Child sex trafficking and abuse ring uncovered in Bibb County, Ala., leaves community stunned

Bibb County, Ala.
(Wikipedia map)

 

After their county sheriff, Jody Wade, announced his office had uncovered an alleged child sex trafficking ring that included at least 10 children ages 3 to 15 years old, residents of Bibb County, Alabama, were at a loss for what to think or do, so they met at a small Presbyterian church and prayed.

"There were Baptists and Methodists and some who claimed no denomination at all, heads bowed and eyes closed in a rare show of interfaith unity amid criminal allegations considered so evil that some openly wondered if Satan himself had taken up residence here," reports Holly Bailey of The Washington Post.

“We can’t assume that just because we’re in small towns that everything operates like it did in the days of ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’” Robert Turner Jr., the district attorney for Alabama’s 4th Judicial Circuit, which includes Bibb County, told WAKA-TV.

The closely-knit rural county was shocked to hear a child sex trafficking ring 
was operating on the outskirts of town. (Ala. Conservation photo)

At the center of the finding was an isolated, underground storm shelter on the "dusty outskirts of Brent, an adjacent town of about 3,000 people located an hour south of Birmingham," Bailey explains. For at least the last three years, children were taken into the bunker and "allegedly drugged and abused in an operation that included sex trafficking [and] torture."

After the bunker was discovered and one of the defendants agreed to cooperate, "seven people were arrested and charged with a laundry list of crimes, including numerous charges of rape, sexual abuse, trafficking and kidnapping," Bailey reports. "The defendants include the parents of at least four victims."

Wade warned the community that the initial "revelations are probably only 'scratching the surface,' with additional victims and more arrests expected," Bailey writes. He told her, “I know God’s forgiveness is boundless, but if there was a limit to it, I think we reached it.

'Troubled teen' camps have a history of deceptive marketing and risky practices, and most remain unregulated

Deaths include wilderness-therapy camps, boot camps, religious boarding schools,
reform schools and teen ranches. (Daily Yonder chart, from Unsilenced data)

Out of options and desperate, many parents turn to youth wilderness camps to "cure" their troubled teens, but the multi-billion dollar industry is generally unregulated, riddled with corruption and risky practices, reports Sam Myers of The Daily Yonder. "In the United States, thousands of pre-teens and teens have their rights signed over to 'therapy camps' in the troubled-teen sector. . . aimed at rehabilitating youth labeled as 'troubled or 'delinquent' by parents, guardians, psychiatrists, or school officials."

Wilderness camps are marketed as "tough love" where nature and military-like discipline root out problems, but research shows the opposite. Myers reports, "There is no evidence that wilderness-therapy camps effectively rehabilitate troubled youth. In 2006, Maia Szalavitz, a journalist who covers drugs, addiction, and public policy, published her book Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids. In an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Szalavitz went as far as to say that the practices used by these programs would be violations of the Geneva Convention [provisions] for prisoners of war."

Kayla Muzquiz, who was sent to the School of Urban and Wilderness Survival, a wilderness-therapy program in rural North Carolina, is Myers' object example. She told him: "I was out in wilderness therapy for 72 days. . . . We would wake up every day and hike 10 miles with almost a 60-pound pack on our backs. It was excruciating because I had an undiagnosed autoimmune disorder. . . .While I was hiking, I was constantly in pain. . . . I woke up next to a snake, a copperhead, twice."

The programs' costs can be excessive, and parents are often lied to about the care and supervision provided. "A survey of 28 wilderness camps conducted by All Kinds of Therapy found that sending a child to one of these programs for 30 days costs, on average, $19,934," Myers reports. "In 2008, the Government Accountability Office reported that many programs employ deceptive marketing, including false statements and misleading representations of practices and policies. . . The report covered several deaths at wilderness-therapy camps. In one instance, a 14-year-old at a Texas wilderness-therapy program died of cardiopulmonary arrest after his hiking group got lost for hours in temperatures with a heat index near 105 degrees."

Meg Applegate, CEO of Unsilenced, an organization that raises awareness of institutionalized child abuse in the troubled-teen industry, told Myers: "Let's say a case of sexual abuse happens. What they'll do is just fire that person and then tell the authorities they took care of it … but that facility isn't held accountable. . . . So, that person will go and work at a different facility. . . . Let's say the whole facility did something terrible, and they shut down. Well, what they usually do is rebrand under a new LLC – even if they're in the same building and do the exact same things." Myers reports, "According to research done by the organization Breaking Code Silence, a mother accused a therapist at the facility of assaulting and sodomizing her 14-year-old daughter in 1991. The therapist was fired, but it's unclear if they were criminally charged."

Lawsuits used to be the only way to close a program, but in some states, "momentum for governmental regulation" is growing, Myers reports: "In March, Applegate testified in front of the Montana State Senate to support HB218," which the legislature passed to "revise program practices and provide additional licensing requirements."

