Experience from A Youth Mentor

I have received a few e-mails about the outcomes of abuse, or the actions abuse can lead to. Let me share with you one such e-mail.

The e-mail was provided by an at-risk youth mentor, from a local youth center. I have kept all names out of the e-mail, and the company he/she works for. We can talk about confidentiality another time, or the reason you will never find any names listed on the website.

He/She emailed me about the youth he/she works for, and a personal experience from his/her family:

“Most of our clients come from dysfunctional situations. Many of them have been physically abused, sexually abused, or emotionally abused or neglected. One of our clients comes from such a household. His mother committed suicide when he was only 11 years old. His father has committed several felonies and may be on the way to prison. It is no wonder that this client was confused on how to cope with his difficult circumstances. As a teenager he moved in with his girlfriend. He burglarized a local facility to get money to buy methamphetamines. He was placed in lock up and has been in and out of programs for the last few years until he ended up with us. He suffers from depression and ended up getting in more trouble in our program. He was then sent to a more secure program (meaning lock up or juvenile detention) for 30 days and now is in a more secure program until he is released. I doubt the counseling he has received really gave him direction. All this was due to the dysfunction in his life. Our client’s lives all reflect something similar. Several of them were abused.

Similarly, my own uncle was abused as a foster child. At age 11 he was adopted, but by that time he was smoking. Shortly thereafter he got into drugs. He later robbed a gas station and was sent to prison. The state then offered him two options: serve in Vietnam or fulfill the remainder of his sentence. He chose Vietnam. Already addicted to drugs, he got in to opium while in Vietnam. His addiction was so serious that that discharged him. My grandmother pleaded his case and the military mercifully extended him an honorable discharge. Upon return, he got into more trouble. He eventually died while drunk and swimming at age 32.”