Abuse

I’ve been thinking about abuse lately. About what is abuse and what isn’t.

There’s a two-year-old who is being starved most mornings. She has adults forcing things down her throat, things that aren’t food. She’s being stabbed in the chest, regularly exposed to damaging levels of radiation, her lungs are intentionally flooded with fluid. She’s got a piece of plastic permanently embedded in her back. She’s so full of drugs and chemicals that she’s sick half the time.  She’s not allowed to play, not allowed to see anyone, not allowed to go to church.

And this is a cure!

She has leukemia, and has had bad reactions to a new kind of treatment, and all of this, and more, has been in the name of keeping her alive! It’s not abuse. It’s sanctioned! By doctors and nurses and teams of people, and heartbroken parents.

Then there are two other girls. One is twelve, the other one is fourteen. They’ve been psychologically abused for ten years by a woman that the courts still allow custody to. This woman has sexually abused the older girl, physically abused the younger. She’s kicked them in the head, convinced them that everything evil will get them when not by her side, done everything her power to get them to hate their birth father and his new wife, just so that she can have power over him. For TEN YEARS.

 She’s caused self-harm behaviors in the youngest, and self-destructive stupidity in the oldest.

Guess who these girls are accusing of abuse?

The step-mom. Because she won’t let them run roughshod over the rules when they’re in their father’s house.  Because she won’t replace IPads that the girls were too careless to keep in working condition. Because she wants perfectly healthy preteen girls to help with chores, spend some time playing outside, not act like brats and swear at the dinner table.  Because she’s preparing them for adulthood, they’ve decided she deserves the shaft. So they went along with their birth mom and accused the step-mom of trying to strangle them.

Never mind that there aren’t any bruises, marks or any indication at all of this abuse. And because social services always has to investigate every claim, the step-mom is being questioned after coming home from work, at a job where she is over worked, and overqualified with a master’s degree in psychology.

So I gotta wonder. How can a two-year-old, with leukemia, put up bravely, day in and day out with the torture of her treatment with more fortitude than an abused fourteen year old being asked to take out the trash?

And why are the teenagers putting up, day in and day out, with the woman whose only motivation is using her daughters to get at their father, but decide to attack the one woman who has their best interests in mind?

I’ve never been more ashamed of teenagers, and more proud of a toddler before in my life.