How P.C. Redefines and Distorts the Definition of Child Abuse
Henry Kempe, a Denver pediatrician, realized in the 1960s that some of the children and infants who came to his hospital with severe injuries were being maltreated by their parents or caregivers. The bad news spread quickly round the world and bureaucratic agencies were set up in almost all developed countries to try to rescue children from such abuse.
Are these agencies successful in their efforts? This is the question that a long paper in a recent edition of The Lancet sets out to answer.
It is a formidably difficult question to answer for a number of reasons. Among them is the tendency for social problems to appear more common as agencies are set up to tackle them (few agencies ever dissolve themselves because the problem they were set up to tackle has been solved).
Moreover, the definition of the problem changes over time – usually in the direction of expansion. Child abuse started out as fractured legs and broken skulls, and has ended up as assaults on self-esteem.
To avoid definitional problems, the authors of the paper compared rates of violent death and non-accidental injury of children over time in several different countries or provinces: Sweden, 20 states of the U.S., England, Western Australia, New Zealand, and Manitoba, Canada. They took these measures because they reasoned that they were comparatively trustworthy and unsusceptible to diagnostic fashion.
They found that in most countries neither the death rate nor the rate of non-accidental injury had fallen; only the death rate in Sweden and Manitoba had fallen, but not the rates of non-accidental injury.
I’m quite sure how the title of this thread relates to the contents. This isn’t really an article about “PC” at all – it’s a summary of a study published in the lancet on the “old-fashioned” sort of child abuse. You’re also quite short on any sort of explanation of the findings, just some rhetorical questions.
And I’m not quite sure why assaults on self-esteem, if prolonged and serious, should be defined back out of existence just because they don’t result in a trip to emergency. Do you actually not agree that it qualifies as serious? Particularly, do you not agree that it’s abuse that can have serious and long-lasting consequences? Sure, it’s not sexual or physical, but that’s no reason to ignore it. How do you think the next generation of abusive parents are raised?
It’s true, the cuffs don’t match the collar here. “Cheap Hooch Bad News for Red-headed Stepkids” might have been a better headline.
I’ve read that guys on Death Row have lots more self-esteem than your average citizen, Techno. Pumping self-esteem hasn’t been proven to have any benefits whatsoever. Why should its reverse be considered abuse – because you feel it to be so?
You read where? National Enquirer? Psychological abuse or assaults on self esteem are more permanently harmful than moderate corporal punishment.
And how would you know that? Massive twin studies where one was insulted and the other assaulted?
Not a lot of such studies.
Much easier to lie.
Sneering at the National Enquirer, Terry Gain? After the John Edwards story serious people recognize that the Enquirer’s a more reliable news source than the New York Times.
Actually I heard it on the Dennis Prager Show – he talks a lot about the feel-good nonsense behind the child-damaging self-esteem movement. He was interviewing a guy who’d actually studied Death Row prisoners. Might have been one of the psychologists who authored this study:
http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/papers/baumeistersmartboden19961.pdf
“Psychological abuse or assaults on self esteem are more permanently harmful than moderate corporal punishment.” (What about “moderate” psychological abuse, quibble boy? And if Mom kicks you down the stairs and you break both legs, doesn’t that also count as psychological abuse and an assault on your self-esteem?)
What constitutes an “assault” on self-esteem? “You’ll never have any friends!” sounds harsh – call social services! But “If you don’t stop bullying weaker kids, you’ll never have any friends!”, how’s that sound?
Who defines this “abuse” and “assault”, some bureaucrat fresh out of grad school who’s been taught that Evangelicals are all dirty brain-washers? Get past broken legs and black eyes into speech and thought-crime, and you invite complete government tyranny over the family.
The title of the article, I admit, isn’t really that important to the meat of the article but the point that political correctness has changed the definition of what child abuse is – for good or bad – since child abuse became an issue back in the sixties is valid.
The meat of the article though, the main point of the article I believe, is that child abuse rates haven’t really changed since then. All this effort, all these new agencies and all these new laws, the family courts and all these investigations have done almost nothing to limit the number of truly violent child abuse reports.
