by Neil Robert Miller, ©1993
Supplement to
Bibliography
and 22 Books
site index
e-mail: neil@imaginenine.com
______________________________________________________________________________
Keith Richards
Tender Mercies: Inside the World of a Child Abuse Investigator
The Noble Press, Inc., Chicago, and
The Child WelfareLeague of America, Inc., Washington, DC, publishers. 1992,
280 pages
Alice Vachss
A. Vachss, Queens County, New York Assistant District Attorney
for Special Violence
Random House., New York, 1993. 284 pages
Louise Armstrong
And They Call It Help: The Psychiatric Policing of America's
Children
Addison Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1993, 279 pages
______________________________________________________________________________
The following is a book review, written for a small, private newsletter a couple of years ago but never printed. I thought I'd include it here, as a supplement to the bibliography, as I really did like the books, and they seem perhaps even more timely now than when they were written.
______________________________________________________________________________
Perhaps it was reading a highly informative report on Cuba by
[---] that inspired me to think to write the following. She
mentioned the very low rate of personal violence in Cuba and it
got me thinking about the very different situtation that we are
faced with here.
There are a couple of books on that subject that I've recently read and that I thought
some people might find interesting.
On the recommended list:
Tender Mercies: Inside the World of A Child Abuse Investigator
by Keith Richards
Although I've always thought social workers ought to get paid
twice as much as they're getting paid, there ought to be twice
as many of them, and they ought to have four times the backing
that they currently have, I've also thought they should be twice
as good as they are and, as such, I've sometimes had a disdainful
attitude towards the profession. This is a bit peculiar as my
entire family (very much including myself by the way) has basically
been in some facet of this field, either formally or closely related,
for my whole life. But anyway, I had a set of traumatic experiences
with quite a few social workers and therapists as an adult and,
for whatever reason, I just haven't had a very good impression
of the field generally.
Well, this book completely changes my views on the subject (funny
how a book can do that). Keith Richards is a Child Abuse Investigator
for "Pelham County" (in real life books like this, the
names are always changed; seems like it's probably really Sufflok
County or thereabouts, out on Long Island). He has to handle,
out there at people's homes, a lot of hard to figure situations,
and the constraints, and oftimes the lack of backing from his
administration means he must come up with and exercise the wisdom
of Solomon and the insight of Sherlock Holmes with the timing
of Flash Gordon and, when he gets back to the office, wind up
on the rack for it to boot. But he's just a guy, could be any
of us, a very nice guy, intelligent and determined in all the
best ways. And at the center of every story, there's a child.
You can definitely tell that he really likes the kids that he
works with, that's the best part. There's a lot of good stuff
about unjustified reporting of abuse, but mostly it's about getting
some safety for kids that are in very cruel or life-threatening
situations who would otherwise be in much worse situations, or
killed altogether. I don't know quite what to say; it seems so
real and he tells it very well. I cried and cried in at least
five places, which is not that unusual for me but it does mean
I liked the story a lot. Definitely on my own, personal recommended
list.
Another book on a slightly different theme is by Alice Vachss.
She was the Prosecutor of the Queens County Special Crimes Bureau
in the Queens District Attorney's Office all through the 1980's.
In her case, it was not merely lack of backing that was the problem,
but sometimes organized sabotage by her superiors on very nasty
cases that she was prosecuting. She's very tough, exceptionally
competent and intelligent, very sure of herself, and very very
much in the right (in my opinion), and she tells quite an exciting
tale. (Kinda makes me miss The Old Country [New York].) Her whole
field (special violence law) is rife with loopholes, which allow
people who commit such crimes to continue to believe that there
is something about what they have done that is sanctioned at very
high levels, and that's what she (and a lot of such prosecutors
around the country) are really fighting. That theme, that there
is some subtle but powerful encouragement regarding violence towards
women emanating from high up, is an increasingly frequent theme
in books about this area of law; sometimes pretty hair-raising
stuff. (I think Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a reference to
the problem in an angry answer to Republican Senator Arlen Spector,
when she defended a minority opinion of hers on the rights of
women. It was the only time in the hearings that I saw her go
almost out of control with rage at the man.) Anyway, there's a
great line in Vachss' book about "following orders";
although the term is often used as a throwaway slogan, in the
context it came up in the book, it made me very proud. If you
like 'em action packed, this is a hot one.
The last book of this little tripartite is "And They Call
It Help" by Louise Armstrong. Like Richard's book, it's
also about kids getting harmed. In this case though, the subject
is how institutions of therapists, hospitals, and social workers
are doing the harm. Some hundred thousand kids a year, mostly
teenagers, being incarcerated and indoctrinated in mental institutions,
and fed mentally and intellectually damaging drugs in order to
get them to passively accept a lot of unnecessary ugliness in
life. (Most of the kids seem to be an awful lot less rebellious
and much 'straighter' than I was at their age . . . definately
kinda scary.) In this kind of situation, when the institution
wins, the kids lose. Well, according to Armstrong anyway, and
in my own personal opinion, I think she's right. She has the same
warmth, the same sort of intelligence, the same obvious, attentive
love for the kids as Richards; she's just working a slightly different
arena and looking at the situation as a hospital to hospital,
school to school field researcher rather than as a house to house
caseworker, which is to look at it from a bit of a higher level.
The entire field that these three books cover is a pretty serious
and growing national scandal, and it's great to see a lot of well
written, warmly written, action-packed, and accessible research
coming off the press about it - all three of these books were
just released this spring and summer. These are the best so far
of the couple of dozen I've read recently on these subjects and
if you've got growing kids or if you're concerned about the level
of violence in society, you might want to check them out. Sometimes
harsh, sometimes warm, but definately timely, action-packed stuff.
From Neil in San Francisco:
- San Francisco, September 2, 1993
Bookstores: Old Wives Tales, Modern Times