By Dr. Stacey Patton

Yesterday, The Times of Trenton officially announced that I will receive the 2012 Barbara Boggs Sigmund Award from Womanspace of Mercer County, NJ.  This recognition has been bestowed on 18 stellar women, including artist Faith Ringgold, television personality Star Jones, journalist Diane Sawyer, and Rutgers University basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer.

To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Womanspace selected me to receive its annual for my work on behalf of children who have been abused or neglected.

It’s always nice to be recognized for your work, especially when it’s work you do from the heart.  While my “official” professions are author, journalist and historian, my “passion project” is speaking to and working with youth and adults around issues of foster care, adoption, and domestic violence.

As you know, I am one who includes the spanking of children—corporal punishment in the name of discipline—in my definition of domestic violence. When I share this perspective, and my commitment to giving parents options to use in their child-rearing toolkit, some people react very negatively. I’ve received countless insults, typed attacks and threats on this site and elsewhere for suggesting that physical violence might not be the best way to communicate with a child. 

Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that some of those people who are most adamant about spanking and beating children (you know, the ones who loudly and proudly advocate “whuppin’ that a**”) often have hostile reactions to my advocacy work.

Fending off attacks is nothing new for me: I spent my childhood trying to survive an abusive adopted home. So the vicious comments and accusations only fuel my determination to grow this movement until the beating of children is viewed as socially unacceptable.

So in addition to being an honor, I appreciate Womanspace’s recognition of my work, not only because I have deep respect for their organization, but because it is so profoundly validating of my efforts to make a difference. This is especially important these days when, despite rhetoric to the contrary, the well-being of kids is not a national priority.

The Children’s Defense Fund reports that Black children are facing the worst crisis in America since slavery. Their statistics paint a grim and frightening portrait of young Black life in our nation. There are many areas for progress and improvement: health, education, poverty, fractured family structure, and risk of crime and incarceration. Why then would we add corporal punishment to the already daunting load of challenges faced by Black children today?

Womanspace is a nonprofit that provides help for victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and they have upgraded their child advocacy program this year into a full-service therapeutic children’s counseling division. They get it!

I will humbly and gratefully accept their Barbara Boggs Sigmund Award on behalf of every parent who has struggled with anger, fear and frustration; every child who wonders why the person they rely on for survival is hurting them to “teach you a lesson;” on behalf of the countless women and men in social services; and in tribute to those advocates and activists who came before me. It means a lot to me, for all those reasons.

But the most important message that this honor conveys is that, despite the often hateful response to standing up for children, I am not alone in this struggle, the most important of my life.

The Womanspace fundraiser will be held on May 9, in the Westin Hotel at Forrestal Village. Please help support their work by purchasing a ticket, or making a donation at www.womanspace.org, or calling them at 609.394.0136.

                          

I’m happy to report that on Jan. 11, 2012 I will deliver the keynote address for the 19^th annual Children’s Law Institute Conference (CLI) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

Every year the CLI conference brings together hundreds of social services professionals from the State of New Mexico and beyond to enhance their skills and knowledge of how best to serve child victims of abuse and neglect.  Attendees explore a range of best practice responses, highlight new research, recommend changes in the foster care and juvenile justice systems, and look at a variety of ways for professionals to build support and connections for the children and families they serve.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Community Matters” and is a call for social work professionals to come together as a community, rejuvenate, hone skills and find inspiration.  Like many other industries across the U.S., the child welfare system is facing tough times.  Agencies are being asked to better the lives of children and families in the face of shrinking budgets, fewer resources, and increasingly complicated cases. 

Do more with less, is the constant refrain in all sectors of American society.  But I will talk about how the social services community can band together to do more AND BETTER for children in care.  I will share the story of my foster care journey and highlight the social workers and community that rallied around me as a child and ultimately empowered me to finish growing up.  I will also emphasize key ways the social services industry can build community by strengthening cultural competence and bettering communications with the families they serve.

This year, the CLI conference will offer 35 workshops that are designed to refresh thinking about core topics in social work practice, inspire new ideas, and leave attendees feeling united and energized.  On Jan. 11 and 12, I will lead a workshop called “The Grief Journey of the Child Placed in Foster Care.” 

My workshop is designed to help social workers, supervised visitation professionals, Court Appointed Special Advocates, counselors and other direct care providers understand the stages or phases of grief and ways that children may act during these stages.  Through interactive exercises and discussions participants will learn how to identify and appropriately document the behaviors that children demonstrate as they move through stages of grief and loss and develop strategies on how to respond not only to the behaviors but also the emotions behind the behaviors.

Among the list of dynamic speakers and presenters is Ashley Rhodes-Courter, author of Three Little Words.  Ashley spent 10 years in foster care, living in 14 different foster homes.  She will discuss her time in foster care and highlight the CASA worker that was able to get her out of abusive situations and eventually find her an adoptive family. Ashley will also shed light on what it means to be a foster youth, what tools are important when working with youth, and how one person can change the life of a child.

