Blah.

It's gloomy and raining outside. I have to pay money for tuition (goodbye bank account). Sad things are happening in the world. What a depressing day.

I just read an article about a 14 year old boy who was killed in January at a boot-camp in Florida. 7 guards and a nurse were charged with his death. The guards "roughed him up" to the point where he died. I can't begin to describe the depth of my sadness about this. He very well could have been one of my boys at the Ark. How do 7 adults get off roughing up a kid to the point of death? I just can't conceive of such a thing. I read another article a while ago about a "treatment" center that was established by a real estate mogul turned evagelist. This place has been investigated several times by the government for cases of child abuse and molestation. A kid had his arm broken by a staff member who was twisting his arm behind his back because he refused to clean, or something like that. They employ convicted sex offenders at this place because the "evangelist" who started this place claims that Jesus wouldn't have turned anyone away, so why should he? I'm sorry, but what the fuck????? I'm pretty sure that Jesus had common sense and wouldn't put children in harms way by exposing them to sex offenders on a daily basis. The treatment of at-risk children by this culture sickens and saddens me. Can you even imagine the lives that they've had to lead, as children?? Not having any role models except for gang members, or abusive men, or battered women. At 8 years old being asked by adults to shoot a gun at someone else. Being used as a sick old man's sexual play thing. The horrors that these children have lived are inconceivable to most "normal" people. But they are treated as "bad" and "problem children" and "defiant." If I had a life like that, you'd better believe that I'd be angry, and I'd act out, and I'd push people away when they tried to be loving toward me. You'd better believe that I'd behave in any way necessary for me to preserve at least some vestige of sanity. But yet, we decide that what these children need is "a good beating." Or we treat them as criminals. As social pariahs. What they need, is a strong, stable adult to give them love and teach them that they don't have to behave as the adults who raised them did. They don't need to be beaten into submission.