I highly recommend this video showing what the “instinctive drowning response” really looks like, with Dr. Frank Pia’s expert commentary. The most chilling visual to see how close this struggling child is to adults, almost within arm’s reach, yet they don’t realize he is in trouble. Fortunately, in this case, a trained life guard entered the water to rescue the boy.

This quote from Dr. Pia really stands out to me: “You have to understand that the struggle of of the drowning person lasts between 20 and 60 seconds. Young children struggle less than adults. The drowning movements of a young child can look like they’re actually doing the dog paddle in the water, when they’re actually drowning.”

Here is more information on the Instinctive Drowning Response, by the same expert, Dr. Francesco Pia, via the blog post “Drowning doesn’t look like drowning,” by Mario Vittone:

1. Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. The respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled, before speech occurs.
2. Drowning people’s mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When the drowning people’s mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water.
3. Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water, permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.
4. Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.
5. From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response people’s bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.

(Original source: On Scene Magazine: Fall 2006 (page 14))

I started researching this issue last summer after I witnessed a very disturbing incident myself. My family was participating in a local swim meet, and I was a lane timer for the races. A little “age 6 and under” girl from the other team was swimming in my lane, and she was having a hard time getting across the pool. I now believe that she was on the verge of this instinctive drowning response. She made it across, but in retrospect, I believe that someone should have jumped in and pulled her our, rather than let her struggle all the way across the pool. I felt guilty about this, because I could have been the person to jump in.

Even though I had made a safety mistake, what I was able to do was immediately write an email to my team’s leaders telling them about the problem I had perceived, saying I wish I had acted to pull the swimmer out. Here was how I described what I saw:

[This swimmer] went underwater twice with her mouth open, and she almost went still and quiet. She managed to eventually struggle enough to propel herself to the wall, but it was really disturbing, and in retrospect I realize that she really should have been pulled out. The lifeguard should have pulled her out. Her parent was right there at the end of our lane and he should have jumped in. If I ever see this happen again, I will jump in myself. It was one of those unsure situations, that had so many people watching, and so many adults there you would think it would be safe, but it definitely was not. I really think that all of us witnessing made the wrong judgement call to let her continue on her own, even though she made it to the wall.

No team should enter a child into an event if that child cannot strongly and confidently swim 25 yards across the pool….I want to make it clear this is not just about a kid swimming really slowly, or hanging onto the lane divider, or not knowing the stroke form–this is not about competitiveness, it was about safety.

In return I got a brief email from a team leader thanking me for my concern, and affirming that “Any time you believe a swimmer is in distress you should act to assist,” but I never did hear back whether the issue was discussed at the entire league meeting, and what the overall outcome was. Now that swim team season is starting again, I think I need to follow up on that. Almost a year later, this incident still disturbs me. And I still think about the barriers to perceiving, believing and acting: it was a chaotic situation, fast-moving and loud. It was a race where every participant was assumed to be a competent swimmer, at least to get across the pool, if not quickly. There were many people there, including life guards, coaches and her parent. So there were several factors at play: diffusion of responsibility, feeling limited by my own role as timer, and feeling that the life guards would surely act if there was a problem. There was a lot of uncertainty in this situation–even looking back at it today, I can’t say for sure what happened, other than to say I wish someone had acted to pull her out. And that type of uncertain, busy, situation where people are expected to be competent swimmers is one where the coaches should make sure that each swimmer has the skills needed to compete safely. It is much better to set this situation up for success at the beginning, weighing in on the side of safety, rather than to have to make a difficult judgment call in the moment.

I often refer back to Kidpower’s founding principle: safety is more important than anyone’s embarrassment, inconvenience or offense. It would have been embarrassing and weird to jump in and pull this girl out, and maybe I would have even possibly been over-reacting or mistaken about how much danger she was in. But putting safety first means being willing to risk looking like a fool if it means you can keep someone safe, and I wish I had taken that leap in this situation.

Recommended articles:

“Keeping Your Kids Safe on The Beach” by Patrick Quinn, via “Life of Dad” blog

Drowning Safety by New Hampshire Water Safety. Has a good list of “what we do?” prevention tips.

“Drowning doesn’t look like drowning,” Mario Vittone’s full post.

