Going beyond duty's call to save a child

[Bob Hubbard]

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Bob Greene: What can be done to ensure a locked-up child is noticed and rescued?
• In Whitehall, Ohio, 20 years ago, police officers found a boy under his parents' bed, he says
• Only their determination and perseverance enabled them to rescue him, Greene says

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/24/greene.missing.child/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Someone had phoned in a hot line report that a family in a Whitehall mobile home park was brutally abusing one of their sons. The 12-year-old boy allegedly had blackened eyes, was scarred on his face and had a severe speech impediment. Rex Adkins, at the time a young patrol officer, went to the home. No one was there.
He had been told that three children lived in the home, but that only the boy was being tortured. He returned later, and the parents let him in. They introduced him to a girl and a boy; they said these were their only children. The two children seemed healthy, but nervous. They told Adkins that they had no brother.
Adkins left. But he couldn't shake the thought that something was not right. He told some fellow officers. That night, he and four others returned to the trailer.

In fact, the commitment of five officers to the case was a significant strain on the department's resources. Whitehall, at the time, had only 42 police officers on the entire force, spread over three shifts. But if there was a boy in distress inside, these five had decided that they were not going to leave. They said through the door to the parents: If you don't let us in, one of us will go get a search warrant while the rest of us wait here.

James Stacy, at the time Whitehall's police chief, told me that the child had been beaten virtually since the time he was born. He was the one of the three children who was singled out for the brutality.
...

Stacy was convinced that, if his officers had not returned to the mobile home that evening, the family would have left town and the boy would never have been rescued. The child had broken bones and a skull fracture that had never been treated. The parents were arrested and charged with multiple felonies, and the boy and his brother and sister were taken to safety and placed in foster homes.