'Culture of silence' envelops sexual abuse of rural kids; training program in Oregon and California seeks change

Photo by Kristina Flour, Unsplash

Wikipedia describes the culture or conspiracy of silence as "the behavior of a group of people of some size, as large as an entire national group or profession or as small as a group of colleagues, that by unspoken consensus does not mention, discuss, or acknowledge a given subject."

Silence can proliferate problems; however, "A program that educates adults in rural Oregon and California about child sexual abuse is increasing the likelihood that victims will get the help and protection they need, according to a new report issued by one of the program’s funders," reports Claire Carlson of The Daily Yonder. "The report, made in collaboration with Oregon State University and the [Oregon-based] Ford Family Foundation, found that adult participants in the Protect Our Children training are three times more likely to know the signs of sexual abuse in children and five times more likely to know how to prevent abuse in their community after taking the training."

Carlson writes, "Protect Our Children participants also reported change in their communities’ norms surrounding conversations about abuse. In the United States, reluctance to discuss the topic creates what the report calls a 'culture of silence' that isolates survivors of child sexual abuse, despite the likelihood that they are surrounded by others with similar experiences. Of the 10,748 program participants who were surveyed for the report, a third said they were survivors of childhood sexual abuse."

“Historically, the topic of sex is taboo, and it’s hard to talk about,” Mary Ratliff, Protect Our Children project director, told Carlson. “The way we talk about child sexual abuse sometimes can inhibit kids from disclosure.” Carlson notes, "This culture is especially prevalent in rural areas, where a 'not in my town' attitude – the perception that small towns are safer – can prevent people from reporting or discussing abuse, according to the nonprofit ValorUS."

"The goal of the Protect Our Children training is to normalize conversations about sex and child sexual abuse. . . The training also encourages conversations among adults regarding child sexual abuse, like asking fellow parents what their closed-door policies are when their child’s friends are over," Carlson reports. "Normalizing those conversations is a key way adults can decrease child sexual abuse, which is usually caused by someone the child already knows, not a stranger, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization."

Carlson notes, "While Oregon has a law that requires child sexual abuse prevention programs to be taught in public schools, nothing exists for adults, even though the program emphasizes that the duty to protect children from sexual abuse lies with adults, not the child." Ratliff told Carlson, "There are tools for kids, but we want to make sure that we instill that responsibility in adults, too. We have to have these conversations and social norms changes and policy changes because that’s what’s going to protect kids everywhere and all the time.”

Misbehaving teachers move from district to district and state to state with relatively little scrutiny

Teachers who have committed sexual misconduct are able to move from district to district and state to state without close checking by school administrators and state governments, and the issue appears to have been widely ignored.

In Kentucky, the Lexington Herald-Leader "found that over a five-year period, the top reason the majority of teachers voluntarily gave up their licenses or had them revoked or suspended was due to sexual misconduct," report the paper's Beth Musgrave and Valarie Honeycutt Spears. Despite some teachers eventually leaving the profession, many are allowed to move to multiple teaching posts without consequences for prior abuse even when the abuse resulted in suspensions.

Take the case of Kentucky teacher Jason Earlywine who was "a physical education and health teacher, was disciplined for sending a student more than 1,700 voice or text messages in 2011 and 2012 and for other inappropriate conduct while a teacher at Paris Independent School District," Musgrave and Spears write. "He eventually left the district and got a job at West Jessamine High School in 2019. Students said in the first several months on the job that Earlywine made inappropriate comments to female students. . . . according to Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board documents."

Kentucky does not have enough prevention policies or training that would help keep possible abusers out of the school system and prevent those that do gain access from traveling from school to school. "Kentucky teachers receive training on sexual harassment but has no requirement that they undergo training on sexual abuse or appropriate boundaries between teachers and students," Musgrave and Spears report. "33 states and the District of Columbia mandate that training."

Kentucky is not alone. Many states that struggle to prevent the hiring or discipline of teachers who act inappropriately with students. In Cabell County, W.Va., a gym teacher faced charges for sexually abusing multiple students. "The alleged incidents happened from August 2019 through January of 2022, according to the criminal complaint," says Eric Fossell for WSAZ-TV. "It also states that an administrator with Cabell County Schools told investigators that Miles had been reprimanded before for similar allegations. That administrator asked Miles in a letter to refrain from 'jovial touching of students' or the matter would be referred to the superintendent."

A Montana school district was sued in 2020, "over its hiring of a teacher and coach who was accused of sending sexual messages to the student," reports The Associated Press. The suit said the teacher "had a pattern of inappropriate behavior toward underaged girls and that the school district was negligent in hiring him. . . . Botsford had been fired from a different high school in 1999 after two girls reported him for inappropriate contact. . . . Centerville Supt. Jan Cahill investigated the reports and found Botsford had 'unethical and immoral relationships' with at least three students, the lawsuit said."

