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On Jan. 17 a federal class action lawsuit was filed against the state of Maryland Department of Human Services (DHS) over inadequate prescription oversight of psychotropic drugs for children in the foster care system—putting them in danger of overdoses and serious side effects.

According to the lawsuit, recent DHS data shows that at least 72.1 percent of children in Maryland foster care who are taking psychotropic drugs “do not have a documented psychiatric diagnosis.”

The lawsuit states that “this could suggest that psychotropic drugs are not administered in response to a diagnosed mental health condition but instead are administered as a form of chemical restraint,” and “at minimum, it evidences inadequate medical record-keeping.”

Read more here. 

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What Will Future History Be for Today’s Girls?

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Picture this:

You’re a parent of a 13-year-old girl who is just starting to discover the world of social media.

As you’re aware that the online world can pose some dangers to kids, you try to do a bit of research on the various apps your daughter is using, to make sure they’re safe. There’s one in particular she spends most of her time on, and you haven’t heard of it before. It’s called “Kik.”

Doing your due diligence, you browse the Kik website to see what this app is all about. Much to your comfort, the website is full of assurances that Kik is “built especially for teens,” and offers teens a “fun, safe place to connect.”

You’re more than satisfied. What a stroke of luck that, of all the apps your daughter could have chosen as her favorite, she happened to settle on one that was specifically designed for kids her age!

. . . Or so you thought.

Read more here. 

Horrifying cases of women being raped in their rooms at top hotel chains are occurring because staff are allegedly handing over keys to sexual predators unchecked, The Post can reveal.

In two separate cases in Texas, men allegedly broke into women’s rooms after lying to staff to obtain keycards.

In an even more shocking incident, one man was allegedly able to convince police and hotel staff to deliver his victim to his room at a Hilton-owned property.

Read more here.

The West Virginia House of Delegates passed a bill Wednesday that would prohibit minors from getting married.

The Republican-dominated House passed the bill 84-13, sending it to the state Senate. The regular session ends March 11.

Currently, children can marry as young as 16 in West Virginia with parental consent. Anyone younger than that also must get a judge’s waiver.

The bill would establish that 18 is the age of consent. It removes the ability of a minor to obtain consent through their parents, legal guardians, or by court petition. Existing legal marriages, including those done in other states, are unaffected.

Read more here. 

Adolescent girls face a rising rate of sexual violence, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There’s a parallel crisis that’s not spelled out: Many of the young survivors are punished as if they were criminals.

This is known as the “abuse-to-prison pipeline.” Girls who are sexually abused are often pushed into the legal system and charged with offenses that can trigger a cascade of consequences: a criminal record that can haunt a person for years; confinement in facilities that are unsafe; and long-term sentences that can keep them imprisoned for decades, even for life. For girls of color, the risk of entering the criminal justice system is far higher than for white girls.

Examples of the pipeline are all too common. It happens when girls escape a violent home, but then are charged as runaways. It happens when girls report sexual abuse to police but are charged with false reporting. It happens when girls fight back against adult rapists in self-defense and then are charged with serious offenses. And it happens when children who are sex-trafficked are arrested on suspicion of prostitution or charged as traffickers themselves.

Read more here. 

Ben & Jerry’s is among the companies whose supply chains utilize migrant child labor, often in violation of child labor laws, despite the company’s self-proclaimed progressive values and vowing to “honor and stand with” immigrants.

A New York Times exposé, released earlier this week, interviewed more than 100 migrant children in more than 20 states “who described jobs that were grinding them into exhaustion, and fears that they had become trapped in circumstances they never could have imagined.” The report detailed children as young as 13 working 12-hour days, often overnight shifts before going to school during the day, in order to survive.

The report said migrant children are employed in the supply chain for major companies like Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, Ford, General Motors and Ben & Jerry’s, among others.

Read more here.

TikTok announced Wednesday, 03-01, that every user under 18 will soon have their accounts default to a one-hour daily screen time limit, in one of the most aggressive moves yet by a social media company to prevent teens from endlessly scrolling.

Teenage TikTok users will be able to turn off this new default setting, which will roll out in the coming weeks. But the feature change could bolster the digital well-being of younger users by requiring them to opt out of stricter screen time limits rather than clearing the higher bar of opting in to them.

If the 60-minute limit is reached, users will be prompted to enter a passcode — requiring them to make an active decision to extend their time spent swiping through videos on the app.

The move comes after TikTok and other social media platforms have faced years of scrutiny over their impact on young users, including their potential to lead teens down harmful rabbit holes. TikTok is also facing mounting pressure from Washington over security concerns from its ties to China through parent company Bytedance, including renewed discussion of a possible US ban of the short-form video app.

Read more here.