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    TrumpsTinyHandsBreanna Edwards
    3/14/17 11:47am

    This story is sadder than sadness, and the part that twists the knife at the end is that she sought out her abusive mother until the end. This world sucks too much, from DJT at the top, to the abuse going on in the homes of the powerless.

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      Hoyo AfrikaTrumpsTinyHands
      3/14/17 12:35pm

      I was kidnapped from my biological mother by my father and made to live with my stepmother. After years of abuse (physical and emotional), you start to identify with your captor. There were times when I’d cry in the shower and a part of my brain would urge me to tell teachers or anyone and her voice would pop into my head so what, you leave and go live with a bunch of white people? Ha! We’ll see how they treat your worthless ass. It took an attempt of suicide on my part to see how evil she was. She tried to pin the suicide on my own mental frailty and told my dad she did all she could for me. I broke free in 2005 at the age of 19 and never looked back. The sad part is that she also covered up the sexual abuse of my little sister (at the hands of her sister’s husband) and she, my sister, still lives with her and is apparently addicted to food and has become a fundamentalist Muslim.

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      user_21938TrumpsTinyHands
      3/14/17 12:51pm

      This is something I’ve been dealing with lately as a child abuse survivor (I’m now 30). I have realized that a great deal of my self-loathing is tied to the fact that even as my dad was regularly beating me, I loved him and I wanted to make him happy. I wanted him to be proud of me.

      That’s a child’s natural love for their parents serving to reinforce the abuse. We see our parents as true authority figures, and if they’re beating us, then surely we must have done something to deserve it. It’s only now, some 16-17 years after the abuse stopped, that I’m beginning to understand what it means to have had my pride stripped away.

      This little girl’s story devastates me, both because I still have my days of suicidal ideation, and because her story is not as uncommon as we’d like to think.

      Rest easy, young’un.

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    "Hachi"Breanna Edwards
    3/14/17 1:20pm

    Here is another telling report, I frequently use the Kids Count Data for reporting on indicators and outcomes for children. Kids Count Data is one of the most widely-used sources and data for Florida indicates that after children with unknown racial/ethnic makeup, 28% of non-Hispanic Black children experience maltreatment. Further, non-Hispanic Black children also experience more adverse experiences than other any other group in Florida. There is something called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Survey which indicates that the more trauma you have been exposed to, the poorer life outcomes you will experience (and the higher risk for depression and suicide). My heart aches because this happens so often. Children fall through the cracks. This is absolutely chilling. Reading Naika’s abuse, I started crying because I know that there are more like her.

    What do you do when you experience abuse and trauma? If you aren’t completely disenfranchised, you try to get help. That means mental health and medical care. Data from the Kaiser Family Foundation indicates that 13% of Florida residents are uninsured. And remember that Rick Scott rejected the Medicaid expansion. So Florida families have virtually no support. No Medicaid to pay for treatment, no insurance to cover medical care, NOTHING. The Naika’s of the world deserve better, they deserve hope and a life free from pain, abuse and trauma. Come on y’all, open your eyes and see how the world is set up for young children of color.

    ETA - sorry, misread a data point for one of my links and had to revise.

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      Breanna Edwards"Hachi"
      3/14/17 1:32pm

      Thanks for this super useful information, Hachi. Hopefully it can help save lives.

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      "Hachi"Breanna Edwards
      3/14/17 1:44pm

      Of course, Breanna. That was my intent, I want a world where the Naikas prosper.

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    Jane ErrorBreanna Edwards
    3/14/17 12:50pm

    The Miami Herald has done excellent work on the problems in Florida’s DCF system in the past. I don’t know if anything has changed in the last couple of years, but I kind of doubt it.

    Warning, this covers a LOT of child deaths and is absolutely heartbreaking:

    http://media.miamiherald.com/static/media/projects/2014/innocents-lost/

    The gist, if you don’t want to subject yourself to reading it all, is that legislators simultaneously cut funding drastically and prioritized family reunification, with predictable results (a whole lot of kids got left in abusive situations and got murdered).

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    Hoyo AfrikaBreanna Edwards
    3/14/17 12:38pm

    that a child is being abused

    Violence towards children is so engrained in many black/African cultures that it is often difficult to tell “discipline” or abuse apart. My stepmother would often beat my sisters in a way that looked as if she was fighting a woman her own age/size. Another thing is that (the article mentions the child’s Haitian roots) is that I’m certain many of the mothers in those instances suffer from severe mental illness that goes untreated and undiagnosed.

    RIP Little Angel. Hope you’re at peace.

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    nadaforgretchenweinersBreanna Edwards
    3/14/17 1:57pm

    I work(ed) in the mental health field with 8 years in community mental health. It was hard for me not to want to just take these kids, scoop em in my arms, take them to Disneyland and tell them you don’t have to go back. I’ve seen DCFS fail kids, I even had one worker tell the parent that I shouldn’t have believed their kid when he said his mother dragged his sisters by the hair. I both hated and loved my job.

    These kids need so so so much love and compassion and so many times the system fails them over and over again until they die, either by suicide or in the hands of fucking awful foster care parents.

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    THE DARK ONEBreanna Edwards
    3/15/17 9:11am

    there are a lot of systems in florida that are meant to help people, but are just awful. ran by awful people, or ran with as little funding as possible.

    this state is a travesty to it’s residents. it’s been a joke since chiles left office.

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