While laws can be passed, it's up to school boards and administrators to set policies and stop abuse. For instance, the Montana legislature passed the "Creating a student safety accountability act" in May of 2019, but it did it keep the teacher from continuing his pattern of abuse.

Report documents abuse and deaths of Native American children at government boarding schools from 1819 to 1969

The Sherman Indian School Cemetary in Riverside, Calif. (Riverside Press-Enterprise photo by Cindy Yamanaka)

"An initial investigation commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland cataloged some of the brutal conditions that Native American children endured at more than 400 boarding schools that the federal government forced them to attend between 1819 and 1969," Mark Walker reports for The New York Times. "The inquiry was an initial step, Haaland said, toward addressing the 'intergenerational trauma' that the policy left behind. The report, released today, found that more than 500 indigenous children had died at about 19 federal boarding schools, and said that number is expected to grow to thousands."

Haaland called for the report last June after the unmarked graves of nearly a thousand children were discovered at similar boarding schools in Canada. She vowed that Bureau of Indian Affairs officials would search the grounds of former schools in the U.S. and identify any remains.

It's not an abstract issue for Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo member whose grandparents attended such schools. She said, "I came from ancestors who endured the horrors of the Indian boarding school assimilation policies carried out by the same department that I now lead," Axios reports.

The government forcibly took hundreds of thousands of children from their families to attend the schools. "In attempts to assimilate Native American children, the schools gave them English names, cut their hair and forbade them from speaking their languages and practicing their religions or cultural traditions," Walker reports. The government's other major goal with the schools was to claim Native American land by forcing the removal and relocation of their children.

While at the schools, children "suffered whippings, sexual abuse, manual labor and severe malnourishment," Chen reports. "Many children tried to escape but were found, brought back and punished, according to the report. The damage had long-term health effects."

"Haaland also announced plans for a yearlong, cross-country tour called The Road to Healing, during which survivors of the boarding school system could share their stories," Walker reports. The U.S. government has never before provided a forum for boarding-school survivors or their descendants to talk about their experiences at the schools.

White House task force finds Indian Health Service needs big changes to better protect sexually abused children

"A White House task force called for broad changes at the U.S. Indian Health Service to protect children from abuse at the agency’s facilities, saying officials must redo earlier, insufficient attempts at fixes," Christopher Weaver reports for the PBS program "Frontline." "The task force was formed in spring 2019, after a joint investigation by The Wall Street Journal and "Frontline" revealed the agency had mishandled a pediatrician who sexually abused his patients on Native American reservations over the course of two decades."

The task force's report, released last week, confirmed many of the same conclusions and called for a wide range of changes to the agency that oversees health care for 2.6 million Native Americans. "It says the agency should reform the ways it recruits, vets and pays its medical providers. And it calls for the agency to replace child-protection policies and a staff training program it announced just last year in the wake of the Journal-Frontline reports," Weaver reports. The task force also "recommended the IHS standardize sex-abuse reporting policies across its entire network of hospitals and clinics, arrange yearly training conducted by federal law enforcement authorities on sex abuse for all employees, and centralize its efforts to screen new providers for problem backgrounds, an activity the IHS now allows local managers to conduct, among other things."

Study finds that adverse childhood experiences increase risk of opioid addiction, relapse after treatment

A newly published study quantifies how trauma experienced during childhood, called adverse childhood experiences, can lead rural people to become addicted to opioids. Common ACEs include having an alcoholic or depressed parent, and being abused or neglected.

Researchers from the University of Tennessee and the University of Memphis conducted an in-depth study of 87 patients seeking opioid addiction treatment at a rural medical clinic. All the patients were white and 75 percent were male; almost half of them reported four or more adverse childhood events. A higher number of ACEs correlated to an increased risk of addiction relapse: every additional ACE increased the odds of relapse by 17%, according to the study.

On he other hand, each treatment visit reduced the odds of a relapse by 2%. Relapses occurred in 54% of patients, and the highest relapse rate happened after the first clinic.

Lead author Karen Derefinko said the study shows the lasting impact of ACEs, Jane Stevens reports for ACEs Connection.

"This study will help practitioners understand the importance of providing trauma-informed treatment," Derefinko told Stevens. "Because of the stigma associated with drug use, it’s hindered health care workers’ understanding of why people use drugs and has led to an assumption that they’re bad people. This shows that trauma-informed care and providing resources does impact how well people can do. It’s also validating for patients and gives them a lot of hope."

Newspapers' probe details decades of sexual abuse by Southern Baptist pastors and staff, and leaders' failure to act

The headquarters of the Southern Baptist Convention in
Nashville (Associated Press photo by Mark Humphrey)

Nearly 400 Southern Baptist leaders and volunteers have been accused — and about 220 took plea deals or were convicted of — sexually abusing as many as 700 victims in 20 states, some of them children as young as 3 years old, over the past two decades, and dozens of cases are still pending, says an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News.