And yes, some of the new PC ideas of what constitutes child abuse, in my opinion anyway, are questionable. A quick smack on the butt is not going to do any physical harm to a child. Parents have been spanking children for generations, some even used a switch, a belt or a spoon. Today though, parents are accused of child abuse because someone sees them smack a child in a store for throwing a temper tantrum. Which brings up another question, are some of the problems we are having with our children today due to a lack of real discipline? Are parents so afraid the child, or a nearby witness, might scream child abuse that they just let the child throw a tantrum instead of discipline the child?
Nowadays, child abuse is a lot like rape. You don’t have to actually be guilty. All some one has to do is make the accusation and your life can go down the drain.
I despise people who hurt children but parents have to be able to discipline their child within reasonable limits.
Very agree.
Very misleading headline, yes. PJM is better than this.
Perhaps the mismatch is because something on the front page of the Lancet article was edited out of Dalrymple’s article:
There is no meat to this non-article. Dalrymple wanked his typewrier and this meaningless “article” was spewed.PJMedia should be ashamed!
I believe there were some very serious cases of child abuse in Britain recently that were not handled well by the child protection agencies. On the other hand, bureaucrats can overreact to far less threatening behaviours or simple accidents. It becomes a question of how to ensure that agencies allow common sense to direct their activities, rather than masses of regulations.
So, if we make alcohol illegal, child abuse will fall?
What do you dream at night?
Without question, if you could make consumption of alcohol dramatically fall, it would reduce child abuse, rape, murder, robbery, and aggravated assault. How to make that happen is unclear, and even worse, how to make that happen without adding other problems is even more unclear. But yes: alcohol causes some people to do terrible things.
Alcohol causes behaviour? Citations please. I’ll buy that alcohol lowers inhibitions that an otherwise uninfluenced person might have regarding certain behaviours, but that is not cause. Which and how much spirits would I need to consume before I must commit murder or assault?
“Alcohol causes behaviour? Citations please. I’ll buy that alcohol lowers inhibitions that an otherwise uninfluenced person might have regarding certain behaviours, but that is not cause.”
A philosophical distinction without a difference.
If someone slips LSD into my diet coke, will my behavior change? If it does, can we say that LSD “caused” my behavior? Or must we persist in these semantic games?
Even when I am very drunk, I am very, very unlikely to kill anyone or abuse children. Glad to hear that you consider yourself in the same boat.
But it is also true that many/most people tend to behave with less control and are more likely to commit crimes when they are drunk.
Anyone that doesn’t know that alcohol changes behavior must never get out.
“Blue, you say?! Citations, please!” says Richard Blaine
C’mon, do we need the government to appropriate taxpayer dollars to fund a team of professors and grad students to study the sky for us before we can say what color it is?
Of course alcohol consumption increases child abuse. Why? Because drinking pushes the marginal over the margin.
And this very author has studied the correlation between inexpensive liquor and heavy drinking. One of his essays I read concerned a Brit company who took people to Africa to build roads in the back of beyond. One of the workers’ perks was two-dollar quarts of vodka, and they all turned into alcoholics. See his published works!
If making booze illegal would make it more expensive, then making booze illegal would reduce child abuse, HippieChick.
No, Chris, nobody’s suggesting that there’s a drink or a pill that would make a swell guy like you do anything lousy.
The question is, is it right to impair everybody’s rights because some will benefit? Should a school ban peanut butter sandwiches because one student is allergic to peanuts? The answer seems to be trending yes, and I think that’s very bad news.
Look, I fully understand that many people can get rip-roaring drunk and not become violent. But pretending that there are not social problems caused by alcohol (and many other intoxicants), is where ideology wins over facts.
‘And this very author has studied the correlation between inexpensive liquor and heavy drinking. One of his essays I read concerned a Brit company who took people to Africa to build roads in the back of beyond. One of the workers’ perks was two-dollar quarts of vodka, and they all turned into alcoholics. See his published works!’
Strange. I can’t find it on Pubmed. Would you care to provide a link?
For what it’s worth, this example is very familiar to me as well, from the author’s published works. I regret that I do not have a link. Most likely the reference is in one of the articles in “Life at the Bottom”, and it’s possible that the original quote is in “From Zanzibar to Timbuktu”. I recommend both books.
