child abuse / murder

[TIGG]

So often of late, too often of late, I turn on the television, or radio, or pick up a newspaper to read or hear of another child who has died at the hands of its caregivers.

Through the mindnumbing illness, disgust and pain any normal sane person feels at hearing this comes the nagging questions, " Is this a cultural problem, socio-economic? generational, a learned pattern?" How has our society become so violent that 3 month old twin babies can find themselves dying in hospital of horrific head injuries and broken limbs? And the family responsible hide behind a 'wall of silence"? Is the rights of the guilty more weighty than those of children who are completely at our mercy?"

[Jnyusa]

TIGG, the problem is pandemic in the United States. It sickens me to the core.

I would like to hear Voronwë, and Ellie, and newly-barred Nel to comment on this if they feel up to it, though I know that Family Law is not the specialty of any of them. Children and spouses remain very much a property law issue in the United States, in my opinion, and this accounts for our failure to impose standards upon parents. We can blow mile-high smoke screens talking about privacy, but what it really comes down to is that minors are the property of their parents and have about as many rights as the family car.

Jn

[narya]

Not necessarily, Jny. Part of my volunteer work involves taking after-hours emergency calls to Child Protective Services and relaying them to the social worker on duty. You wouldn't believe some of the stories I hear (not that I'm allowed to repeat them). The county can and often does step in if the situation is dangerous, if someone speaks up to notify them.

There was probably far more of what we would call child abuse - hitting children with hands or straps or sticks - in the past, but less of the out of control violence that leads to murder. My guess is that it is a combination of things. Isolated moms who do not have the extended family support when they can't handle it themselves, lack of neighbors who care to get involved, 15 year old girls having babies, drug and alcohol impaired parents, and boyfriends with no emotional bond to the children of their girlfriends.

[The Watcher]

Do any of you ever post here with any first or even second hand experience about that which you wish to discuss, debate, or otherwise pass judgement on?

I have FIRST hand experience with issues such as these, and believe me, the child protective services and social services believe the WORST first, and then narrow it down to specifics, I had a husband who had a penchant for child pornographic chatrooms, and then also began discussing his then fourteen year old stepdaughter in the jists of such conversations.

I am not saying that what I had to go through as a result of this was unfair, but it was hardly nonjudgemental, I had to literally "prove" myself innocent, even though I was never even under any suspicion myself.

People may be able to hide all sorts of things. Unfortunately, unless we are willing to surrender ourselves to the "BIG BROTHER" sort of state, that will never change. But, I for one am not willing to let it get that far. I would rather go through all of the hassles and headaches and "searching" that they performed on me when my now gratefully ex-husband was doing what he did than ever surrender my rights for privacy and personal freedom.

And, sorry, J, but it does NOT take an attorney to weigh in on this issue, it is a most complex and very unclear (by nature) part of Western Law. I will chime in that children ARE protected, at least in my experience, very highly, almost overly zealously so. Of course, I am speaking from the experience that occurred to me within the mostly very wealthy suburbs of a major American city. We have county time to burn.

[Jnyusa]

I will chime in that children ARE protected, at least in my experience, very highly, almost overly zealously so. Of course, I am speaking from the experience that occurred to me within the mostly very wealthy suburbs of a major American city. We have county time to burn.

Yes, I do have personal experience with this issue, and my experience, alas, was the opposite of yours. I would have been happy to submit to any sort of inquiry if only teachers and psychologists and social services and the courts would have taken my ex-husband's threats seriously.

Children reach the age of majority and get beyond the frivolous power of the courts. They reach financial independence and get beyond parental retribution. Slowly, then, slowly the truth comes out. But I will never forgive the schools, the psychologists, the social workers, the neighbors, and even the synagogue for what they knew about my ex-husband and concealed. I will never forgive them. Never. I have forgiven the one psychologist who apologized to me afterwards for the misguided role she played. Everyone else, who acted out of fear for their own safety at the expense of my children, if I ever see them catch fire I won't piss on them to put them out.