Also on the list of speakers is Alan Webber, founder of Fast Company Magazine.  Alan will deliver the closing keynote on Friday.  He will share relevant lessons from other sectors about building efficient and effective teams within the social services community.

Stay tuned for updates from New Mexico and hopefully a video of my keynote!

By Dr. Stacey Patton

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday I took a virtual trip to Israel where I met up with about 20 Jewish and Palestinian high school teens who attend the Jerusalem Book Club four times a year to share pizza, lemonade and thoughts on the books they read together.  I sat in a small drab studio in Brooklyn Heights while they perched themselves on colorful poufy chairs inside the American Center in Jerusalem and discussed my memoir That Mean Old Yesterday. 

Organized in 2007, the Jerusalem Book Club is a cooperative project between the Schmidt’s Girls College in East Jerusalem and the Academy of Music and Dance in West Jerusalem.  The club’s theme is – “Reading is Understanding.”  Despite being neighbors in Jerusalem and surrounding areas, these Arab and Jewish teens rarely interact with each other in their every day life outside of their book club meetings.

I was surprised when Suzanne Sapir, one of the Jerusalem Book Club organizers, informed me that Arab and Jewish teens were reading That Mean Old Yesterday as their most recent pick.  My initial reaction was, ‘Why would a group of teens living in radically different cultures want to read a book about a young African-American girl who was adopted, endured child abuse and survived the American foster care industry?’  ‘Why would these young people, who continue to endure political hostilities and unrelenting violence in their region, want to hear what I have to say about the history of slavery and racial terrorism and its impact on black families in America?’  

‘What in the world could we possibly have in common?’

As they all sat side-by-side on the opposite side of the video monitor they asked important questions about the themes of my book, the writing process, healing and resiliency, and they brilliantly articulated what my work meant to them.  One student told me that if he had to choose a soundtrack to accompany my life story it would be Sam Cooke’s “Change Is Gonna Come.”  I was blown away by the students’ depth of knowledge of American history, black music and literature.

More importantly, they reminded me that there clearly are issues that transcend political boundaries, religion, and long-term feuds.  I’ve kept in contact with a few of the teens via Facebook and email since our meeting.  Some have shared their own personal challenges with physical and emotional abuse and others have talked about how much they enjoy coming together despite their differences. 

Last year a student told Sapir, “It is so nice to get together.  We talk and laugh and enjoy discussing books.  Why do people around us tell us that we are enemies and should not meet?”

Sapir said she almost fell off her chair.  “That is what I always wanted these kids to realize,” she said by email.

Sapir initially got the idea to start the Jerusalem Book Club from watching an episode of Oprah that mentioned kids and book clubs.  When the Israel and Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI) and the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), organizations dedicated to peace and recognizing the rights of Israelis and Palestinians and children, both ran out of funding Sapir knew she had to do something to address the impact of the conflict on young people.  So she asked a Muslim friend and colleague to partner with her to begin a book club where Jewish and Arab teens would read books in English.

“My mission was to bring together kids who live in the same city but never connect, never socialize, never talk,” Sapir said.  “It’s like they live in two different worlds.  At the time, as well as now, it would be impossible to bring Arabs from the territories here or bring Israeli kids there.”

In 2007, Sapir traveled to the U.S. to visit her sisters.  One of her sisters donated the first two sets of books – Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.  She returned to Israel with the books in her luggage and prepared for the first meeting.  Since their first meeting the club has read books like The Wave, Jane Eyre, The Book Thief, The Kite Runner, Life of Pi, Mao’s Last Dancer, and A Long Way Gone, a book about a boy soldier in Sierra Leone who was rescued by UNICEF and now lives in New York City.  In 2009 the book club received an award from a German organization for doing cooperative work in a conflict zone.  The club received 1000 Euros to purchase more books.

“The kids love getting together,” Sapir said.  “They talk and laugh and do what all teenagers do – complain about school, etc.  We usually discuss the books for an hour after doing icebreaker activities.  At 5:00 it is over, but sometimes the kids stay and talk, talk, talk after the teachers leave!”

As I chatted, laughed and shared jokes about Hip Hop and reality TV shows like ‘The Jersey Shore’ and ‘Real Housewives of Atlanta’ I got the sense that the burdens of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict did not enter the room and certainly were not brought up in our conversation.  Sapir said that she and the other organizers hope that by reading and discussing books together the students can somehow bridge the gap between them, overcome prejudices they have about each other, and become friends.

Sapir said, “There are many stories, good stories” about Arabs and Jews cooperating.  “This info never gets out in the media,” she said.

Her biggest hope is that the teens will walk away with a vision that they can help others by making people aware of important issues.  “Knowledge is power,” Sapir said.  “Even one person has the power to change things.  Books take you to different places.”  Sapir also hopes that the teens may be inspired to write their own stories about growing up in Jerusalem.

