Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

I saw an article by Bill O’Reilly on Fox News tonight and he was talking about child abuse and he posted a nationwide hot line to report any perceived action of child abuse. The hot line is called; Child Help the National Child Abuse Hotline and he posted their phone number and it is 1-800-4-A-CHILD, and he also said that they receive over 100,000 calls a year to report child abuse.

So if anyone who reads this thinks they see a possible abuse of a child, please either report it to this hot line or call your local child abuse center, because these children didn’t ask to be abused and it’s up to us caring adults to try and make sure not another action of child abuse is allowed, not single one.

Child abuse is a horrible crime. However, what constitutes child abuse? Is a spanking in a grocery store considered child abuse? How about a verbal beating? One person's abuse is another's discipline.

Without getting into the weeds on this one, great care should be taken in deciding what is child abuse. Families can be destroyed when social services gets a call from someone. Some cases are obvious, but I would speculate that most are not. Just sayin . . .

Verbal abuse (and things like spanking) aren't going to be the kind of things you're going to detect as abuse in a casual setting. These are more the realm of the mandatory reporters: teachers, doctors, etc..

Signs that the kid had been physically injured (beaten, burned) or denied food to the point of malnutrition, etc... it's easier to pull the trigger.

I've actually had to call 8004achild. If you have doubts, talk to them. They understand abuse and the local laws and resources. They will help you decide what the next step is or if action is even required.

The only time I have ever felt any sort of need to make that sort of call was when I watched some guy screaming and cussing at his 10 year old daughter. The last straw was when he called her a fat b*tch. Figured that if he would act that way in public, it had to be worse at home.

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

This reminds me of the one time I made a complaint to the authorities about the way other people were treating children.
SWMBO and I were on the way home one time years ago zooming up 4-laned US 23 at something more than 60 mph, and SWMBO suddenly exclaimed “My God, there’s a child in the road! There tottering all alone along the white line at the edge of the road was a little blonde-haired girl about 2 years old. I whipped over into the median and ran back to where the child was now about a foot or so out into the lane to get the child out of the road. I managed to trip over some high grass at the edge and fell on my face onto the pavement in front of an oncoming car that managed to stop a few feet short of me. So by the time I got to the little girl I was not only horrified and outraged that she was out in the road; I was also pretty shaken up from almost getting run over. In the meanwhile, 2-3 other vehicles had stopped but no one else had gotten out. I took the kid’s hand and led her about 75-100 feet back down the road to the nearest driveway, where I found an old man about 70 or older sitting in a lawn chair in his driveway drinking beer and listening to a NASCAR race.
“Are you responsible for this child?”, I asked him.
Instead of answering, the guy turned around to another child, a little boy who looked to be maybe 3 or 4 years old, and started cussing the kid for letting his sister get out in the road and cussing the little girl for running off, and threatening the kids that he was going to “beat their asses”.
I was already disgusted with the situation, but at that point I completely lost it. If I ain’t mistaken, I called him a stupid son of a bitch and told that old fart that the only one that needed an ass beating was him, and if he touched either of those kids while I was there, he’d get one. By that time, SWMBO and occupants of several other had gathered around, and all of them were shaming the old man and giving him grief for his behavior.
After the old man cussed me a little bit and told everybody else there to go straight to hell, he gathered up those two kids and went inside. We went on home and promptly contacted the local office in charge of Children In Need of Services (CHINS).
Don’t know if he beat the children, but he was definitely guilty of gross neglect. I felt like I’d done my good deed for the day. SWMBO went so far as to follow though and make sure the CHINS people made a home visit.

Agreed Dorm. I'd have called them as well in that situation. Must say you showed great restraint in not whipping his ass.