The Tragedy Surrounding Adrian Peterson Tragedy & Where To Go From Here

Why would anyone want to go there? This is a football blog on the Minnesota Vikings, so why not spend ones time diagnosing Xs and Os to try and gain readership? Shouldn’t we be talking about a current player on the roster that should be cut to make room for another street free agent because there’s more upside there? Well maybe so, but every now and again there comes a time when an instance happens that is far more important than anything that occurs in any game we long to watch.

As most everyone knows right now, Adrian Peterson’s 2-year-old son died this past week from an alleged beating in Sioux Falls, SD. Reliable news sources have written that Adrian didn’t have much of a relationship with this child and the fact he asked for photos of his other son, Adrian Jr, to be taken off of any form of social media with that child still being alive and healthy. But none of that matters right now. What does matter is that a child is dead that didn’t deserve to be part of such an atrocious act and there’s far too much child abuse going on in this country.

If you were to be told that a report of child abuse is made every ten seconds in this country, more than four children die every day as a result of child abuse and over half of child fatalities for those under the age of 4-years-old are due to maltreatment and such is not recorded as such on death certificates* what would be your response?

For anyone that follows me on Twitter and this blog, you’ve known that I became a father in this past year to a young daughter named Addelyn Cecelia. She’s called “All Day” for short and loves to play in the living room kicking her legs in the air all day long listening to music as time passes. To quote Vikings defensive end Jared Allen, “Being a father is the most precious part of your life.” Those that are in the same boat can surely agree.

But it’s not about me. It’s about the neglected and abused children that won’t be given a chance to live a prosperous life and fulfill their dreams due to unfortunate circumstances. If anything good is to come of Adrian’s celebrity status it’s that prevention occurs on such heinous acts that happen far often in this country. We’ll all be cheering for our favorite running back and team tomorrow like no other, but moving forward feel free to reach out to the following foundations…

Childhelp: www.childhelp.org
My Stuff Bags Foundation: www.mystuffbags.org
National CASA Association: www.casaforchildren.org
UNICEF: www.unicefusa.org

*Statistics were provided by Childhelp

Jon Merckle may be followed on Twitter @thevikingpig