One thing that we all agreed upon – African American, Jew, and Arab – is that abuse knows no boundaries and that healing, resilience, and friendship are universal necessities.

If you would like to support the Jerusalem Book Club by donating books or money please email Suzanne Sapir at sksapir@gmail.com.

By Dr. Stacey Patton

The sexual abuse of a child, irrespective of gender, class background or race, is no doubt one of the most heinous crimes.  But there’s no denying that the public’s outrage is especially charged when the perpetrator and victim are of a different race. 

Unconfirmed reports allege that former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky chose black boys as his primary victims.  The mainstream media’s use of the coded terms “underprivileged” and “at-risk” to describe the victims has rightly raised suspicions among black observers.  A parent of one of the boys has said that Sandusky’s victims were “blacks about 10-12 and had a tall slim muscular build.”

What if Sandusky’s victims are in fact black?  Did race add a layer of vulnerability for his victims, as some observers have suggested?  Did the race of the alleged victims lead Penn State officials to turn a blind eye to a serial child rapist?  Will race determine whether the judicial system will allow the accused pedophile to walk free or pay for his alleged crimes?

While some say that the race of the victims involved in the Penn State sex abuse scandal does not matter, others like Syracuse University professor Boyce Watkins believe that blacks have good reason to be concerned and skeptical.  The problem, Watkins and others have asserted, is much bigger than the Penn State scandal: we live in a society where black children are exempted from the category of innocence, have no intrinsic social value, and are unworthy of protection.  Watkins writes:

“When Black kids go missing, the media almost never notices.  When Black children are being shot in “the hood,” nobody cares.  Black men are incarcerated at holocaust proportions, but few politicians show even a hint of concern.  In light of these realities, it’s not entirely inconceivable that Sandusky chose his targets for the same reason that many serial killers murder prostitutes with no family . . . it’s easy to get away with the unthinkable when you go after the victim that no one cares about.”

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, co-host of the Al Sharpton Show, agrees.  “Put bluntly, if Penn State officials kept their yaps shut for years in the face of open knowledge of and strong suspicions of the child rapes and the victims were young black males, then the last dot connected is the charge that black lives are routinely devalued when it comes to officials taking action to protect them,” Hutchinson asserts.  He adds, “This charge has repeatedly been leveled in serial murders, inner city gang carnage, and child service agencies that ignore or downplay repeated reports of abuse when the victims and the abused are black.”

I am inclined to agree with Watkins, Hutchinson and others who have raise these very important points about the degradation of black childhood in America.  But I want people to consider something else . . .

While the African-American community should rightly be concerned about Sandusky’s alleged fetish for black boys, his crimes against them, and the institutional response, this scandal ought to prompt black America to rally around its children.  How can we expect the larger society to value and protect black children from sexual abuse, genocidal violence and other hidden holocausts when too many among us advocate and even celebrate physically and mentally beating down our children? 

Just this week CNN published a report showing that African Americans are most likely to use switches, belts, shoes and other objects to beat children.  Last week I participated in a conversation on NPR’s “Tell Me More” with Michel Martin and the ‘Mocha Moms’ about the so-called thin line between physical discipline and abuse.  One of the moms boisterously argued that it is okay to whip children with switches and belts and to even knock her 18-year-old child upside the head.  You have to beat them with love, she said.  I’m not making this up.  You can listen to the conversation for yourself here.

There’s no denying that black children have remained trapped in the logic of race and devaluation since the birth of William Tucker in 1624, the first black child born in the American colonies.  In the American imagination the black child remains the antithesis of the white child: unhealthy, uneducable, deviant, criminal, hypersexual, dangerous, and unworthy of protection.  

But when so many black people beat the bodies and murder the souls of our children we shouldn’t be so surprised when a predator, like Jerry Sandusky, seizes the opportunity prey on our youth.  We shouldn’t be surprised when an institution like Penn State looks the other way and when a philanthropic organization like The Second Mile Foundation uses the plight of poor black children to raise millions while knowingly or unknowingly becoming complicit in pimping out those same children.

Until we do better by our children, no one else will.

A discussion we desperately need to have.

Two recent cases of videotaped beatings have brought corporal punishment into the public sphere in a dramatic way, interspersed with the dynamics of race, gender, class, age and privilege.

In September, Devery Broox, 25, posted a video on WorldStarHipHop.com of himself whipping a seven-year-old boy he mentored. Broox’s justification for whipping and verbally abusing the boy,  humiliating him with a bad haircut and subjecting him to a punishing workout, is that he was trying to keep him from prison. He said the boy’s grandmother had called him to punish the boy for acting up at school.

Broox posted the video online with scrolling statistics about the number of black men in prison, and titles for each step of the process of disciplining a child: Interrogation, Removal of SWAG, Beat Dat ASS!!!, and at the end: Job Well Done.

A viewer alerted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the local police department identified Broox and the boy from the video, and Broox was booked into jail and charged with one count of felony child abuse. He has since posted bond.