I'm talking serious, illegal conspiracy to conceal child abuse here, involving dozens of people, not just matters of judgment or opinion. But I don't feel comfortable talking in public, even this limited public, about the details of my daughters' experience and the response of the people they told because that is part of their private lives and it is up to them if they want it known.

It is just as negligent and indifferent toward the child to go on an obvious witch-hunt as it is to ignore real abuse when that happens. But the witch-hunt keeps the SS busy, you see, and guys who are really abusive are also the ones most likely to actually hit back at the social worker. Better to avoid the real abusers and build your mountain out of some molehill.

That was my experience.

The other area where I experienced the legality of childhood first hand was in the area of adoption. Adoption law has been compared to slavery in that it is the only contract besides slavery which is imposed in childhood but extends throughout one's life. This comparison is obviously unfair toward the motivation of adoptive parents who are only trying to give a loving home. But from the legal point of view the comparison is apt, imo. Until the adoption is complete, and in many states now for some grace period afterwards, the child is the property of the biological parent and can be taken back at any time. This claim supercedes the welfare of the child. Once the grace period has expired, the child is the property of the adoptive parent, denied access to their own birth certificate and to any knowledge of their own background, even after reaching the age of majority when all other parental rights and responsibilities terminate. The right of an adoptive parent to claim the child as his own supercedes any right of the child to claim his/her own self. This is property law, pure and simple.

That is why I asked for our attorneys to chime in if they had any opinion about this.

Though I understand the logic behind separating family court from other kinds of cases, I think that the special status given to family court and the power of judges within it is a legal abomination.

I know of one case, reported on the news, where an ex-husband murdered his daughter to punish his wife for leaving him. After being convicted, the judge kicked him to Family Court for sentencing because it was "a domestic matter." (State of Florida.) The sentence was five years. That is also, by the way, the average time served for murdering one's wife, according to the statistics that I have read. (Sorry that I haven't got a citation at my fingertips.) According to sociologist Phyllis Chesler, whom I never tire of quoting, based on a study of 10,000 custody cases, 70% of fathers who are given full custody have already been convicted of sexual abuse. A friend of mine gave me Chesler's book to read after the courts had given unsupervised joint custody to her ex-husband following a conviction for molestation.

On the other hand (or maybe it isn't, really) I also have a friend who was turned in to social services by her pediatrician after the pediatrician found abnormally high levels of a blood pressure medication in her infant daughter's blood. My friend was on this medication while breast-feeding, you see, and her own doctor had overdosed her to the point where her own life was threatened as well as that of her child. Both were hospitalized. Instead of charging the doctor responsible with malpractice, it was she who was charged with child abuse for drugging her child, and she and her husband were really put through the mill, but they won the case in the end.

Now let me tell you what her job is. She's a pediatric psychiatrist and works for the State of Colorado investigating pediatricians and emergency medical personnel who conceal child abuse!!! Testifying against physicians is her daily routine. That's a State that's serious about ending child abuse. And apparently, some physicians are really determined to go on concealing it. It's such a hassle, you see, to show up in court and testify. Such a waste of time because the courts only really, actually take your children away from you if you're Black or Hispanic. If you're White and reasonably professional-looking, nothing short of gonorrhea gets your kids out from under.

It's almost impossible to find doctors and psychologists willing to testify to anything short of rape resulting in an std or physical violence or negligence resulting in hospitalization. Actually, we did experience the latter, and even that was not enough to get our pediatrician into court. Some of them will stop at nothing, even destruction of records, to avoid giving testimony.

For all the great stuff we see on TV, "oh he didn't really mean it," still wins the day in most cases. In my experience.

So I don't find it wondrous at all that so many children end up dead.


Jn

[narya]

Watcher, I do have first hand experience, as the child abused.

[axordil]

I find it difficult to believe that more children in otherwise "civilized" countries are abused or killed by caregivers today than at any period of the (even comparativley recent) past: think Dickensian England, or pre-child labor law America.

I do believe, however, that cultural norms, including attitudes of what is acceptable treatment of children, change over time and with opportunity. Treating children less like a disposable and renewable resource and more like, well, children, is unquestionably a good thing.