We are proud of this new Kidpower success story from our North Carolina Center. A mother whose eight-year-old daughter took a Kidpower workshop about two years ago wrote in:

“I wanted to tell you about a recent incident that happened with my daughter and how it could have been a very bad situation. She and her entire grade went on a field trip to a museum last week in downtown Raleigh. From what I understand, it was pretty crowded there with multiple schools.”

“My daughter was walking in a single file line through the museum following her class – she was the ‘caboose.’ However, she fell back a step or two, then a large group walked in front of her. By the time the crowd cleared, her class was nowhere in sight.”

“My daughter looked around for a few moments but did not see any familiar faces. She told me she began to panic, then calmed herself down and made her way back to the information desk where they had originally checked in. In a calm, clear voice she told the workers “I got separated from my class. Can you please help find my teacher?”.”

“They announced her teacher’s name over the loud speaker and asked him to report to the front desk, and the situation turned out just fine! My daughter’s teacher said he lost a few years off his life, but he was really amazed that she knew just what to do. I told him it was thanks to Kidpower, and he said he wants to discuss having a workshop take place in the school.”

“Just wanted to thank you for teaching her those important skills!! You are, quite truly, a lifesaver!”

I highly recommend Irene’s article, shared below, about the Kidpower skills that helped this girl stay safe in when she got lost. She kept her cool and did just what she had practiced in Kidpower! Practice with your kids–they remember what they DO. You can make it fun, acting out the skills in a fun and upbeat way. (I remember my daughter at age 9, asking me to act out Harry Potter with her. She’d say, “I’ll be Hermione, you be everybody else!” That was quite an involved scene. If I can do that, you can role play Kidpower with your kids! It only takes a few minutes and we’ll tell just what to do.)

What If I Get Lost? – Kidpower Skills to Prepare Children to Get Help
by Irene van der Zande, Kidpower Founder and Executive Director

Schedule an interview: Dr. Amy Tiemann is a frequent guest expert on parenting websites, national radio tours, magazines from Redbook to Glamour, and TV including ABC News, the CBS Early Show, and NBC’s Today Show. To schedule an interview, please contact her publicist Jill Dykes, jill@jilldykespr.com or 919-749-8488

Amanda Berry, right, hugs her sister Beth Serrano after being reunited in a Cleveland hospital, May 6, 2013. (Family HO/WOIO-TV/AP Photo)

This is such a bizarre story that evokes mixed feelings of triumph, relief, anger and sadness. How could these three young women have remained in captivity for a decade, just a few miles from where they were kidnapped? How much does the stigma of racism and poverty of this poor neighborhood in Cleveland play into the investigation, or lack thereof? There are big questions to be answered in this investigation, starting with the fact that neighbors reportedly did call police about strange goings-on at alleged abductor Ariel Castro’s house.

…Two neighbors said they called police to the Castro house on separate occasions. Elsie Cintron, who lives three houses away, said her daughter saw a naked woman crawling in the backyard several years ago and called police. “But they didn’t take it seriously,” she said. Another neighbor, Israel Lugo, said he heard pounding on some of the doors of the house in November 2011. Lugo said officers knocked on the front door, but no one answered. “They walked to side of the house and then left,” he said. “Everyone in the neighborhood did what they had to do,” said Lupe Collins, who is close to relatives of the women. “The police didn’t do their job.”

Think of the suffering that could have been avoided if police had invesigated more thoroughly years ago. The neighbors took a difficult step of calling the police, who apparently dropped the ball. It is asking a lot of the neighbors to expect them to be able to follow up on that on their own, once the police failed to act. Did they fail to believe that such a serious crime could be taking place at this suspicious house?

In Doing Right by Our Kids, we talk about three steps necessary to address a safety problem: Perceive, Believe, and Act. Perceiving and believing can be intertwined, and sometimes it is almost impossible for our brains to process what we are seeing, if a bizarre or traumatic event is outside the realm of what we believe to be possible. The most vivid example of this that I can share is what happened when I saw the Twin Towers fall on September 11, 2001. When I turned on the news, the first tower had already fallen but the rubble was partially shrouded smoke. I was on the phone with my husband, who had started watching earlier than I had, and he was trying to explain to me that the first Twin Tower had collapsed. Even though he told me this, and I was looking at it on live television, my brain literally could not accept or believe that the tower had totally collapsed. I was in denial, thinking that somehow, when the smoke cleared, there would be something to salvage. So when I saw the second tower collapse I was almost as shocked as could be.