The problem has persisted because the denomination has an informal ordination process, pastors tend to move around frequently, and church leaders have mishandled, hidden or ignored complaints —and because the Southern Baptist Convention has refused to enact substantive reforms.

The newspapers dug deep, spending more than six months collecting and cross-checking news stories, prison and court records, sex offender registries, and other documents, as well as conducting hundreds of interviews with victims, church leaders, offenders and investigators. They focused on Texas, but looked at documents from 20 states and cited examples from several, and produced an online database and multimedia package in their three-part report, the first piece of which ran Sunday.

Since 1998, more than 380 people who worked or volunteered at Southern Baptist churches have been charged with sex crimes. Many confessed, or were convicted or successfully sued, and more than 90 are in prison today. "Scores of others cut deals and served no time. More than 100 are registered sex offenders. Some still work in Southern Baptist churches today," the papers report. Many of the more than 700 victims were shunned by their churches, encouraged to forgive their abusers or even get abortions following rape. The news package includes a database of 220 convicted church officials.

The Southern Baptist Convention has 47,000 churches, but its oversight of them is almost nonexistent. The churches are particularly vulnerable to predators because of the denomination's practice of local ordination. "It's a perfect profession for a con artist, because all he has to do is talk a good talk and convince people that he's been called by God, and bingo, he gets to be a Southern Baptist minister," said Christa Brown, who wrote a book about being molested as a child by her Southern Baptist pastor. "Then he can infiltrate the entirety of the SBC, move from church to church, from state to state, go to bigger churches and more prominent churches where he has more influence and power, and it all starts in some small church. It's a porous sieve of a denomination."

Victims have pressed for reforms for years with little success; several of the perpetrators have been presidents and prominent leaders in the SBC. In 2007, victims asked SBC leaders to create a registry of current and former pastors or volunteers who had been convicted or credibly accused, but it didn't happen. In 2008, victims asked SBC leaders to track sexual predators and take action against churches that harbor or hide predators, but the leaders rejected almost every proposed reform. In 2018, victims once again asked leaders for such a registry but were denied. Wade Burleson, former president of Oklahoma's Baptist convention, told the papers that leaders rejected the reforms because of the local autonomy that is fundamental to the denomination, and because some feared lawsuits if the reforms didn't prevent sexual abuse.

August Boto, interim president of the SBC's Executive Committee, helped write the rejection of reforms proposed in 2008. He told the Chronicle and the Express-News that there is only so much SBC leadership can do to stop sexual abuse: "The fact that criminal activity occurs in a church context is always the basis of grief. But it's going to happen. And that statement does not mean that we must be resigned to it." 

Though SBC leaders said they were troubled by predators, they said they couldn't interfere with local church problems. However, the papers note that the SBC has dis-affiliated from at least four churches in the past 10 years for welcoming homosexuals. "The SBC governing documents ban gay or female pastors, but they do not outlaw convicted sex offenders from working in churches," the papers note.

Meanwhile, "At least 35 church pastors, employees and volunteers who exhibited predatory behavior were still able to find jobs at churches during the past two decades. In some cases, church leaders apparently failed to alert law enforcement about complaints or to warn other congregations about allegations of misconduct," the papers report. "Some registered sex offenders returned to the pulpit. Others remain there, including a Houston preacher who sexually assaulted a teenager and now is the principal officer of a Houston nonprofit that works with student organizations, federal records show. Its name: Touching the Future Today Inc."

Southern Baptist leaders have appeared more concerned about public blowback than in reform. A few years after popular Southern Baptist preacher Leslie Mason's 2003 conviction on two counts of sexual assault, he returned to the pulpit. When Michael Leathers, then the editor of the Illinois Baptist State Association's newspaper, published a story about it, state Baptist leaders told him he might be fired and lose his severance pay. Leathers resigned. 

J.D. Greear

SBC President J.D. Greear of North Carolina told the Chronicle in an email that any church that "proves a pattern of sinful neglect — regarding abuse or any other matter — should absolutely be removed from fellowship from the broader denomination." But he also wrote in the email that his authority is limited because of local autonomy. "Change has to begin at the ground level with churches and organizations," Greear wrote. "Our churches must start standing together with a commitment to take this issue much more seriously than ever before." Greear, 45, was elected last year on a platform of reaching out to and listening to women and minorities. 

One victim, Anne Marie Miller, said Greear has been supportive of her pending case against a missionary whom she says assaulted her as a teenager in the late 1990s, but that she doubts Greear's election will bring about change. "I was really, really hopeful that it was a turning point, but I've been disappointed that there hasn't been any meaningful action other than forming committees and assigning budgets, which is just good old Baptist red tape," Miller told the papers. "That's just what you do — you form a committee, and you put some money towards it and no change actually happens."

