Kerre Woodham: What happens to the survivors of child abuse?

We have all seen the stories of the broken abused babies and children from this country - the Nia Glassies, the Kahui twins, Hale Sage McClutchie, Saliel Aplin, Olympia Jetson – there's way too many of them. More than 60 children in the past several years who have been horribly abused and killed by the people who should have been protecting them. The roll call of dead children in this country is a long one, and it makes for harrowing reading.

The abuse that these babies, these children, these preteens, suffered is utterly appalling. But whenever these stories are told in the media, I always wonder what happens to the siblings.They have brothers and sisters under the same roof. What happens to the survivors of this horrific abuse?What happens next to them?

It would appear that for many of them, they go on to perpetuate the cycle of abuse. Probably won't surprise you to learn they don't need full and rich lives full of potential and promise that is fulfilled. It's not a given, but it takes a monumental effort to move away from the environment you've grown up in and that is something that's acknowledged by our courts.

Two key players in a Mongrel Mob meth ring have had significant reductions in their sentences for, in part, the horrific circumstances of their childhood, the trauma of which a judge said led to their gang affiliations and criminal offending later in life.

Many of them have no family structure at all, hence the attraction of the gangs where there is at least somebody who purports to care about you, although that would only be for as long as it was convenient.

Surely a child who has been horribly abused, who is functionally illiterate, who has no family - surely they have fewer options than most of us who were raised in loving families, given the basic necessities of life, food, shelter, protection, love. Surely we have sympathy for the child who isn't given the basics?

It's a fact of developmental growth, if you don't get what you need, you won't grow up as you should. So all the dead babies have siblings, and those siblings have grown up into adults. We had sympathy for the child. Where does that sympathy go when the child becomes an adult? 

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