Sorry, Louise, but I can’t put my finger on it. I recommend all his books, though:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_8_9?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=theodore+dalrymple&sprefix=theodore+
Jonathan’s probably right – read LIFE AT THE BOTTOM, it’s only 5 bucks! I’m confident it’s not in the latest one, ANYTHING GOES, but read that, too.
Thank you but I have read most of his ‘literary output’ including “Life at the Bottom’ is a fine book if you take it for what it is – semi-autobiographical fiction. The fact that some readers are willing to see Dalrymple as some kind of scientific authority on the basis of this book alone baffles me.
“It becomes a question of how to ensure that agencies allow common sense to direct their activities, rather than masses of regulations.”
Sorry to say vb, it is never gonna happen. Every government employee has a very strict set of rules and regulations specifying how they are to act in any given situation. This kind of system is supposed to remove bad judgement from the equation, but it rarely does. It does effectively remove good judgement. This is the root cause of government’s Sadim touch. To exacerbate the situation there are civil service rules that make firing bad employees nearly impossible. These rules ensure that good performance is never rewarded, and bad performance never punished.
It’s not just bad judgement they try to remove, but any judgement at all. That’s why they treat a kid that says “daddy yells at me too much” the same as a kid with a broken jaw; that’s why certified EMTs and police officers can sit and watch a man drown for an hour without helping; that’s why a TSA agent treats an 8 year old girl exactly the same way he/she treats a 22 year old arab male with a one way ticket and a facial twitch.
That’s the issue with any form of government involvement, even the kind we all agree on that is done with the best of intentions (especially given the litigious nature of our society.) Judgement and discrimination have been turned into bad words in Western culture, and we can see the effects.
Yet the flip side isn’t much better … allowing bureaucrats too much latitude for judgment opens the door for abuses and corruption of government power that will end up trampling on the rights of some. What if some bureaucrat decides that, say, homeschooling your kids is a form of abusive “isolation” from the world around them … or exercises their judgment to bring Jim Crow back from the dead?
This is why government should be limited to those relative few, one-size-fits-all areas that are truly part of our “commons” … and the rules in those areas, including the amount of latitude for judgment calls, need to be clearly set out … instead of the popular practice in Congress of leaving the details for the bureaucrats to define, when it comes to creating new legislation.
Bureaucracy consists of writing rules for one situation, and applying them to another situation, and claiming that there is improvement.
If the government backs off, and people treat people like people, we won’t get much worse, and we will spend a lot less money doing so.
Darwin always asserts himself in the end.
we too often think we have moved beyond that. we haven’t.
Try living in a state like New Jersey, like I do. About a year or so ago a boy in college in New Jersey committed suicide by jumping off of the George Washington Bridge after his roommate in college secretly videotaped the boy having gay sex in the dorm room. The boy found out about it after the video of the event was posted on the Internet. The boy then killed himself and the roommate was arrested and faces numerous charges, most of them dealing with invasion of privacy and secretly taping someone without their permission.
Seems that the boy in question never told his parents that he was gay and that he was devestated by what happened to such an extent that he thought the only way out was to kill himself. It was a very tragic event, but the entire state went a little insane after it happened. New Jersey has now enacted an “Anti-Bullying” Law throughout the state that has to be one of the harshest in the country. In the old days, bullying used to be a kid that beat up another kid for lunch money. Or even a kid that threatened another kid with physical abuse. But today, ANYTHING could be considered bullying, from insulting a kid (“Your mother wears Army shoes” or just “You Stink”) to just saying something bad about another kid, even though you’re not saying the insult to the actual kid who is being insulted.
In short, ANYTHING can now be considered Bullying. It has gotten so bad in public schools now in New Jersey that each school has to designate an anti-bullying specialist to investigate complaints; each district will have an anti-bullying coordinator; and the State Education Department will evaluate each case and post grades on its web site. Educators who don’t abide by the rules may lose their licenses, according to superintendents. This is without state funding to help. And each complaint can go on a kid’s record, no matter how small or slight the insult was. You can read more about how this law is affecting the state here: http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/state/bullying
So now, not only can ANYTHING be considered bullying in public schools, but the punishments can include legal prosecution and permanent marks on your school record, doing untold damage to your possibility of getting into college. So a third grader who says to a little girl “You’re icky” can now find himself before a judge explaining what he ment by that crack.
