Statistics on the actual and factual incidence of child abuse are too horrendous to gather and believe, so thank God for the government’s social workers and the private sector’s scores of foundations looking after their welfare.

Incredibly, many young victims of physical and sexual abuse – 31 percent of them are children or wards of the offenders – do not want to be sheltered. They run away, return to the streets, they even risk going back home in the hope that the monster who has been tormenting them will have gone away, like last night’s nightmare.

David Bradley, publisher of The Atlantic Monthly, has been to Manila “30 times.” He lived in the Lichauco ancestral home in Sta. Ana, and for a time taught economics at Pamantasan ng Lunsod ng Maynila. As any Manileno would tell you, the commute between Intramuros and Sta. Ana is a rich source for a study of the plight of street children. (Among other neighbors in his peripatetic career, the family of former presidential candidate Senator John Edwards, “who lived right next door” in Washington, D.C.)

On Mr. Bradley’s 30th, or 31st, visit to Manila, Atty. Katrina Legarda organized a little dinner in her grand-aunt’s house for her friends, lawyers, doctors, Rotarians, constructors, teachers and journalists, to meet the founder and chairman of the Child Protection Unit at Philippine General Hospital.

None other than Mr. Bradley.

Why is CPU operating from within PGH? Because a hospital is where to find abused and wounded children who need immediate medical attention. Seizing that “medical moment,” as Mr. Bradley phrased it so succinctly, gives the Unit’s pediatricians, counselors and lawyers a better chance of saving the children with more lasting results.

Medical intervention is only one part, though the first step in the rescue. Very often, according to Dr. Bernadette Madrid, executive director of CPU, it’s “Lola” (grandmother) who initiates the rescue by taking the child to hospital. Unless the offender is “Lolo.” (Part 2 on Thursday.)