Healing abused girls is frustrating and rewarding work for social workers and the girls alike, but most frustrating for social workers is the lack of family cooperation, said Cheng Su-ling (鄭淑玲), chairwoman of the Mennonite Good Shepard Center in Hualien, in an interview yesterday.
Speaking from her seven years of experience at the center, Cheng described the social conditions that lead to domestic abuse and victims' desire for
acceptance.
"When we first see the girls, their backgrounds make it hard to trust anyone. They may act tough, but at the same time, they're very vulnerable," she said.
The center's clients include sexually-abused girls from ages nine to 18 who have been sent to the center by the courts. The girls usually stay for one to two years. During that time, the shelter provides academic help, psychological counseling and arts classes.
The aim is to establish a safe and stable place for the girls to explore their feelings and options before they return home.
"We try to keep in contact with the family throughout their child's time with us, but often parents don't come or won't be around when we go visit," Cheng said.
"It's hard. The girls yearn for acceptance from their families despite all they've been through. When family members don't come see the child, the girl will wonder if it's through some fault of her own and blame herself," Cheng said.
She said it takes about two months to a year for the girls to learn to trust the center's staff enough to make progress. But progress does not necessarily guarantee post-center improvement, she added.
"There's really so little that we can do once the girls leave us. You can only hope that the girls will not forgo the progress they've made and fall back into the patterns of their old life," Cheng said.
Commenting on changes she has seen through the years, Cheng said, "When I first came to work here, we had mostly sexual-abuse cases. Now, cases are becoming more complex. Girls are coming in with multiple sources of trauma, such as sexual abuse at home , plus rape and neglect."
"Societal pressures have increased throughout the years, on both parents and children. Parents may have to work more and face financial difficulties. As a result, the family as a unit cannot fulfil its typical functions of providing stability and security," Cheng said.
The center's No. 1 source of case leads are schools, she said.
"Teachers play a very important role, since they interact with the children on a daily basis," she said.
If you suspect a case of sexual abuse or battering, the center suggests calling 113, the national domestic violence hotline.
More information about the the Good Shepard center is available by call (03) 822-4614 or e-mailing s328000@ms4.hinet.net.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching