Each day on the news you hear or read about a child who has been abused and now must live their life each day trying to move on from that horror. Some stories are even worse, where the child has no second chance at life because they were murdered. These horrible events occur everyday across our nation, yet in some places little to nothing is done to prevent them. In some cases the person or persons hurting these innocent children are family members who are supposed to be protecting them, their mothers, fathers, siblings, ect. Many times persons who witness the abuse happening choose to look the other way, ignoring the abuse they have seen. My question is why? Why do so many refuse to help a child in need of their protection? Why would someone not speak up for a child who cannot speak for themselves? Why would someone allow a child to remain in a harmful situation until it's too late?

I have been witness to this type of situation personally, where this family refuses to speak out against one of their own to save to young children from neglect and abuse at the hands of their mother. Multiple times I have called Child Protective Services with details I have witnesses, and everytime I am told that what little information I have is not enough for them to act upon. Unfortunately, many times something bad must happen to a child before the services meant to protect them can and will step in to rescue them. Most times, Protective Services has a file already on these children in danger, but they still cannot act unless they have concrete proof that the child or children are being hurt. It is extremely frustrating to bare witness to child abuse and yet be unable to stop it, but more frustrating is when someone has witnessed enough abuse to get something done, but they will not report it.

Some countries, the abuse of children is not considered a taboo, it has become such a part of their culture that anyone who speaks out against it is threatened or murdered. Places such as Africa are prime for the sexual assault of children, and the majority of times the guilty persons are not held accountable for their actions, but rather, the victims are looked down upon for allowing the assault to occur. Other countries are well known for child prostitution and child pornography. The governments of these countries do nothing to try to prevent these horrors from happening because it is a big business for them. Even here in the United States it seems as if many times the youngest of victims are overlooked. Often times to avoid putting the young victim through the pain of a trial, forcing them to relive each horrible memory of abuse, deals are made allowing the abuser the chance to hurt another child after serving little to no prison time. And many times when the abuser gets out of prison, their next victim doesn't live to point the finger at the person who hurt them.

Why do we accept this in our society? We are supposed to be the voice of our government, of our justice system, our officials should be speaking out for us and our interests, right? Then why does it often seem as if no one is listening or hearing those speaking out for the rights of those too young to speak for themselves? Something needs to be done to prevent child abusers from hurting child after child. Why are so many speaking out for the rights of these monsters, trying to protect them from being treated unfairly in our court systems? Why protect someone who chose to cause pain to a innocent child? Would these people feel the same way and protect the person who hurt thier own child? Then why protect the person who has hurt someone elses child? It makes no sense. In our country where we have the freedom to speak our minds, why use that freedom to speak for someone who abuses innocent children?

So many children lose their innocence or lives because of these monsters living in our society preying on them, many of these predators are repeat offenders, let out of prison again and again to hurt more children. Be the person to speak out for a child who cannot speak for themself, don't look the other way anymore. It is time that we let our voices be heard, for the victims who have been lost, and those who will never be the same. The more voices the children have, the louder they become, and then maybe they will finally be heard.