A man’s dream of ending child abuse in U.S. within 120 years

It was the maggot-infested baby that sealed it for Victor Vieth, the man who has a plan to end child abuse in America within 120 years.

Come again? I’ll get back to that, as well as what hybrid corn and the “perfect” chicken have to do with eliminating child abuse.

But back to the maggots tale.

Vieth, who grew up in Winona, was then a rookie prosecutor in Watonwan County in southwestern Minnesota, fresh out of Hamline University Law School. He inherited a “routine” termination of parental rights civil case, which is never routine. They might as well have handed him, on the spot, a tech tutorial on uranium waste disposal. He had never been taught or prepped for something like this.

One of his witnesses, a young male social worker, was struggling to defend himself under a blistering cross-examination as to why he violated state law and took it upon himself to remove the maggot-covered child from the abusive home. Only law enforcement was allowed to do that. You broke state law, the man was told.

“I saw this man break down and cry and say that the baby was covered with maggots, and what was he supposed to do?” recalled Vieth, the founder and executive director of the National Child Protection Training Center at Winona State University.

“We won the case, but it was life-changing for me,” Vieth said. “I went home that night and told my wife what I wanted to do with my life.”

Of course, given the subject matter, there would be more lump-in-the-throat tales that would affirm Vieth’s decision to make the plight of abused and neglected children his life’s work.

There was the 7-year-old girl at his teacher wife’s private school in Virginia. At the time, Vieth headed the National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse in Washington, D.C.

The girl was caught performing oral sex on a female classmate. Vieth’s wife, Lisa, reported the incident to the principal. Another case reported to the principal involved a boy so malnourished that he ate crumbs off the classroom floor. When the principal declined to contact authorities in either case, Vieth’s wife and other staffers, at the risk of termination, did it themselves.

MOST CASES NOT REPORTED OR INVESTIGATED

Vieth’s nearly 7-year-old, federally funded center has trained hundreds of front-line professionals