A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains 4/5

--DISCLAIMER--: I do not own this video. All rights and all content go to ABC. Diane Sawyer and 20/20 take a deeper look into the poverty and addiction stricken side to Kentucky. It’s a side of America that many choose to overlook and ignore. "In the hills of Central Appalachia, up winding, mountain roads, is a place where children and families face unthinkable conditions, living without what most Americans take for granted. Isolated pockets in Central Appalachia have three times the national poverty rate, an epidemic of prescription drug abuse, the shortest life span in the nation, toothlessness, cancer and chronic depression. But also in Appalachia young fighters and dreamers filled with hope struggle to survive: a high school football superstar who sleeps in his truck; a 12-year-old who wants nothing more than her own bed and a cupboard full of food; an 18-year-old who must decide whether or not to spend the rest of his life in the coal mines; and an 11-year-old determined to save her mother's life. Diane Sawyer continues her award-winning reporting on America's forgotten children with an eye-opening hour on rural kids living in poverty. -Shawn Grim, 18, Appalachian high school football superstar, sleeps in his truck to avoid the thievery, alcoholism and despair of his family's life in the hollow in Flat Gap, Kentucky. Over the course of Sawyer's report, Grim moves eight times. He is determined to be the first one in his family to graduate from high school and go to ...

Channel: YouTube Video Length: 9m 38s Date Found: Mon, Jun 28 2010 2:55 AM Category: Home Video Date Produced: Sun, Jun 27 2010 11:25 PM View Count: 0