UPDATE, Feb. 12: How did Baptist media operations handle the story? A senior editor at Baptist Press wrote an 1,170-word story focusing on Greear's reaction; at midday Tuesday, it was the top-trending story on Kentucky Today, an online newspaper of the Kentucky Baptist Convention. It did not have a story on Kentuckians in the database, as the Louisville Courier Journal did.

Quick hits: Sessions saves a town's fireworks; Appalachian adoption, foster care; good analyses of Farm BIll and trade

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

The small town of Hamlet, N.C., just east of Charlotte, canceled its Independence Day festivities in 2017 because of threats of gang violence. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, infuriated when he heard the news, "sent a team of federal prosecutors to Richmond County to team up with state and local law enforcement along with the courts to combat the area's violent crime, Michael Gordon reports for The Charlotte Observer. After the crackdown, the town felt safe enough to have their usual Independence Day celebration this year. Read more here.

The Ohio University Press Podcast's latest installment is a fascinating discussion with Wendy Welch about her book Fall or Fly: The Strangely Hopeful Story of Foster Care and Adoption in Appalachia. The featured review on Amazon.com reads: "In Fall or Fly, Welch invites people bound by a code of silence to open up and to share their experiences. Less inspiration than a call to caring awareness, this pioneering work of storytelling journalism explores how love, compassion, money, and fear intermingle in what can only be described as a marketplace for our nation’s greatest asset." Listen to the podcast here.

As jobs disappear in rural coal country, a private prison pitches itself as the solution to one rural Kentucky town's financial woes. But some residents are pushing back. Read more here.

Farmdoc Daily has an excellent analysis of the Farm Bill and its prospects. Read more here.

The Agricultural Policy Analysis Center offers a solid breakdown of the politics of international trade. Read more here.

New summer camp helps kids affected by opioid addiction

Sperling's Best Places map

A rural West Virginia firefighter and emergency medical technician is trying a novel approach to mitigating the opioid epidemic: a summer camp geared toward kids affected by opioid addiction. Through his job at the Teays Valley Fire Department and working with the Tri-County YMCA's summer camp for several years, Jared Davis saw local kids needed something like the camp. If the generations-long cycle of poverty and drug abuse is allowed to continue unchecked, today's kids could be tomorrow's opioid users, Carlee Lammers reports for the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

"When a kid is born into a particular situation, they’re going to see that as normal . . . When their family does drugs, doesn’t work and isn’t functional, the kid is simply going to grow up and follow in those footsteps," Davis told Lammers. "It’s not a kid’s fault to grow up and become what their home situation is if no one has ever taken the time to show them a better way."

Davis' church, Church at the Depot, bought a defunct day camp for $535,000 and turned it into Camp Appalachia, a 150-acre camp with features such as a rock wall, a ropes course, and a pool. The church is partnering with West Virginia State University to provide outdoor education, in hopes of slowing or preventing summer learning loss for campers.

The camp aims to help kids build up their self-esteem and realize they can conquer challenges (such as a rock climbing wall), which will hopefully help them feel like they can overcome the challenges in their home lives. They want to help the children understand that "they can be better," Davis told Lammers. "We can't necessarily fix the kid's situation, but we can change his or her outlook on the situation. So, when they go back to a home that is not suitable, so to speak, they have the emotional fortitude and the resiliency to be able to overcome their family situation. Maybe they can look back on the counselor who spent extra time with them, or showed them that they cared."

Davis will bring in local firefighters, EMTs and police officers to hang out with the kids so they can feel more comfortable with law enforcement, instead of viewing them primarily as people who "took Mom or Dad away," he said. The camp opens this summer.

Childhood trauma can cause long-lasting harm to rural adults; help less available in rural areas

People living in rural areas are more likely to deal with poor physical and mental health; the reasons are a complicated web of interconnected factors such as smoking or drug use, workplace hazards, lack of access to physical or mental health care, poverty, and despair. But another reason for poor health is adverse childhood experiences, which are "significant disturbances in a child’s life that affect their security and ability to function in healthy ways. ACEs include all forms of child abuse (emotional, physical, or sexual), neglect (physical or emotional), or household dysfunction (divorce, violence, incarceration, substance abuse, or mental illness)," Jenn Lukens reports for the Rural Health Information Hub. ACEs can cause a self-perpetuating cycle of poor life outcomes that in turn create more ACEs for the next generation.

ACE exposure in rural adults. (Source)

According to a 1998 study by insurer Kaiser Permanente and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the more ACEs a child experiences, the more likely he or she is to experience chronic health conditions, anxiety disorders, a lack of accomplishment in life (career, etc.) and even early death. Subsequent studies confirmed that research and found that "because the central nervous system closely interacts with the body’s immune, hormone, and clotting systems, adverse experiences in a child’s life, especially repeated ones, can change how the organ systems function later on. This process is known as 'biological embedding' and could take years or even decades before symptoms start to show," Lukens reports. And rural children are more likely to experience certain ACEs such as poverty, living with a mentally ill person, and living with a person who abuses drugs or alcohol.

