Saturday, June 17, 2006

Abuse hysteria

During the week I saw this headline; "Abused kids should be taken from parents, claims US professor".

Dr Schmitt was brought to NZ by the Plunket Society as an expert on child abuse. He recommended more stringent intervention. In the US there was a mandatory reporting system where anyone who had anything to do with a child - a teacher, doctor, nurse - was required under the law to report any signs of abuse to social welfare, which then fully investigated the case. He said, "Termination of parental rights has been common in our country for some time. It gives judges the option to remove the child permanently from a family and put him or her up for adoption...people should be suspicious if there was more than one bruise, or bruises in different areas. When a child fell, they usually received only one bruise."

The professor was brought to New Zealand in 1982.

Question; Those of you who have youngsters, do they have any bruises on their legs? My seven year-old does. And she generally gets them at school where she is at her most active, swinging from bars, jumping from climbing frames, tripping over shoelaces, missing a step. Like many her age, she goes at everything full tilt and sometimes comes a cropper.

Anyway, coincidentally I came across a story in the LA Times today. Now, if you want to read about the real and tragic consequences of the hysteria surrounding child abuse, physical and sexual, that peaked in the eighties read on....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Do you remember this egregious episode from the UK.

I worked with one of the fathers (a professional engineer) involved in this scandal in the late 90s. He was still furious 11 years after the event.

His children were removed from his home by social workers. His wife to whom he was devoted, was told by the social workers the only way she would get her children back was if she left him and cut off all contact between him and the children (she didn't).

Ultimately the children were returned but God knows what damage had been done to them. They had absorbed the notion that their father was to be treated suspicion and that he was in some way dangerous. Physical affection (in the wholesome and normal sense) between him and his children was no longer possible.

We hear a lot about 'abuse' it's an industry with an anti-male bias as its fundamental axiom.

There are indications that suggest where males abuse children in their custody they are not the biological fathers but 'boyfriends' etc. There are studies that demonstrate the absense of the father correlates very highly abuse sexual and physical.

This is what socialogists should be following up on but wont because it might contradict their anti-family assumptions big time.