And let’s not even discuss the damage this does to your Constitutional Right to free speech. Doesn’t this kid have a RIGHT to say “You’re Icky” without fear of bening prosecuted and given a criminal record? Don’t kids have a right to say what’s on their mind without fear of prosecution? This is a state that has gone insane with Political Correctness and I’m just waiting before one of these kids who has been slapped with an “Anti-Bullying” penalty takes it all the way to the Supreme Court. I’ll bet he or she wins. No state should be allowed to withhold your freedom of speech. Just like people cannot be thrown in jail for insulting a cop, you should NOT be prosecuted for saying that “You’re mom’s a hamster” in grade school.
I’m sorry that kid jumped off of the George Washington Bridge. I really am. But his reaction to that event in college showed that he wasn’t too mentally stable to begin with. And now to penalize an entire state for something one kid did is just deranged. I certainly hope that this law is repealed, especially with the help of the US Supreme Court.
Child abuse and bullying are very serious issues. But IMAGINED bullying is getting out of hand in New Jersey, as is this wierd desire to protect all kids from every slight, real or imagined.
Free speech has its limits.
If something is illegal in the adult world, it sure as heck should be illegal in a juvenile world. Adults who are psychologically tormented by ex-spouses or stalkers can go to court and get a restraining order and the other parties can be jailed for just coming near them.
When children are thrown into that same situation … meh … it’s time for them to “man up” and stop the “imagined” bullying. Send them back to the same place and let the “imagined” bullies get another “imagined” crack at them the next day.
Libertyship, I’m sure that if a group of “imagined” tormenters put you through the daily harassment that some school kids go through, you’d go crying to the police in a day or two. Following you around at work telling all your co-workers that you are a slut or a child molester. Making false allegations to get you in trouble with your boss. Alienating people that hang around with you in an attempt to socially isolate you. “Accidentally” bumping into you in the halls and knocking you over, then laughing in your face and calling you an idiot. Taking your lunch and laughing about it when you don’t have anything to eat the rest of the day. Posting untrue statements about you online.
Here’s the text of New Jersey’s law: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2010/Bills/A3500/3466_R1.HTM
I don’t see anything in there saying “your mom’s a hamster” is legally actionable. So stop fearmongering. Just curious – what would you change in this oppressive law?
As for the college student committing suicide after having his sexual encounter broadcast over the internet, how “mentally stable” would you be if someone posted pictures of you playing with yourself all over your town? Then sent them to your parents and family members. Then commented on the size of your member?
You need to walk a mile in someone’s shoes before you start making uninformed judgments.
Although I understand your view, unfortunately the “restraining order” way to deal with things has gone too far in the other direction from what was intended. It is now a preemptive weapon utilized by too many women as a prelude to a divorce and nasty child custody fight. All a woman has to do is say she’s “afraid” based on no evidence of violence (physical or psychological) and a man’s life can be ruined. As a judge told me…”No judge is going to take a chance that they don’t issue an order and a woman ends up in the ER”. When I asked what he would do if a man came before him with no evidence of physical abuse let alone psychological abuse and requested an order what would he do, he said I’d tell the guy to go get a motel room and let things cool off.
I refer you here for a more accurate description of how they are used…
http://www.mediaradar.org/
From the above you would assume that it goes without saying that a woman asks for an order and it’s granted. Not so. I have an adoptive daughter that sought help in the way of a restraining order against a violent, old boy friend stalking her and to my surprise when she went in front of a female magistrate to make the request it was as if she were being prosecuted for stalking him.
I simply took matters into my own hands and set up a network of friends that could be called in case he ever came around her again. Friends with concealed carry permits and no qualms about using their training. I then paid a visit to the young man and explained exactly what I had done. He got the message.
If there was one thing in the New Jersey law that I would see changed it would be to make calling someone’s mother a hamster actionable…that is psychological abuse by any Domestic Violence Group’s standards.
It’s not what might be changed about the law. It goes much deeper than that.
