E Laine W Hitfield S Harp , Tlc

E LAINE W HITFIELD S HARP, TLC ‘98 This is part of a book currently being written by Elaine Whitfield Sharp. Copyright by Elaine Whitfield Sharp, July 2004. Permission to publish given to The Warrior. Evil events are rarely committed to paper. The history of child abuse inherent- ly involves pain inflicted in the dark and behind closed doors, providing us with only the barest of facts. We know that royal children were poisoned and murdered for convenience or for their crowns and that the ancient Greeks dis- posed of handicapped children at birth. We hear words like “beaten,” “burned,” “raped,” and “exploited,” but these do little to reveal the enormous tragedies for which they are mere codes. Today, there is a vast infrastructure of child protective services (CPS) in America. It is funded by billions of federal and state tax dollars. History has been turned on its head. Instead of children being ‘seen and not heard,’ or having no right of survival at birth, children are now revered as precious, as our modern day mocking birds. The entire ‘village’ is involved in their protection and welfare. 28 THE WARRIOR • Fall 2004 welling in the village are child protective services (CPS) THE PRISM OF THE PAST: professionals, pediatricians and others committed to THE ALARMING HISTORY OF CHILD ABUSE stomping out child abuse. The history of child abuse D Read between the lines of the Florence phone book and you will plays a valuable role in helping to form the professional self- images of CPS and medical professionals. History helps them find the human face of child abuse: Hundreds of people with identify the demons and mobilize for the mission. An apprecia- the last name, “Innocenti.” The name means “innocents” and it tion of the present comes through the prism of the past and fos- was given to each child who was rescued in one of the early bat- ters camaraderie between colleagues who share the vision. It is tles to fight the war against child abuse. the grist of the CPS culture. In the 1500’s, liberal-minded, Florentine men helped them- selves to the local slave women—mostly from Africa—and But, there’s a dark side to this culture. The multi-billion dollar fathered hundreds of unwanted children. The babies were rou- annual budget keeping this community alive also encourages tinely murdered at birth because the mothers could not care for overzealous investigation and, with that, millions of false reports them. and accusations of child abuse every year. Powering the ‘indus- try’ of false accusation are mandatory reporting laws requiring As a humanitarian alternative to this local wave of infanticide, professionals who regularly come into contact with children to in 1491 the wealthy Florentine Medici family (of Vatican fame) report suspected abuse. And the standard for ‘suspicion’ or even sponsored an orphanage for the newborns. A mother who could ‘reasonable cause’ is low. False accusations are particularly preva- not keep her baby now had a choice. Typically, a mother dis- lent in cases of so-called shaken baby syndrome (SBS). The list guised her baby as a bundle of laundry and took it at dark of professionals now legislatively mandated to report has through the narrow, winding streets of Florence to the House of expanded. Failure to report suspected abuse may put a person in the Innocents. There she placed the child on a ‘wheel’ that was the dock and subject them to civil liability. much like a lazy Susan—half inside the sanctuary behind a small door and half outside the building. This wheel served as Money, another familiar villain, also lurks on the landscape. the method of anonymous delivery. A mother signaled the Some professionals may be encouraged to find ‘abuse’ because arrival of the baby with a knock on the door before fleeing into they have government grants to look for it. The result is that the night. On hearing the knock, the sisters religious, who ran alleged child abuse, especially of the SBS variety, may be not the the orphanage, turned the wheel around 180 degrees, took the most probable diagnosis, but instead the most profitable. baby in, raised and educated the boy or girl, and arranged for What follows are some snap shots from the world of child abuse each child to be trained in one of the many trades then bur- recognition and prevention professionals. Understanding the geoning in Florence. roots of this culture is one way to prepare for cross-examination Each child took as its surname “Innocenti.” Today, there are sev- of child protection and medical witnesses who were part of a eral pages of “Innocenti’s” in the Florence phone book, all medical emergency that has evolved into a criminal child descendants