ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 11, 1997 TAG: 9702110046
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BETH MACY
SOURCE: BETH MACY
Here's why I think the Roanoke Valley Advertising Federation's new billboard against child abuse is one of the most effective public-service campaigns ever made.
Riding by on his way to preschool, my almost-3-year-old sees the little girl with the black eye and busted lip, and wants to know: ``What's wrong with her? Did she get a boo-boo?''
The next day he asks, ``Who did that to her? Does she have boo-boos on her knee, too?''
The next day: "She's still there. Is somebody gonna kiss her boo-boos?"
Every day there's a new question. Riding by early one evening, he says to me: ``Is that girl outside in the dark? Where's her mommy?''
They are the questions a parent does not want to answer - not truthfully, anyway. And yet they are exactly the questions we all need to ask ourselves.
As the slogan beneath the battered child says: ``What kind of mark will you make on your kid?''
My mother-in-law is a child-development expert. She runs a huge kindergarten and preschool in Indianapolis, and is regularly called upon to give speeches and interviews on child-rearing issues.
She said something recently that stayed with me. ``We all, at one time or another, come within an inch of abusing children.''
That pivotal moment was what Keith White and his AdFed creative team were hoping to speak to in their new television spots, print ads and billboards.
Maybe it's the time your screaming daughter kicks you in the eye while you're changing her diaper, and it's all you can do not to strike back. Maybe you're carting your toddler to the time-out chair when he smacks you in the face - and you lose it.
Your teen-ager screams that she hates you. Your 7-year-old gets creative with spray paint on the living room couch.
``It all boils down to that one moment of decision - depending on the circumstances, your mood, the weather - when you decide whether or not to lash out at your child, verbally or physically,'' says White, AdFed's president-elect, a Roanoke Times circulation manager and a father. The volunteer group donated and enlisted services worth $90,000-$100,000 for the public-service campaign.
``We wanted to remind people to step back for just a second and think. Most people who are charged with neglect and abuse, it's not that they don't love their children. It was that moment when they just weren't thinking.''
Just who is the little girl with the boo-boos?
A typical 9-year-old. She likes to dance (ballet and tap); loves to draw. Would just die for her parents to buy her a pony.
And she believes that her little brother, Brad, should really get over his jealousy about her being on the billboard - and getting so much attention.
A fourth-grader at Glen Cove Elementary in Roanoke County, Meghan Petrine had dreamed of becoming a model, had even had professional photos taken and delivered to a local agency.
Robyn Frier, who arranged the shoot for AdFed through Kings Entertainment, knew it would be a tough sell. It took time to persuade Meghan's parents, Jim and Debbie Petrine, that the child's foray into the modeling world should begin with a makeup session designed to make her look beaten-up.
``We knew that by telling somebody that age that she could have a modeling job - but that it wasn't the glamorous thing she'd envisioned - she might not get it,'' says Frier, who now works for Video Production Services.
The Petrines held a family meeting. Talked about what people might say; the fact that other kids might ask if her parents hit her.
Says Jim Petrine: ``Our main concern was that someone would see her [on the billboard] and not know it was done with makeup.''
But Meghan didn't balk. ``She said immediately she wanted to do this - for the kids who really are abused,'' Frier recalls. ``She knew it wasn't a glamorous thing, and the day she came for the pictures, she was very gung-ho, very serious.
``It was like she really knew she was doing a wonderful thing.''
After the two-hour shoot in Roanoke photographer Greg Vaughn's studio, Meghan was eager to shed the makeup and melancholia. She asked her mom to take her to Burger King.
Meghan says it's odd seeing her larger-than-life self on billboards and TV commercials all over the Roanoke Valley. Spooky, too.
Then, capturing both the shock and the sentiment of the billboard, the 9-year-old says what should be the obvious, but isn't - not when you examine the 1,000 complaints of neglect, physical abuse and sexual abuse filed just in Roanoke. Every year.
"It's kinda weird when you think about it - that someone would do that," Meghan says, pausing before she adds:
"To a little kid."
LENGTH: Medium: 89 linesby CNB