Abuse Problem Growing, Panel Says
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According to a "report card" issued by the child-advocacy group Children First of Oregon, which also took part in the forum, child abuse has increased 41 percent since 1984.

Locally, the deaths of Joshua Ralls, Devyn Handsaker and Sara Rambeck, have ignited the community's outrage and frustration about the problem.

To properly address those frustrations, Dey urged people to realize how the atmosphere for abuse has changed.

She said families in the 1960's came to children's services organizations voluntarily. Teen-agers, not children, ended up in foster care, and usually because of parent-child conflicts rather than abuse. Drugs were not a big problem and kids usually were attending schools, she said.

"I worked five years before I even saw my first sex abuse case," she said.

Now, Dey says the children she's helping have lived through terrifying and violent situations. Drugs and alcohol abuse is prevalent. Families are isolated from the community, and most abusive families are headed by parents who were abused as children.

"It's a much more hostile situation that families are living in today," she said.

Paul McLaughlin, familiar to many Eugene motorist as The Child Abuse Man because of his streetside campaign against abuse, told the forum in a moving speech that every person must get involved in some way. If they were abused, as he was, they must stop the cycle, McLaughlin said.

"All I can do is do the best I can to stop child abuse," he said.

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