The comment threads on various sites where the video was posted overwhelmingly supported Broox, saying black kids need to be whipped to keep them out of the penal system. Some viewers even accused the police and social services as being racist for arresting Broox.  These kinds of reactions support the contention that African Americans are more likely to not just embrace corporal punishment, but view it as essential to rearing children responsibly.  Since this videotaped beating of a young black boy did not provoke an outcry among black Americans, should we be surprised that it did not garner national media attention and public outcry?

Contrast Broox’s case with that of William Adams, a family law judge in Texas whose disabled  daughter secretly videotaped him savagely beating and verbally berating her when she was 16.  The daughter, Hillary Adams, now 23, recently posted the video on YouTube, where it got more than 2 million hits and prompted a police investigation. 

In contrast to the comments for Broox’s video, many of the comments on the Adams family beating harshly criticized the father for going way too far.

Ironically, Judge Adams handles child abuse cases. In response to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services request that he be removed from such cases during the investigation, he was taken off such cases for two weeks.  Last week, the Huffington Post reported that Adams won’t face charges because, although police feel it involved a criminal offense and might normally charge him, too much time has passed. 

We can’t look at these two cases—a young black man beating and berating his young mentee, and a middle-aged white judge doing the same to his teen daughter—without racism slapping us in the face. The five-year statue of limitations on the Adams case, and authorities’ claims that  the judge might otherwise have faced charges feels a bit too convenient. This is not just a white man, but one with power in the judicial system, in the very area in which he might have been charged. 

While we must address the fact that a white man got away with something for which a black man was jailed, we must first address the false and persistently pervasive belief that whipping black children keeps them on the right side of the law. In fact, the opposite may be true. For example, the Baltimore, Md. police department, reports that 84 percent of prison inmates were abused as children.

Let’s get to the heart of the matter: why are children being abused in the name of “discipline?” When does “spanking” become abuse? Why is there such a disparity in the way spankings are viewed in black and white communities? And why are children in our society not entitled to the same right to be free from physical assault as adults are?

With our nation’s schools hyper-focused on addressing bullying, national awareness of adult-on-adult domestic violence viewed as unacceptable, and the growing numbers of black children entering the foster care system because of child abuse, why does the black community have such a tragic double standard for the youngest and most vulnerable among us?

While the specifics—and outcomes—of the Broox and Adams cases vary, the underlying dynamic is terrifyingly similar: physical, emotional and verbal abuse being heaped upon children in the name of “straightening them out.”

Maybe it’s not the children who are bent.

By Dr. Stacey Patton

Last week I gave a keynote speech at the Supervised Visitation Network’s Regional Conference in Seattle.  My talk focused on the stages of grief that foster children move through when they are separated from their families of origin and how visitation professionals can appropriately recognize and respond to children’s behaviors and the emotions behind the behaviors.  Offstage I had a long conversation with a fellow adoptee who leaned into my ear and asked three important related questions:

“Why do you think so many of us grow up and become enablers?”

“Why do we have this need to rescue people in our lives?”

“Why is it so hard for foster kids and kids who’ve been adopted to succeed in intimate relationships as adults?”

I reacted to her questions first with a smile.  And then, I dropped my eyes to my lap and sat silently for a few moments, sinking into an abyss of uncalm waters inside me. 

Her questions made me feel as if she were penetrating through my tough-as-nails, I-will-never-again-be-anybody’s-victim-or-dependent-on-anybody-for-anything exterior that I project when walking through the world.  Though she was genuinely seeking some understanding for herself and the children she serves, I felt as if she had been reading all of my secret vulnerabilities.

Though her questions were painful, my fellow adoptee perhaps unknowingly provided me with an excellent opportunity to confront some truths and a chance to further free myself from the binds of my past. 

So here are the answers I came up with . . .

Like everybody else, foster kids and adoptees long for acceptance, love and a sense of connection with others.  But many of us are terrified of intimacy later on in life because we have experienced some form of abandonment in early childhood and because we’ve racked up so many losses on our journey through the child welfare system.  Life in foster care is unstable and unpredictable.  So many people come and go that it’s difficult to connect or trust others.  We’re always anxiously waiting to be shuttled from one place to another, and bracing for relationships to end.

Unfortunately, many of us have learned that vulnerability and dependency on others is not a safe position for us.  We grew up believing that we were unwanted, unlovable, abnormal, defective and unworthy.  We wondered: if our biological parents don’t want us, if they can’t love us for whatever reason, then who will? 

These negative feelings of self-worth got set during a foundational developmental period in our lives and make it difficult for us as adults to reveal ourselves to others or believe that anyone else can ever truly love us.  And we are always prepped, sometimes even expecting others to leave us eventually.  When it happens, sometimes we get depressed but we generally bounce back quickly because we remember that no other rejection can ever trump the severing of that first primal loss or rejection from our mothers.

