Can We Really Prevent Child Abuse? One Family Rides in Search of an Answer
A father and his son have set out on a bicycle ride across the nation, from South Florida to Los Angeles. After being raised in abusive situations, and being fortunate enough to find a safe place, now they will not run, they will ride to fight for all children to have a fair start.
On average, according to FBI statistics, 450 children are murdered by their parents each year in the United States. More than one a day.
Why can’t governments prevent that?
The truth is they can.
But a few bad policies – family planning systems that push population growth to fill shopping malls rather than parental readiness to ensure functional town halls, underfunded child protection agencies, misplaced systems of rights that treat children as parental property – are standing in the way.
This father and son, inspired by the horrific death of Gabriel Fernandez in 2013, and many others, set out to expose and change those policies. And along the way they’ve seen the other costs of those policies – the ones that push helpless children into the hands of abusive parents – in the form of nature overrun by people mass produced and uncared for, and systems of government that look nothing like the inclusive democracies in which we are supposed to live.
But they are also seeing support – a gush of online support, an advocate in the capital of their home state, and the animals in what remains of nature, helpless like the children this ride honors.
The father says this of his son:
“Now he plays the vigilante of sorts. Taking matters into his own hands, with me as his sidekick and back up. He pounds the streets with his statistics and petitions with a will to change the world for his peers.”
Help them end this, the child abuse, the filicide, that started their ride and keeps them pedaling towards better places and safer spaces.
Sign their Change.org petition.
You can also help change the way we plan families by promoting Fair Start reforms universally.
