Eating pancakes won’t prevent child abuse, but it can help

Proceeds from the Batesville Exchange Club’s pancake breakfast this Saturday will be used to combat child abuse.

“Broken bones, cigarette burns in the back,” said Exchange member Robert Rawson, offering specific examples of abuse too frequently encountered.

As a minister often called during family crisis, Rawson has learned too well the consequences when parents are unable to control anger and direct it toward their children. Rawson began over a decade ago to focus the attention of the Exchange Club toward child abuse prevention. He became an advocate for family counseling in general and mandatory counseling in cases when children are abused.

Efforts of children’s advocates eventually led chancery judges to require mandatory counseling before families can be reunited after abuse has occurred, Rawson said.

Rawson said that a parent who abuses a child is almost always remorseful afterwards. That remorse protects the child only until the parent is again faced with the same pressures that triggered the incident, and then the parent reacts the same way — taking their anger out on the child.

Counseling teaches abusive parents to recognize the individual stress factors that trigger their behavior and gives them an alternative to taking it out on the child, Rawson said.

Support for more counseling and for other work of the child abuse prevention facility which serves Panola County’s families will be the goal of Saturday’s pancake breakfast. Saturday, 7 to 10 a.m. at the Batesville Intermediate School cafeteria. Tickets can be purchased at The Panolian office or from any Exchange member.

Eating the pancakes is optional.

Buying the tickets is urgent.