The underlying problem with the involvement of a state agency in family issues is the method by which governments generally fund things. I believe that otherwise well-meaning and honest people, in an effort to keep already strained budgets intact, will unconsciously lean towards developing practices that justify the continued funding of their agencies. In other words, they will cast the net wider in order to show more activity, even if it means both more innocent families affected AND less attention actually paid to egregious cases of abuse.

It's a particularly nasty no-win situation. And it would require a fundamental rethinking of how tax money is spent to fix, one which I am not sanguine about.

[MithLuin]

As a teacher, I am required by law to report any suspected abuse. I have not yet had to do so (I haven't been a teacher that long, and in high school, the students are more likely to confide in other people first). But it is a very tricky issue. I am not a doctor - if I see (what looks like) suspicious injuries, all I can really do is send the kid to the school nurse. And if I had suspicions that there was something going on at home (abuse or other problems), I would refer the student to the school counselors. I really can't see myself picking up the phone and calling Social Services unless I confronted a student about something and they told me, or they came to me. I mean, I would certainly follow up with the school counselor or nurse, and let them know my concerns. And if a student did come to me with something, I would probably talk to a counselor (or the principal) first for advice.

I am not saying that I wouldn't report something I was aware of - just that reporting would not be my knee-jerk reaction. I'd want to find out more, so I could make sure my report was accurate.

I did have a 16 year old student come in once with a spectacularly bloody eye. (You know, the white of the eye was red, and he had a black eye, skin all scratched up). Of course, everyone asked him, "what happened?" and he said he was injured while surfing (caught in a wave, slammed into the sand). That sounded...unusual...to me, but I know eyes are very sensitive, so I didn't really think anything of it. But then his mom called the school asking for him to leave early for a doctor's appointment, mentioning that his eye had been hurt because he "fell down in a parking lot." Obviously, one or both of them were lying. I informed the other teachers and the principal of the discrepency in the stories, but that was all. I've always felt since then that I should have pulled the student aside and asked him what really happened, but I guess I didn't really know what to do at the time. I'm not really surprised that he gave a false story as to how he got his injury (what guy wouldn't adjust it when telling his classmates if the truth were dull or embarrassing?), and he probably just got injured doing a stupid stunt or fighting with other teens, but of course it is possible that the truth was more sinister than that.

My first year of teaching, there was a case of a teenage girl whose caretaker (not her mother), locked her inside and starved and beat her to death. Clearly, the child was not attending school. The school had contacted the guardian and was following their procedure for delinquint students. Eventually, that procedure would have included a home visit. But before the visit happened....the girl died. No one had had contact with the child for months, and no one else lived in the house. So, there will always be people who slip through the system, tragically.

[truehobbit]

I don't think that there are now more cases of child-murder and serious abuse than in former times, they just get reported more.
Cases like the one TIGG was talking about, that end in the death of the child have been in the news here a lot, too, recently, and in some, where it was not "simply" murdering a new-born, but methodically torturing an older child to death, it was clearly also an oversight of the institutions that should have noticed the neglect (e.g. a child missing in school).
Still, I don't think that something like that would have been less likely to happen in other times. But I agree that it's quite beyond the scope of a mind of a sane person to understand why this happens in the first place.


Jny, I'm wondering if this part of your post is correct?

based on a study of 10,000 custody cases, 70% of fathers who are given full custody have already been convicted of sexual abuse

I'm thinking that either it should be: 70% of fathers who have already been convicted were given full custody - or the study was one that only focused on cases where custody was given to pedophiles.
If neither of this, I don't think the study can be correct.


As to the question of prosecuting offenders, I must admit I'm sometimes worried about how easily something may be construed as abuse that really isn't and may get someone in trouble undeservedly. Of course it's wrong to assume someone guilty, just because someone points a finger at them and says they were abused.
But on the other hand, the need to protect victims is so great, IMO, that considerable inconvenience has to be accepted in order to clear up such a case and if you have a man who is undoubtedly a pedophile and this man is married, then I'm afraid that in most cases I've ever heard of the wife was fully condoning the practices (another of these things that boggle the mind and are yet apparently typical), so I think I can understand the officials who put the rest of the family under as much scrutiny as the real criminal (and criminal it is, even if it's "only" visiting a pedophile chatroom).

