Last year my daughter came home and told me about a boy at school.

The boy is gay and his parents are aware of it. The father is convinced that if he makes his son date girls he'll become "normal." The boy says his father beats him because of his reluctance to cooperate. The boy has dated girls at his father's urging and one of the girls even admitted she had no idea he was gay while they were dating. He has "come out of the closet" now. Unfortunately this honor roll student also dropped out of school because of the teasing other boys did to him. I cried when I heard this.

One of the women on our street works for the county as a child advocate. I went to her with what I knew. She told me to write down everything and she'd bring it to her boss to see what could be done. I was worried what could happen since the boy was only 17 at the time. I was assured that the father would be asked to take parenting classes and the boy would not be put in foster care. I also worried that the father would beat his son even more if he became aware that the son was talking to others about the abuse.

She came back to me saying that unless I had seen the father beat his son or the son was willing to admit his father beat him there was nothing they could do. They could not even talk to him (the father).

I can fully understand that authorities get all kinds of false reports and they must be very careful when investigating them. I was falsely led to believe that you can call abuse hot lines to report this sort of thing but it seems in reality it really isn't the case. Has anyone else ever tried to speak up for a child?