blog | Lane Brown, LLC

You are furious. You trusted your child with a soccer coach in Arlington Heights, a camp counselor in Chicago, or a youth advisor in Northbrook and that adult not only failed to keep your child safe, but that adult also actively hurt your child in a way that no child should be ever be hurt.

Be Careful of Your Actions

While you have every right to be angry, it is important that you don’t make this horrible situation worse. Specifically, it is important that you avoid:

Violence. Do not physically assault the person who hurt your child.
Making threats. Do not make threats or even talk directly to the person who hurt your child.
Talking to the media. Do not talk to the media about what happened, about your child, or about the person who hurt your child.

Instead, don’t do anything without asking yourself this question: How is my action going to help my child?

What You Can Do to Help Your Child

There are things that you can do to help your child recover from being sexually abused. You can talk to your child’s doctor, to a counselor, and to a lawyer about how to help your child recover. You can also make the person who did this pay without causing additional harm to your child. To find out more, please start a confidential and free online chat with us today. We also encourage you to subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay up to date on important information for parents of child sex abuse victims.

It was not the outcome you expected. You knew your spouse was sick—seriously ill. That is why you rushed her to the emergency room at Skokie Hospital in the middle of the night.

Yet, you still have many questions about why your spouse died. Was it really the result of the underlying illness or injury that brought her to the emergency room, or was it because of the actions or inactions of emergency room staff? Would your spouse still be alive if emergency room staff had acted differently?

How to Find Out the Truth

You need to know why your loved one died for two reasons. First, you deserve to have your questions answered as you grieve. Second, you may have a medical malpractice case if emergency room staff were negligent in their care.

You can find out the truth by asking the right questions. Those questions may include:

How soon was my spouse seen by a doctor?
What triage was conducted to determine if my spouse needed help?
What tests were done to diagnose my spouse’s condition?
What medications was my spouse provided?
Was a medical history taken?

Of course, the doctors and hospital are unlikely to provide you with complete and accurate information just because you ask for it. Instead, you may need to go through the legal process with the help of an experienced and compassionate lawyer who can help you get the answers that you need.

Please fill out our online contact form today to learn more about your rights.

Two recent studies looked at the effect of cell phone bans and texting bans on car accidents. One study, published in Science Direct, found that California’s handheld cell phone ban had no effect on reducing car accidents. Another study, published in the Journal of American Health, found that texting while driving bans have reduced teen traffic fatalities by about 11 percent.

Let’s Put Aside the Laws for a Minute

In Illinois, it is currently against the law to use a handheld cell phone while driving. The law may or may not prevent some car accident injuries and fatalities on Lake Shore Drive, the Stevenson Expressway, and other Chicago roads. For the moment, we will assume that the law does not prevent every distracted driving accident in Chicagoland.

However, there are other things that we can do to help prevent distracted driving crashes including:

Making a personal pledge to stop distracted driving. Each driver can do his part to prevent distracted driving crashes by refusing to answer the phone or text while driving.
Raising awareness about the problem. We can teach others about the risks of distracted driving.
Teaching our children. We can model responsible driving behavior and enforce strict rules about distracted driving for our teenagers.

It is also important for drivers to know what to do if they are hurt in a distracted driving crash. People who are injured by distracted drivers may have the right to recover financial damages for their injuries. You can learn more about this in our free report, The 8 Steps to Follow After Your Illinois Car Accident.

It doesn’t matter if your child is an infant or a teen—the news is equally devastating. Your child has suffered a brain injury, a spinal cord injury, a broken bone, or another painful injury that significantly impacts his life. You can’t go back and prevent the crash that caused the injury, but there are things that you can do to make this difficult time easier for your child.

What You Can Do Now

Your child’s recovery may require the effort of the whole family, but your child is the only one experiencing the physical pain. As you move through the days, weeks, and sometimes months or years following your child’s car crash on the North-South Tollway, Eisenhower Expressway, or other Chicago road, it is important to:

Get your child the medical care he needs. If you think your child needs a second opinion, don’t hesitate to get it. Additionally, make sure that your child gets the rehabilitation therapy and recommended follow-up care.
Encourage visits from your child’s friends, as appropriate. As long as it won’t interfere with your child’s physical recovery, it is important that your child feel included, and not isolated, from his friends.
Help your child with his fears. It may be difficult for your child to get back into a car, or he may fear death. It is important to talk about these fears and to seek professional help, as appropriate.
Talk to your child’s school. You don’t want your child to fall behind in school. Talk about accommodations that can be made for your child.
Accept help. You are going to be very busy helping your child. Accept help from your family and friends when it comes to cleaning your house, running errands, making meals, or caring for your other children.

Do you know any parents in the Chicago area? It is impossible to know when a serious car accident will occur, so it is important to be prepared. Please share this blog post on Twitter and Facebook to let other parents know what they can do after a crash, and please download our FREE accident app to your cell phone for step-by-step instructions about what to do after an accident.

None of the reasons schools, churches, youth groups, or other entities use to explain why they failed to report child sex abuse are good enough. None of them excuse the inaction of the adults we trusted to protect our children in Skokie, Northbrook, and other Chicago-area communities.

These Arguments Don’t Work

The supervisors at an entity may argue that:

They tried to handle it internally. Illinois law is clear about who must report suspected child sex abuse and how to do it.
They were concerned that, if word got out, it could harm their reputation. This is irrelevant. They had a responsibility to your child and a responsibility to report alleged child sex abuse in the state of Illinois.
They didn’t know it was happening. The better question is whether they should have known it was happening. If they should have known that sexual abuse was occurring and decided to look the other way, they should be held accountable.

Any or all of these arguments may be true; yet, a child was still violated in an intimate and inexcusable way.

They Are Just Excuses

Instead, you can send the loud and clear message that these arguments are not good enough. Your child’s mental and physical health—his innocence and childhood—are worth more than these excuses.

If you know a parent whose child has been sexually abused, please share this blog post with him. Let him know that multiple parties may be responsible for what happened and that help is available for children who have been sexually abused.

July 21, 2014, was a deadly afternoon on I-55—two fatal truck accidents occurred within three miles and 16 minutes. The first accident occurred south of Arsenal Road, killing four people. A few minutes later, another accident occurred three miles north of the first one, killing another person.

What Caused These Fatal Accidents?

While the cause of both accidents remains under investigation, initial accident reports drive home the point that truck driver negligence is often the underlying cause of fatal truck accidents—even though the circumstances of the accidents can vary greatly. For example, the trucker involved in the first accident was charged with felony log book violations. It is alleged that he willingly entered false information in a false log book. The trucker reportedly made an abrupt lane change and hit a car that was stopped in traffic. And while the second accident did not immediately result in any criminal charges, one semi-truck rear-ended another semi, killing one of the truckers.

Why Is the Cause Important?

We know that the effect of these accidents is important. We know that people lost their lives unnecessarily and that their families are devastated. However, the cause of these fatal truck crashes is also important. In order for the grieving families to recover, they need to know what caused the crash that killed their loved ones.

If you have questions about the cause of a truck accident that hurt you, or killed your loved one, please start an online chat with us now to find out more about your rights and your possible recovery.