[Jnyusa]

Mith, guessing what is really going on from scant evidence has got to be a tough call, but I would like to think that if a student came to you and told you they were being abused and asked for your help, you would do something about it.

We had an awful case here of three children who were starved nearly to death by their foster parents, and the starvation had gone on for years while their social worker was turning in fake reports without actually visiting the foster home. It was discovered by accident, when one kid escaped the house and ran to a different neighborhood to root for food in garbage cans. A homeowner saw him, looking like a picture out of the Ethiopian crisis, and the truth came out.

Hobby, the results of the study are as I quoted. Among fathers who received full custody, 70% had already been convicted of child abuse.

I know it seems outlandish, but you have to catch the underlying cause. Most fathers do not ask for full custody. Only something like 30% want custody of their children. Men who are intent on using their children as sexual objects are over-represented in that 30%, and that's why the rate of prior conviction is so high among them. If joint custody were the rule so that all fathers had to take physical responsibility for their children part of the time, then the percentage of creepy Dads would be much, much lower.

You can ask why the courts give custody to convicted pedophiles, but that gets you into the whole question of how our culture views its children.

If I had had Watcher's experience, I would probably feel the system is overzealous. But I think it definitely says something about the system being misguided when the stories of persecution seem to come from the innocent while the victims of real crime can't get help if they stand naked on a steeple singing the national anthem.

Ax, you are definitely right about these agencies being devoted to continuation of funding, and they are generally underfunded given the magnitude of the problem. The catch-22 related to that is the fact that serious cases take up more time and make productivity look lower, so there is a real incentive to avoid them. Triage, social worker style: treat lots and lots of flesh wounds.

I don't know how our statistics on child murder stack up against the past. Child mortality was certainly higher in the 19th century than it is today, but there were more things for a child to die from besides their own family. The foster care system as we know it today did not exist then. Children had other family members to take them in or else they went to orphanages, I guess. Whether the number of caregivers killing their children was greater or less, I just don't know.

Jn

[vison]

Oh, man.

I don't think there are more abused or murdered children now than there ever were. I agree that we hear about it more.

One thing I know, kids want to be with their parents. That's one of the things that make this such a horribly complicated issue.

A few weeks ago I took my Oz to the dentist. While he was in having his teeth cleaned and whatnot I waited for him. I shared the waiting room with a young woman and her little boy, he was 8 or 9 I would say. A bit fidgety, shifting from one chair to another. Nothing noisy or disruptive.

If I'd had a gun, I swear I would have shot his mother. I have never ever heard anything like this: "I'm putting you back on Ritalin. I can't deal with you." Or, "I'm getting another job, Mummy already works at two jobs but I'm getting another one so's I can get away from you brats." "You're the worst kid I've got. You're all bad, but you're the worst, I work two jobs and this is the thanks I get?"

She was "playing" to me, the whole time and I could quite readily have hit her over the head with a chair to shut her up. Her little boy watched her very carefully, and moved like a mouse trying to get away from a cat. She said much more and much worse and all the time she KNEW I could hear every word she said. So could the receptionist. It was bizarre. She never touched the kid, nor threatened to hit him. But she went on and on and on saying the most hateful things and he just absorbed it.

I didn't know what to do and I still don't. I overheard enough to know this woman and her children are already involved Social Services and Indian Affairs. Should I have called someone? To say what?

She was more abusive and hateful than anyone who ever smacked a kid or beat one. She shouldn't be allowed near a child, whoever she is. I honestly don't know what the answer to this one is.

edited to add, after seeing that Jnyusa posted at the same time: foster homes are often worse. Many aren't, but the truth is, it's a continuing scandal here that children die or are abused in foster homes where they are supposedly under close scrutiny.