The problem is using the criminal law against children. If they haven’t reached the age of reason then the criminal law is (or should be) inapplicable as a means of dealing with them. This stems from the principle that to commit a crime you must a) provably commit the proscribed act and b) provably have the fully comprehended intention of committing the proscribed act.
Certain ‘progressive’ elements now want the law to pooh-pooh the ‘principles’ approach and just deploy the criminal law, like putting an automatic weapon on ‘burst’ mode and simply spraying the crowd.
This stems, I think, from the ‘progressive’ dilemma: having a) deconstructed the family and marriage and parental authority and largely the entire realm of pre-existing principles, while simultaneously having ‘valorized’ so-called ‘total autonomy’ for kids, they now have to deal with cohorts of kids
who have been raised with no real sense of right or wrong.
Their solution – and it’s not a good one – is simply to use the criminal law to replace the missing competences that should have been instilled by family and parental authority and education into the principled-life. Thus whatever ‘actions’ shouldn’t be done, should simply be ‘criminalized’.
But this dangerously engorges the police power of the State, already invited into the hearths and bedrooms of the Citizenry by the domestic-violence advocacy and persuaded to enact the eerily Stasi-like sex offense registration laws – and those are only the most obvious examples of the engorgement of the sovereign police power at the insistence of the Left (we had always thought that only the Right’s law-and-order folk would invite the dangerous return to Leviathan, but over the past 25 years it has been the Left even more so).
I think this whole issue offers the chance to reflect on the larger and deeper concerns: there is a grave risk in all this use of the criminal-law as a substitute for ‘raising children in principles’and as a ‘teaching’ tool and ‘to send a message’: the careful balance of the Constitutional machinery will be deranged and the tilt toward an invasive police state will begin.
And that tilt will also be assisted by a civil society already weakened by the weakness of its core source of vitality, which is not the government at all, but rather the vital social links that start with parenting and the family and extend out horizontally to others similarly engaged.
Progressive victimism – while perhaps well-intentioned – is as great a danger to the Constitutional balance as the old law-and-order Right of yore.
To Pertinax,
I have three thoughts regarding your discussion of criminal law and bullying.
1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/03/library-sends-police-5-year-old_n_1181916.html
Cops make a house call at a house in Mass because of a 5 year old had 2 overdue books from the library.
2. I was against Gov Chris Christie’s anti-bullying law in NJ as over reach. Then I read about a bullying case in Staten Island New York that made me think I knew nothing about bullying. We might have to refresh our definitions of words because when 50 teenage kids show up at a girl’s house while she is staying home to avoid bullying, and the police are called, and they are shoved to the ground, and the fire department is called, and have to use a water cannon against the kids, and “The girl has a heart condition, relatives said, and at one point, one of the teens taunted her by saying, “We’re gonna punch you in the chest. We’re gonna fix your heart condition.”
http://www.silive.com/northshore/index.ssf/2011/12/9_arrests_in_staten_island_inc.html
Maybe that is no longer bullying but gang warfare, but it was 50 to 1, and that doesn’t define gang warfare to me.
3. I know our criminal system talks about having the requisite “intention” to commit the crime based on moral culpability such that someone commits a crime and is found innocent or acquitted due to insanity, I think we need another approach to criminal acts and that would be “guilty of the acts and insane and dangerous” because the idea of Anders Behring Breivik who killed 92 people, mostly kids, getting some time in a mental institution because they think he is insane is insanity. Even had he been found guilty, he was only going to get something like 21 years anyway. We cage dangerous animals and they do not have the ability to form criminal intent,and I don’t see why we don’t do the same thing for humans.
Their having done the deeds and being dangerous is all I need for a conviction. Pretty soon we’ll see a defense that people can’t be responsible for their actions because they could not have criminal intent because they were brought up with no concept of moral and immoral, or right and wrong, and that might be the case, but we still need to lock them up. The same is true of someone who had brain injury destroying the part of the brain that makes moral judgments. We also want to lock up sociopaths who act out, despite their ongoing pre-existing condition.