So in criminal cases of child abuse, abduction, or molestation, believing that you could be seeing evidence of a serious problem is key. You don’t have to always understand exactly what you are seeing, if you see something worrying, suspicious, or bizarre, you need to tell an authority and get help. And those authorities need to follow through. I am reminded of the Jerry Sandusky/Penn State sexual abuse case which shared many of these features, including parent complaints that went unheeded for years before Sandusky’s eventual arrest. With Doing Right by Our Kids, our goal is to empower grassroots activists of all kinds–including kids, parents, teachers and coaches–to Perceive, Believe and Act. Report safety problems and keep telling until you get the help you need. You and the children in all of our lives deserve our courageous action on these issues.

Schedule an interview: Dr. Amy Tiemann is a frequent guest expert on parenting websites, national radio tours, magazines from Redbook to Glamour, and TV including ABC News, the CBS Early Show, and NBC’s Today Show. To schedule an interview, please contact her publicist Jill Dykes, jill@jilldykespr.com or 919-749-8488

The Pentagon is preparing to release an annual report about sexual misconduct in the military, which tells the results of a survey of military personnel that found that incidences of “unwanted sexual contact” were up by 33% in the past two years, from 19,300 to 26,000 now. Whether this increase can be in any way attributed to an increase in reporting, rather than an increase in sex crimes, is unknown, but what is known is that it is a huge problem. The treatment of soldiers reporting rapes and assaults has been abysmal, and:

Military officials said they are concerned that most troops may be reluctant to press charges or formally report sexual assault to authorities. The Pentagon recorded 3,374 sexual assault reports last year, compared with 3,192 in 2011, according to a separate report made public Tuesday.

Meanwhile, lawmakers singled out the Air Force on Tuesday for its botched handling of sex crimes, expressing incredulity that an officer in charge of the service’s sexual assault prevention efforts had been arrested for sexual battery of a civilian.

In related news, the Air Force’s Sexual Assault Prevention Officer has been charged With sexual battery.

There are brave service members fighting back for fair treatment. The Rolling Stone article “The Rape of Petty Officer Blumer” is a good place to start reading. The more you read, the angrier you’ll likely feel, starting with the story of Petty Officer 2nd Class Rebecca Blumer. After she was drugged and raped by three Army guys, she ended up being jailed and charged with driving under the influence!

Can you imagine, when soldiers enlist to defend our country, the last danger they should have to worry about is being raped by fellow American service members. Instead, one victim reported in the Rolling Stone article, “It’s like everyone gets raped…the military’s like a big rape cult.”

For more stories and opportunities to take action, visit the website for the award-winning documentary, “The Invisible War.”

One final glimmer of hope to leave you with:

Senators Denounce Military Rape as Victims Testify at Capitol Hill Hearing
by Miranda Green Mar 14, 2013, The Daily Beast
With moving testimony from victims who said sexual assault was treated as a joke, Kirsten Gillibrand and other lawmakers confronted military officials on Wednesday.

“There’s a lot to live for, even if maybe you can’t see it right now. Please don’t go yet!”
These heartfelt words are from a teen reaching out to try to stop another teen from committing suicide. This article is about what young people need to know if someone sounds as if life is not worth living. This success story is particularly poignant when we think of all the young lives that might have been saved if only other kids had known what to say and how to get help. This story is the opposite of cyber-bullying. I highly recommend the entire article–make sure you read all the way to the end [on the Kidpower blog] to see an excerpt of the online exchange.

Recently, a Kidpower parent told us her teen daughter came to her earlier in the week and said, “I need help.”

Her daughter had already gotten permission from her mom to join an online social networking site. While she was ‘chatting’ with another girl about their mutual interests, this girl suddenly started writing despairing comments about life not being worth living.

Our Kidpower teen, “Laura,” first tried to offer the other girl, “Susan”, support by saying that she thought Susan’s life was valuable and urging her not to give up hope. When Susan continued to sound despondent, Laura recognized that this was an emergency and asked her mother for help as soon as she came home from work.

With her mother’s guidance, Laura wrote that feeling like this was not safe and encouraged her to find an adult she trusted to talk with. When Susan could not come up with a name of someone she could contact, Laura and her mother looked up the Suicide Prevention hotline.

Laura wrote that she was a kid who could not provide counseling herself and asked Susan to call this hotline right away! She disengaged from the conversation by saying that her mother had told her to get offline and do her homework – but that she would be logging in to find out how things went.

