Promoting a Safe and Healthy Environment by Collaboration

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Promoting a Safe and Healthy Environment by
Collaboration

• By
• Thomas F. Sullivan, Regional Administrator
• Administration for Children and Families
• Denver, CO

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• Child sexual abuse and child suicide flourish
  in an environment characterized by high rates of
  unemployment and poverty, significant levels of
  drug and alcohol use and abuse, widespread
  violence, little or inadequate law enforcement
  creating an environment which appears to treat
  most child sexual abuse as a minor offense.
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• I realized that my siblings and I were the
  only kids from our generation in our community
  who had not been sexually abused as kids This
  startling statement was made to me during a
  conversation several years ago by a young lady
  who was born on a Reservation and had grown up
  there, married and now was raising her own
  children on the same Reservation. Subsequently, I
  heard similar comments from several other men and
  women from all across Indian County.
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• Amnesty Internationals interviews with
  survivors, activists and support workers across
  the USA suggest that available statistics greatly
  underestimate the severity of the problem. In
  the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, for example,
  many of the women who agreed to be interviewed
  could not think of any Native women within their
  community who had not been subject to sexual
  violence. Source Amnesty Internationals report,
  Maze of Injustice, the Failure to Protect
  Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA,
  published in 2007 on page 2.
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• During the past 16 years the Child Protective
  Services (CPS) unit staff from one of our
  Reservations has been investigating every
  reported case of child sexual abuse, using
  rigorous standards and has confirmed on average,
  two cases of child sexual abuse or statutory rape
  per week for every week during those 16 years.
  All of these confirmed cases have been referred
  for criminal investigation and criminal
  prosecution to the resident FBI agents and the US
  Attorney.
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• The US Attorney and FBI agents assigned to the
  Reservation referred to on the previous slide
  between 2001 and 2009 criminally investigated and
  prosecuted very few of the cases referred to them
  by the CPS Unit staff.
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• Is this why so much of Indian County is known
  as The Land Where Rapists Walk Free, the title
  of Marianne Pearls devastating report from a
  South Dakota reservation in the July 1, 2008
  issue of Glamour magazine?
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• The Justice Department found that one in three
  Native American women will be raped in her
  lifetime. In many cases, on rural reservations
  like Standing Rock, NPR found that there werent
  enough police to investigate sexual assaults, and
  few of the cases were prosecuted.
• The Womens shelter director on a Region 8
  Reservation can attest firsthand to the lack of
  police response. When her daughters boyfriend,
  a non-native, broke her daughters nose, her
  daughter filed a report and attached statements
  and photos from the doctors. But when she called
  special investigators the next morning, an
  officer told her that her injury was not
  considered a broken bone, but broken cartilage
  and that the case would not be prosecuted.
  This is a lawless land where people are making
  up their own laws because theres no justice
  being done, the Director said. 8

