The last known person to see Sandra Birchmore alive was a police officer. He stopped by her apartment a few days before Birchmore, 23 years old and newly pregnant, was found dead in February 2021. The officer acknowledged having sex with her when she was 15. His twin brother — also an officer and Explorer mentor — and a third Stoughton officer, a veteran who ran the program, eventually had sex with her, too. Birchmore’s case is among at least 194 allegations that law enforcement personnel, mostly policemen, have groomed, sexually abused or engaged in inappropriate behavior with children in the Boy Scouts Explorers since 1974.
ByClaire Savage, Associated Press/Report for America |
CHICAGO (AP) — Children as young as 11 are confined alone to cells the size of parking spaces up to 23 hours a day at a juvenile detention center in Southern Illinois, according to a lawsuit filed by ACLU of Illinois. Young people at the Franklin County Juvenile Detention Center in Benton must ask staff permission to flush the toilet, and they can go days or weeks without access to schoolwork. Black mold grows on the walls, according to the lawsuit filed Friday, and there are no mental health professionals employed at the facility.
Death rates were 5.9 times higher for previously incarcerated 11- to 21-year-olds in Ohio than in that state’s general population of youth enrolled in Medicaid health insurance for low-income people, according to a study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Open Network.
In a finding researchers said was especially startling, formerly incarcerated females died at nine times the rate of the general population.
“More than half of all deaths were among youths convicted of crimes against persons,” wrote the researchers, who examined 3,645 formerly incarcerated youth. “More deaths occurred in youths who were incarcerated for the first time and in youths who spent less than or equal to [one] year in custody.”
With suicides, including those by gun, the second-leading cause of death for 10- through 34-year-olds — and suicides surging by 35% during 20 years ending in 2019 — it’s important to raise awareness that suicides are preventable and that most of those survive an attempt do not try another.
That’s according to the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution, whose early December report, “Convergence Dialogue on Guns and Suicide Prevention,” highlights interventions, including safe gun storage and efforts to safeguard the mental health of young people and others who may be suicidal.
The Georgetown University Center for Juvenile Justice Reform is preparing to train this fall's inaugural class of juvenile justice executives and rank-and-file detention facility staffers in protocols aimed at limiting the use of solitary confinement of youth.
It had been scarcely a year since his son was discharged from the Navy following a suicide attempt, Ramon Day said, and only a few months since he’d voluntarily undergone in-patient care at Mental Health Resource Center in Jacksonville, Fla. So, when then 25-year-old Tyler Day returned from a Department of Veterans Affairs counseling appointment and offhandedly mentioned that he’d bought a gun, his father was stunned.
“You having a gun upsets me a great deal,” Ramon Day said, recalling his fright over his son’s revelation back in the summer of 2011. “If you would do me a personal favor, return the gun.”
Let me start by saying I am a triracial human being with a dark complexion. That was my funny way of saying I’m Black. I embrace my Mexican side. I embrace my Indian side and my Black side but for a while no one else embraced it.
I was bullied a lot growing up. I’m 33 years young, and it was because I didn’t fit the mold the world created for me.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for young people in the United States. More children and teens die by suicide than the next eight leading causes of death. Firearm suicide in particular is a growing crisis impacting young people: Every year nearly 3,000 young people die by firearm suicide. The rate of firearm suicide among youth ages 5 to 19 has increased 82% in the last decade. While suicide rates are increasing most among young people ages 10 to 19, researchers are noting a troubling trend of suicide among children as young as 5 years old.
The coronavirus pandemic has upended life as we know it, disrupting normal routines and cutting off access to many support networks.
Firearm sales have increased exponentially during COVID-19. More guns in the home increase the risk of youth access to firearms. In Michigan alone, a suicide occurs every 13 hours, and access to firearms increases the likelihood of suicide completion by 85%. Unintentional shooting deaths by children increased by 30% nationally March through May of 2020 compared to the same time period averages for 2018 and 2019.
As a psychiatric nurse practitioner this raises grave concerns for mental health and the public health crisis of gun violence. Locally in Washtenaw County, Michigan, I am a survivor fellow with Everytown for Gun Safety working with the local chapter of Moms Demand Action to get out voter information about gun sense candidates who are willing to work toward common-sense gun laws such as red flag laws, which temporarily remove firearms from individuals in crisis, and background checks for all weapons.
After losing my son Jonah to firearm suicide in 2016, I speak with groups (temporarily online) about why safe storage bills, such as Ethan’s Law in Connecticut, are crucial in the fight against teen suicide. In a world where teens are more isolated and having to manage multiple stressors that are new to all of us, in homes that are increasingly saturated with guns, we have an escalation of the public health crisis of suicide as teenage suicides rise nationally.
Theirs was supposed to be the kind of family people dream of having; a father, mother, son and daughter living in domestic harmony. Instead it became a nightmare.
