From: M18611@MBVM.Mitre.Org (Kathy Wilk)
Subject: Re: Response to Deluge About Hillary Clinton
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford MA 01730
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 16:27:10 GMT

In article <14j3mfINNq2m@gw.home.vix.com>
shedevil@vix.com (Anne P. Mitchell JD) writes:
 
>
>Hillary Clinton's proposal will not help abused children.  Abused
>children, and children from highly dysfunctional families, are just
>about the *last* kids who will go to a court, of *all* places, and ask
>to get out from under their parents.  And, again, these legal
>mechanism are *already* in place anyway, in many, if not all, states.
>
  You mean there are states where there AREN'T mechanisms to escape
abuse?  What does a child do?
  Many discussions about abuse finally center on why these mechanisms
don't work.  Perhaps this is an area that should be discussed
thoroughly.  I don't understand, for example, how so much abuse is
ALLOWED to go on.  There are plenty of psychologists who will step
in to a discussion of continuing abuse and explain why parents deny.
Just recently, a father in my state (Massachusetts) was sentenced to
36 years in prison for repeatedly raping his three daughters.  Anne,
this is a really good story of denial!
  The mother was sentenced to two years for allowing the rapes to go
on!  The mother and father had run away and were finally found living
out on the West Coast somewhere ... caught because someone identified
them after seeing the story on 'America's Most Wanted' or whatever the
name of that show is.
  One daughter remains anonymous to the press.  Another does not want
her town to be known because she fears retribution when the father
gets out of prison (!).
  The mother offered one comment of support to her daughters after
being sentenced for her part in this drama of denial and abuse.
A daughter read a speech in which she expressed her sorrow and reproached
her mother.  Her mother said, quietly, 'You don't have to say a word.'
And that was IT, after all those years.  The girls are women, now.
The pain remains.  The atmosphere of abuse and denial persisted for all
those years, enough to give one the impression that the environment
was a prison without walls.
 
  Why reproach the victims for being emotional?  Why impugn their
attempts to tell the truth?  This attitude is revolting!
 
>What such a proposal *would* do would be to allow your adolescent son
>or daughter to drag you into court because you have said "No, you
>cannot have a full-time job while you are flunking all of your
>classes."  It will allow your teenaged daughter to sue you because you
>won't let her get liposuction [not to mention pay for it].
 
  Would a judge stand for that?  Are the courts set up to handle cases
like that?  If so, more money for the lawyers!  And what 12-yr-old can
afford to invest that much time and money into such an issue as getting
a job or liposuction?
 
>
>What else it would do would be to create a whole new industry of legal
>professionals.  Wow...what a deal..I can cull clients from the junior
>high school, and heck, if I win get their parents to pay their legal
>expenses, on *top* of that plastic surgery.
 
  Please do.  I think Beverly Hills would be the best area for your
practice.  Sure, it's a silly job but someone has got to do it!  In
the meantime, there are other areas where kids aren't so affluent and
there might be some real need for getting out of abusive situations,
a real struggle in ANY case.
  It does seem silly when you read that a parent is suing a school,
for example, for not allowing his or her child to wear a certain item
of clothing.  Silly because you hear about how overburdened the court
system is.  However, you wouldn't want to deny the parent the right
to have their day in court.  Or would you?  Because that parent is
REALLY a flake, and the item of clothing he or she is spending thousands
on lawyers fees for happens to be a pair of pink satin hot pants that
are part of a mother-daughter ensemble (I'm making up this example..)?
Hey, is there a lawyer out there making money on these cases around the
high school - would you have us believe that?
 
Too silly?  Well, in my town, recently, there was the threat of a law-
suit recently over a gingerbread float in a Girl Scout parade.  One
adult party backed down and we were denied the entertainment of following
THAT case in the town paper!
 
  I have heard recently of a project here in Massachusetts to change
the court system somewhat - to accomplish the same amount of work
with the same results but in a restructured court system.  Doesn't
this make more sense than denying a person (a 12-year-old is a person)
the power to extricate him or herself from an abusive environment?
 
>
>If I truly believed that this idea would help neglected or abused
>children, then I wouldn't have even posted it.  Geez, I'm not
>unreasonable, or unfeeling even.  I happen to believe though, that it
 
  What you seem to be is bent on denying an avenue of recourse to those
who might need it.  For the life of me, I can't understand why!
 
>will not only not help the kids who need it, but it will *harm* those
 
  There is not a movement afoot, I hope, to make divorce the ONLY recourse
to abused children.  If that were true, I might agree with you.  If you are
going to try to push the point that escape from abuse will only be available
to kids who can afford it, I think you will be grasping at straws.  I didn't
think that was part of Hillary Clinton's plan.  By the way, I am not trying
to defend Hillary Clinton.
 
>kids who are *not* mature enough to make such decisions, but drag
>their parents to court anyway..because they can.  So what if they end
 
  The more I read the net, the more I worry about adults who are not ma-
ture, not the kids.
 
>up losing their case...the harm done to the family at that point could
>be irreparable.
 
  Think about what you are saying.  What harm is irreparable?  Abuse without
the power to escape it?  Or showing up in court?
 
>
>This is NOT to say that there aren't real problems with the system.  I
>just don't think that this is the answer, and in fact I think it could
>be very harmful, in the long run, to the kids themselves, as well as
 
  Again, it would be very harmful?  The abuse, or showing up in court?
  There are real problems with the system, but also real problems in
the very nature of the family unit that allows abuse to occur.  Denial,
denial!  Parents incapable of putting a child's mental health above his
or her own needs!  Relatives who are afraid to speak up, friends who are
afraid that they will be threatened and harmed if they step forward.  People
are afraid of taking responsibility, afraid to make a mistake!
 
  Work on the problems that keep children in abusive environments.  It
doesn't hurt to give children the power to reclaim their lives - it's
not going to keep YOU from working on the problems you see in the system.
Why assume that the two activities are mutually exclusive?
 
                        K. Wilk
                        M18611@MBVM.MITRE.ORG
 
            <--********************************-->
 'Thrusting my nose firmly between his teeth, I threw him to the ground
  on top of me.' - Mark Twain
            <--********************************-->
                        K. Wilk
                        M18611@MBVM.MITRE.ORG
Newsgroups: alt.parents-teens