abuse
Courts routinely appoint a guardian ad litem (GAL) for children whose best interests are to be determined by a court of law. The Latin term ad litem means for the lawsuit. When a child is caught in a highly contentious custody dispute, the courts can appoint an independent attorney or mental health professional to represent the best interests of the child.… Read the rest
The media is inundated with stories about sexual harassment involving public figures. These stories are not new news; sexual harassment, assault, and abuse of females are sorry chapters within the patchwork history of the human condition. Sexualization of girls and women can have unexpected long-term results that derail lives: it can result in victims’ being incarcerated in a system of blind justice.… Read the rest
Statistics from The National Center for Victims of Crime website reveal that one in five girls and one in twenty boys is a victim of child sexual abuse (CSA). A 2009 study by The National Child Trauma Stress Network finds that “as many as 1 out of 4 girls and 1 out of 6 boys will experience some form of sexual abuse before the age of 18.”… Read the rest
Tennessee Williams’ Not about Nightingales is about a prison atrocity. Written in 1938, the play was originally titled The Rest is Silence: This play is dedicated to the memory of four men who died by torture in an American prison, August 1938. The events portrayed in the play are real. Not about Nightingales was inspired by newspaper accounts of atrocities in a Pennsylvania prison and written when Williams was just twenty-seven years old.… Read the rest