By Jeffrey Page

Does the war against children ever end? Here are some important recent stories you may have missed that illustrate the violence inflicted on kids as well as the seeming indifference some authorities display in prosecuting the abusers.

First, some numbers: In her Violence Against Children Act of 2011 (which died when it was referred back to committee), Senator Barbara Boxer noted that 248,000 crimes against children ages 12 to 17 were reported in 2007. That’s about 700 a day. Nearly 92,000 of the victims were under age 12. Boxer also noted that 65 percent of violent crimes against people ages 12 to 19 go unreported to the police.

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I was struck dumb when Deborah Gomez, 43, of Chicago recently faced a judge in Kansas – where she had been charged with child endangerment – and then strolled out of court. Specifically, Gomez last June bound the hands and legs of her two youngest children, then blindfolded them and then left them in her car in a Walmart parking lot while she and her husband went to shop. The children were aged 7 and 5. The high temperature for the day was 87, pretty dangerous in a closed car.

Gomez pleaded no contest and the judge, clearly not as outraged as you and I might have been, sentenced her to one year on probation.

Gomez’s husband, Adolfo, was charged with misdemeanor counts of child endangerment and was to be sentenced later. A wire service report noted that Adolfo insisted the children be blindfolded and bound as a defense against demons.

The Gomezes’ three other children, ages 15, 13 and 12, also were locked in the car but were not restrained. They made no attempt to help the two youngest.

To be ordered to report to a probation officer every week for a year reminds me of the light sentences some judges have been known to hand down in some drunken driving cases. These are judges who justify such a degree of mercy with the idiotic chestnut “He didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

In the Gomez case, I think the Kansas Bar Association should order the judge to move in with the Gomezes, their children and their demons for a year while Mrs. Gomez reports to her probation officer.

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Sometimes kids are abused by other kids, as often is the case in instances of bullying. Last Friday night, with a wind-chill of about 13, Freddy Martin, 9, was playing on the roof of a five-story building in the Bronx. So was Casmine Aska, 17, almost a grownup. Around 8:30 p.m., the police say, Casmine threw Freddy off the roof.

It was an accident, Aska is reported to have told the cops. While holding Freddy off the ground, Casmine turned and slipped and somehow dropped the younger kid off the roof.

Did Casmine call 911? No.

Did he tell his mother what happened? No.

Did he run downstairs to see if Freddy was all right? No.

Freddy somehow survived and was able to tell the cops who had dropped him. The Times quoted a neighbor as saying Freddy was “unrecognizable” as a result of his fall.

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In rural Alabama, Jimmy Lee Dykes once beat a dog to death with an iron pipe and had threatened some elementary school children – they’d stepped  onto his property – with a gun. Now he was days away from a court hearing on charges that he had threatened a neighbor with a gun.

That incident was in December. But now it was February, and Dykes and his police record boarded a school bus in Midland City. When Dykes tried to grab two kids to take with him, the bus driver, Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, put himself between Dykes and his gun. Dykes killed him in cold blood.

But Sykes got one kid, an autistic boy named Ethan, and took him to his underground bunker.

It took authorities about a week to finally work out a plan for Ethan’s rescue. There was an explosion and gun shots, and Dykes was dead. Ethan was not injured.

I’d like to meet the people in charge of Dykes’s current case. With his history of violent behavior, how could his December threatening-case have been delayed two months as he walked about?

Maybe Jimmy Lee Dykes was just a crazy old coot, but he was dangerous enough to move his case as quickly as possible and be done with him. I understand that. So do you. But the prosecutors didn’t? I don’t believe that for a minute.

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In Queens, a couple was charged with shaking their baby daughter to death; she was 70 days old. The man was convicted and faces 15 years to life in prison. His wife went free; the district attorney dropped the charges against her. Both had spent five years in prison awaiting trial.

This is how screwed up the system is. Everyone wants to avoid trial. So it just goes on, with those in charge often seeming to go easy on child abusers. To avoid trial, prosecutors often accept a guilty plea to a reduced charge. And children keep dying.

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Did it take you about 5 minutes to read this story? According to Boxer, that means almost 3 children were beaten or clubbed or shot or stabbed or otherwise abused since you first saw the headline.