Hi Lex,

I support you for taking a stand up when you felt a child could not do so for him or herself. Our Gatekeepers are failing our children out of fear of litigation and censorship, along with Compassion fatigue under the weight of the shear magnitude of this issue, and if we wait for them to identify every case of Abuse these types of Forums are going to hold Millions of more hurting adult survivors as well as the next generation of victims. I recently had to turn my sister into Child Protective Services in Dec 2004, for imprisoning, emotional abusing, and literally starving my young Niece, in which she convinced her entire family including her Spouse that this was being ordained by God. I won’t go into to much detail, but it was a battle, other professionals who were witness to the issue, did not want to report it, and when I confronted them I got statements of “I know this is a CPS case, but I am afraid they will only make matters worse”, and this was from an MD, who happened to be a church member and felt the issue would place him at odds with his duties as a religious confidant, plus she would withdrawal further into her delusional world and may not allow any contact with my Niece from even church members. This man also told me he knew my sister was mentally ill, and needed help, but this was not his area of expertise, I hit wall, after wall, after wall, it was not these were bad people they just understood how broken the system is, and after awhile you get complacent. So, finally at the risk of loosing a relationship a truly valued, I turned her in, and did exactly that. The whole family is now in Counseling, there is a lot of anger directed toward their mother as they become aware of the web of delusions, but my Niece is thriving, although it has resulted in a pending Divorce with the other parent having temporary custody, I would not, no, I could not watch another child suffer as much as I remember us suffering due to severe childhood physical and emotional abuse. No child deserves to suffer and suffer, and suffer..please I hope you find solace in your decision, it’s a very lonely place to be, my family too did not want me to make the waves, told me to let someone else take up the alarm..but there are to many newspaper stories with the results of that kind of thinking..my sister is still delusional, she refuses to get help, she told me I am no longer her sister, which hurts more than words can convey..I truly love and miss her..I hope someday she will take the medication she needs, until then, my Niece is learning to how to live..and I take solace in that..and again I hope you will too eventually..this is very hard sharing, so please it was done with hope it would help.