- People I follow
Children Fishing, 1882
Rosa and Ester 1852. Taken by RasMarley http://www.flickr.com/photos/32357038@N08/6636155173
Sull’ Attenti 1878.
Taken by RasMarley http://www.flickr.com/photos/32357038@N08/3303774179
200,000 babies at risk of abuse
“Nearly 200,000 babies in Britain are at high risk of suffering abuse because they are born into families with problems of domestic violence, mental health or addiction, new research suggests.
The NSPCC said under-ones were eight times more likely to be killed than any other age group in childhood.
Launching a new campaign to support the most vulnerable babies, the charity released the first estimates of how many infants are living in high-risk family situations.
Across the UK, 144,000 children under one live with a parent who has mental health problems, 109,000 have a parent with drug or alcohol problems, and 39,000 are in a home affected by domestic violence. Some fall into more than one category.
Two-thirds of official inquiries into cases where babies are killed or seriously injured involve one or more of these factors.
There has been heightened concern about how agencies care for vulnerable young children since the death of 17-month-old Baby P - now named as Peter Connelly - while on the at-risk register in August 2007.”
And rightly so. This article is terrifying to me because it could indicate 200,000+ more Baby P’s across the UK alone, right now suffering at the hands of their parents. They could be visited by police, doctors, social workers..and what’s done?Absolutely nothing
If you’re not familiar with Baby P’s case which took place here in the UK only a few years back, research and see for yourself how awful it is. You’d think with all these strict child protection legislations passed after Victoria Climbe’s murder, (which took place not far at all from Baby P’s location) that they’d be more careful but apparently that’s not so.
True story; The girl in the window
Click photo to read the rest of this
“PLANT CITY — The family had lived in the rundown rental house for almost three years when someone first saw a child’s face in the window.
A little girl, pale, with dark eyes, lifted a dirty blanket above the broken glass and peered out, one neighbor remembered.
Everyone knew a woman lived in the house with her boyfriend and two adult sons. But they had never seen a child there, had never noticed anyone playing in the overgrown yard.
The girl looked young, 5 or 6, and thin. Too thin. Her cheeks seemed sunken; her eyes were lost.
The child stared into the square of sunlight, then slipped away.
Months went by. The face never reappeared.
Just before noon on July 13, 2005, a Plant City police car pulled up outside that shattered window. Two officers went into the house — and one stumbled back out.
Clutching his stomach, the rookie retched in the weeds.
Plant City Detective Mark Holste had been on the force for 18 years when he and his young partner were sent to the house on Old Sydney Road to stand by during a child abuse investigation. Someone had finally called the police.
They found a car parked outside. The driver’s door was open and a woman was slumped over in her seat, sobbing. She was an investigator for the Florida Department of Children and Families.
“Unbelievable,” she told Holste. “The worst I’ve ever seen.”
The police officers walked through the front door, into a cramped living room.
“I’ve been in rooms with bodies rotting there for a week and it never stunk that bad,” Holste said later. “There’s just no way to describe it. Urine and feces — dog, cat and human excrement — smeared on the walls, mashed into the carpet. Everything dank and rotting.”
Tattered curtains, yellow with cigarette smoke, dangling from bent metal rods. Cardboard and old comforters stuffed into broken, grimy windows. Trash blanketing the stained couch, the sticky counters.
The floor, walls, even the ceiling seemed to sway beneath legions of scuttling roaches.
“It sounded like you were walking on eggshells. You couldn’t take a step without crunching German cockroaches,” the detective said. “They were in the lights, in the furniture. Even inside the freezer. The freezer!”
While Holste looked around, a stout woman in a faded housecoat demanded to know what was going on. Yes, she lived there. Yes, those were her two sons in the living room. Her daughter? Well, yes, she had a daughter …
The detective strode past her, down a narrow hall. He turned the handle on a door, which opened into a space the size of a walk-in closet. He squinted in the dark.
At his feet, something stirred.
• • •
First he saw the girl’s eyes: dark and wide, unfocused, unblinking. She wasn’t looking at him so much as through him.
She lay on a torn, moldy mattress on the floor. She was curled on her side, long legs tucked into her emaciated chest. Her ribs and collarbone jutted out; one skinny arm was slung over her face; her black hair was matted, crawling with lice. Insect bites, rashes and sores pocked her skin. Though she looked old enough to be in school, she was naked — except for a swollen diaper.
“The pile of dirty diapers in that room must have been 4 feet high,” the detective said. “The glass in the window had been broken, and that child was just lying there, surrounded by her own excrement and bugs.”
When he bent to lift her, she yelped like a lamb. “It felt like I was picking up a baby,” Holste said. “I put her over my shoulder, and that diaper started leaking down my leg.”
The girl didn’t struggle. Holste asked, What’s your name, honey? The girl didn’t seem to hear.
He searched for clothes to dress her, but found only balled-up laundry, flecked with feces. He looked for a toy, a doll, a stuffed animal. “But the only ones I found were covered in maggots and roaches.”
Choking back rage, he approached the mother. How could you let this happen?
“The mother’s statement was: ‘I’m doing the best I can,’ ” the detective said. “I told her, ‘The best you can sucks!’ “
He wanted to arrest the woman right then, but when he called his boss he was told to let DCF do its own investigation.
So the detective carried the girl down the dim hall, past her brothers, past her mother in the doorway, who was shrieking, “Don’t take my baby!” He buckled the child into the state investigator’s car. The investigator agreed: They had to get the girl out of there.
“Radio ahead to Tampa General,” the detective remembers telling his partner. “If this child doesn’t get to a hospital, she’s not going to make it.”
• • •
Her name, her mother had said, was Danielle. She was almost 7 years old.”
This is going to be my future job insha’Allah
Saving Africa’s Witch Children - The plight of the thousands of innocent children who suffer intolerable cruelty at the hands of so-called Christian pastors in Nigeria’s poorest areas. Branded as witches and wizards, often after a death in their near family, they are ejected from home and persecuted, sometimes to death. Includes disturbing footage and descriptions of child abuse.
Homeless child with puppy, Arizona (John Walker)
Jainal (11) in the factory where he works making silver cooking pots. He earns 700 taka (10 USD) a month.Photo by G.M.B. Akash. Dhaka, Bangladesh (2008)
Afghan children in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
OMG THE ONE WITH THE SHOE IN HIS/HER MOUTH AHAH AWW!
Child care centre in rural Azerbaijan. Smiles all round :)
Beautiful kids of rural west Azerbaijan. Another example of how despite the ongoing war and struggle in this world, they still manage to smile and have fun. Masha’Allah :)
“The home in Gumri where a little boy waits for his shoebox. He lived here with his mother who was very poor. Samaritans Purses partners started to support the mother who tried her best to look after her children in dire circumstances. A year later they had a better place to live and the children were doing well. Operation Christmas Child, Azerbaijan”