I think that the way children were designed as small and with no memory of the first three years was to give the adults the chance to appear as authority figures to the children and the parents have a limited time to use that space before the children turn into teenagers to establish the concept of authority, that there is someone bigger and stronger than the child. I think every individual needs to learn that concept and it is kinder if one’s family who loves the child is the one that teaches that lesson while the person is a child, and the family provides a secure environment for the child and is a source of strength to the person as he/she grows up and lives life. It used to be a hierarchy of God to state to father of the household to child which kept the ego under control. The family prepared the child to live in a society. The Left has worked hard to get rid of God and of fathers and of a hierarchy in the family. That leaves the state. Yes in some countries, authority is stronger and more squelching than in the US, but it is necessary in the US as well.
On the other hand, perhaps people shouldn’t do things of which they are ashamed.
Shame serves a useful social function.
The roommate didn’t want his shared space being used to host homosexual orgies. HIS privacy was being violated. The ‘gay student’ and his sex partner were being bullies.
If you don’t want your shared space used for homosexual orgies, tell your roommate that you do not appreciate it, and could he please make other arrangements? Recording and putting it on the web is about as appropriate a response as shooting someone because they accidentally dinged your car door in the parking lot.
The point about shame is well-taken. The world would be a lot better place if people didn’t do things they would be ashamed of.
But what I am talking about is the criminal-law and in short order that takes us right to the profound matter of Constitutional balance and first principles.
And it is there that I would say we have to insist that you can’t use the criminal law as a shaming device. There is too much at stake in terms of Leviathan and the engorgement of the police-power of the government. The Framers used the Constitutional machinery to limit the government.
They did this both because a) they didn’t trust an expansive police-power in human hands and b) because they realized that government is not the core of a nation’s or a polity’s or a society’s or a culture’s life: that vital primary life is carried on by the people in their daily lives.
What has happened in the past 25 or 30 years is that under the mantra of ‘the personal is political’ the government has been invited into the most personal areas of every Citizen’s life, and precisely with its police-power.
I can think of no greater danger to the Framing Vision.
Also, it would take a government with the knowledge and wisdom formerly ascribed to God to effect this type of authority wisely and without ill-consequence. And the Framers knew that no humans and no human government could be relied upon to exercise such omniscience as well as omnipotence.
If this sounds like a whole lot of ‘basic stuff’ and ‘old stuff’ then I can only say that this is precisely the level on which so much of the past 30 years’ worth of laws were NOT examined and thus it is precisely here that we must look for why there seem to be so many problems with not only the specific laws but with the entire Constitutional machinery now.
And, since baaaad ideas tend to migrate in the Beltway, you can even see the results in foreign policy now, where the government claimed the right to invade Libya because women were reportedly being raped by Viagra-crazed troops and it is the right of any government to invade to stop such pain and outrage. On that basis, any government can claim the right to invade any other country.
It’s funny how the constitutional night moves, but there you have it.
Libertyship’s right. New Jersey legislators should stick to balancing their budget and making health insurance affordable by removing mandated coverage for nonsense like aromatherapy. Some kid who kills himself may be police or tort-lawyer business, but it isn’t legislature business.
Side B, your emotional appeal was touching – how horrible growing up can be, even in the world’s most affluent nation. But I’ll keep fighting to stop maudlin thugs like you from taking my speech rights.
bpete, I liked your stalking/concealed carry story. But I don’t buy the stuff about judges fearing the consequences of their lack of action. Would that it were! We’d have fewer felons on the street. Oh, and I’m sorry to hear about your mom being a hamster.
DonM, you’re weird. Didn’t sound like an orgy, and even if it was, so what? Are YOU without sin? Lay off the stones, then.
Side B, I’m sure you were hit a lot in the head in numerous dodgeball games while you were in school, right? Your arguments are not only idiotic, they only prove my point. You obviously go way, way, overboard in your version of what bullying is. We are not talking about stalkers or “ex-husbands” here. Newsflash to you, chum, I was a kid too once. And there is a huge difference between somebody who wants to physically assault you and somebody who makes a joke about you. But I’m sure you were “a saint” in school, Side B, and never, ever, made a crude or even funny comment about another student. But now in New Jersey EVERY comment you make about another student is actionable and can be reported to school authorities.