of that great humanistic experiment more than half abuse case. a millennium ago. The babies had been saved by an act of social Florence Phone Book: Hundreds of children were saved by a humanitarian experiment in Florence, Italy during the Renaissance. Beginning in 1491, instead of being murdered at birth, newborns were taken to the House of the Innocents where they were raised by the sisters religious and taught a trade. Today, hundreds of the orphans’ descendants live in Florence where their names can be found in the city’s telephone book. THE WARRIOR • Fall 2004 29 THE HOUSE OF THE INNOCENTS to stand back from the treatment. A loyal champion of all boys, everyday experience of his descriptions of maltreated children confronting the battered stemmed from a desire to remedy evils or neglected child and to that he had found in London and its sub- reflect on the wider issues urbs. Dickens’ gave these victims of of what has been present- tyranny and oppression a voice in his ed to us as a single inci- novels. On hearing this voice, Londoners dent in time.”1 were deeply affected and were stirred to a storm of indignation and protest. We rejoin history at the Schools, work-houses, and other public work-houses of Victorian institutions were subjected to rigorous England. These were a per- examination, resulting in several closings version of institutions like and tremendous improvements. the House of the Innocents. Although Dickens’ goal was partly Orphaned children were accomplished, the war against child abuse sent to these Hell holes. had a long road ahead. Moved by the stories of children who were starved and Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, thou- beaten in these places, sands of homeless children scraped out Charles Dickens created a grim existences and often died on the storm of indignation and streets of New York and other cities. By outrage when, based on the 1850, in New York City, alone, there lives of real boys, he wrote were an estimated 30,000 orphans on the stories like “Oliver Twist.” streets. In response in 1853 Charles Orphaned at birth, Twist Loring Brace, a young, Yale-educated the- House of the Innocents terra cotta and glazed medallion: was put into a work-house ologian, formed the Children’s Aid A child symbolically seeks the charity of Florence’s rich in this with other boys where he Society (CAS). In what was to become medallion by Andrea della Robbia. From 1463-66, Robbia was forced to work. Meals the beginning of the modern-day foster made 10 such medallions to decorate the arches of the House consisted of one small bowl movement in the U.S., the CAS shipped of the Innocents, (Ospedale degli Innocenti), built by of gruel, and no more. some 120,000 children out of the city on Brunelleschi and funded by the Medici family as a refuge for “Orphan Trains,” initially to farming The emaciated boys began newborns who were abandoned there in lieu of being killed. families in the Midwest and West and, as to plot a rebellion of sorts the Orphan Train Movement grew, to 45 and drew straws for who states, Canada and Mexico. Even so, reform from the ultimate act of child would ask for more at the next meal. The America’s homeless orphans and abused abuse: murder. short straw fell to Oliver and so, the next children remained mostly voiceless and But this type of Renaissance humanitari- day, he approached the an idealism was slow to spread. work-house master and Infanticide and other forms of physical, uttered what is perhaps the sexual and emotional abuse had been most famous of Dickens’ going on since the advent of Man. No lines: “Please, sir, I want laws or programs would or will ever put some more!” an end to this. The ancient Egyptians Oliver was severely beaten, used to punish mothers who murdered cast out and sold by the their newborns by making them hug the work-house to a local corpse for 72 hours. In 1917, of 5,000 undertaker for five English illegitimate children born in Chicago, pounds. Beatings and star- 1,000 disappeared without a trace. The vation continued there Victorians stuffed their babies down sew- until, one night, Oliver ers, clogging the city’s system. Today, the stole into the darkness— news of war and conflict is punctuated by only to fall into the hands stories of dead babies left in public toilets, of the Artful Dodger. garbage cans and dumpsters. (You’ll have to read the book to find out what The lessons of history are used in child becomes of Oliver.) Oliver Twist: "Please, sir, I want some more!" This is perhaps maltreatment books as case studies of the most famous of Charles Dickens’ lines. The author’s descrip- what to look for today.

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