There’s been a lot of coverage of a recent death of a very young child. At this point the adopting parents have been charged and the stories coming out about the abuse are horrendous. It’s nothing new.
Abuse
School year of 82′, I think. I was working D-4 (Kaneohe) on the day shift when I was sent to Haiku Elementary, unknown problem.
I get there and meet with the V-P and a teacher. A student (5-6 grade if I remember) was having trouble sitting still in class. When the teacher tried to figure out why, she noticed blood on the back of his T-shirt. They introduced me to the child and asked him to lift up his T-shirt.
What I saw made me want to scream in anger. The child’s back was striped like a movie prisoner after a flogging. Some places had broken open and started bleeding. The wounds were just below his shoulder level and went all the way down to the bottom of the child’s buttocks.
They story was simple. Grandpa was watching football, sent the child to fetch him a beer, the child stumbles and spilled the beer, so grandpa pulled a cord out a lamp, and whipped the child until the blood ran. For spilling a beer.
I called the watch Commander gave him the facts and that I was taking the child into custody and transporting to Juvenile Crime Prevention Division (JCPD).
This is exactly what I did. I finished the paperwork, notified the school V-P, and went back to work.
At the end of watch (2:30pm) I get a radio call to call the desk by phone. So I do. The watch Sergeant answers and asks if I have any paperwork to turn in. I did not. He tells me to go on home.
Then he explains the child’s family, including parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and of course grandpa were all at the station and had a full head of anger because “I took their kid away”, without “any reason”.
It wasn’t important that grandpa beat him until there was blood, but only that some “haole” cop took their kid.
Don’t know what my being white had to do with it, but seems to me they kinda had their priorities mixed up. So I went home. The family eventually left and the whole thing went to the family courts.
Of course, after child services spoke to the family and grandpa, they gave the kid back.
No surprise there.
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