The next day, Susan wrote to Laura that she had talked to the counselor on the hotline for four hours. She didn’t have any solutions that she thought would work for her yet, but at least she is now on a path for getting the kind of help she needs.

I encourage you to read the full article at Kidpower.org. It was key to realize that the girl who wanted to help her online friend needed to get guidance from an adult. This was too big a problem for her to try to address on her own, and impossible to “solve” all at once. And, at the end, the article shares some of the exchange between the girls, which I found very compassionate and moving.

This was a monumental mistake, and one that could have very well cost people’s lives. They should have called the police. I am not 100% sure of the timeline, but it is tragic to think that perhaps there was a missed opportunity to prevent the murder of MIT campus police officer Sean Collier, who was killed after the bombings. Transit police officer Richard “Dic” Donohue Jr. was also seriously wounded in that shootout with the bombing suspects.

Perhaps the whole tragedy could have been averted if these young men had the courage to speak up when, according to CNN.com:

About a month before the marathon attack, Tsarnaev had told Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov “that he knew how to make a bomb,” according to an FBI affidavit recounting the charges.

I am certain that these young men will quickly find out that the last thing you want to do is to have the US Government charge you with anything connected to terrorism.

Here is Glen Canning’s letter in full, as originally posted on Huffington Post:

Rehtaeh Parsons Was My Daughter

My daughter was three years old when we went to watch Babe: Pig in the City. There’s a part in the movie when Babe knocks over a goldfish bowl and the fish falls onto the floor and starts flopping around. When this happened Rae suddenly stood up on her chair in the movie theatre and started screaming for someone to help the fish. She cried for it as I tried to reassure her Babe would help (thank God he did) and that the fish would be alright.

That was the nature of my daughter Rehtaeh. She was like that her whole life. I couldn’t go for a walk in Halifax with her without her asking me for change to give to someone in need. She was always looking out for people or animals that needed help. She called Animal Control Services on our neighbors because they left their dog outside too long. Her room and her life was always full of little creatures.

Sometimes her heart was too big, sometimes it scared me.

They say parents need to teach their children. Instead, it was Rehtaeh who was my teacher. My precious gift. She was the absolute best part of my life.

There’s a wooden box in my house that holds all the memories I have of my beautiful little girl. The outfit she wore home from the hospital, a hand print in clay, art, school cards and drawings, mementoes of her life. Even a newspaper dated December 9th, 1995, the day she came into this world.

I tried to keep it all for her, to have someday when she grew up and had her own family. That day will never come.

Rehtaeh died April 7th at 11:15 PM. She was 17 years old.

She died struggling to live, much as she spent the last 18 months. She hung on right to the very end, when the nurses were telling us if she couldn’t be declared brain dead soon they couldn’t use her as an organ donor. We couldn’t wait any longer. She couldn’t live any longer. And right at the last moment there was a change in her blood pressure as the last part of her brain gave away. She knew she had to leave. It was time to let go and find peace.

It was so like her to hang on right up until the very last second. To give us all a chance to hold her hand, wipe her tears away, and kiss her beautiful face for the last time.

I tried my best to save my daughter’s life. I believe that in my heart.

I asked her repeatedly what I could do, was I doing enough, what did she want from me? She said she just wanted me to be her dad. To make her laugh. To do everything possible to keep a part of her life normal. She said it helped more than I could ever know.

I prayed for the best while I prepared her for the worst. We went to counseling together. Sometimes I was the drive, sometimes the father, sometimes the counselor.

The worst nightmare of my life has just begun. I loved my beautiful baby with all my heart. She meant everything to me. I felt her heart beating in my soul from the moment she was born until the moment she died. We were a team. We were best pals. We often sat on my couch and laughed until we could hardly speak. When we weren’t together she would call me or text me every single day, just to say hi, to say she loved me. The life I had with my daughter was a rare thing. It was wonderful, it consumed me. I was defined by it. It made my life rich and beautiful.

She was amazing.

Yesterday I looked at another wooden box. It will hold her ashes. I hate it.

I had to write something about this. I don’t want her life to defined by a Google search about suicide or death or rape. I want it to be about the giving heart she had. Her smile. Her love of life and the beautiful way in which she lived it.

I found out this afternoon my daughter saved the life of a young woman with her heart. How fitting.

