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A reordering of priorities toward protecting children would include far higher funding and staffing of Child Protective Services, the organization that investigates charges of abuse and can move to rescue children before the damage is irreparable. But even that would do little good if there is no place to put them. No solution will be possible without an overhaul of the foster- care system, which in many cities is on the verge of collapse. All too often, children are separated from siblings and shuttled from group homes to relatives to foster families, with no sense of the safety, security or stability they need to succeed in school and elsewhere. "If we don't have money for adequate care," says Ruth Massinga, a member of the National Commission on Children, "removing children from their homes is just another devastation."
Failure to make treatment available to drug addicts who seek it will ensure yet another generation of addicted babies and battered kids. In Los Angeles the number of drug-exposed babies entering the foster-care system rose 453% between 1984 and 1987. A survey of states found that drugs are involved in more than 2 out of 3 child abuse and neglect cases. Children born into a family of addicts are left with impossible choices: a life with the abusers they know, or a life at the mercy of a system filled with strangers -- lawyers, judges, social workers, foster parents.
It is a common mistake to assume that all abuse is physical. The scars of other forms of abuse -- like unrelenting verbal cruelty -- can be just as apparent when children grow older, unloved and self-hating. "You can tell kids you love 'em," says April, a runaway in Hollywood. "But that's not the same as showing them. Broken promises is really what tears your heart apart." For April there is not much difference between insult and injury. "Beating kids will hurt kids. Sexual abuse will hurt a kid. But verbal abuse is the worst. I've had all three. If you're not strong enough as a person, and they've been telling you this all your life, that you can never amount to anything, you are going to believe it."
There have always been children who are survivors, who overcome the odds and find some adult -- a teacher, a grandparent, a priest -- who can provide the anchors the family could not. Toure Diggs, 18, grew up in a rough neighborhood of New Haven, Conn., and is now enrolled at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Since his parents separated three years ago, Toure has tried to help raise his brother Landis, who is 7. In the end Toure knows he is competing with the lure of the street for Landis' soul. "You got to start so young," Toure says. "It's like a game. Whoever gets to the kids first, that's how they are going to turn out."