Chandler Grafner
UPDATE: 8/12/08: The jury found Chandler’s foster father guilty of murder in the first degree. He will receive a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole. The father’s girlfriend, pleaded gulity, and made a plea bargain before her trial started. She will be sentenced to 48 years in prison.
**Before you read any further, please be warned that this is a horrible and heartbreaking case of abuse. I can’t even follow it in any detail- it is too horrific for me, and I won’t be writing about the awful details, but I feel it is important to help raise awareness on child abuse.**
The child abuse that Chandler Grafner, a 7 year old boy suffered by his half-brother’s dad, and his common-law wife, who by the way were his legal guardians, are just horrendous and gruesome. You can read a brief summary of what happened to him on Wikipedia here. (This is a summary and does not go into all the details.)
The “father” of Chandler is now on trial for first-degree murder charges, and if you can stomach it, you can read what is happening in the case, and all the sickening details of how these people abused and eventually killed Chandler here. (About half way down the page, in the right sidebar, there is a box of related links, and you can start there if you want to read about the entire case.)
While I know the basic details, I can’t read about this story for more than a few seconds without crying. It is just so heartbreaking to know a child was treated like this. What is worse, is so many people failed Chandler from social services- people who should have been able to recognize what was happening.
I believe a teacher of Chandler’s did report possible abuse to Denver social services, as did the assistant principal, but evidently social services did not do enough to save Chandler. Eventually Chandler was pulled out of school because the teachers and school were asking questions, and trying to get help for Chandler, but again, social services did not catch the extent of what was happening.
Whether others suspected abuse was happening or not, I don’t know- I can’t read the story in enough detail to know. But I do know that nothing like this should ever happen to a child, but sadly it does. I just can’t help but think how many other children are being abused in our communities, right under our noses?
This little boy should not have had to give his life, which hadn’t even started, up to child abuse. I can only hope that if anything slightly positive can come from the senseless death of Chandler and so many others like him, is this can serve as a wake-up call in our society and communities.
We have to be more aware and stop thinking that other kids aren’t our business. We should stop worrying if we will offend the parents, or come across as nosey, if we suspect a child is being abused. We have to start focusing on kids. Instincts are seldom wrong- if you suspect a child is being abused, don’t ignore it. Report what you suspect, and pray that social services will do their job- even though they failed Chandler.
People talk about the evil out in the world- terrorists and the such, but this just shows we have plenty of evil right here in our society. We have to get more involved when we think a child is being abused. It is far better to report a possible child abuse case, and be wrong about it, than to continue to have innocent children like Chandler suffer, and die painful and horrible deaths.
If you suspect a child in your neighborhood, school, or community is being abused, it only takes a simple, brief, and usually anonymous phone call to your social services department. They can be found in your phone book, or on-line. Or you can contact the The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline, which is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Or The Child Abuse Hotline. You can also make tax-free donations to organizations like these, and help support their important work.
I pray and hope Chandler and the other thousands of children who die at the hands of child abusers are in a better place and are finally free from their sad, painful, and heartbreaking short lives.
How we treat and protect our children shows what kind of a society we are. I think this quote sums it up perfectly,
There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children
~Nelson Mandela