Good friends have said that before they got to know me I came off as cold, detached, so together, always in control, and impenetrable.  In many respects they were right, but little did they know that this behavior was a defense mechanism.  Keeping distance from others was imperative for me to hide my sense of unworthiness and unaccepted truths about my abandonment and victimization.  My unhealthy beliefs about myself, instilled in childhood, ruled my emotions, outlook on the world, and relationships with others.  In my work with my foster brothers and sisters, fellow adoptees, and those who lost their parents during childhood, I have found that they too share similar challenges.

One of the most striking traits that many of us share in adulthood is our seemingly unconscious addiction to being enablers and rescuers.  Why is that?

Now, I’m no shrink and I won’t attempt to give you some armchair psychobabble.  I’m just speaking here from personal experience and my observations from my peers who navigate the world with these issues.

We may know it, or not, but most foster kids and adoptees often react to life as victims and we have a habit of putting people on pedestals, setting ourselves up in relationships where we unconsciously re-enact painful themes from our childhood and are ultimately left abandoned, betrayed or taken advantage of.  We were not adequately nurtured during childhood.  Some of us were abused or abandoned.  And so we find ourselves rescuing other people because we wanted somebody to come rescue the little boy or the little girl that we were.  And though we are physically grown, many of us have not exorcised the troubled inner child.  We let the little boy’s or little girl’s insecurities, memories, trauma, and fears rule the adult.

Being a caretaker or helper makes us feel like we matter, that we are important and worthy to others.  Our behaviors and actions towards others allow us to not accept that we were once child victims because we now have the power to fix things.  By rescuing others we think it will make ourselves feel good and protect others from feeling bad.  Ultimately we derive a false sense of being in control, which provides us sense of empowerment.  But that feeling doesn’t last long because we find ourselves involved in relationships with friends, family members and lovers who are lifetime victims or dependents who have no idea how to be there for us.

I’ve often found myself sacrificing my needs and feelings, saying that they are irrelevant and that I don’t deserve to tell others what I want or need.  As a rescuer, the only way that I think I can legitimately connect with others, feel valued, and meet their needs is through the back door of caretaking, serving and “fixing it.”  

For too long I’ve believed that if I take care of others well enough and long enough, then I will be fulfilled.  I will prove that I am worthy and lovable.  If I take care of them long enough, then they will eventually take care of me too.  It’s hard to admit that rescuing others is an unconscious addiction that sprang from my need to feel valued and to prevent others from walking out of my life.  It’s even more difficult to accept that after all the time and energy spent trying to fix things for others that we can’t expect anything back from them and that they will most likely wind up leaving us because they are needy and don’t have the ability to care for themselves. 

Rescuers are attracted to victims and dependents.  The end result is that we wind up becoming serial victims who are always trying to make ourselves indispensable because we are afraid of being abandoned or alone. 

Adoptees and foster kids sometimes falsely believe that our total value comes from how well we are able to please or do for others.  We spent our childhoods trying to convince others that we were keepable.  As adults, it may be difficult for us to see our worth beyond our services and what we can do for others.  And so in our relationships we may unconsciously encourage dependency.  We think: “They won’t leave us because they need us.”

Foster kids especially come from families where their needs go unacknowledged.  And adoptees sometimes dwell on their unmet needs that the biological parents who relinquished them failed to provide.  So it’s no surprise that they grow up to become adults who treat themselves with the same degree of negligence that they experienced as children and don’t give themselves permission to take care of themselves.  We unconsciously foster dependency in others that becomes harmful to our rescuees’ development.  The more we rescue others in our lives, the less self-responsibility our rescuees take for their own lives.  For us, having a victim in our lives is essential for maintaining the illusion that we are needless, that we were never victims.

The woman who asked me the questions that sparked this reflection told me that she and other rescuers she knew always have at least one person in their lives that was troubled, sick, fragile, inept and dependent on them.  Once those people eventually took responsibility for themselves, then the rescuers were abandoned and had to seek out new people and relationships to fulfill their emotional voids.  And the cycle continued.

So what can people like us rescuers do to keep from becoming victims of our own good deeds?  Here’s some things I’ve learned through some of my self-help readings:

1. Continue to be loving, generous and kind.  We can continue being helpful and supportive to others without being a rescuer.  We must recognize that there is a difference being between helpful and rescuing.
2. Act without expectations for reciprocation.  Empower rather than disable.  Encourage self-responsibility, rather than promote dependency.
3. Remind yourself that others – friends, family members, lovers – can handle their own business.
4. Remember that everyone has the right to make mistakes and learn through consequences.
5. Trust that others have what it takes to see themselves through times of difficulty without you needing to “save” them.
6. Do NOT help others in order to get validation or feel important.  It only fosters dependency and ultimately leads to setting yourself up for victimization.
7. Learn to set appropriate boundaries, nurture and set priorities for yourself.  Stop obsessing, intervening and interfering in the lives of others in unhealthy ways.  Stop taking responsibility for others instead of yourself.

