Analysis Of In Death, Florida Family Reveals A Spiral Of Domestic Abuse

In the article, “In Death, Florida Family Reveals a Spiral of Domestic Abuse,” the children portrayed in this story had shown many of the signs listed above, and yet, no one intervened. Lizette Alvarez and Frances Robles wrote about the horrific abuse that had plagued the whole household in a small Florida town. In Bell, Florida a woman by the name of Sarah Spirit, 28 years of age would constantly call the police on her father who she claimed was brutally violent and that she was terrified of him. The uniqueness about this story is that the abuse was not between a husband and wife, it was between a father and daughter and her six children. However, as stated previously, domestic violence can be any form of abuse between two people in the household.

Spirit had nowhere to go. The family lived in harsh conditions and drug abuse played a major role in their lifestyle. The abuse was constant and extreme. According to the article, Florida’s child care services had gone out to the home on several occasions, however, the six children were never taken. The agency also never gave reason as to why they did not remove the children from the house. According to witnesses, the children expressed aggressive like behavior at school as well. One witness mentioned how his son had tried to befriend the oldest Spirit child but he had to interject because he noticed the aggressive like behavior that he displayed in school and he did not want that type of behavior rubbing off on his son. The oldest son had very little friends and he was constantly in fistfights. The superintendent of the school stated that he never saw any concern to interfere when it came to these issues. Unfortunately, the perpetrator murdered everyone in the household, including himself (Alvarez, Robles, 2014). Had someone intervened, would that family had been saved? Had the school picked up on the children’s behavior, could they have been one less

While the case listed above was an unfortunate event, imagine the children who do not exhibit such harsh behavior and still get overlooked? Many children who are exposed to violent behavior in the household tend to become numb and emotionally unavailable (Weithorn, Behrman, 1999). They do not have to show anger or be physically violent, some children seem to become silent, depress and possibly distance themselves from others. I had the privilege of interviewing a professional in the education field. Shayna Bennett- Givner is the director for Teenie’s Tot Daycare located in Pittsburgh. I wanted to get a first-hand insight on behavioral issues and how she has to deal with them with in her business.
In my interview Shayna Bennett, I asked her questions that were pertinent to the issue at hand. All of my questions were directed towards how she and her faculty handled this situation as well as the different methods that were used to pinpoint the issue. The reason I chose to do an interview is because I wanted to get a first-hand experience as to how one should handle children with behavioral issues because of a domestic abuse problem. The answers that were given seemed pretty