They tried to kill me.  I was six or so and I've remembered this incident my whole life.  I was in the back of a dump truck, riding, a man was driving.  No one else in passenger seat but I was in the back.  We drive downhill the winding dirt road to the Bartlett city dump 1953 or so, I've come this way before.  At the bottom the truck stops, and engine cranks up for dumping mechanism on truck, it starts to turn to dump me out.  I am banging on the window and hollering, no-no-no don't dump it, stop stop.  The man is facing forwards and pretends to not hear me, he has to hear me, but he keeps facing forward and the truck keeps turning to dump me out.  Until I fall land slam on the ground. 

This part has been related to me later.  People gathered around, thought I was dead, people thought I was dead, I must have shown signs of being dead.  But then, as my aunt said, I “popped back up” and jumped up and apparently ran around for a moment “like a chicken with head cut off.” I don't know what exactly was said,  But I've never forgotten yelling stop stop and the man continuing to stare ahead when I knew he was hearing me.

One time my aunt visiting at the dinner table referred to it as “the time Kathy came back to life.”

Her remark was met with a strained and awkward silence.

Now I look back now on that incident and realize the period of time coincides with being taken to the cardinal’s mansion and told to stop babbling about what Father Horne did to me. 

Just now reading news about the hearings going on in Geneva about the rights of children, one day before the stream of news stories starts about the Catholic priests, it was this headline that made me begin to put that incident in perspective.

Key UN body can now hear complaints from children whose rights have been violated

UNITED NATIONS
United Nations News Centre

14 January 2014 – A new legal instrument allowing children or their representatives to file a complaint with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child is set to go into effect in April, following its final required ratification, the United Nations today announced.

Costa Rica became the tenth country to ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the child on a Communications Procedure, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) announcement noted.

“The Optional Protocol gives children who have exhausted all legal avenues in their own countries the possibility of applying to the Committee,” said Kirsten Sandberg, Chairperson of the Geneva-based Committee on the Rights of the Child, which monitors implementation of the treaty and its protocols.

“It means children are able to fully exercise their rights and are empowered to have access to international human rights bodies in the same way adults are under several other human rights treaties.”

Starting in April, individual children or groups of children from the countries that have ratified the Optional Protocol will be able to submit complaints to the Committee on specific violations related to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Posted by Kathy Shaw at 6:39 PM

My first reaction reading that was, great, good for them, but it doesn't make my life any better.  Then I stopped and actually processed this thought:  What happened to me won’t happen to other children. That's as far as it got, I have very little Polyanna instincts. 

But it's obvious that if back in 1953 there had been such a thing as Child Protection Services like we have in L.A. and Chicago and in every county in America now, I doubt the stuff that happened to Patricia and me would ever have developed.

We were definitely pre-child protective services kids.