Certainly, there are valuable lessons and useful tips here not just for adoptees, foster children and people who’ve experienced some form of abandonment.  As we all journey through life we must become conscious of our emotions and behaviors as well as their origins so we can make changes, heal from pain, and re-claim our emotional and spiritual health.

By Dr. Stacey Patton

In late September the disturbing YouTube video shown above began circulating on blogs and other social media platforms with scores of people defending Devery Broox, 25, for whipping his 7-year-old mentee with a belt because he was acting up in school.  Broox justified whipping the boy by intimating that he was trying to save him from the penal system.

But the irony here is that Broox found himself behind bars for child abuse after someone who saw the video online called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The video, almost eight minutes long, begins with scrolling statistics from the Sentencing Project and the latest U.S. Census report – 1 out of 8 black men are in prison; 1 out of 3 black men born today are expected to go to prison; there are 2,500,000 black people in college, only 910,000 are black men while 827, 680 are prison or jail.

In the next scene Broox appears with a belt slung over his shoulder, flexing his muscles and interrogating the young boy as he sits on a toilet seat with a look of terror on his face.

Text appears on the screen that says “Step 1: Investigation.” Broox begins his interrogation of the child. 

Then, “Step 2: The removal of SWAG.” Broox proceeds to shave the boy’s head while saying, “You want to act like a clown, I’ll send you back to school looking like a clown.  After I finish whooping your ass, we gonna work out like we just came out of boot camp.”

And then, “Step 3: Beat Dat ASS!!!”  Broox tells the boy to “drop your pants,” as they walk into another room.  At this point the viewer can hear the boy crying, pleading and screaming as he’s being hit with the belt. 

As I watched this scene play out in horror I could not contain my tears.  It brought back a flood of memories from my own childhood when I was interrogated, yelled at and put down as part of the prelude to my adoptive mother’s many beating rituals.  I saw myself in that little boy and I felt his fear.

My tears turned to disgust and anger.  I began to hate the so-called “mentor” who can be heard yelling, “Move your motherfucking hand” as the boy screamed, “It hurts!”

Thankfully, the video was sent to the Orlando Police Department and the Department of Children and Families later discovered the identities of Broox and the boy.

Both the boy and his mother initially told investigators that scars on the boy’s body were from a bicycle accident, but a doctor reported that the scars were consistent with physical abuse with a flexible object like a belt.

The boy later told a DCF investigator that Broox had whipped him with a belt and that Broox had told him to lie to investigators so he wouldn’t be arrested.  Clearly there was recognition here that there was wrongdoing on his part.  Broox’s actions reminded me of my adoptive mother who coach me on what to say to the police, doctors, social workers, teachers, people at church on anybody else who asked about welts, black eyes and old scars on my body.  I had to play my role in making sure my adoptive mother didn’t fall into the hands of the “racist” white social workers or police officers for beating me.  Besides, all they wanted to do was break up black families and keep black people down, my adoptive mother told me.

When Broox voluntarily went to the Orlando Police headquarters, he told the cops that his references to “beating” and “whipping” the boy in the video meant physical exercise, not actually harming him. Police said Broox told them the off-camera portion of the video was “staged” and that he never hurt the boy.  Broox was booked at the Orange County Jail and charged with one count of felony child abuse but has since posted bond.

Some people have cried fowl over Broox’s arrest.  Some of those commenting on various sites say that he did not cross the line by whipping this child.  Too many agree that it is necessary to whip black children to keep them from ending up behind bars. 

But they are wrong.

It amazes me how people can’t seem to connect how this kind of violence and soul murder of black children actually helps feed our children into the child welfare system and the prisons in this country.  Whipping children does not prevent them from becoming subject to the state!  I’ll bet you any amount of money that if you walk into a juvenile detention center or any prison across American and take a survey of the inmates more than 90% will most likely tell you that they were whipped as children.  And yet, they still ended up in prison.

My adoptive mother used to rationalize beating me by saying things like – “I beat you because I love.  I beat you so you won’t be killed by the police or the white man.  I beat you to keep you from ending up in prison or an early grave.” 

What kind of flawed logic is this? 

Every time I heard those messages and each time my adoptive mother struck me, she damaged my sense of self-worth, and she sowed the seeds of anger, resentment and anger towards her.  I did not respect her, I feared her.  I did not think I needed saving from the police or the white man, I needed saving from my black mama who I thought was going to kill me with a belt, switch, wire hanger, or whatever other object she decided to use.

I am so sick of black folks who perversely embrace and promote violence against our children because they are unwilling to learn healthier non-violent ways to grow their children.  What happened to this little boy in the video is abuse and it won’t help save him from a racist criminal justice system.  It only creates a double terrorism for him and legions of other black children who are popped, whipped, or beaten on a daily basis.

