"We are the victims of exploitation and abuse… you call us the future, but we are also the present…we are children whose voices are not being heard: it is time we are taken into account…" -Youth Delegates to U.N. Special Session on Children, May 2002

I agree with the kids. The public and the 108th U.S. Congress should too. The Child Abuse Accountability Enhancement Act (H.R. 1444), if it ever sees the light of day again, could make a big difference both to kids who have been abused and to society. It would let military pensions be garnished for valid child abuse judgments. In other words, retired military dads who beat or sexually abused their kids while their pensions were accruing wouldn't get to hand off the staggering costs to their children, the federal government, insurance companies and a long list of others in society.

More than 3 million children are reported as abused or neglected each year in the United States. Of those, 3 die each day in our country. To put the figures in perspective consider the U.S. military casualties in the Iraq War for this past year. A total of 670 service men and women have lost their lives to date. In a similar period, 1,095 children lost their lives through abuse. Where is the uproar? Why the silence on this front?

In 1990, when I was 46 years old, my sister and I sued our father for sexual, physical and emotional abuse that had happened decades earlier and won our case. Dad fled to Mexico rather than pay any of the $2.3 million judgment. So, I pursued him through Congress. After a CBS television movie, Ultimate Betrayal, was made about my life, and Congresswoman Schroeder joined us on a national television talk show, the audience flooded Congress with requests for co-sponsors. Hearings were called and the legislation passed within a few months, allowing federal pensions to be garnished for child abuse judgments. So why is the government stalling on the similar H.R. 1444? H.R. 1444 was introduced by Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-CO) and put to bed in the Armed Services Committee on the same day one year ago.

There are nationwide economic costs for abuse of children that have recently been calculated in a study by Fromm, Suzette, 2001. According to this study, the annual cost of child abuse and neglect in the United States, using the most conservative data, is $94 billion. Everyone but the abuser ends up footing the bills. H.R.1444 should come out of the Armed Services Committee immediately because it makes economic and moral sense. And, there is a precedent in Public Law 103-358, the 1994 Child Abuse Accountability Act.

I'll be in town this week for the first-ever National Race to Stop the Silence: Stop Child Sexual Abuse (www.stopcsa.org) that will be held this coming Saturday, April 17. As Race Co-Director, I'll be out there in Freedom Plaza doing my part to respond to those great kids at the U.N. Special Session on Children. They told us kid's voices were not being heard. I agree. They also said that they were the voices of abused and exploited kids everywhere and that it was time to take them into account. The Race to Stop the Silence is a way to take abused kids into account. So is getting the Child Abuse Accountability Enhancement Act out of the Armed Services Committee.