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enforcement. These include: abandonment; lack of su pervision; lack of medical or dental care; lack of ade quate clothing and poor personal hygiene; lack of ade quate nutrition; lack of adequate shelter; lack of emoti onal stimulation; and lack of education and chronic absenteeism. All of us can and must believe our children when they do tell. A child’s report is the single most signifi cant indicator of sexual or physical abuse. Abused children generally feel ashamed, humiliated, responsi ble, betrayed, angry and/or confused. What they need most at that moment of disclosure is the support of the adult listener who doesn’t doubt them. Don’t be baffled by the wide range of feelings a child may have towards the abuser — for example, both love and rage. Let the child know that it is okay to express all of these feelings. If a child has been abused, he or she will need to be professionally evaluated. Family doctors who are trained in the area of sexual abuse can conduct the exam in an unpainful and non-upsetting way. Know your doctor’s experience with these kinds of exams before a crisis occurs. Some hospital emergency rooms are set up to examine and treat pediatric patients admitted for sus pected sexual or physical abuse. Find these hospitals and pediatric trauma centers in your locale. Know your community’s resources. It’s an injustice for a child to be examined two or three times later. Finally, the law in your state may require that child protective services and/or law enforcement be notified of child maltreatment. By state law in New Jersey, any person who has reason to believe that a child has been abused or neglected must immediately notify the Div ision of Youth and Family Services (DYFS), New Jer sey’s child protective service agency. A toll-free phone number to call 24 hours a day, seven days a week is 1-800-792-8610. The identity of all referents is kept con fidential by law. Most other states have similar reporting requirements. Even when in doubt, call. You could be protecting a child from further maltreatment. You could be helping to break the cycle of violence and preserving our most important investment in the future: our children. 1. See Widom, Cathy Spatz, “The Cycle of Violence,” National Institute of Justice — October 1992. Patricia H. Kotyk-Zaiisko, an attorney, is Assistant Prose cutor/Director in Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, Newark, NJ., Director Child Abuse Unit with the state of New Jersey, as well as Trial Attorney. She is a member of many professional affiliations including the Governor’s Task Force on Child Abuse and Neglect — Protection Subcommittee and Child Death Review Team. Patricia is a member of UNWLA Inc Branch 98. MARTHA BOHACHEVSKY CHOMIAK R E D IS C O V E R IN G T H E H U M A N IT IE S IN U K R A IN E In the private university, the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, where I taught in the summer, American type of discus sion was kid’s stuff for the students. Reestablished in 1990, the Academy draws on a history, which though interrupted, antedates Harvard by some thirty years. The students were interested in women’s studies, in community organization, and had already organized an active extracurricular program run by students. That is not the case with the Kiev University, which in the fall of 1992 had dropped the term State from its name but changed very little else in the institution. A week or so into the semester the dean asked the Kievan second-year students, who were assigned to my class, to elect three from their midst as representatives to the student assembly. To my surprise, no students volun teered to run, and the dean nominated three good stu dents for that function. I asked why none of them wanted to be elected to a body that could conceivably help change the structure of the teaching at the univer sity, and insist on electives and more choices for stu dents. They argued that the system under which they functioned could not be modified until the government structure was changed. Eagerly, over a cup of coffee that had almost become too expensive for them, these young persons explained to me how they knew first hand the pervasive corruption of the "legality” of the Soviet era, and how it undermined any kernels of youth ful idealism. Their reaction provided yet another proof of my earlier contention that one of the worst crimes of the Soviet regime was the destruction of the actual dis course of democracy. By going through the motions of social participation it destroyed hope in the efficacy of any community action and robbed the population of a language which could be used to rally the population to establish conditions for its own self-help. ’’Newspeak” destroyed the preconditions for creating a new society, or reactivating the dormant one. It did not, however, destroy a conscious desire of activists to try to change the system. Some of the same Ukrainian students who lectured me on the futility of working through the uni versity administration, had gone on a hunger strike in October 1990, setting up tents on Kiev’s main street in front of the huge statue of Lenin to demand the dismis sal of the Soviet prime minister for Ukraine, Vitaliy Masol, for ineptitude. The resignation of Prime Minister Masol was the only such case in the entire history of the 'НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛИПЕНЬ-СЕРПЕНЬ 1994 21
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