After working with “at risk” children and teens in Mental Health Counseling and critically ill children as a Registered Nurse, I’ve encountered many little kids in the pediatric ICU that have been physically or sexually abused. I have had to perform rape exams on toddlers, stand at the patient’s bedside with the suspected abuser while steam came out of my ears, and remain silent because one is always “innocent until proven guilty.”

One little girl still flashes back to this day in my mind, and I often wonder how she is doing as an adult. Years ago, I worked at a residential treatment home where abused children would live until they were 18 years old. Many of the kids were taken away from their abusive homes by the courts and child protection services and given a therapeutic living environment where they would feel safe, receive counseling, and make new friends. One ten year old girl had been so sexually abused by an older male relative that her knuckles and toes were broken many times and she was thrown in scalding hot showers when she wouldn’t ‘perform.” Everyday she would stare in envy at the other children swimming in the pool, but would not go near the deck for her fear of drowning.

One afternoon when the pool was empty I asked her to sit on the side of the pool deck with me and dangle our feet in the water for a few minutes. She did so, but dug her fingernails into the deck as we sat and talked. Everyday for a week, we would take time to sit on that pool deck and talk and splash water. A week later, I asked her to get in to the pool in the shallow end and stand for a few minutes with no other children nearby. Her disfigured fingers always clung to the side of the pool, and I often thought how sad it was that she had never learned to swim and enjoy the benefits of water.

As weeks rolled by, she finally trusted me enough to put her face in the water and hold her breath while clutching my hand tightly in hers. By the end of that hot summer, she and I were both sitting at the bottom of the deep end laughing and thinking about the fish she had become while bubbles floated to the surface.

I reminded her that day that any fear she would encounter later in life was simply a mirrored image of the one she’d conquered in the water, and that we “slay one dragon at a time.” Years later, I was informed that this young girl had graduated from high school and was planning to go to college. All I could do was grin from ear to ear…

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