While most countries of the world have passed laws against child abuse and child torture, and signed onto the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), three countries have not. These include the United States, Somalia, and China.
Over the past 20 years, America's youth have been caught in a Dark Age between Parental Rights and the Age of Majority. They have no UN Convention and no Geneva Convention to protect them. So what is our government doing about this?
In recent months, the government has taken steps to protect America's youth from child abuse. Prompted by an investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) which found hundreds of allegations that children have been abused, and some even died as a result of misuses of restrain and seclusion, Rep. George Miller (D-CA), Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee is championing two bills through Congress.
Two cases reported by the GAO are revealing. In one case a Florida teacher's aide gagged and duct-taped children as young as 6 for misbehaving. In Texas, a 14-year-old who refused to stay seated in class died after a 230 pound teacher lay on top of him, as a means of restraint. The GAO reported that in Texas alone, more than 4,200 students were restrained nearly 19,000 times during the 2007-08 school year.
Miller seeks to put an end to this abuse. The first and well-titled: HR 911, focuses on preventing child abuse in residential treatment programs for teens. Many of these programs -- also referred to as "boarding schools" or "snakepit" schools -- are parent funded. Children are routinely "disappeared" into these behavior changing schools by anxious, worried parents who worry about their behavior. Some are court-ordered. HR 911 now awaiting action in the Senate, will protect them.
The second bill, HR 4274, seeks to stop another area of child abuse that more closely resembles child torture. It seeks to prevent harmful restrain and seclusion in public and private schools and is going through markup in Rep. Miller's committee today.
Together these bills represent the first national effort, says Miller's staff, to address this problem and ensure the safety of both children and school staff. My expose, An American GULAG, puts a human face on these abuses. I received a Teen Hero Award for the book when it was released online, and coverage in Time magazine.
What ultimately may enable Congress to close the gap on protecting America's youth, I think, are not only the horrors revealed by the GAO, but a shift of focus from parental actions to school staff. Ultimately, the crux of the issue is this: Whether at home or school, all children have the right to be treated with dignity and be free from mistreatment, abuse, neglect, and exploitation.