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For a while last week, the images of courtrooms, dysfunction and death — from newspaper photos and television video — seemed to blur together. The conclusion of Liz Carroll's Clermont County murder trial — with a guilty verdict in the death of 3-year-old foster child Marcus Fiesel and a sentence of at least 54 years in prison — coincided with the circus-like court hearing in Florida over the remains of flamed-out celebrity Anna Nicole Smith and whether she would be buried alongside her dead 20-year-old son, a victim of drug abuse.

And you didn't have to flip through too many channels to find the latest breathless news about another pop icon, Britney Spears, and her shaved head and check-ins/check-outs at rehabilitation centers — all while her estranged husband is challenging her in court over custody of their two young children.

The common thread that runs through these cases is, most obviously, out-of-control adults who have abandoned their responsibilities as parents — in favor of the demons to which they're drawn — and who, frankly, shouldn't be parents in the first place. The now-familiar cast of characters in the horrific heat/suffocation death of Marcus Fiesel — foster parents David and Liz Carroll, live-in girlfriend Amy Baker, and natural mother Donna Trevino — share some of the qualities that made them unfit parents and allowed a little boy to die in a closet and then be discarded like yesterday's trash.

The National Center for Victims of Crime reports that 896,000 children were the victims of abuse or neglect in the United States in 2004, according to reporting children protective agencies. Nearly a million children at risk — in a nation that fancies itself the shining example for the rest of the world.

The organization Prevent Child Abuse Ohio reports that Ohio's rate of child abuse and neglect ranks ninth in the nation, and that the number of cases is on the rise, doubling from 1998 to 2002.

It's shameful and it's

unacceptable.

The news media is criticized for sensationalizing facts surrounding these unfortunate cases but — as we learned in courtrooms in Clermont County and Florida last week — the media's initial reports can turn out to be restrained and mild when compared to the sworn testimony about lurid, irresponsible lifestyles (such as Smith's out-of-control drug use while pregnant last year). The circumstances are often worse than we could imagine.

And the target of our ire often is the government agencies that are supposed to protect all the children, like Marcus. Butler County Children Services is under a critical microscope now — and rightly so — and those who weren't diligent and vigilant enough have paid or will pay a price. Already, Children Services director Jann Heffner has resigned and the agency that placed Marcus in the care of the Carrolls has been put out of business in Ohio. And a recent survey of Children Services employees revealed unmanageable caseloads and bad attitudes. Is anyone surprised?

The sad truth is — despite our best efforts to make Children Services as well-managed and foolproof as possible — more children will die under its watch.

And they will die because all of us — except for those who are paid to preach on Sunday morning — have remained too timid and politically correct to pass judgment on the self-destructive lifestyles led by those who have taken on the responsibility of parenthood. It's much easier to accept that 400 children in Butler County must be placed in foster homes and that we'll just hire more and better train Children Services caseworkers. But we can't hire enough caseworkers to protect every at-risk child who is out there.

This is a national crisis over which government can only police, prosecute and imprison, but cannot solve. The courtroom scenes we saw last week, after all, are just that proverbial iceberg tip.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing," Edmund Burke said. The neglect, abuse and murder of children is evil, and must be acknowledged as such. Compassion and help for adults struggling with their problems is always appropriate, but their children must come first. Good men and women cannot allow this war on our children to continue.