[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 123 (Tuesday, September 10, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10207-S10208]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR THE VILLAGE . . .

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, we are hearing a great deal of talk 
about whether a family should save a child or whether a village should 
save a child. Obviously, we all should be doing what we can to save 
children.
  The morning after the Democratic convention, I picked up the Chicago 
Tribune and read one person's moving story. Her name is Bunnie Reidel. 
I have never met her, but sometime I hope to have the honor of meeting 
her.
  She tells a story that is important for all Americans to hear.
  I ask that her story be printed in the Congressional Record.
  The article follows:

                 Had It Not Been for the Village . . .

                           (By Bunnie Riedel)

       These days the word ``village'' makes Republicans hiss and 
     sneer and makes Democrats cheer wildly. Maybe it's because 
     village has become the rallying cry for Republican-backed 
     ``parental rights'' laws. Or maybe because the word is 
     Afrocentric, as is the context from which ``It takes a 
     village to raise a child'' is lifted. I don't know. I am 
     sure, however, that parental rights proposals send chills 
     down my spine and if it hadn't been for that much-maligned 
     village, I would not be who I am today. In fact, I'd most 
     likely be dead.
       My youth was a living hell at best. I have the distinction 
     of having had not one, but two mothers who were total 
     failures.
       My first mother was my biological mother. She became an 
     itinerant farm worker, alcoholic, and finally, murder victim. 
     I was her 12th child and there were three more to follow me. 
     She left the Ozarks of Missouri while she was pregnant with 
     me, with my older sister at her side, stopping just long 
     enough in Tulsa to have me and then move on to California. 
     There she worked the fields, lived off the kindness of loser 
     men and drank her once attractive self into complete ruin. 
     When I was two, she became pregnant again and decided to give 
     me (not my sister or the new baby) up for adoption to her two 
     landlords. I didn't see my older sister, Debra, for another 
     20 years and I met the original 10 children (left behind in 
     Missouri) 10 years after that.
       My second mother, Naomi, thought of herself as being 
     completely antithetical to the first and in many ways she 
     was. She provided a home, clothes, great cooking and regular 
     church attendance. I can count the number of times she hugged 
     me on one hand and count even fewer times she told me she 
     loved me. Our home looked fine from without but was a 
     nightmare within. My father died when I was 8 and Naomi 
     conveniently forgot his admonition that she was not to hit 
     me. So hit me she did. With belts, coat hangers, kicks, hair 
     and ear-pulling, Naomi was determined to beat the hell out of 
     me.
       But more than the beatings. I'll never forget the things 
     she said: ``You'll never amount to anything.'' ``You're so 
     stupid.'' ``Sometimes I would like to kill you.'' These 
     verbal tirades were almost worse than the physical beatings 
     because they would last for hours. I'll never forget the time 
     I had a girlfriend spending the night and my mother woke me 
     up at 4 a.m. and railed on me until 7. My friend will never 
     forget it either. Even now, after 25 years, my old friend 
     mentions that episode every time we see each other.
       For me, and for so many children like me, the village 
     became our lifesaver. I would leave the house in the morning 
     with swollen, red eyes (from crying myself to sleep the night 
     before) and find haven for a few hours a day with adults who 
     were actually kind, helpful and praised my accomplishments. 
     School was my salvation. It was the teachers I encountered at 
     public school who gave me a glimpse of what life could 
     actually be like. In that glimpse, I saw a world beyond my 
     mother's house, full of wonder and unafraid of inquiry. It 
     was a world where discipline was administered with dignity 
     and self-esteem was valued. Mrs. Nyberg, Mr. Woody, Mrs. 
     Papadakis, Mr. Pessano, Mr. McDonald and Mrs. Edwards were 
     people who broadened my horizons with ideas and information 
     that were unattainable at home. They were people who gave me 
     something to hold onto throughout those dark, ugly days and 
     none of them knew that.
       In my neighborhood, there were other examples of caring 
     adults. My Girl Scout leader thought I had a keen, 
     interesting mind and she told me so. The German woman down 
     the street (with the six kids) taught me how to do the twist 
     and offered me graham crackers and hot chocolate. My friend's 
     aunt spent hours with me as I entered my teen years, talking 
     to me like I was really a human being.
       I used every excuse I could to go out into the village. I 
     was active in after-school activities and clubs. I began 
     working at 13. I

[[Page S10208]]

     went away to church camp. I excelled in drama, journalism and 
     forensics. These are the things that kept me from drowning 
     myself in drugs or alcohol. These people and activities kept 
     me from killing myself that one awful night when I was 16 and 
     I had reached the end of my rope. These people and activities 
     gave me the courage to pack a bag and leave home at 17, two 
     weeks before I was ready to start my first semester at the 
     university my mother insisted I could not go to, even though 
     I had a scholarship and grants that completely paid my way. 
     If it hadn't been for that village . . .
       Now, many years since Naomi's death and many miles from 
     that home that was not a home, I count on the village as a 
     parent. When my children were little, the village taught me 
     simple things that I had not learned at home; how to breast 
     feed, how to change diapers, how to teach my children to 
     read, how to discipline without violence. As my children have 
     become teenagers and I have become a single parent, the 
     village has become even more critical to my family's health 
     and well-being. There are those loving adults at our church 
     who adore my children, give them new experiences and constant 
     encouragement. There are those caring adults at their school 
     who challenge them to stretch their imaginations and use 
     their intellect. There are those adults in our neighborhood 
     who wave and smile and provide a watchful eye of protection. 
     As a single, custodial parent of children whose father is 
     3,000 miles away and rarely sees them, I count on the men in 
     the village to provide examples to my son and daughter of 
     what dedicated, responsible men look like.
       I know firsthand that not every parent is wise, all-knowing 
     and caretaking. Sometimes it is because they did not receive 
     those things themselves as children; sometimes it is because 
     they are hopelessly lost in their own egos.
       Making fun of a promising and true statement, that it does 
     indeed ``take a village to raise a child,'' does not change 
     bad parents into good ones, it only furthers political games 
     at the expense of children. Writing into law that a parent's 
     ``rights'' are absolute and inalienable (and thereby 
     overturning almost 2,000 state child abuse statutes), will 
     not strengthen families but lead to despair for the most 
     vulnerable members of those families.
       The village saved my life.

                          ____________________