POM 101

I completed the Protection of Minors Training this morning. 

Why is this important - while a majority of students are not-minors,  universities do cross path with thousands of children each year with all the programs they run., ~50K kids/year at Vandy, per the training. 

Apparently 1:10 kids get abused (median age 9) but only 38% disclose and 90% perpetrators are known to the child. Types of abuse include physical, sexual, neglect and emotional. 

When it comes to abuse, most just focus on the physical or sexual parts. I want to address childhood "abuse" in the context of disabled kids who are also subject to endless rounds of emotional abuse and neglect all through childhood. It's terribly unreported, not even acknowledged, and we carry lifelong emotional scars well into adulthood. 

Here is a small example: Throughout my special education years in elementary I was moved around multiple classrooms, sometimes are many as 4 in the course of one school year. How is that not emotional abuse by teachers who openly did not want me in their classrooms and resentful of my presence. How does that make a small child feel. How it is that the very people we are supposed to trust to nurture and support us (the 98% of folks we are surrounded by), end up as the perpetuators of lifelong emotional trauma for us.