Helped a Kid, Did My Job, and the Backlash

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In the modern day, you would think that when a child reports they are being abused at home it would be taken seriously. Especially when that child is old enough to give details and understand what is the truth and what is a lie. I thought so too, until my third year teaching high school special education. I found out it is amazing what both school staff and children's services will overlook - simply because it is most convenient to call a child a liar. B started his freshman year in my classroom with quite a thick file. He had severe ADHD, tested with an IQ of 66, and lived with his dad in a well known trailer park. His dad was an alcoholic and pain pill addict, B basically took care of himself and did a pretty good job of it for being only 13. Almost immediately I noticed what others had called severe ADHD seemed to have something else underneath it...B was always worried about "what if..." and always obsessed with people not liking him or being mean to him. By the end of first semester, I'd worked with a school mental health worker to get B back on medication...but this time in addition to his ADHD medicine he was being treated for anxiety as well. He was making slow but steady progress. There was no doubt he was a neglected kid. We bought him a winter coat, helped with lunch money, and other things his dad couldn't be bothered with. I'd made two child abuse hotline calls - one when he said his dad choked him, the other for verbal threats he reported, but nothing came of them. It was a cold February morning when everything finally exploded. B came to school late, running, explaining he'd missed the bus. He handed me a note, my heart nearly stopped when I read it. It explained how his dad threatened to shoot him the night before. I immediately got the school resource officer involved, left a message for the school social worker (who B saw once a week for counseling), informed the principal, and made a hotline call. B was removed from his home that day and placed in a foster home. Over the next months I found out many interesting things. The school social worker thought I never should've made the hotline call when B showed me the note, for one. The problem is...teachers are mandated reporters. I legally had to make the call. It led me to figure out she'd ignored many reports of abuse from B at the hands of his father, because she decided not to believe him. She got her revenge on me for making the call the next year. She had district administration rip B out of my self contained class after the first day of school. He was mainstreamed into classes he wasn't academically or emotionally ready for. He was also told he wasn't allowed to speak to me. Both for no reason but a grudge over helping a kid and doing my job! As you can imagine, he ignored the order not to speak to me. I was harassed so much over it that six months into the next school year I had to go on stress leave. I ended up finishing the year out on stress leave and never returning to work for the school district. I did keep tabs on B though. He ended up moving schools to the district his foster home was in. He did great, working a part time job during junior and senior year. He bought a convertible and still lives with his foster dad now at he's graduated and is working full time. I still hear from him on holidays via Facebook, always with "Thanks for saving my life.