Statistics

The statistics are mind-numbing, yet, like the script of a cheap horror film, they continue to lurch like a nightmare through the pages of every major urban newspaper. Life in America is beginning to unravel. Author Robert Rector paints a grim, graphic portrait of the impoverished life.
In Queens, a heroin-addicted mother with AIDS murders her four-year-old daughter, stuffs the body in a laundry bag, and with the help of her current boyfriend - also a drug addict - tosses the bag from a bridge into the East River.
In Philadelphia, two commercially successful "gangsta rap" artists realize their fantasies, gunning down a female police officer during a hold-up.
In Chicago, police raid the apartment of five sisters on welfare. The apartment swarms with cockroaches and is chilled by a winter wind pouring in through broken windows. In four rooms are 19 children, the youngest 12 months old. Feces and garbage cover the floor; hungry children share food in a dog bowl with several dogs. Dazed, one of the kids asks a policewoman, "Can you be my mommy?"
In Detroit, a five-year-old is thrown from a 14th floor window of a public-housing complex because "he refused to steal."
In Washington, D.C., a gunman empties his semi-automatic into a swimming pool crowded with children.
Rector tells us there is hope.
Boys who regularly attend church are 50% less likely to commit crime.
They are 54% less likely to use drugs and 47% less likely to drop out of school.
Boys and girls who attend church regularly are 2/3 less likely to engage in sexual activity.
Church attendance halves the probability of having an illegitimate child.
Children who attend religious schools are 2/3 less likely to drop out of school.
Children aged 10 to 18 who do not attend church are 1/3 to 1/2 more likely to exhibit anti-social and dysfunctional behavior.