Letters to the Editor for April 8, 2009

Not all abuse signs are obvious

I would like to comment on last Thursday’s paper in “Your Views”: “It shouldn’t hurt to be a child” by Monica Thomas.

For a high school student I would say she is well-informed, hopefully not by experience. She told about physical signs and neglect, but failed to talk about emotional signs.

A child can be threatened about abuse to be inflicted but the parents did not go through with it in every instance. It’s a form of control and manipulation.

If you see a child hovering or staying close to the parents, being a loner, or being a zombie, afraid to move except when told to do so, this could be a sign of emotional abuse.

I know of two adults in this town that were emotionally abused as children that fit this criteria. One of them sought help from a counselor at 40 years of age. The other may be hopelessly lost in the emotional abuse of his parents that is still ongoing today. Without help from a counselor, who knows what will happen to him once his parents are no longer here.

The worst part of it is the victims of abuse sometimes never know that they are being abused because that’s all they know, and others either don’t want to get the parent in trouble because the child loves them, or they are just afraid to seek help. Some may not know that help is available. Children need someone they trust to talk to before they will open up.

Tammy Marie

Baker City

Join La Grande’s Tea Party

To the editor:

The U.S. government has grown too large with too much power centralized in Washington. To stimulate the economy and grow the government at an alarming pace the Obama administration and Congress are spending billions and proposing bills in the trillions. However, the government is broke! It has no money!

Obama is proposing two options: borrow money stealing from our grandchildren to pay ourselves, which is morally wrong; or print money, which devalues the dollars, stealing from Americans’ savings, which is criminal.

The government is the only one that can pull off such a fraudulent ploy to steal from hard-working Americans and not go to prison for it. President Obama and the liberals in Congress, with their arrogance and power, are doing everything they can as fast as they can to shove this enormous debt down our throats. Congress is voting for these outrageous spending bills without even reading them. How is this for our high-paid representatives living up to their duty? President Obama has no compunction to go to China begging for billions in loans. Am I missing something here? How did America get to this point? We must start thinking about the consequences of such blatant disregard for the Constitution and the values of thrift and honesty. Economic laws are immutable and our government is showing absolutely no regard for them. The stakes are high.

High taxes, runaway inflation and loss of our liberties are the outcome of such recklessness. We must reverse these trends. Join us for La Grande’s “Tea Party” April 15 starting at 5:30 p.m. at Max Square across the library. “Renew the Revolution” sends a loud message to Washington: stop this insane borrowing and spending! For more information: www.oregonteaparty.com.

Rae H. Anderson

La Grande

Boys’ prank made it tough on me

To the editor:

Saturday morning I heard a loud thump in my front yard. I went out in time to see four boys laughing and running north of Fourth Street. It was then I saw my garbage can had been pushed into the street.

These young men looked to be about 14 or 15. One was wearing a light blue windbreaker and was quite tall.

I raised three sons of my own and I’m sure these boys meant no harm and there really was none. However, I am nearly 83 years old and it was quite a chore for me to get that big garbage can back in the yard. I leave it there all the time because it is very difficult for me to wheel it back and forth from the garage on garbage day. I hope those boys read my letter and realize what they did and not do it again.

Mary Carroll

Baker City

Education curbs child abuse

To the editor:

April is National Child Abuse Awareness Month. Child abuse is everywhere, yet we do not often enough think about the impacts it has on not just the child and their family, but also on the community as a whole. The impacts of child abuse and neglect are profound, and it is happening in Baker City every day.

Child abuse happens in all families, no matter what their race, ethnicity, socio-economic status or religion is. Child maltreatment found that in 2006, there were 905,000 children who were found to be victims of child abuse. That is 12.1 children for every 1,000. According to Oregon DHS, for the fiscal year of 2007, there were a total of 13,306 children who were found to be victims of child abuse. Baker County has one of the highest rates of child abuse cases in the state of Oregon.

It is not just children and their families who are affected by abuse, the entire community is. Every year, taxpayers pay for law enforcement, judicial and public service systems, and nonprofit agencies that respond to child abuse. According to the child welfare information gateway, child abuse and neglect costs the nation as much as $253 million per day, as much as $94 billion every year.

The best way to stop child abuse is by preventing it from ever happening in the first place, and the best method of prevention is through education. Through parent education classes, parents can learn how to manage the stress of caring or a baby and how to build a healthy relationship with them. Parent education classes also focus on how to be a good parent. They teach about child development, age-appropriate expectations and the roles and responsibilities of parenting.

If you suspect any form of child abuse or neglect, or if you are an abuser yourself and want to get help, call the child help national abuse hotline at 1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453). They have 55,000 emergency social service and support services ready to help, and all calls are anonymous.

Annika Yates

Baker High School student

Baker City