Guest Post: Child Maltreatment and Futuristic Technologies by Robert Eggleton
Lacy Dawn’s father relives the Gulf War, her mother’s teeth are rotting out,and her best friend is murdered by the meanest daddy on Earth. Life in the hollow is hard. She has one advantage — an android was inserted into her life and is working with her to cure her parents. But, he wants something in exchange. It’s up to her to save the Universe. Lacy Dawn doesn’t mind saving the universe, but her family and friends come first.
Will Lacy’s predisposition, education, and magic be enough for her to save the Universe, Earth, and, most importantly, protect her own family?
Rarity from the Hollow is adult literary science fiction filled with tragedy,comedy and satire. It is a children’s story for adults, not for the prudish, faint of heart, or easily offended.
Rarity from the Hollow, my debut novel, is best classified as adult literary fiction with a science fiction genre backdrop. However, much of the content is more real than not, and the story is based upon real-life personal experiences. I’ve worked in the field of children’s advocacy for over forty years. In 2002, I accepted a job as a children’s psychotherapist for our local mental health center. It was an intensive day treatment program that served kids with serious mental health issues. Many of them had been abused, some sexually. It was during one of those therapy sessions that I met my protagonist, Lacy Dawn, a skinny eleven year old who presented resiliency so powerfully that it inspired other victims toward recovery and empowerment.
- Adoption, including pregnancy counseling and assistance with legal services;
- Birth to Three, which assists families care for children who exhibit developmental delays and strengthens the families’ abilities to care for their children at home;
- Comprehensive Assessment and Planning for children and families involved with child protective services to ensure the appropriateness of services and safety of the children;
- Child Advocacy Centers within which children suspected of having been maltreated can be interviewed in a supportive environment by all involved parties (police, social workers, medical staff, defense, etc.), including video recordings, so as to prevent the children from further trauma by exposure adversarial courtroom proceedings;
- Parenting Education for parents involved in divorce proceedings;
- In-Home Child and Family Services to keep families intact when there is no imminent danger to the child but supportive services, such as case management or transportation is needed;
- Exceptional Youth Emergency shelters serving youth with disabilities;
- Foster Care in private family homes that sometimes adopt the children initially placed there if freed for adoption through legal proceedings;
- One mid-town youth center that focuses on after-school and summer academics, delinquency prevention, and parental development;
- Right from the Start which targets high risk birth mothers and high risk infants to ensure that proper medical, economic, and social service needs are met;
- Emergency Shelters (9) for youth in crisis (this was where Robert worked as the Director of Shelter Care – He started 5 of these family-like settings but the network has since expanded);
- We Can, a program that recruits volunteers to augment services provided by child protective services workers;
- And, a Youth Services program in an under-served part of WV that turns around mostly younger teens who are heading in the wrong direction.
So, yes, prevention works, but what about the butt holes that hurt kids? Can they be “fixed” so that they stop their maltreatment of others? As a professional and personal opinion, I would never trust treatment alone to cure a pedophile. I believe in accountability, punishment, and ongoing monitoring to protect us all from that worst type of human. At the same time, it has been my experience with other types of child maltreators, present in all countries, religions, cultures, socioeconomic classes…, that many abused children still love their biological parents and that some abusive parents dearly love their children. This was the situation in Rarity from the Hollow. Lacy Dawn, more than anything in the universe, wanted for her parents to be cured of their mental health problems that contributed to the maltreatment. The father is a war damaged Vet suffering from PTSD, night terrors, and anger outbursts, who was raised in a subculture that respected the value: “spare the rod and spoil the child.” I see posts by proponents of this value every now and then on Facebook.
Yes, access to mental health and substance abuse treatment, psychotherapy and medical models that exist today are evidenced based – they work, and decrease the occurrence of child maltreatment because if a parent is “messed up” it’s a correlate. The problem appears to be access to treatment. https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/looking-for-evidence-that-therapy-works/?_r=0 Antipoverty, job training, employment and similar economic development programs, social issues included in Rarity from the Hollow, can also reduce child maltreatment. I live in West Virginia, the state with the poorest economic outlook in the U.S. http://business.wvu.edu/centers/bureau-of-business-and-economic-research And, the state with the highest overdose death rate in the nation. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/statedeaths.html In Chapter Two, “Recess” in my story, Lacy Dawn counsel peers at school whose parents have lost jobs because of the coal mines shutting down, an issue that has risen to national prominence and one reported basis for the U.S. pulling out of the Paris Accords on the environment, now a controversial news item. It seems like a lot of stuff in life in general in one way or another affects child maltreatment rates because children are the most vulnerable. Part of the treatment of the father in my story involved job training and gainful employment.
In Rarity from the Hollow, what appeared to be fantastical means implemented by an alien who was sent to Earth were used to treat the mental health problems of the parents that contributed to the maltreatment of Lacy Dawn. In a nutshell, her genetic spawn had been manipulated for millennia as the best hope for becoming the savior of the universe. The alien, named DotCom, a recurring pun in the story, lived in a spaceship hidden in a cave behind Lacy’s house and his mission was to recruit and train her. Lacy didn’t mind saving the universe, but her family and friends came first – as a prerequisite to accepting the job that the alien offered was that her parents had to be “fixed.”
While I’ve appreciated compliments by book reviewers who have spoken about my wild imagination, I confess that the fantastical means employed by the alien in my story to treat the parents were based on today’s medical reality. I’ve already mentioned that in the beginning of Rarity from the Hollow, Dwayne, the abusive father was a war damaged Vet experiencing anger outbursts and night terrors. The mother was a downtrodden victim of domestic violence who had lost hope of ever getting her G.E.D. or driver’s license, or of protecting her daughter. Diagnosis and treatment of these concerns affecting the parents, as representative of many similarly situated, were based on emerging technologies presented at the 2015 World Medical Innovation Forum: https://worldmedicalinnovation.org/ . Yes, in real life, like in my story, patients have been hooked up to computer technology for medial diagnosis and treatment.
Additional exciting research was presented at that Forum and may one day may revolutionize psychiatric treatment. Most relevant to my story were: (1) smart brain prosthetics, wireless devises being tested for potential to relieve depression, PTSD, Bipolar Disorder…neural engineering to manipulate brain signals; (2) sophisticated imaging systems that are minimally invasive to brain circuitry for diagnosis (3) and, healing the brain with neuromodulation and electroceuticals to treat depression and schizophrenia. http://hitconsultant.net/2015/04/30/tech-revolutionize-neurological-psychiatric-care/
The question, it seems, is not whether child maltreatment can be prevented and treated, but instead: Are we adults willing to invest in the future by protecting kids?
http://www.lacydawnadventures.com
https://www.facebook.com/Lacy-Dawn-Adventures-573354432693864/
https://twitter.com/roberteggleton1
Robert Eggleton has served as a children’s advocate in an
impoverished state for over forty years. Locally, he is best known for his
nonfiction about children’s programs and issues, much of which was published by
the West Virginia Supreme Court where he worked from1982 through 1997. Today,
he is a retired children’s psychotherapist from the mental health center in
Charleston, West Virginia, where he specialized in helping victims cope with
and overcome maltreatment and other mental health concerns. Rarity from the Hollow is his debut
novel. Its release followed publication of three short Lacy Dawn Adventures in
magazines. Author proceeds support the prevention of child maltreatment. http://www.childhswv.org/
Note: This guest post content is owned by the author. Affiliate links are in use.
One Comment
roberteggleton
Rarity from the Hollow is now available for any eReader: https://bit.ly/2KNJkI2