A dear friend in another state e-mailed me the following true story.

Maria (not her real name) is a senior in high school. That means she is perhaps 17 or 18 years old. Last week, she approached her high school guidance counselor to ask her how she could become the legal guardian for her three siblings.

The 17 and 18-year-olds I know are busy planning their weekends around football games and parties. I knew this was going to be a story I needed to hear.

When prompted, Maria explained that her brother had endured another night of abuse when his father beat him with a belt and a stick because he did not take the trash out as quickly as the father expected him to. The results of this beating were covered by his clothing, but it was so severe that the young man is now in the custody of relatives.

Maria subsequently revealed that she had been a victim of sexual abuse by an uncle who is currently in jail because of repeated molestation and rape of female family members, even fathering a child with one niece. Maria’s parents would not allow her to file charges against the uncle, and they have denied her the opportunity to receive counseling.

Foster care for these children exists not in the county in which they reside but two counties over, a situation that more than likely assures that the siblings will be split up if placed in foster care. Surely, at a time like this, they need each other more than ever.

The parents are angry that the children have discussed “family business” with authorities. I can only imagine how their anger may be raged against their children in multiple forms of abuse.

Parents scorned can be an intimidating and dangerous force on children who live in fear and seek to live in peace, regardless of the cost.

Maria has stepped forward to assume the mantle of responsibility for her siblings. It’s just not something that a young person ought to have to do; yet she has mustered the courage to stand up and be counted as someone who will love, care for and protect her siblings. She’s fighting, not just for herself, but for them as well. Her purpose goes well beyond the self-absorption typical of many teenagers.

Maria is fighting for something. Maria is fighting for someone.

Stories like this demonstrate the crisis that the family is currently undergoing. In the days of my youth, we never heard stories like this. Perhaps they existed, but we were unaware. I was 13 years old before I knew the word “divorce” and when someone told me their parents were getting a divorce, I had to ask my parents what that meant. It has been as commonplace a word as hamburger in my daughter’s life.

Though every family is not as desperate as Maria’s, there are hundreds of thousands of stories out there that reflect the basic undercurrents of divorce, neglect, indulgence, abandonment and instability that threaten the very fabric of society by slowly destroying the strength of the family.

When children from these kinds of homes grow up, they generally have no concept of what a family should be other than what they have seen and observed; therefore, the coming generations will reflect a growing number of poorly functioning families parented (or not) by adults who do not have the skills to do so.

I wonder what will happen to Maria. I wonder what will happen to her siblings. I wonder if the “authorities,” understaffed and underfunded, will be able to help this young woman who is trying so hard to help herself.

Maria teaches me that mine is not the only reality. Her story also makes me wonder how much of a cultural and family decline our nation will tolerate until it finally says, “No more.”

Harris Murray is director of library services at Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College. She can be reached by e-mail at writeharris55@yahoo.com.

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