As Renee Martin of Womanist Musings put it so eloquently: “Black people are in prison because we live in a white supremacist state that is determined to impoverish and criminalize blacks, not because we need to beat our children more.  Don’t black kids have enough to deal with growing and learning in a society that fundamentally hates them, without piling even more abuse on their plates from the ones that are supposed to love and protect them?”

Video Shows Dramatic Septa Bus Shooting: MyFoxPHILLY.com

By Dr. Stacey Patton

Some of you may have heard about that idiotic Philly mom who got upset and called her goon relatives to shoot a fellow Septa bus passenger after he threatened to call child services on her for hitting her child.  In that incident, which took place in early August, an angry 20 year-old Penny Chapman made a phone call to her brothers Karon and Raheen Paterson and directed them to “shoot that ni–a” when the bus arrived at her stop. 

Video taken inside the bus shows one man sliding a large assault rifle out of his jeans and passengers, including a mother and her 4 year-old son running for cover as bullets fly through the windows.  It also shows an 80 year-old Asian woman dropping to the floor just seconds before a bullet flies overhead.

Watching this horrific scene play out on my computer screen made me pause and think back to all those times I ever dared to open my mouth and say something when I witnessed a child being mistreated.  And for the next few days and weeks I found myself contemplating what I should tell others who’ve said that this video graphically illustrates the dangers of speaking up on behalf of a defenseless child.

“What do I do if I see an adult hitting, roughly handling, or cussing out a child in public?  Do I intervene?  Or do I keep quiet and mind my own business?”

Even before FOX aired this video, I often received these questions from email writers and audience members who participate in my child abuse prevention and positive discipline workshops.  The questions typically come from white women who encounter young or middle-aged black mothers slapping or verbally cutting down a child.  For years now I’ve been loudly beating my drum, telling my black and white participants to “Speak up!  If these people will hit a child in public, imagine what happens behind closed doors.” 

Many participants want to say something but are often afraid to intervene for fear of being told: “Mind your damn business, white lady!  Don’t tell me how to raise my child!”  

Others, black and white, are afraid of being physically threatened by the angry parent.  Some say they don’t want to make matters worse for the child who might get physically or verbally beat down even more when they get home.  And every now and then I hear a black audience member say they are hesitant to report abuse because they don’t want to see yet another black child end up a statistic in the child welfare industry.

When I was in my 20s and still working through my own anger issues and traumatic memories stemming from the physical abuse I endured as a child, I had no problem walking up to a parent and saying, “Don’t hit that child like that!  What’s wrong with you?  Why don’t you try to hit ME like that?  Pick on somebody your own size!”

In time I moved away from those kinds of heated confrontations by shooting child hitters a dark and indignant glare, turning my nose up at them, or simply shaking my head.   But over the years I’ve learned that kind and delicate intervention is the better approach.  If you come at a parent angry, judgmental or in a way that embarrasses them in front of others then it defeats the purpose.

I have found that sometimes a parent is so stressed out that they may not see that how they are treating their child is abusive.  If the parent is out of control, call the police right away.  Use a camera phone to record the incident if available.  Don’t give the parent a disapproving stare or confront them directly.  Negative reactions are likely to increase the parent’s stress or anger, and could make matters worse for the child.

Offer support, even just a smile.  If you see a parent struggling, hold the door open or offer to help with bags.  You can say something like, “Oh, my kid used to do that all the time.  That’s really normal.”

Here are some other simple tips that might help:

Start a conversation with the adult to direct attention away from the child.

“He’s really trying your patience today, huh.”

“My child sometimes acts out like that, too.”

“These little ones can really wear you out sometimes.  Is there anything I can do to help?”

Divert the child’s attention (if misbehaving) by talking to the child.

“I like your baseball cap.  Are you a Mets fan (whatever team logo) fan?”

“I like your T-shirt.  Did your Mommy pick that out for you?”

Look for an opportunity to praise the parent or child.

“Your child has the most beautiful eyes.”

“That’s a very pretty shirt on your little girl/boy.  Where did you get it?”

If the child is in danger, offer assistance.

If the child is left unattended in a grocery cart or a car, stand near the child until the parent returns.  If the child is in immediate danger, call the police!

To report suspected child abuse or neglect, please call Child Protective Services at 1-800-4-A-Child, 24 hours a day.  As long as your report is made in good faith, and without malice, your identity is kept confidential and free from any liability.

Yes, the Philly incident was pretty scary.  But we cannot use it as an excuse to keep quiet and mind our own business.  Thankfully the state prosecutor will make an example out Chapman and her goon brothers who are awaiting trial.   Hopefully what happened on that Septa bus last month will remain an isolated incident.

As members of the human family, we all have a duty to speak up when a child is being mistreated.  My hope is that eventually states will help our cause by making it illegal for parents to use physical force against their children, in public or private, just as they did in the fight against domestic abuse of women.

By Dr. Stacey Patton

Creator of Spare The Kids

For far too long Christian fundamentalists have preached the gospel of “spare the rod, spoil the child.”  And now, a California couple is behind bars after pleading guilty to beating their seven-year-old adopted daughter to death with a 15-inch plumping supply tube that they called “a biblical rod.”