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• When sexual predators are not prosecuted, as
  appears unfortunately to be the rule rather than
  the exception in Indian County, they stand no
  chance of being convicted. Thus they are not
  required to register on either the state or
  Tribal Registry of Sexual Offenders. If they
  move off of that Reservation to another community
  where they are not known and apply for a job in a
  Head Start Center, day care center or school,
  apply to be a foster parent or adoptive parent,
  where they are required to submit to and pass a
  background check, they will pass with flying
  colors. All of us with young children or
  grandchildren should be especially concerned
  about the implications for us all when law
  enforcement refuses to prosecute child sexual
  abuse cases in Indian County.
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• Later in the Amnesty International report,
  One support worker told Amnesty International
  that of her 77 active cases of sexual and
  domestic violence involving Native women, only
  three women had reported their cases to the
  police.
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• At 14, Bonnie, a Cherokee Indian, needed a
  ride home. She grew up near the small city of
  Talequah, on the eastern side of Oklahoma. A
  woman she knew from town offered her a ride,
  instructing Bonnie to wait at her house. The
  womans husband was home, drinking with four of
  his friends. I was in the other room, and they
  came in and threw me on the bed. Bonnie said.
  And they all held me down. Bonnie never
  reported the rape. She says she had been told
  many times by her mother and other relatives that
  nobody was going to take a case involving an
  Indian girl getting raped. I just didnt figure
  anyone would believe me a child against five
  white men, Bonnie said. (NPR Reporter Laura
  Sullivan in a report dated July 26, 2007)
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• Tribal child welfare, child protective
  services staff and mental health staff who are
  attempting to fulfill their responsibilities with
  integrity have been subjected to significant
  threats to their well-being and physical safety
  by sexual predators, their families or their
  defenders. This has included threats against
  their continued employment by Tribal Council
  members, tires being slashed on numerous
  occasions, dogs being killed on several
  occasions, windows of their vehicle being shot
  out when the vehicle was parked overnight. In
  response to these threats some have been forced
  to move from their home Reservations, some have
  sought and obtained conceal carry permits, one
  has placed loaded guns within easy reach all
  around her home so that she is never far from a
  loaded weapon no matter where she may be and one
  former child welfare director had to go to the
  local emergency room with panic attacks at least
  monthly while in that position.
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• A psychologist with extensive experience in
  counseling clients in Indian County recently
  wrote, It is unusual for me to work with a man
  or woman, a boy or girl, who has not had their
  trust betrayed sexually by a person they ought to
  have been able to trust. It is a big elephant
  in our front room and a factor in some of the
  hopelessness/helplessness/rage many of our young
  express in their choice of hanging as a problem
  solver.
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• Only 35 of those children from the reservation
  where there have been on average two confirmed
  case of child sexual abuse for every week during
  the last 16 years are receiving rehabilitative
  services they need to help them overcome the
  trauma of their sexual assault. Research
  indicates that children who are sexually
  assaulted and who do not receive rehabilitative
  services to help them overcome the trauma of
  their sexual assault are more likely to think
  about, threaten or attempt to commit suicide,
  become drug or alcohol dependent, become a sexual
  predator themselves or engage in other
  dysfunctional behavior as adults.
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• Native American writer, Tim Giago,
  speaks passionately about the abuse so many
  Native children suffered in the Boarding Homes.
  When I speak about the time my eight year old
  sister, along with dozens of Lakota girls the
  same age was raped at the mission school by a
  pedophile, I often get choked up, but I continue
  because I want people to know the horrible damage
  done to Indian children by the boarding schools
  over the more than 100 years they existed. I
  want people to know we were beaten with leather
  straps, shorn of our hair, and used as child
  slave-laborers at these boarding schools. My
  younger sister told me about her abuse on her
  deathbed and I, along with her three children,
  finally understood why she had become a violent,
  alcoholic woman for so much of her life. She
  died angry at the world and all alone. Many of
  the problems of alcoholism and drug abuse now
  prevalent in Indian Country can be traced back to
  the physical, emotional and sexual abuse suffered
  at the hands of our keepers in the BIA and
  mission boarding schools.
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• Senate Indian Affairs Committee Chairman Byron
  Dorgan at a 2007 hearing called the increase in
  rapes, murder, gang shootings and brazen crimes
  on reservations in recent years unbelievable.
  We must find a way to stop it, Dorgan said, as
  Tribal leaders testified to the committee about
  their frustrations with the Bureau of Indian
  Affairs police and Justice Department.
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• A recent National Institute of Justice report
  shows that 64 of Native children had witnessed
  abuse against their mothers by age 3. Youth ages
  12-18, of sexually abused mothers showed more
  depression and had more behavioral problems than
  children of mothers who had not been sexually
  assaulted.
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• Seeing your parent hit is terribly traumatic
  for a child says Doug Goldsmith, Executive
  Director of the Childrens Center in Salt Lake
  City. Yet the psychological needs of children
  who witness domestic violence often go
  overlooked, making it more likely they will
  become future victims and perpetrators.
  Goldsmith called the cycle of abuse an
  absolutely negative chain that is perpetuated by
  bad things happening to little, tiny children.
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• In a January 2007 Senate statement Senator
  Dorgan noted there are fewer than 90 doctors for
  every 100,000 Indians compared to 230 for every
  100,000 people nationwide. Senator Dorgan went
  on to say that the Indian Health Service
  expenditure for each American Indian in 2005 was
  2,130 compared to 3,900 for federal prisoners.
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• Child abuse and neglect are preventable. Each
  year in the United States almost a million
  children are confirmed as victims of child