Dr. Jean Talbot of the Maine Rural Health Research Center led research for a 2016 study that looked at how ACEs affect adults in both rural and urban areas. "ACEs cluster together. People who report having an ACE are more likely to have more than one," Talbot told Lukens. "It’s easy to think of ways that this could happen. For example, if a parent experiences incarceration or mental illness, this in itself is an ACE for the children in the family, but it can also impair the adult’s ability to care for kids. So it may open up the fault line exposing children to other types of adversity."

Helping kids deal with ACEs could have a big impact on rural health. "We know that ACEs are linked to high-risk health behaviors like smoking and alcohol abuse," Talbot said. "These, in turn, contribute to health outcomes like heart disease, lung cancer, and diabetes – some of the major causes of the widening rural-urban mortality gap. So, if we want to close this gap, we may need to address rural ACEs as part of that effort."

Some rural community clinics and school districts are trying to address ACEs with programs that train teachers to watch for kids facing adverse conditions, and other programs that help children process trauma. Pediatricians are often the first professionals to see that a rural child has had an adverse experience, so the CDC and some nonprofit groups are raising awareness with doctors about the importance of keeping an eye out for them.

Abusive teachers skip from state to state as local schools cover up misdeeds

"Despite decades of repeated sex abuse scandals — from the Roman Catholic Church to the Boy Scouts to scores of news media reports identifying problem teachers — America’s public schools continue to conceal the actions of dangerous educators in ways that allow them to stay in the classroom," reports Steve Reilly of USA Today. "Education officials put children in harm’s way by covering up evidence of abuse, keeping allegations secret and making it easy for abusive teachers to find jobs elsewhere. As a result, schoolchildren across the nation continue to be beaten, raped and harassed by their teachers while government officials at every level stand by and do nothing."

The investigation by USA Today and other Gannett Co. newspapers found "more than 100 teachers who lost their licenses but are still working with children or young adults today," Reilly reports. "State education agencies across the country have ignored a federal ban on signing secrecy deals with teachers suspected of abusing minors. . . . Private schools and youth organizations are especially at risk. They are left on their own to perform background checks of new hires and generally have no access to the sole tracking system of teachers who were disciplined by state authorities."

The failure of the system extends to local schools, which "regularly fail to do the most basic of background checks," Reilly reports. "School administrators are rarely penalized for failing to report resignations of problem teachers to state licensing officials."

"At every level, institutions and officials charged with ensuring the safety of children have failed. Lawmakers have ignored a federal mandate to add safeguards at the state level. Unions have resisted reforms. And administrators have pursued quiet settlements rather than public discipline." (Read more)

Mobile unit brings services to abused children in parts of Oklahoma that are short on such help

An Oklahoma nonprofit is helping abused children in the state's under-served areas get the help they need, Alex Strohm reports for The Oklahoman. Maria Rosales-Lambert, director of Oklahoma Interviewing Services, said the agency provides "culturally sensitive forensic interviews in English and Spanish, community outreach, and training, supervision and mentoring to other interviewers, and consultation to appropriate agencies throughout the state of Oklahoma. The interviewers and child/family advocates provide direct services to victims of sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect and to witnesses to homicide, domestic violence, drug use/production and other crimes." (OIS photo: The mobile unit family room is place where child can do activities and have snacks while they wait to be interviewed)

The agency recently received funding for a mobile unit, Strohm writes. Rosales-Lambert told him that "it provides the state of Oklahoma with the unique ability to have a fully operational forensic interviewing team on site in less than 24 hours anywhere in the state. The intent is to assist local investigators by providing a team of specially trained forensic interviewers with the ability to respond to locations reporting alleged crimes against children. This is especially important when the potential for multiple victims exists."

First story in series examines West Virginia's rising epidemic of babies born addicted to drugs

The number of babies born addicted to drugs in West Virginia is on the rise, Darlene Swiger reports for The Exponent Telegram in the first of a series exploring the impact the largely rural state's drug epidemic has on young people. In 2014, the number of drug-addicted babies was 106 cases per 1,000 admissions, up from 21 cases per 1,000 admissions in 2010, according to the Family and Child Tracking System. So far this year, 79 confirmed cases have been reported. (Swiger photo: Misty Harlow, UHC nurse manager of labor and delivery, administers medication to a baby suffering symptoms of drug withdrawal.)