She also gave someone a new liver, a kidney, a new breath, and a new chance to love. She saved the lives of four people with her final gift of life. She was that wonderful.

Someone out there is going to look at the world with my daughter’s eyes. The most beautiful eyes
I have ever seen.

To the Justice Minister of Nova Scotia

Rehtaeh Parsons thought the worst outcome for her case would be no charges against the men who raped her but we all know better. The worst thing that could happen would be charges. That they would be found guilty, and that Rehtaeh would sit on a court bench and listen in utter disbelief as they were given parole, or a suspended sentence, or community service. All for completely destroying her life while they laughed.

Why is it they didn’t just think they would get away with it; they knew they would get away with it. They took photos of it. They posted it on their Facebook walls. They emailed it to God knows who. They shared it with the world as if it was a funny animation.

How is it possible for someone to leave a digital trail like that yet the RCMP don’t have evidence of a crime? What were they looking for if photos and bragging weren’t enough?

Why was this treated like a minor incident of bullying rather than a rape? Isn’t the production and distribution of child porn a crime in this country? Numerous people were emailed that photo. The police have that information (or at least they told us they did). When someone claims they were raped is it normal to wait months before talking to the accused?

You have the opportunity here to do something good and lets face it; the court system in Nova Scotia was just going to rape her all over again with indifference to her suffering and the damage this did to her.

My daughter wasn’t bullied to death, she was disappointed to death. Disappointed in people she thought she could trust, her school, and the police.

She was my daughter, but she was your daughter too.

For the love of God do something.

***I’ve been contacted from media outlets from all over the world and as a past member of the media I understand why you all want to speak with me. You have all been very courteous, professional, and respectful. Please know, however, this is the only statement I am able to make. I’m too devastated.***

I feel like I’m dead inside.

I am so angry about this. I was in a coffee house this morning in line with a lot of UNC students and I wanted to jump up on a cafe table and tell them that they deserve so much better than this. I just cannot believe that sophomore Landen Gambill, who followed direction from the Dean of Students office to not go to the police while pursuing an honor court trial, is now being dragged into the Honor Court, facing a violation for speaking out. Gambill says was treated poorly by the Honor Court during the trial against her attacker, whom she has never even publicly named. Understandably, she feels that the new Honor Court charges are retaliation against her original speaking out, and joining a Federal complaint against the University:

Last month, Gambill joined with two other students, a former student and a former assistant dean of students to lodge the federal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The complaint accuses the university of violating the rights of sexual assault victims and of creating a hostile climate that denies victims the right to an education.

The University says that the Honor Court is run by students so the administration cannot intervene. I believe that is wrong for several reasons:

Sexual assault never should have been under the jurisdiction of a student-run Honor Court in the first place. Sexual assault is a crime that should be handled by the police. In the News & Observer coverage this morning they reported on the matter being in the hands of an “undergraduate attorney general” which is absolutely ludicrous.

Students are technically adults, but they are just getting used to being adults and have seriously limited life experience and maturity to draw upon. I have written about this issue before, talking about too much responsibility being put on student Resident Counselors, who find they have to deal with serious mental health problems and relationship issues that are way out of their league, with little ability to compel their peers to get professional help. This issue with the Honor Court feels similar.

Landen Gambill certainly felt that the Honor Court let her down with her original complaint, not only finding her alleged attacker not guilty, but that on the Honor Court, students with little training in such cases accused her of making it up.

In fact, since Gambill’s sexual assault case went before the student court last year, the university has rewritten its policies about such cases. Now, sexual assault cases are no longer heard by the student court. Across the nation, universities and colleges are revamping policies to comply with anti-discrimination law under a recent directive from the federal government.

This was a good move on the University’s part but they have more work to do. They must step in to support Landen Gambill. It is so difficult in our culture to report domestic violence or sexual assault. People who do report their problems should be supported, not punished. Talk about an “intimidating environment.”

And, whistleblowers who point out problems in the way the system is operating should be supported as well. The University of North Carolina needs to step up, put the professional adults in charge, and stop this travesty of the student Honor Court from persecuting Landen Gambill.

Here is the latest statement from UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp, on a forum Campus Conversation on Sexual Assault. For the record, I think that Chancellor Thorp is a good person, and I hope he is able to do this right thing in this situation. I am not sure how they will get there from here at this point, but I will continue to follow the story.

