Dear Next President:

Children of America need your help. For hundreds of years children have been abused by their parents. The law for child abuse is that it is a failure to act. Nearly 80% of children suffer from neglect, 19% suffer from physical abuse and 9% from sexual abuse. The child abuse cases must be controlled and stopped from spreading (nationalchildrensalliance.org).

Child abuse in the United States is a terrible problem for many reasons. First of all, children get badly injured. One way children can get injured is that the parents can send their children to work and that child can die from working without any necessities in the child’s bloodstream. One reason is that the child is abused because that child's family is poor and he had to work to get money along with his family. Also, when children are abused, the children get scared of everything. Some might agree that child abuse needs more attention at an earlier point as soon as it is noticed. If these problems are not fixed, the child abuse cases will keep on growing, and not be looked at and cared for like they should be.

I am letting you know about child abuse that happened and touched my heart and hit my home. My dad started to date a girl that has three kids. The smallest one was 5 months old. Her bio-dad was in prison until she was three. All was good until he got out. It all happened in 4 short years, when she was three to seven years old. In those years she was sexually abused, beat with a belt and rope, and had hickeys on her body. Abused emotionally, physically, and mentally. The part that made me so mad is that all of this was done with no help from the law enforcement. My dad's girlfriend also went to court with also no help. She was just told she had to keep sending her to her father all through these 4 years. There were 35 calls made to the DHS, 5 visits to the ABC House, several times to Old Mill Center and Crime Investigation. January 8th, 2015 was the falling point for her; it changed her life for the worst. She is now in counseling at Linn County Mental Health. She also has PTSD now at the age of 8. However, there is a happy ending to the tear jerking story. Her bio-father's rights have been demolished. My father adopted her and I gained an amazing sister on November 17, 2015. Our justice system needs to change. Bio-father walked away from this with no jail time. Walked away free, which makes me sick.

The U.S. is based on the idea that the children of this great country are safe. What we don't want people to know is that not all children are safe inside their houses. As president you will have the power to lead changes in the current situation about child abuse. I have faith you can help these children before it gets worse.

Sincerely,

Rachel Simmons