Written by By Tara Overzat
Numerous scholarly articles have stated that not only is child abuse underreported (here and globally) but so is child sexual abuse.
My own sexual abuse is difficult to talk about. But I can say that looking back, I am incensed at the pediatrician in the town I was raised in for the first several years of my life who didn’t take any legal action when he treated me for the aftermath.
Why? It may have been that my family’s last name was known in this town. The doctor retired when I was about 5. Maybe he was just getting too old to cause a stir. Maybe he thought foster care would be a worse alternative than the hell I was already living in.
This man is probably long since dead, so I will never know what went through his mind in not reporting what happened to me. I will never know if he was bribed by my father. I will never know if it was just a sign of the times, that in the 1980′s it was still too taboo for a doctor to press on when he knew something was wrong.
What I do know is that what he did was not only cowardly, but illegal. If doctors and teachers will not be vigilant in reporting abuse, children will grow up into scarred adults, at risk of abusing alcohol and drugs. In the worst scenarios, these children die before reaching adulthood.
It does take a village to raise a child, and a healthy community is one in which we do not turn a blind eye to people in danger- whether it is abused children, abused spouses, or at-risk teens.
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