It is significant that both my mother and father experienced abuse at an early age. They were children at the beginning of the 20th century -- my father in New York City, and my mother in Massachusetts. My mother was orphaned (along with five siblings) when her young mother died during the great Flu Epidemic of 1918. My mother was 10 or eleven and the second oldest.
Their father had placed the five girl children, including an infant, in a Catholic orphanage, taking only his son with him into his new life without a wife. The girls were on their own thereafter. The youngest child was adopted and never seen again by her siblings. My mother and two of the remaining four girls were placed in foster homes where they all experienced ongoing incidents of abuse, especially sexual, and neglect until they were old enough to escape. Although they all survived in to stable, productive lives as adults, none ever lost the chill horror of that experience. They did have one advantage: their sisters.
I tell this story because I grew up with a mother deeply affected throughout her long life by the loss of mother, and the experiences of abuse that she experienced growing up. Her experience naturally heightened my awareness of the plight of children subject to abuse and neglect. All children know who is important to their welfare and survival. Without care, kindness and affection, like the rest of us, they are without a life—jacket. My mother -- was mine. That is the role of the parent in nature, although many of us experience or are exposed to people who do not provide any of the above.
So you can see that my interest in the NYSPCC is fueled by personal history. I think that’s true of many of us who share that empathic interest, but not entirely. I asked Mary Pulido, who grew up in Trumbull, Connecticut in a home free of those fears, how she got involved the NYSPCC.
![]() | ![]() | | Elbridge Gerry and Henry Bergh, founders of NYSPCC and ASPCA. | ![]() | ![]() |
She told me that as a child, she wanted to learn how to play the piano. Her parents couldn’t afford a piano but she had a maternal aunt nearby who had one. That aunt also paid for her lessons. Her aunt was a social worker. She knew this although she didn’t know what the term defined. One afternoon when she was at her aunt’s house practicing the piano, her aunt got a phone call. Mary had been instructed beforehand never to listen to her aunt when she was on the phone. The phone call was about a report that came in about a little three-year-old girl who had been tied up with venetian blind string and beaten. The child Mary was so distressed to learn such a thing could happen to a little girl, she decided then that she wanted to be a social worker when she grew up.
Yesterday Pulido and Grant talked about the problem – which is ongoing and very great: in the last two weeks there have been ten deaths of children in New York City because of child abuse and neglect. Three of them were murder. The problem is everywhere, in all socio-economic brackets although it is generally the poor whose children are deprived of any kind of support or help. The NYSPCC is doing that.
The Society was formed in 1875 by Elbridge Gerry, a prominent and wealthy lawyer. His action was prompted by the report of a ten year old girl, an orphan, in Hell’s Kitchen who was regularly beaten and starved by her caretaker, a woman she called “momma.”
The case was brought to Gerry’s attention by a social worker who had heard about the abuse, investigated it and decided to find a way to rescue the child. Gerry enlisted the assistance of his friend Henry Bergh who had founded the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). They applied the same rules and legal applications to their new NYSPCC.
Denouement. The little girl from Hell’s Kitchen who was rescued was placed in a home where she was well cared for in a loving family. She grew up to marry and have a family and died at the age of 92 in 1956.
Yesterday, Pulido and Grant talked about the child’s experience overcoming the wounds of abuse. The NYSPCC have programs for these children where they are taught how to detect oncoming abuse, how to find safety for themselves and thereafter how to move away emotionally from the trauma of the experience. They told me they are having a lot of success with these programs. Children are resilient by nature to one degree or another.
A child who has one person in his or her life who demonstrates affection regularly toward that child can save a life. The experience of kindness, a gentle disposition, joy of company are powerful antidotes to the misery that abused and neglected children are made to endure with all its negative ramifications. The NYSPCC works everyday to provide that kindness and gentle disposition to many children in New York.
You can help. Somehow. www.nyspcc.org/nyspcc/
![]() | ![]() | | Philip Howard, author of “The Rule of Nobody." | ![]() |
Notes on the Calendar: Today at luncheon at The Links Club on 36 East 62nd Street, Philip Howard, author of the best-selling “The Death of Common Sense;” “Life Without Lawyers,” “The Collapse of the Common Good,” will be speaking about his newest work “The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government” (WW Norton, publishers).
Philip who is a partner of Covington & Burling LLP has advised two presidents and numerous public officials on legal and government reform. You may have seen him on The Daily Showwith Jon Stewart or his TED Talk, which is widely watched.
“The Rule of Nobody” is about how “the United States is so choked with rules that, in effect, nobody is in charge. Millions of words of detailed regulation have usurped official responsibility and severed the links of government to broader society.”
Catching up. While French President François Hollande was heading to Washington for a State Dinner in his honor at the White House, a gala dinner was presented by the Consul General of France, Bertrand Lortholary, and hosted by Drs. Mireille and Dennis Gillings for the launch of Dennis and Mireille Gillings Global Public Health Fellowships.
Mireille, founder of HUYA Bioscience International, and her husband, Dennis, founder of Quintiles, Inc., hosted the event to announce their renewed commitment to advancing public health in a partnership between the Institut Pasteur and UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Awarded annually, these Fellowships will support post-doctoral scientists to join one of the Institut Pasteur’s 32International Network sites based in 25 countries on 5 continents.
Among those attending the luncheon were scientists, biopharmaceutical executives and investment banking leaders. Evercore Partners’ CEO Ralph L. Schlosstein and his wife Jane Hartley, CEO of Observatory Group – and said to be President Obama’s leading candidate for US Ambassador to France - were there along with Evercore Partners’ François Maisonrouge and his wife, “Luxury Alchemist” Ketty Pucci-Sisti Maisonrouge. Also Pablo Legorreta, founder of Royalty Pharma and his wife Almudena, along with Dr. William Haseltine, founder of Human Genome Sciences, and his wife, Maria Eugenia, were joined by Christopher Viehbacher, and his wife Alison, Dr. Barbara Rimer, dean of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, along with Institut Pasteur president Dr. Christian Bréchot, who oversees the 125 year old research institute, and his wife, Dr. Patrizia Paterlini-Bréchot. The Consul General broke his own curfew as the party went on until well after 10pm – the official closing time for the Consulate!
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