[Ethel]

I've not read all the replies - I'll go back and do that. But I will say this: child abuse is nothing new. And it was always worse than it is now. I believe this with all my heart. Time was, children were chattel. They were valued because they could help out on the farm. Girls were no good - you'd have to give them a dowry to get them married to someone who might, if it all worked out, align with you. It was all about boys.

Things have changed. Nowadays we're supposed to love and cherish our children for their own sake. And I do! I love my adult son extravagantly.

But this is an anomaly in the history of the world. Time was, children - particularly male children - were wealth. Nowadays they are a huge investment that, in most cases, doesn't really pay off in any personal way.

[narya]

I believe that otherwise well-meaning and honest people, in an effort to keep already strained budgets intact, will unconsciously lean towards developing practices that justify the continued funding of their agencies. In other words, they will cast the net wider in order to show more activity, even if it means both more innocent families affected AND less attention actually paid to egregious cases of abuse.

That may be true in some places, but the case workers I've dealt with, in my phone relay work, are running from one end of the county to the other, just trying to put out fires, and have an exhausting work load.

If you have a strong constitution, and lots of Kleenex, you might want to read Dave Pelzer's books.

[Elflover]

Hobby, the results of the study are as I quoted. Among fathers who received full custody, 70% had already been convicted of child abuse.

I know it seems outlandish, but you have to catch the underlying cause. Most fathers do not ask for full custody. Only something like 30% want custody of their children. Men who are intent on using their children as sexual objects are over-represented in that 30%, and that's why the rate of prior conviction is so high among them. If joint custody were the rule so that all fathers had to take physical responsibility for their children part of the time, then the percentage of creepy Dads would be much, much lower.

I'm still not sure I believe that statistic - studies can screw with factors involved to show things they want to see. Still, I don't doubt there is some truth in it. During my divorce, my lawyer said she has seen men who have molested their kids and still get regular, unsupervised visitation on the weekends. Abuse situations often need to be proven to be *current* to be seen as relevant.

Domestic violence is not taken into account for custody battles either, since it is seen as an issue between the two adults only. Thus, it is possible for a controlling, violent man to be awarded regular visitation to his children, only because his abuse was not directed at them.

Another factor that may contribute to the high number of abusive dads who still see their kids is that abusers are more likely to seek custody. Many people understand that mothers usually get custody, but assume that a dad who fights for it must be a loving, involved father who really cares for his kids. This is better than the dead-beat dad who doesn't pay child support, right? So he is taken seriously since in theory everyone wants a child to have two devoted parents.

But unfortunately, truly good dads too often do not fight for custody or for as much visitation as they could get. They may not want all of the legal entanglements, or they may be more passive and just let things be. Some dads who are to willing to "do whatever it takes" to get their kids are actually driven by aggressive personalities, not love for their kids. They may be protecting a personal interest, or just be dominant, ego-centric men who are used to getting their own way and aren't going to be "out-done" by their ex. This too often is mistaken for devotion in their children's lives.

[eborr]

Perhaps I am going to present a contrary view here, not in the sense that child abuse isn't terrible, or that much of the abuse takes place within families, rather that there is a whole industry of social workers, and lawyers who have grown up around this.

As such creatures are won't to they have bureacratised the problem, in essences providing tons of hopeless guidelines whilst child abuse cases are still uncovered,
I am a little short of E time - perhaps will expand the argument and invective later.

[axordil]

I believe that otherwise well-meaning and honest people, in an effort to keep already strained budgets intact, will unconsciously lean towards developing practices that justify the continued funding of their agencies. In other words, they will cast the net wider in order to show more activity, even if it means both more innocent families affected AND less attention actually paid to egregious cases of abuse.

That may be true in some places, but the case workers I've dealt with, in my phone relay work, are running from one end of the county to the other, just trying to put out fires, and have an exhausting work load.

The two are not mutually exclusive, far from it. What you describe is the inevitable outcome of what I describe.