And we’re worried about gay people adopting children?

This week CNN reported that Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz, a white couple from Paradise, California beat their seven-year-old black daughter Lydia because they believed God wanted them to.  The couple tortured the child for seven consecutive hours, taking breaks for prayer.  When police arrived at the Schatz residence, Lydia was still alive.  An officer administered CPR, but it was too late.

“We have heard the phrase ‘death by a thousand lashes,’” Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey told CNN.  “That’s basically what this was.”

The Schatzes, who had eight other children, didn’t only beat Lydia.  All of their children were regularly tortured in the name of God.  Lydia’s sister, eleven-year-old Zariah was beaten so severely that she almost died.

CNN reported that the couple was heavily influenced by a Christian child-rearing book titled To Train Up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl of Tennessee-based No Greater Joy Ministries.

“If you spare the rod, you hate your child,” author Michael Pearl told CNN.  “But if you love him, you chasten him timely.  God would not have commanded parents to use the rod if it were not good for the child,” the book states.

Umph.  A lot of good the rod did for little Lydia.  Her skin was so badly battered that the medical examiner said her injuries looked like those seen on earthquake or bombing victims.

The Schatz’s pleaded guilty to torture and murder.  The husband will spend 22 years behind bars and his wife will be locked away for at least 12 years.  At Kevin’s trial Lydia’s sister Zariah faced her tormentor and asked: “Why did you adopt her (Lydia)?  To kill her?”  Lydia and her seven other surviving siblings are now in foster care.

There’s more to be said here about this horrific crime.

I’ve been reading reactions on various blogs, Facebook and other social networking sites and the consensus seems to be that what happened in the Schatz’s home is an isolated incident of brutality.  People have been quick to call the couple a pair of monsters or nut jobs who twisted the Bible to justify their sick indulgence in torturing children. 

But I can’t tell you how many arguments I’ve gotten myself into with Christians who fervently defend the proverbial saying “spare the rod, spoil the child” and loudly proclaim that the Bible advocates violence against children.  But what was the use of the rod, and is it a directive or a metaphor?

Here’s a little lesson I learned about Biblical philosophy and child rearing . . . . 

The verse “spare the rod, spoil the child,” as it is often quoted, does NOT appear in the Bible.  The closest verse like it is Proverbs 13:24 which reads, “Those who spare the rod, hate their children, but the one who loves their child disciplines them diligently.”

The use of the word rod appears in the 23^rd Psalm: “Your rod and your staff comfort me.”  Here we can assume that the rod of a shepherd is at least similar in type and use to that in the proverb verse.  The use of the rod by shepherds did NOT include beating them.

The fact is, the rod and staff were the two implements utilized by professional shepherds of the day. The staff, which we are most familiar with, has a “crook” or “hook” on the end which was used to stop running sheep, help pull sheep up from rocky places when they’d fallen over, and so on. The rod was used when corralling the sheep to insure they went in the direction they were supposed to go. It wasn’t used to prod or poke, but to direct along the length of the shaft.

Now, sheep were a valuable asset for the shepherd; indeed, without the sheep there would be no shepherd, so the flocks were well taken care of. In fact, a damaged or maimed sheep was a liability, since it was considered tamé, Hebrew for polluted or impure. This being the case, the shepherd who owned their sheep took good care of them and used the tools of their trade as they were meant to be used–to guide, to direct, and to teach (the literal meaning of discipline). However, there were scoundrels who were simply hired to look after the sheep. They had little concern over the welfare of the animals, so they would use their tools in whatever way suited them. These were the ones who might lose their tempers and beat a lamb with a rod just to demonstrate they were more powerful and could force their will upon it.

Children are no less valuable than sheep, and they learn better too! If a sheep is consistency directed, that is limited and taught, they will learn what is expected and generally conform. However, if they are beaten and broken they not only stop responding, but they look for every opportunity to escape–even when escape may mean grave danger.

To “spare the rod” is indicative of a parent who does not discipline their child, that is, to teach, guide, and direct. This is the parent who “hates their child.” To spare the rod doesn’t mean a parent should beat down their children into submission, rather they are to be like shepherds who value and care for their charges and keep them from danger by using the tools of good parenting to teach responsible behavior and appropriate morality.

All Christians need to be careful about how they read and interpret the Bible and use scriptures to justify certain behaviors and practices.  Certainly the Bible ought not to be used to promote violence of any degree against children.  While it may be true that what happened in the Schatz’s home is a rare incident of murder, but far too many children are hit on a daily basis with hands and other objects because their parents believe that the Bible says it is right.

By Dr. Stacey Patton
Creator of Spare The Kids
First there was the story of Kelley Williams-Bolar, a desperate single black mom who was convicted by a predominantly white jury and spent ten days in jail for enrolling her children in a better suburban school district that she did not live in.