#StandWithLanden

University website: Sexual Assault Policy – Actions taken at UNC

News Coverage:

Raleigh News & Observer, “Student who spoke out on UNC conduct is now accused.” February 26, 2013

Raleigh News & Observer, “Federal complaint claims UNC-CH violated assault victims’ rights.” January 18, 2013

The Daily Tar Heel, “Landen Gambill says Honor Court charge is retaliatory.” February 27, 2013

This story is receiving national and international coverage, including:

Jezebel, “College Rape Survivor Faces Potential Expulsion For ‘Intimidating’ Her Rapist”

Huffington Post, “UNC Sexual Assault Survivor Faces Honor Code Violation After Speaking Publicly About Abuse”

New York Daily News, “College student could be expelled for reporting her rape and creating an ‘intimidating environment’ for her alleged rapist.”

First I read the Letter to the Editor by Charles L. Bailey, Jr., the Raleigh Leader of SNAP, the Support Network of those Abused by Priests. He wrote:

Pope must protect

The College of Cardinals will now look to its membership for a new leader. We hope it will be someone who can lead the church into a new era. We hope that they look for a man among them (or outside as permitted by Canon Law), who will protect the most vulnerable among the faithful: innocent children and reach out to the most hurt among the faithful: victims of clergy sexual abuse.

For the church to truly embody the spiritual teachings of Jesus Christ, it must be led by a pontiff who demands transparency, exposes child-molesting clerics, punishes wrongdoers and enablers, cooperates with law enforcement and makes amends to those who were hurt so greatly by Catholic priests, employees and volunteers.

The era of cover-up and secrecy in the Catholic Church must end. Victims of child sexual abuse agree on one thing: We want to ensure that what happened to us never happens to another child. The only way for that to happen is for the cardinals to select a pontiff who puts child safety and victim healing first, as the true teachings of Jesus Christ dictate.

Simple, yet powerful and challenging, straightforward and direct. I thought this is a great jumping-off point for church leaders to consider. Then, on the next page, columnist Rick Martinez wrote about Pope Benedict being “Just the pope we needed.” Martinez lauded the leader, saying, in part:

…Ratzinger was just what the church needed. John Paul II made it cool again to be Catholic, but Pope Benedict has taught us what it really means to be Catholic.

Benedict has stood firm on theology and teaching. Priests still can’t marry, and church teachings on sexual practices and birth control remain unchanged. What he has done better than any other modern pope is to tell us why. Being a person of faith, any faith, is not a matter of agreement or popularity. It’s a matter of doctrine. Benedict’s gift has been to provide doctrinal clarity, meaning and context in a time of moral relativity….

I’ve been both amused and irritated at the flash judgments of Benedict’s papacy since his announcement. Most writers can’t get past the second paragraph without bringing up the church’s sex scandals. Some have criticized Benedict for not ending the debate on homosexuality and the admission of women to the priesthood. The same can be written of every pope going back to Peter. Chances are, the same will be written about every pope from Benedict XVI going forward….

So tonight, at Ash Wednesday Mass, I will say a prayer of thanksgiving for Pope Benedict, a man who has used every bit of his strength to serve God and his children.

Martinez’s blithe dismissal of the problems of sexual abuse within the church felt like a punch in the gut. To move beyond these major problems, these issues will need to be confronted honestly in a way that has not happened yet. There are well-documented instances where the Church put the reputation and prestige of the organization ahead of the well-being of children. You can learn a lot more about one powerful case study, the Reverend Lawrence C. Murphy, who according to The New York Times, “admitted he sexually abused deaf boys at his boarding school for 22 years. Victims tried for more than three decades to bring him to justice, but documents show that the church neither defrocked him nor referred him for prosecution.” Pope Benedict, then Cardinal Ratzinger, was the person who ultimately decided not to pursue a case against Murphy. The complaints were ignored and/or covered up for so many years that Murphy was an old and sick man by the time an investigation by Ratzinger would have taken place. Ratzinger decided against the investigation, and upon his death, Murphy was buried in his priestly vestments.

Murphy is the subject of a new documentary showing on HBO, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God. I wish that Rick Martinez would watch this documentary and reconsider his opinion. Here is a brief intro to the documentary:

Abuse is certainly not limited to the Catholic Church by any means, but the Church’s abuse scandal is a compelling example of what happens when top-down authority, secrecy, and belief that an institution or person embodies the Power of God combine together in a powerful institution. I believe that the church needs all the grassroots activism it can get from its laity who insist on creating a safe environment for everyone in their faith community. These activists will have to keep up their influence, and work with and around the leadership as needed.

