Expressing Support for Designation of April 2008 as National Child Abuse Prevention Month

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Congresswoman Woolsey for her leadership by managing this resolution this afternoon and for Congresswoman Foxx's strong support that she just articulated very powerfully.

As Congresswomen Woolsey and Foxx stated, the statistics that the resolution lays forth clearly show the grave seriousness of this problem of child abuse all across America. In addition, though, just to the horrible trauma to the victims of child abuse, which by itself would be reason to fight this problem, society pays a huge price due to the high incidence of alcoholism, depression, drug abuse, eating disorders, and criminal behavior that has been clearly shown to occur in the later lives of too many children who were abused and neglected.

Recent statistics, for example, show that 14 percent of all men in prison in the United States were abused as children and 36 percent of women in prison were abused as children. And it is easy sometimes to get very discouraged about the numbers that just seem to suggest a problem that is growing almost out of control. In Connecticut, the State where I come from, for example, in between 1990 and 2003, the incidence of reported child abuse actually doubled. But I would suggest that perhaps we should look at those numbers in a different fashion, because what is also happening out there is that as a country, we are prepared, as never before in the past, to confront this issue. Mandated reporting laws now require that doctors, mental health providers and professionals in all arrays of professions that deal with families and children are now required by law to report incidents of abuse which in the past would have been swept under the rug. And that is one of the reasons why the number of cases are going up.

In addition, I think we should also be encouraged by a smarter and more effective approach that is being developed to fight child abuse, the multidisciplinary teams that are pulling together police, social workers, prosecutors, health care providers, nurse practitioners and doctors who are now systematically working together to make sure, number one, that complaints are dealt with accurately, but also that victims are diagnosed, treated and interviewed in an organized fashion so that there is more effective prosecution of cases.

If it seems as though I may be a little bit passionate about this issue, it is because my wife, Audrey, has been a pediatric nurse practitioner for 18 years in Connecticut, has worked at Saint Francis Hospital at Hartford and Windham Hospital as part of the multidisciplinary team, again, that is employing the best techniques possible to make sure that complaints are handled intelligently, swiftly and also in a comprehensive fashion so that prosecutions are not lost or neglected due to the fact that we don't have systems in place to make sure that the cases are handled in an effective manner.

This resolution, I think, adds to both of those positive trends by putting the spotlight on this issue to make sure that we, as a country, are prepared to confront the issue, to talk about it openly, to talk about the numbers that are out there and the terrible consequences that we face as a society when we don't deal with the issue.

So hopefully this year, like prior years, as Congresswoman Foxx indicated, April will act as a month where awareness will continue to grow, that we are going to continue to, as a society, deal with this issue honestly and frankly so that, A, we will protect our children who are our most valuable national treasure, and, B, that we will have systems that are prepared to effectively prosecute and punish perpetrators, and finally, that we are going to treat and care for people who have been abused in such a terrible fashion, because it helps not only them, but it helps American society.

So again, I applaud Congresswoman Woolsey for bringing this measure out on the floor this afternoon and I urge unanimous passage when it comes up for a vote later this evening.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source