In Harrison County—home of Clarksburg, where the Telegram is based—50 percent of the 1,050 babies born last year "were born to mothers who used drugs, alcohol, cigarettes or caffeine, with half of those babies needing treatment for withdrawal symptoms, according to Lee Ann Romeo, United Hospital Center patient educator and supervisor for maternal child health," Swiger writes. UHC screens every expectant mother for amphetamines, barbiturates, cocaine, opiates, benzodiazepines, PCP and marijuana. Typically, babies with these symptoms remain in the hospital for 21 to 52 days, said Misty Harlow, nurse manager of labor and delivery.

At West Virginia University Medicine Children’s Center, anywhere from 15 to 30 percent of the  approximately 1,500 babies born each year have been exposed to substances, said spokesperson Angela Jones-Knopf, Swiger writes.

Harlow told Swiger, "We question mothers about their drug use and any prescriptions. We make an automatic social service consult. The social worker will talk to the mother, and then there is a child protective service referral. Through that process, a determination is made if the mother gets to take custody of the baby. Many times, it comes down to a supportive family unit to help take care of the baby. A very small percentage are placed in custody of the state.”

Swiger writes, "Once a referral is assigned, the child protective worker reviews the family’s available records and history of past involvement with the state Department of Health and Human Resources." After a face-to-face meeting with the family "the worker obtains identifying information about the father and thoroughly assesses the family, including garnering records and information from the hospital, doctors, teachers and drug counselors. A protection plan is initiated before the child is discharged. The follow-ups continue at home and through other services."

The problem is that officials lack enough data about what happens to the babies when they get older, Swiger writes. Harlow told her, "It’s only been an epidemic for about three or four years. We don’t know the effect it’s going to have on them at school age. We fear that’s where our true problems are going to start.” (Read more)

Rural Minnesota lacks social workers to comply with immediate child abuse aid law

Rural counties in Minnesota lack enough trained professionals to meet state requirements that a child protection worker must take an abuse case within 24 hours, Don Davis reports for the Grand Forks Herald. About half of the state's 87 counties are unable to comply with state requirements, mainly because rural areas do not have social workers available nights and weekends, and rural law enforcement personnel are typically not trained in that capacity. (Minnesota Department of Health map)

"Lawmakers suggested that rural counties look into ways to keep trained social workers on call at all times, perhaps by working with neighboring counties," Davis writes. "New rules were expected to be in place Jan. 1 requiring counties to have that capability, but social workers said they will not be ready."

Carole Wilcox of the Human Services Department told a Legislative Task Force on Child Protection—which earlier this year approved extra money for around-the-clock child protection— that funds are needed, instead, "just to fund investigating an increasing number of abuse reports," Davis writes. "New guidelines governing the child protection process are due out Oct. 1 after public comments are heard." (Read more)

Annual Kids Count report offers a wealth of information on child well-being in your community

The annual Kids Count report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation was released today. The report features county-level data in five categories: child well-being; economic well-being; education; health; and family and community. While job growth and consumer spending are up and unemployment is down, the report found warning signs that the recovery could be leaving the lowest income families behind, especially families of color. (Annie E. Casey Foundation map: States ranked by health)

States were ranked for each category. For child well-being, Minnesota was ranked No. 1, followed by New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Iowa and Vermont. Mississippi was ranked last, with New Mexico at 49, Louisiana, 48; Nevada, 47; Arizona, 46 and Alabama, 45. The top five states for economic well-being are: North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota. The bottom five are: Mississippi, California, New Mexico, Louisiana and Nevada.

When it comes to education, Massachusetts leads, followed by New Jersey, New Hampshire, Vermont and Connecticut. The bottom five states are: Nevada, New Mexico, Mississippi, Louisiana and West Virginia. The top five states for health are: Iowa, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Illinois. The bottom five are: Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, Montana and Nevada. When it comes to family and community, the top five are: New Hampshire, Utah, Vermont, Minnesota and Maine. The bottom five are: Mississippi, New Mexico, Louisiana, Texas and Arizona.

The report provides excellent information for local stories, and we recommend checking it out. To read the report, click here.

Rates of rape, sexual assault in Pennsyltucky are much higher than official statistics

Official rates of rape and child sexual assault in Pennsyltucky —western and central sections of Pennsylvania, which are geographically and/or culturally part of Appalachia—are significantly higher than the rest of the state, Emma Eisenberg reports for Salon. But actual numbers are estimated to be even higher because of the high number of incidents that go unreported. (Wikipedia map: Pennsyltucky)

"Nationwide, experts believe the available numbers on rural sexual assault underestimate the problem," Eisenberg writes. "A 2003 report from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center found that in rural areas, the numbers of those who seek crisis services far exceed the number of reported rapes. The NSVRC hypothesizes that underreporting, a major factor in all states, is especially pronounced in rural areas because of the low population density, which means victims probably know or have significant relationships with their attackers."

Studies show "that the closer the relationship between the victim and the offender, the less likely a victim is to report," Eisenberg writes. Other factors include not wanting to report rape to a police officer victims know on a personal level, lack of cell phone service and public transportation, poor roads and long distances to travel to reach law enforcement and crisis centers.

