correctional facilities where they are sexually and in
other ways abused. How could their lives be different? What was missing from
the lives of such unfortunate children and present in the lives of the young
people gathered at Denver?
The world is a cruel place today especially for the young, those
innocents we as adults have been mandated to care for, nurture, encourage and
protect as they explore with wide-eyed wonder the world unfolding around them
and seek to find their place in it. I shudder as I read of children only a few
months old being beaten to death, drowned in the bathwater, whipped until their
bodies are covered with scars, tied to radiators and left in dark closets
without food and clothing. How could anyone hurt an innocent child? we ask in
horror, yet we know the answer.
For it is their parents and grandparents, their uncles and aunts,
their stepparents, their caretakers, their teachers, and yes, even their
ministers and priests who have abused and continue to abuse them, shattering
their innocence and often ending their lives. What kind of country do we live
in where a 3-year-old child can disappear from the home of her foster parents
and no one is concerned about her disappearance for over a year? Where is our
outrage at the incompetence of those assigned to help children who too often
contribute to their harm, whether willfully or not?
Yet why should we be surprised? There’s no direct link as far
as I know that can be proven between the increase in reported cases of child
abuse and the increased rate of incarceration of children as young as 10 years
of age who have been tried as adults. But surely there is some connection. Our
children have been turned into “others,” faceless and nameless
things, and as such have lost not only their identity as human beings but also
all of the rights that accompany such an identity.
Recently two brothers, ages 12 and 13 at the time of their alleged
actions, were tried as adults and convicted of murder as the result of a
twisted effort by the prosecution to bag three birds at one time. The adult who
had sexually abused the youngest and certainly emotionally abused both of them,
tried separately, was found innocent to the shock of many including,
fortunately, a judge who overturned the boys’ convictions and had their
charges and sentences reduced. Yet the charges and sentences were still based
on their status as adults rather than as children.
We have demonized our children. Yes, many of their crimes are
heinous but has anyone, in the rush to false adulthood and vindictive
retribution, asked why over the past 25 or so years, our children have
supposedly become savage animals without morals, sensitivity, or any normal
human and social responses? Do we simply blame rap music and violence on TV and
films or do we acknowledge our own failure to parent, to lead and guide these
children onto other paths? Their socialization too often takes place in the
company of other children rather than with the moral and social leaders of our
decaying communities because, too often, these leaders are too busy pursuing
their own goals, oblivious to the destruction and despair left in their
wake.
We are as complicit in child abuse as those parents and
grandparents who have inflicted the actual physical or emotional abuse. A 10-,
11- or 12-year-old is not an adult. No rewriting of the law, no language about
“wilding,” or “savages,” or “animal-like
behavior,” will change that fact that they are still children. Yet we
condemn them as adults because it is easier, it rids us of their presence. We
sentence them to jails already overcrowded and filled with hardened criminals
and look the other way because, after all, they have committed a crime or even
crimes.
Should we not ask what led them down this fatal path? What
happened to rehabilitation, or forgiveness or a second chance? As Christians,
we believe that Christ offers his salvation to all, over and over and over
again, for God’s mercy has no bounds and God’s grace is overflowing.
If we truly believe that life is sacred from womb to tomb, why do
we as Christians not only apparently accept this travesty of justice and faith
but also actually promote it just as we promote the death penalty? There is no
chance for conversion, no possibility of repentance, no avenue for salvation
under such circumstances. I am sickened daily by the violent acts of children,
but also by the adult response to those acts. If a child commits a crime, they
should and must be punished for it, but that punishment should not just fit the
crime, it should also fit the criminal. It must offer the hope of their
rehabilitation, of a life change that will enable them to become decent
law-abiding citizens. This is not possible under our present system of law and
injustice.
Of course, to wait until the crime has been committed is much too
late. Intervention should and must begin so much earlier, literally from the
date of birth. Ironically, however, those who are so vehemently protective of
the life of the fetus too often seem completely indifferent to the child that
emerges from the womb nine or so months later, at least until that child
commits a breach of the peace or an act of violence towards them or their
property.
I am appalled by the lack of concern in our church and in our
country about our children. We prattle on about standardized tests while we cut
the funding for public schools and argue over teacher salaries while paying
exorbitant ticket prices to pay athletes outrageous salaries. We eliminate
physical education, art and music classes, recess and even foreign language
re-quirements to save money and give more time to tests but we refuse to
recognize the negative impact these cuts have on a child’s future, on his
or her ability to be creative, to imagine worlds other than his or her own, to
have hope.
What are we offering our children today? Schools that resemble
prisons more than places of learning, overcrowded schedules of activities that
leave them little time to create on their own, and endless days of boring
repetition and rote memorization with few activities that stimulate their
creativity, wasted lives in blasted out inner cities and impoverished rural
towns with no resources or outlets, providing no hope for viable futures or
else lives of rampant materialism and indulgence. We teach them by our own
example to give in to their every impulse, to lie, to cheat and to blame others
rather than taking responsibility for their own actions. At Little League and
PeeWee football games, at cheerleading tryouts, in camps and in clubs, we teach
them to disregard the needs and concerns of those smaller, weaker or less
fortunate than themselves, to ride roughshod over others feelings and needs, to
think only of themselves and to be violent when things don’t go the way
they want them to go.
Our country and our church are doomed if we do not recognize the
injustices being perpetrated on those least able to defend themselves, our
children. Their future is ours and it is slowly and irrevocably being destroyed
for the sake of a few dollars. We’re building a legacy of despair in the
train of endless and needless war, disease and poverty.
My prayer for this Christmas season and for the coming year is
that the true meaning of Jesus’ birth will fill our hearts and open our
eyes and ears to the sins being perpetrated every day against our children, the
least among us. We must work together to change their lives for the better and,
in so doing, change our own lives as well.
Diana Hayes is associate professor of theology at Georgetown
University, Washington.
National Catholic Reporter, December 27,
2002
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