  maltreatment. Remember these are only the cases
  which get reported. It is claimed that child
  sexual abuse is one of the most under-reported
  crimes in this nation. The cost implications of
  such data are staggering. These costs are being
  paid daily in every community in Indian Country
  as the confirmed cases of child sexual mount and
  the bodies of child suicide victims pile up.
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• According to a report released in 2007 on the
  Total Estimated Cost of Child Abuse and Neglect
  in the United States by the Pew Charitable Trust.
  According to this report children who have been
  abused or neglected are more likely to experience
  adverse outcomes throughout their life span in
  the following areas
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• 1.)Poor physical health (e.g. chronic fatigue,
  altered immune functions, hypertension, sexually
  transmitted diseases, obesity)
• 2.)Poor emotional and mental health (e.g.
  depression, anxiety, eating disorder,
  suicidal thoughts and attempts, post-traumatic
  stress disorder)
• 3.)Social difficulties (e.g. insecure attachments
  with caregivers, which may lead to difficulties
  in developing trusting relationships with peers
  and adults later in life)
• 4.)Cognitive dysfunction (e.g. deficits in
  attention, abstract reasoning, language
  development, and problem solving skills, which
  ultimately affect academic achievement and school
  performance.
• 5.)High risk health behaviors (e.g. a higher
  number of lifetime sexual partners, younger age
  at first voluntary intercourse, teen pregnancy,
  alcohol and substance abuse) and
• 6.)Behavioral problems (e.g. aggression, juvenile
  delinquency, adult criminality, abusive or
  violent behavior).
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• Toxic Sequelae of Childhood Sexual Abuse
  Editorial in the October, 2009 American Journal
  of Psychiatry. The proportion of suicide
  attempts linked to childhood sexual abuse was
  27.8 for women and 6.9 for men. This means
  that in the absence of childhood sexual abuse the
  rate of suicide attempts during a lifetime would
  drop by 28 for women and 7 men.
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• Usually a single caseworker supervises
  anywhere from 12-15 individuals, if they comply
  with federal standards. In Indian County a single
  caseworker usually supervises 60-80 individuals
  and on one Reservation in Region 8 the ratio is
  one caseworker to 100 individuals. The
  professionals filling these caseworkers slots in
  Indian County are doing heroic work, frequently
  putting their own health and, sometimes, their
  lives at risk. If we are serious about resolving
  the twin epidemics of child sexual abuse and
  child suicide, we must begin to get law
  enforcement at all levels (local, tribal, state
  and federal) more effectively involved in the
  protection of these professionals to stop the
  attempted criminal intimidations and we must
  begin to reduce these ratios to the level that
  would be demanded anywhere outside of Indian
  County one caseworker for every 12-15
  individuals.
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• On one small North Dakota Reservation two
  years ago two thirds of their Tribal Council were
  themselves child sexual predators or had
  immediate family members who were. On this
  Reservation the person who played Santa Claus at
  the Tribal childrens Christmas party was a
  convicted sexual predator who had completed his
  prison sentence and had returned to the
  Reservation. Since all employment opportunities
  are controlled by the Tribe and since if one
  complains or takes action which is considered to
  be complaining, the complainant runs the risk of
  losing their job. Those who are tempted to
  complain remain silent so they can retain their
  jobs, feed their families and pay their bills.
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• Every Region 8 Reservation has a shortage of
  qualified foster families and homes a shortage
  of inpatient placements of those youth who are in
  crisis who now must be transported several hours
  across a state, sometime in severe weather, by
  limited staff to the nearest qualified facility
  a shortage of qualified counselors who can
  minimize the need for inpatient placements by
  recognizing and working with children/families
  moving towards crisis so that the situations can
  be defused before it ever gets to that stage as
  well as a shortage of advanced computer systems
  linked with each other, with the Tribal Court,
  with the ICWA staff and with the state. These
  shortages can no longer be allowed to persist.
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• Clearly, all of this demonstrates we are not
  doing a very good job of promoting a safe and
  healthy environment. Some might even look at all
  of this and say that we are dealing with an
  emergency a major emergency in Indian county. In
  an earlier day in 1940 a British Prime Minister
  was confronted with a comparable disaster with
  the threatened annihilation of British forces on
  small piece of land on the French coast
  Dunkirk. His response was to call on every man,
  woman and child who had a boat, to cross the
  English Channel and bring back the British
  Forces. They did. Some in luxurious cabin
  cruisers some in small fishing boats and even
  some in just row boats. The British forces were
  rescued to fight again. Can our response to this
  emergency be any less? Every available resource
  must be marshaled to stop the child sexual abuse,
  the suicides and all of the attendant
  dysfunction. 27

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• As the British Prime Minister did in 1940 when
  the German forces were threatening to annihilate
  the British forces at Dunkirk we must bring every
  resource to bear. These include
• A.) Department of Justice, that office
  responsible for the US Attorneys as well
  as program staff from the office of
  Juvenile Justice.B.) Bureau of Indian Affairs,
  that part responsible for law enforcement
  on Reservations and the Indian Child
  Welfare ActC.) Department of Education, that
  part responsible for elementary and
  secondary education.D.) Department of Labor,
  that part responsible for economic
  development and job training programs. E.)
  Department of Commerce, that part responsible for
  economic development programs.
  
  
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• F.) Department of Housing and Urban
  Development, that part responsible for
  public on Reservations.G.) Department of
  Agriculture, the Food and Nutrition
  Service and that part of USDA with responsibility
  for Rural Telemedicine grants. H.)
  Environmental Protection Agency.I.) Tribal
  Leaders or Tribal Program DirectorsJ.) State
  Governors Liaisons to Tribes.K.) Tribal Child
  Welfare Directors.
• All of these agencies must work
  collaboratively with each other but more
  importantly with Tribal leadership as well as
  states, counties, and local communities.
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