You MUST Read this Comment
Hello David.
A small but horrifying story for you, just one of many that I see every week.
There are drug dealer(s) working out of the Lore Krill social housing complex on Cordova (between Abbott and Carrall). (This is hardly news.) Walking to work in the morning, I often see drug addicts queued up at the intercom, trying to get in to get their morning fix.
This morning two addicts, a man and a woman, were at the intercom. The woman had a baby carrier on her back, and, initially, I thought she had a toy doll in it. When its head listlessly lolled back, I realized it was a live baby. It was naked. It's raining, it's three degrees. A blanket is trailing behind the woman, trailing through the puddles and the dogshit and the filth that spreads out from the homeless encampment across from Army and Navy.
Having lived in the DTES for a number of years, I know better than to directly intervene with junkies, especially those that are jonesing for drugs. Verbal abuse is nothing to me now - over the years I have been assaulted, grabbed, followed and threatened. Fortunately two men were nearby, a construction worker and a postman, and they intervened while I walked on.
I didn't see what subsequently happened. So many things bothered me about this vignette. My own cowardice, to start - it disgusts me that my fear for my own well-being is greater than my fear for that baby. But I am also swamped by a sense of futility. What difference would it make to see that the baby was wrapped up in the filthy, wet blanket, when its life is being destroyed, in far more profound and appalling ways, by its junkie mother? Why bother calling the cops - the addicts would be gone by the time they arrived, and what could the cops do anyway?
3 comments:
I simply had to share this one with my wife.
We discussed the situation.
She pointed out she might have started a conversation with "oops you dropped your baby's blanket" then stopped in mid-thought suddenly realizing where this was happening and whom it was that was the 'parent' to that naked baby.
The penultimate in helpless sacrifice...the innocent child born into such utter squalor and having lost their parents to the drugs, possibly addicted while in the womb.
I had to say back to my wife (whom knows that I have faught for others that wanted to escape abusive and/or abused lives, won some and lost some) that my icewater comes out when faced with such a situation.
I must walk-on.
Why?
Because I would not want a drug-addled society to suddenly start wanting to take my children away from me (so that they could be properly drugged up!).
I cannot assist that child, indeed my actions could very well end up making life worse (if one could imagine such a thing) for them.
Hard, ice-water for blood, frozen in my emotive response I KNOW, since to take action is to interfere, thus facing a reaction from the legal end of society; something that the junkies seem to know FAR too much about.
As difficult as it is to accept that this ADULT has brought into their world a child, then appears to be completely without a sense of responsibility for that child, we MUST accept that this has happened and MUST accept that this ADULT is to be permitted to carry on.
As sad as the picture looks from the simple passing by, we cannot make more of an intervention, at this stage, than a simple casual one "you dropped the blanket".
The intervention will come about, but only when real harm can be proven to have been done to that child. Therefore the police could do nothing (you saw no injury take place), the child services are so overwhelmed already that unless this child has no roof and no food (the clothes are not as big a concern as it is a baby and was 'in' a baby carrier) they will not intervene either.
Icewater I know, hard I accept as I know from personal experience that until that ADULT has hit their bottom or really is ready to 'clean-up' there is literally NOTHING ELSE I can DO.
Thank you David for highlighting this comment as it advertises the general dispair and reality faced ON THE GROUND, each and every day in the dark corners of our cities.
My heart is absolutely broken. And sadly, I have no doubt that many bleeding hearts would defend this mother's right to raise this baby as she saw fit. Though I wonder how they would defend her actions when she offered to sell the baby in exchange for her next fix?!
I have to disagree with murdock. Take that baby away now. That women may be an adult, but she is no more capable of raising a baby than a CHILD. There are plenty of good homes, with caring people who would love to adopt a baby. This kind of crap makes me sick. Yes Murdock, you are an iceman, shame on you!
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