Susan Lewis, who wrote the National Sexual Violence Resource Center report, wrote, “Sexual assaults in rural areas are mostly hidden crimes, hidden both intentionally and unintentionally by characteristics of a close-knit culture or an isolated lifestyle.” A program director in a rural Pennsylvania, identified in the report only as Tanya, said, “Rural people don’t report unless they have to." (Read more)

Unregulated boot camps in rural and remote areas putting troubled teens in dangerous circumstances

Unregulated therapeutic institutions for troubled teenagers—located almost exclusively in rural and remote areas—that expose kids to often brutal wilderness conditions are becoming increasingly popular in the U.S., Sulome Anderson reports for The Atlantic. Teens, who are often brought to the camps forcibly and without any prior knowledge of what's happening, are admitted anywhere from a few months to as long as two years. (Flickr photo: Wilderness camp in Denali National Park and Preserve) 

Critics say the teenagers are exposed to cruel conditions, abuse and even death, Anderson writes. "Its proponents maintain that this type of isolation, away from the temptations and perils of society, can benefit youth who are straying down the path of addiction and dysfunction. They present a multitude of success stories and insist this type of therapy can be life-changing."

The U.S. Government Accountability Office compiled a 2007 report on the dangers of wilderness and other teen facilities, but no one knows for sure how many teenagers have died at the institutions, Anderson writes. The highest unconfirmed count is 86 deaths since 2000.

One of the main problems is that "many states don’t require background checks for staff, and there have been multiple investigations into sexual abuse and arrests for sexual assault at teen residential and wilderness programs in recent years," Anderson writes. The fear is that untrained staff members are given free rein to do whatever they want to underage vulnerable teenagers.

"In May 2013, Congressman George Miller, a Democrat from California, reintroduced legislation that aimed to better protect adolescents in such facilities from abuse and provide easily accessible information for parents on the safety records of the programs," Anderson writes. "The bill has repeatedly failed in the House." But some politicians, including 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, own companies that run these programs. The institutions are also popular with local residents because they provide jobs and stimulate the local economy. (Read more)

Small weekly in rural county where girl was killed after state agencies ignored abuse claims, finds state not following up on abuse reports

The Todd County Standard, a 2,500-circulation weekly newspaper in southwestern Kentucky is tackling a local issue that has statewide implications, indicating that state agencies created to protect children are causing more harm than help. Local officials are worried of another instance like the one that happened in 2011, when 9-year-old Amy Dye (left) was killed by her 17-year-old brother, in a case where repeated claims of suspected abuse to the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services fell on deaf ears.

"According to Todd County Assistant [School] Superintendent Ed Oyler there were 33 reports of neglect and abuse made by teachers and administration of the school system during the previous school year — 12 at the elementary schools, 17 at the middle school and four in high school — and 'little to no follow-up' was given on any of the cases," Standard Editor-Publisher Ryan Craig reports. "On the majority of the cases, Oyler points out, there wasn’t any information passed back to the school system and when the school system made inquiries — even so much as scheduling appointments with social workers only to have those meetings canceled and not rescheduled — there was no information shared."

Supt. Wayne Benningfield told the Standard, “We don’t know what the cabinet has done, what they are going to do or if they are going to be there. We never get a call back. We are told they are coming, but we never know if that happens. We just have no idea.”

Making matters even worse, school officials say the cabinet's "Department for Community Based Services has failed on at least three instances recently to protect the identity of Todd County teachers or administrators who reported abuse," Craig writes. Benningfield told him that during the past two years three parents showed up to campus knowing the identities of the people who reported suspected abuse. (Read more)

The Standard has won the general-excellence category for small weeklies in the Kentucky Press Association contest seven years in a row.

Annual Kids Count report offers a wide range of information on child well-being in your community

The annual Kids Count report, with loads of county-level information on child well-being, was released last week by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The report focuses on four main areas: economic well-being, education, health, and family, and also looks at national trends, comparing current data with trends since the first report was released in 1990. This year's report ranks Massachusetts, Iowa and Vermont as the top states for child well-being, with Nevada, New Mexico and Mississippi the three lowest ranked states. (Annie E. Casey Foundation map)

The report has a wealth of information about child well-being, with the four main areas broken up into four sub-sets, which look at the rate of children in poverty; children whose parents lack secure employment; children living in households with a high housing cost burden; teens not in school and not working; children not attending pre-school; fourth-graders not proficient in reading; eighth-graders not proficient in math; high school students not graduating on time; low-birthweight babies, children without health insurance; children and teen deaths per 100,000; teens who abuse alcohol or drugs; children in single-parent families; children in families where the household head lacks a high school diploma; children living in high-poverty areas; and teen births per 1,000.

The report has excellent information for local stories and we recommend checking it out. To read the report click here.