Whoever called the world a ‘wicked place’ surely knew what they were talking about. Man’s inhumanity to man is enough to keep you wide-eyed for several nights.
However, when children are the victims of this inhumanity in the form of abuse, it’s a thousand times worse.
Child abuse in the United States of America
Child abuse cases abound yearly across the United States and the rest of the world. The numbers are gut-wrenching and make you wonder what sort of evil people inhabit the planet with us.
As of 2015, 1,670 children died from abuse and neglect in the United States. This number rose to 1,720 in 2017. Yearly, close to 700,000 children are abused in the States. The youngest children were more vulnerable to maltreatment.
This maltreatment is usually in the form of neglect. Of the abused children, 74.4% suffered neglect, while 17.2% and 8.4% were abused physically and sexually respectively. The saddest part of all this is that 78.1% of the child abuse cases had a parent of the child as the perpetrator of such horrid acts. [1]
Victims of child abuse appearing in court cases
As if they have not been put through enough, these victims are subjected to the trauma of experiencing the legal system. For starters, the court is forced to re-victimize the child because they have to relieve the terrible moments they went through in the hands of their abusers.
The Department of Justice has come up with several tools to help reduce this trauma on the children.
Some of these tools include:
- providing alternatives to courtroom testimony
- protecting the identity of the children
- using multidisciplinary child abuse teams [2]
Regardless of such tools being put in place, the experience is still a harrowing one for innocent children. To make it much easier for the children, help has come from such an unlikely source.
Bikers Against Child Abuse (B.A.C.A)
This is an organization that works to create as much of a safe environment as possible for abused children. They are an unlikely source because bikers are supposed to be rough and scary, as the stereotypes suggest.
An excerpt from their mission statements reads, “We exist as a body of Bikers to empower children to not feel afraid of the world in which they live. We stand ready to lend support to our wounded friends by involving them with an established, united organization. We work in conjunction with local and state officials who are already in place to protect children… We stand at the ready to shield these children from further abuse.”
If the agency ‘representing’ the child determines that they are frightened for any reason, they will consult the B.A.C.A. They contact the family and make arrangements to meet the child. Then the group visits the child and provides him or her with a B.A.C.A vest and other gifts.
They then support the child in any way they can, from providing escorts for them, checking on them, being in court with them, and spending time with them whenever they’re scared. [3]