No More Victims

In today’s society, too many children grow up with no one to look up to. Either there parents are irresponsible, have an alcohol or drug addiction, or have broken the law to the extent that they have been sent to jail for a long period of time. The movie ‘No More Victims’ shows us this troubling and unfortunate reality of life.

In this movie two parole officers, one male and one female, create a class at a local high school to give support and guidance to students whose parents have been incarcerated. The woman parole officer came up with the idea after seeing a young girl’s mother being arrested by two officers. The child was crying hysterically as her mother was hand cuffed and placed into the back of the police car. The woman parole officer proceeded to ask the two officers who would now take care of the little girl. Following the officer’s response of “who knows lady, its not my problem,” the woman looked over to see the child’s grandmother cursing and beating her as she pulled the innocent kid into the house. She was deeply disturbed by this. Upon returning to her office, she expressed her emotions to her friend and colleague. He responded by telling her that he had seen this behavior many times before. They both agreed that something had to be done to attempt to bread this cycle of behavior.

In the beginning, the students who decided to attend this class did so with a negative attitude, assuming that their two instructors knew nothing about their issues and their struggles in life. After several classes, each student began to open up to their classmates airing their problems and frustrations. One particular male student was very resistant until he came to class one day to a cake with candles and singing classmates, it was his birthday! He was overwhelmed with emotion as his eyes watered up and he began to cry. He had never had a birthday cake before, no one important in his life had acknowledged his special day until now. I thought that this scene was great because it shows that all these kids are missing is someone who cares for and loves them unconditionally, the love only a father or mother could provide. Many of these types of children grow up with no one to provide things like structure and guidance that I believe every child should be entitled to. This kind of atmosphere will often cause a young person to join a gang to provide for them a feeling of acceptance that they are not receiving at home.

Another male student in the class came home one day to find his step father on his case verbally abusing him for no apparent reason. When this young man retaliated, he was defenseless as he was beaten by his step father who was much bigger than he. I thought this portrayal of the situation was appropriate because in seeing it, you can really gather a sense of the lack of confidence one might have to deal with because of this. When you come home every day and someone in your family is telling you that you are worthless and you’ll never amount to anything, it creates a negative mentality. Someone in this position most likely will always feel like they have to defend themselves. If these ideas of no self worth and no potential are constantly beat into a child’s head, how could one expect that person to supercede this type of thinking.

Pertaining to another step father incedent, one of the female students announced to the class one day that she had been raped by him while her mother was out. This scene was perhaps the most disturbing to me especially since her mother did not believe her. The step father told this