happiest: I agree with you that there’s more abuse than people care to admit or pick up on.
“if the at risk teens situation is so rampant and many many many of these teens had some type of abuse experience (which is why they are at risk) then this problem also has to be rampant, no?”
I don’t entirely agree with this statement, though. EVERYBODY has hardship. On different levels of course. But nobody lives the perfect little life. If I’d need an excuse to go off, I could easily say my father/mother is abusive. Why? Because they’re not perfect. And we expect our parents to be perfect. Yes, they might have accused me falsely for doing something wrong, or yell, or…even spank me (when I was younger of course). The point being, that these kids have issues either emotional or spiritual. The parents aren’t necessarily abusive just because the kids say so. They love blaming the parents, teachers, principals etc. – Anyone but themselves!
OTOH, unfortunately, there ARE some kids who suffer at home and leave Yiddishkeit because of that. Which is terribly sad. But I think that if anybody is earnest and really looks for the truth they’ll find it.