Even newspapers like the New York Times (hardly a far-right publication) thinks there are big problems with this law. You can read about it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/nyregion/bullying-law-puts-new-jersey-schools-on-spot.html?pagewanted=all
And, according to the most recent version of the law that I have seen (dated January 5, 2011) http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2010/Bills/AL10/122_.PDF:
“Harassment, intimidation or bullying” means any gesture, any
written, verbal or physical act, or any electronic communication 145,
whether it be a single incident or a series of incidents, 146 that is
47 reasonably perceived as being motivated either by any actual or
48 perceived characteristic, such as race, color, religion, ancestry,
A3466 [1R]
10
national origin, gender, sexual orientation, 1 gender identity and
2 expression, or a mental, physical or sensory [handicap] disability,
3 or by any other distinguishing characteristic, that takes place on
school property, at any school-sponsored function 1[or] ,1 4 on a
school bus 15 , or off school grounds
Did you READ that? It said ANY gesture, ANY written, verbal or physical act, or ANY electronic communication that is motivated either by ANY actual or perceived characteristic. Do you really need a definition of what the word ANY means? Schools are now being flooded with these complaints and we, the taxpayer, are going to have to get stuck with the bill while the schools lose time investigating whether or not “Your mother is a hamster” falls under the category of ANY VERBAL COMMUNICATION.
And you go on to say, “Following you around at work telling all your co-workers that you are a slut or a child molester. Making false allegations to get you in trouble with your boss. Alienating people that hang around with you in an attempt to socially isolate you.” Since when did a grade schooler have “co-workers?” When did an 8th Grader “get you in trouble with your boss?” And when was a 7th grader called a “child molester?” As usual, bleeding heart liberals like you go way overboard and apply adult situations to grade schoolers, exactly what should NOT be done.
And if you are trying to, once again, insulate or protect ever kid from every slight or every insult there is in the world, then I feel sorry for that kid when he or she does grow up and has to enter the real world where people are not nearly as nice as they are in school. Maybe it is time for you to “Man Up” and try to really look at what should and should not be considered a crime in a public school or a state for that matter.
As I said in my first post, I feel sorry for that college kid. But the perpetrators of that crime are facing criminal and civil charges and I hope they get the book thrown at them. But kids will be kids and they say dumb things. It still doesn’t mean that they should be found guilty of a criminal offense because of it.
Note: My comments seem to appear and then not appear on this post, so I am re-writing them here. Don’t know why this is happening in the comments section.
The kid that jumped off the bridge, had a sensitive conscience. Society can’t have that now, can we!
50,000,000 abortions and counting.
“…and it is not easy to imagine how the public authorities could simply ignore child abuse once it came to their knowledge.”
It may not be easy for you to imagine, but having served as juror on a couple of child molestation cases, I find it all too easy to imagine. In fact, in one of my cases, you didn’t have to imagine it at all, you just had to listen to the fairly disgusting testimony.
And it seems that some child abuse is ignored or the perpetrators coddled. Muslims literally get away with murder. The system has a high tolerance for abuse among American Indians, both in the USA and Canada.
Try this: go to the supermarket and swat your child’s ass for doing something he/she shouldn’t be doing. If your child chooses to make a scene, people will call 911 and report CHILD ABUSE.
At the very least, you will be interrogated by a police officer, with his finding being forwarded to Child Protective Services.
At the worst, he’ll take your kids and you’ll have to hire an attorney to get them back which will only happen after a bleeding heart liberal social worker with a BA in something irrelevant puts you through the paces to justify his/her job.
It happened to my neighbor and it’s happened to my daughter in law.
I was questioned once on a friends fitness to be a mother when her child nearly drowned in their backyard pool. She was in the pool with her child, the child had those floatation cuff thingies on, she turned away for a second to blow up a pool toy float ring when the child slipped and went under and took water up his nose. The pool was not deep enough to be over the child’s head. She rushed him to the emergency room and he was fine. Seems a neighbor didn’t like her and reported the accident as child neglect. I was in the hospital room to visit when the state worker interviewed me. I couldn’t believe anyone would question this as anything but an accident, but all it took was a disgruntled neighbor to almost cause her to have her child taken away. I don’t know how many others they interviewed but no one else said anything but good things about her and her love for her child.
