Reply #70: The Incident I Saw Was In Philadelphia

[Mrs. Venation]

I was at the Amtrak station, waiting for a train back to Washington, DC. There was a woman with a small child, my guess is about 4 or 5 years old, sitting on a bench across from me. The child was fussy, as young ones will be when they are bored. The woman lost her temper and slapped that child's face.

I lost my mind.

I stood up, walked over to the woman, and told her she didn't want to do that again. She told me to mind my own business. I told her that child abuse is everyone's business. I told her if she hit that child again she'd have to deal with the police and child protective services. She looked me square in the eye and slapped that child again. I calmly walked over to a police officer who was at the train station and told him I wanted to report child abuse. (I guess that sorry excuse for a human being thought I was bluffing when I told her not to hit that child again.) I told the police officer what had happened. He called his dispatcher and requested a juvenile officer and CPS presence. Then he and I walked over to the woman and he told her I had lodged a complaint.

She denied hitting the child. At that point several other people who had seen her hit the child approached the officer and told him the woman was lying, that she had slapped the child, that I had warned her not to do it again, and that she slapped the child a second time.

Juvie officers came, CPS came, child was removed from the home. I went back to Philadelphia about 8 weeks later to testify in Juvenile Court about the incident that day. Since the session was closed, I didn't find out what happened. I hope that, at the very least, this woman was taught that you can't just go around beating on your kids.

Sometimes I still have nightmares about seeing that child slapped. At the moment it happened it seemed like the reverberation from that slap was as loud as a gunshot.

I hope that child grew up; and I hope she grew up knowing that some strange adult cared about her.