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Nothing is more heart wrenching than
photographs of a young child who has been severely
physically abused. They most often show large bruises, burns, welts
or scalding that bring tears
to the even most hardened of investigators and the urge stop this
torture at almost any cost.
Such disturbing photos are also shown to legislators to help pass
new laws or to secure additional
funding for social agencies. And when the public hears of child
physical abuse, these are the very
images that come to mind.
In actuality there are very few allegations of this type of serious
abuse. In those rare cases of
severe physical abuse the physical evidence overwhelmingly proves
that physical child abuse has
occurred. The only time that a false allegation might arise is if
the true perpetrator falsely accuses
someone else to avoid punishment. So from where are all the allegations
of physical abuse coming?Setting The Stage:
Dr. Benjamin Spock v. Conservative
Judeo-Christian Beliefs For centuries in Judeo-Christian
communities, parents have used physical discipline or corporal punishment
as a means of teaching
their children "right from wrong." Even the Bible refers
to such physical discipline in its warning,
"spare the rod and spoil the child. " However, shortly
after WWII, this means of molding a child's
moral character was challenged by well known pediatrician Benjamin
Spock, when he proposed
forms of positive re-enforcement and non-physical discipline as
the more enlightened method of
child rearing. Spock's methods were popular in more liberal circles
and became the philosophical underpinning for the training of social
workers, child therapists, and child advocates. (It still
remains today as the foundation of any training done by state agencies.)
However, ,ore conservative parents-- particularly those with fundamentalist
religious beliefs--
opposed Spock's ideas and continue to so. That is why the fierce
conflict between these two
perspectives of handling children is still not resolved in the courts.
In response to the horrors of physical child abuse, the California
legislature wrestled to define
what constituted such abuse in the early 1990's. Representatives
were heavily lobbied both by
social workers who wanted corporal punishment outlawed, and by various
Judeo-Christian groups
believed it was their religious right to use corporal punishment.
The end result was an ambiguous
statute.
Welfare and Institutions Code Section 300 reads "...For purposes
of this subdivision, "serious
physical harm" does not include reasonable and age-appropriate
spanking to the buttocks where there is no evidence of serious physical
injury." Is it physical abuse, then, if you spank your child
on the back of the leg? What is "age appropriate?" How
does one define "serious physical injury?"
Can a red bottom caused by hand spanking be a "serious physical
injury?" None of these issues
can by resolved with this code, and instead, how that code section
is interpreted depends on the
child-rearing perspective of the people who read it.
For example, we have found that Child Protective Service officials
in California generally interpret
the use of any instrument on a child as physical abuse. For decades,
however, mothers spanked
their children with a wooden spoon in order that the mother's hand
was not associated with
inflicting pain. Does the spoon used with the same force as one
might use a hand to spank a child
constitute an "instrument of abuse?"
In California it often does and Child Protective Service workers
have taken children away from
their parents for such disciplinary conduct.
Our office has counseled many Judeo-Christian parents who have raised
their children with love
tempered with physical discipline only to be terrified by allegations
made by Child Protective
Services or the police against them of child abuse. Since Child
Protective Services as a group is
against corporal punishment in any form, they are very liberal in
interpreting corporal punishment
as child abuse. They can then use their power to seize children
and can request the police to
make an arrest for child abuse.
The police and prosecutors are not so uniform in their interpretation:
Each officer, each
department, and each DA's office has a different view of what is
legal corporal punishment and
what is not. However, police and prosecutors tend to ignore the
perspective of some
Judeo-Christian families who feel it is their right to use corporal
punishment for discipline.
That is why some officers will arrest a parent and the DA's office
will prosecute him or her for spanking a child.
The freedom given to Child Protective Service workers, police officers
and prosecutors in defining
corporal punishment is what most often leads to false allegations
of physical child abuse. Their
freedom turns into unchecked power when combined with the unlimited
resources of the DA's
office, an often misinformed or biased staff, and a judicial system
that relies on information from
people in the employ of the state. Even though the ultimate authority-the
jury-will decide on what
is the reasonable treatment of child, it is unfair to expect families
to bear cost and trauma of a
jury trial in order to establish that what they are doing is legal
and reasonable.
The code section as it currently stands makes it possible for agents
of the state to control parents' actions, even if the parents are
acting in the best interest of the child. And while Judeo-Christian
groups can influence what laws are written and passed, they have
little power in influencing how social workers or officers in the
legal and justice systems interpret child abuse standards. And that
may mean arrest, jail and the seizure of your children should you
believe that you have the right
to physically punish your child in order to reinforce moral training
and education.
Conclusion
The cause of injuries to non-verbal children is often difficult
to determine. The search for
evidence can be complex and time-consuming. However, if the justice
system hopes to make
decisions on the basis of the truth, then the truth must to be based
on unbiased scientific data.
That is the only way of distinguishing between the guilty and the
innocent, of distinguishing false
allegations of child physical abuse from those that are true. And
most important, it is the only
way of truly protecting the children.
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