As noted Catholic author Garry Willis has said, “All of us who honor his name must come together. When a Catholic tells me—often these days, it is a young woman—that she can no longer put up with the male monarchical Church, I tell her, ‘Stay with us, we need you. The people of God need you.’”

Additional reading:

New York Times article about Reverend Lawrence Murphy: “Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys” by Laurie Goodstein.

The related timeline tells the story in an equally compelling way: “The Predator Priest Who Got Away”

Schedule an interview: Dr. Amy Tiemann is a frequent guest expert on parenting websites, national radio tours, magazines from Redbook to Glamour, and TV including ABC News, the CBS Early Show, and NBC’s Today Show. To schedule an interview, please contact her publicist Jill Dykes, jill@jilldykespr.com or 919-749-8488

Why am I writing about this on the DoingRightByOurKids.com blog? We need to put our societal evolution toward and understanding of abuse prevention into a historical context. I love the fact that the core principles in the Declaration of Independence were ahead of their time and have helped us strive for equality in the long run. However, we need to remember the struggles of history to understand the path we have traveled to get we are today. It has been a path that has included many struggles for civil rights. As we all know, the Declaration stated that “all men are created equal,” but in fact our society excluded enslaved men, and all women from citizens’ rights for much of our history.

The idea that all people of color, and women, and children have equal rights has only been fully realized in the past 50 years or so, and we are far from ending racism and sexism. We can see that gay people are still in the midst of their struggle for equality, and have made a great deal of progress with recent changes in public support of their equal rights.

Throughout much of our country’s history, our social structure was ripe for abuses of power built right into our system: for instance, even in the United States, until the recent decades there was no legal definition of a man raping his wife. In 1993 my own home state of North Carolina became the last state to remove the marital “rape exception” laws. It was in December 1993 that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights published the “Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women,” which established marital rape as a human rights violation.

Similarly, throughout most of history, children were considered property of adults and had few or no rights of their own. CulturalSurvial.org states starkly in the article, “The History of Children’s Rights–Whose Story?”

Children have not always been on the human rights agenda as a separate group. Indeed, the human rights agenda itself is a relatively recent historical phenomenon. The question of children’s rights was not an issue for the French Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1780. Children were regarded as a residual category of person, lacking full human rights. At that time European societies simply thought of children as the property of their parents, and not particularly valuable property at that. According to Blackstone’s 1758 legal commentaries in England, for instance, child abduction was not theft in the legal sense unless the child happened to be dressed. The thief was regarded as having stolen the clothes. Apart from that, child theft was tantamount to stealing a corpse. In the case of both a dead body and a live child, no legal person was involved.

How could child abuse even be hoped to be recognized as a problem in a society that had such callous disregard for children?

The basic ideas of child safety that we would now like to weave into a permanent, prominent thread in our cultural tapestry are in fact still new ideas. I am in the process of doing more research into the historical prevalence of child abuse, but when we read about the historic “perversion files” of abusers maintained by the Boy Scouts, or hear about the orchestrated abuse coverups within the Catholic Church [for one example, see coverage of Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony] that put the prestige and authority of the church above the safety of children, we can get a distinct sense that abuse was historically tolerated, and we still live with the effects of that culture today. When we are unsure what to do, or worry that we won’t be believed, that a victim will be blamed for abuse, or that authorities won’t do the right thing, that is taking place within this still-powerful cultural context.

Building on the efforts of activists working over the past years and decades, today are working to make cultural change and set new standards to protect children. That is why even our core Kidpower principles, Put Safety First and The safety and healthy self-esteem of a child are more important than anyone’s embarrassment, inconvenience, or offense, are still so revolutionary. As individuals and communities we are waking up to the absolute need to stop tolerating abuse, to open our eyes and remove our blindness, and overcome our paralysis and inaction–to see, believe, and act in any ways necessary to protect people from abuse. Then, as individuals and communities we need to work to get our institutions and organizations to adopt a Put Safety First objective as well. In some cases individual people lead, in other cases it can be organizations that set a great example that radiates into the community. In “Doing Right by Our Kids,” our model of “Protecting Child Safety at All Levels of Society” works to encourage safety advocacy in every possible venue, from individuals to organizations, laws and cultural change.