I was just starting to write another part when I thought I should go back and explain why most of our family would not help out when my father asked them too. See the family had been through so much with my bio parents and the kids already I think they just wanted to wash their hands as much as possible and not get involved. Like I said once I was adopted I heard family talking about the adoption and about how my bio parents were. The stories were pretty bad, they had moved out of places that had to be set on fire because they were so filthy, my bio mother would hand my siblings over to family members to take care of for a while, and then call the police and say they had kidnapped the child. So my family really did want to help but the mess my bio parents made for them caused them to give up. I am not sure how CPS worked back in the late 60’s early 70’s but apparently even worse than they do now. I have watched countless movies about neglect and abuse cases, and read my share of books too, but even with all of that I am left saying why didn’t anyone do anything.
I know our family tried, the police were involved, and there were hospital records when the family had to take some of my siblings in for medical care because when they had them, they had come with illness, and physical damage. Where was the justice for all of my siblings? Even my adoptive parents were apart of the damage control before they got me, they just never gave up.
I remember hearing my parents and my brothers talk about before they got me, when my bio parents had my siblings. My father made it a point to go there and bring food for the kids to eat, and treats for them too. On more than one occasion he would see my bio father beating on my siblings, and he would take care of business, most of the time taking one or more of the kids home with them for a while, until the police came by and they he would have to send them back. My brothers loved to play with my siblings but they hated going to their house. I will have to make a point to talk to them more on this subject and get their input on how they felt and what they saw. I remember them saying that sometimes they just stayed in the car while my parents visited, so they wouldn’t have to go into the filth.
It is said that instead of doing laundry my bio mother would wait until they got to being rags before just putting a new outfit on them. The kids were allowed to urinate, and void anywhere they chose and that there were messes everywhere. I am thinking much like one of those hoarding shows which explains a lot. The kids were not bathed, and my parents even brought my sister who found me through a phone call to the hospital because her shoes had been tied on so tight and for so long that her feet had begun to grow into the sneakers. She almost had to have her feet amputated and still has problems with her feet, although I have seen her feet and they are quite cute like mine just smaller.
Another of my sisters had to be taken to the hospital because there had been maggots eating into her neck, she had been laid in a crib with garbage and her bottles and the underside of her neck was not washed or dried so it started to rot. The Dr.’s even said that even though the maggots were bad they had probably saved her life by eating the rotted flesh so that the infection didn’t spread as far as it should have. This story would explain why I am now so obsessed with making sure my kids shoes fit right, and always checking under their necks. I also have to clean the whole kitchen before I can prepare meals for my family. Just a few of the many things that rule my days and haunt my dreams.
In one of the said houses that were burned they claimed to have found the body of a boy in a closet, but since there were no missing children I don’t think they ever pursued it. Makes you really wonder what kind of law system was in place at this time. I think that child abuse was for the first time being brought out into the light in many areas and people really didn’t know how to handle it and most of the time just decided to ignore it all together. Easier to live with thinking everything is fine then doing something about it. I think maybe even some didn’t do anything because they were hiding their own family imperfections. How could you help someone else out when this sort of thing might have went on in your home while growing up. Wasn’t it normal? Now I am not talking about everything but most people never know the whole story about anyones upbringing, so they only get bits and pieces and make their own judgements from that .
It really is a sad world because today you can just call a number, make an accusation, without any penalty of being wrong or having a justified means of making a call in the first place, even maybe just doing it to get back at someone, or cause pain where there needn’t be any. The system is far from being perfect and as you have heard with our Bryan the system is still letting the kids fall between the cracks. I have a really good one for you all, how about the workers who come to your home who have no kids themselves. I don’t think you should be able to become a worker unless you have had several kids of different ages under your care so you can better be able to evaluate the situations you may walk into on one of those calls. Although most of us have heard of the CPS case workers in NYC who had their own children taped down with all kinds of other abuse going on while they were out and about deciding what to do with other families. Who knows maybe they learned a thing or two from those houses they investigated to rear their own children. It just sickens me.
In today’s society kids kind of rule the house so to speak, if you yell at them you are causing emotional problems, if you spank them it is physical abuse, and the list goes on and on. Now I understand beating, not feeding, molesting, being a problem, but I know when I grew up as most of you do too, if you swore at your parents or talked to an elder disrespectfully you were in for a face smacking. I am not talking about a tooth flying out of your mouth or broken jaw punch but a slap on your face since that is where the infraction came from. I think we learned really fast you don’t speak that way to adults. I can attest that my parents did not spank on a regular basis and I can count on one hand how many times I was hit and one was by a babysitter who never watched me again who moved away fairly quickly after the incident, one was a reaction when I dropped a log on my father’s head, once when I swore at my parents when I had a very high fever, another from a boy at school and once from my husband, that was his one and his two is him out that door and he knows that very clearly. Now I can tell you I threw some terrible tantrums when I was little always in the comfort of own home but I can tell you as a parent I would have smacked my own bottom, but then again I did come out ok so who am I to judge my parents. They gave love unconditionally and that is more than most kids get these days. No wonder they think they can threaten their parents and play with their buttons emotionally. Remember folks the kids today are the rulers of tomorrow, and we wonder why the world is so messed up.
I am sure abuse will go on for centuries yet, and we still haven’t seen the worse. Yes my siblings and I had it pretty bad, but there are children dying out there from parents who don’t know how to cope with raising kids much less deal with their own emotions and insecurities. Many learned how to parent from their parents, family members, neighbors or even gag TV. We need a system that is there to support those in need, teaching them along the way but also letting them make some of their own choices along the way. No one wants to be just like someone else, oh but that is one of the problems too. People get so caught up with wanting what someone else has, or having to do it like so and so, that they forget who they are along the way, getting frustrated and taking it out on their kids. Time for a change but how do we start? I don’t know but my story is long from being finished.
Next week we will meet another of my siblings.
Siblings Separated a True Story 
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