[Jnyusa]

I'm still not sure I believe that statistic - studies can screw with factors involved to show things they want to see. Still, I don't doubt there is some truth in it.

Yes, this does happen in research of course. In this case, though, even if she had deliberately doubled the numbers the truth would still be a terrible statistic.

Another factor that may contribute to the high number of abusive dads who still see their kids is that abusers are more likely to seek custody ... Some dads who are to willing to "do whatever it takes" to get their kids are actually driven by aggressive personalities, not love for their kids.

I think this is probably the dynamic responsible for the sad picture that Chesler paints. These are not random samples walking into the courtroom, reflecting the larger population of divorced parents. The custody battle is part of the fabric of particularly dysfunctional lives, and the men who abuse their spouses and their children are the ones most likely to abuse the courts as well.

...they have bureacratised the problem, in essences providing tons of hopeless guidelines whilst child abuse cases are still uncovered...

This is really the truth. And not the fault of the social worker at the bottom of the pile. But when unsupervised bureaucracies running on government money start to gain momentum, they attract the sleasiest among us and not the best among us.

Jn

[TIGG]

Last night, another case surfaced on the news, a 3 year old died of massive brain injury, 50 individual blows to the head and body.

One massive attack by the mother because the wee boy soiled his pants, using a steel bar. the following morning he did not eat his breakfast (could not eat his breakfast) and another attack by his step-father using a baseball bat followed. He was finally taken to hospital where he died.

I sat with tears rolling down my face, hearing that the country I lived in, the one we were proud to call Godzone, had this as an increasingly common type of news story. I feel enraged, I feel helpless I feel nauseous, and I am numbed with the knowledge that there is nothing I can do.

I know it wouldn't make things right, but these 'people?'/abominations! that treat the innocent like this, I'd like to see them taste some of their own medicine, but then somewhere inside me I wonder is that where this comes from? have they grown up in an environment so deprived of humanity that they know no other way? I do not condone them, I can not ever accept that we all as individuals have the ability to reach above the 'conditioning of our childhood'.

suddenly I feel old.

[vison]

It is almost a certainty that child abusers were themselves abused children. Does this excuse them? No, but it does "explain" it.

On the other hand, many if not most abused children do NOT grow up to be abusers. One of my closest friends was horribly abused as a child, sexually, physically and emotionally and she grew up to be a gentle and understanding mother. Yet it was always her fear that she would "snap" and revert to the lessons she was taught as a child.

It is an enormous problem. I do think it is gradually improving, simply because of the publicity and outrage that result from the exposure of these awful deaths.

I live in a jurisdiction where funding to the Childrens' Ministry has been cut drastically, however. We are right in the very middle of yet another scandal revolving around the death of a child in the Ministry's care.

Money alone will not solve the problem. But money is needed to hire more and better trained social workers and also to fund proper foster families. And, most important, to help the troubled families themselves.

[MithLuin]

...to help the troubled families themselves.

This is what I see as the 'bigger' picture.

Very few people would bludgeon a 3-year-old to death. I don't care if you're manic-depressive or traumatized, that has to be an...odd thing to do. And unspeakably evil. Yes, it does happen. More often than I'd like to think.

But there is a much, much bigger problem. So many families are dysfunctional, have serious problems, are broken or falling apart. Not all of these kids are abused or neglected to the point that you'd ask why a doctor didn't call the social worker....but they are all...in need of help.

Certainly the criminal justice system should deal with people who do abuse children. But what can we do to prevent it? What can we do to help families be healthy? I mean, I know that takes more than encouragement and education, but that might be a good start! There are many community-based programs that seek to provide parenting classes and help for young parents. This sort of 'safety-net' might help keep some people from being so isolated and .... failing in their role as parents. Most people do want to love their children, it's just that that can get hard when you're stressed out and at the end of your rope and hurt yourself...you don't know what else to do, maybe.

I don't know - there certainly is no easy answer. Foster care of course involves people volunteering, and I don't see how you can screen out all the bad apples. Certainly, you wouldn't allow a repeat offender to become a foster parent (if the system worked), but that means they've been caught already.