What about forcing your kid to live on a vegetarian or vegan diet? Is that child abuse or free exercise of religion, etc. ?
One problem, of course, is that nearly the worst way to deal with any social problem is to create an office or agency specifically to deal with it. That’s only a good approach when the problem is by its very nature perpetual, just creating police and fire departments works well.
But for problems that are more sporadic and are potentially solvable, creating a specialized agency or group gives you a group of people who’s livelihood and sense of personal importance (don’t discount the importance of the latter) gives them a reason to perpetuate that problem, and expand it.
There’s also the political side of it. Certain kinds of work draw certain personlity types that should not, under any circumstances, be doing that work. For ex, police departments have to try to screen out would-be bullies and people on a certain kind of ego trip, i.e. the would be ‘Dirty Harry’. That personality type is drawn to the authority (or rather the power) that police possess and can cause endless trouble if they get it.
Some kinds of social work, for their part, draw what amount to busybodies, eager to run everybody’s life for them. They too can cause big problems, if they get into a position to wield power. As with the police, not nearly everybody who gravitates to that work is like that, but they are always among those drawn.
THEODORE DALRYMPLE-
May I suggest that your story title turn into a SERIES? You barely scratched the surface on the subject. This subject involves HUGE problems for parents, children and families that need a lot more exposure in the press.
What is happening portends the complete destruction of our society.
Leonard Henderson, co-founder
American Family Rights
http://familyrights.us
“Until Every Child Comes Home”©
“The Voice of America’s Families”©
THEODORE DALRYMPLE-
May I suggest that your story title turn into a SERIES? You barely scratched the surface on the subject. This subject involves HUGE problems for parents, children and families that need a lot more exposure in the press.
What is happening portends the complete destruction of our society.
Leonard Henderson, co-founder
American Family Rights
familyrights.us
“Until Every Child Comes Home”©
“The Voice of America’s Families”©
I propose what I see as a string of dots to be connected: women are in a relatively short space of time ‘liberated’ across the society; they are known to be the more cautious and fearful half of the species, especially leery of violence (although not averse to deploying it if they can); forthwith this large demographic (or at least its self-proclaimed ‘advocates’) demands increasing and intensifying government assistance through the Sovereign police power; this extends even unto what used to be known as the ‘hearth’ (let alone the bedroom) with the result that under vast expansion of the police power the distinction between public and private realms collapses – one of the hallmark signs of a police state totalitarianism; assorted gravy-trains are constructed whereby ‘experts’ and even advocates are funded with public monies to solve the (never to be solved) problems and expand definitions to keep the numbers up.
Also: what used to be called ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ are now considered the responsibility of govt to solve or eradicate (inviting legal ‘war’ on one half the Citizenry); and as God is kicked to the curb because His Plan doesn’t allow for sufficient ‘total autonomy’ the liberation-questers turn to Leviathan to solve all the problems that God had not.
This is a recipe for civic implosion in a Constitutional Republic and the script for a very dystopian bit of sci-fi. And yet many urge us on as if it were the very cutting-edge of progress and enlightenment.
This is not intended as an implicit approval of human evil but simply points out a Consequence – intended or not – of the National Nanny State with its extended police power flooding everywhere. Consequences – the annoying thingies Bush-Cheney ignored when they went to Iraq in the sure and certain knowledge that you could have a pound of flesh without the icky mess or without killing the patient. And now they ‘cawn’t think why’ things went so wrong, since they meant so well.
“The avoidance of harm is not the only aim of human existence”-
Dalrymple is correct there, with a bracingly bold assertion from a doctor, albeit retired. We all have different views of how liberty and security should be balanced and at what point civil disobedience is justified if the balance in our jurisdiction is not to our liking; at any rate, those of us who take the time reflect upon such questions.
Some will exalt the sexual revolutionaries- Kinsey, Mead, Sanger et al- to their secular humanist pantheon but take exception to closed-circuit television recording them buying their morning newspaper; others enthusiastically extol cannabis while criticising drinkers for putting themselves and others at risk, often incredulous that current law sides with the pub over the “coffee shop”. There is no easy way of working out the right answer to these questions, should such a thing exist; so my principles are that competent adults should decide in the main what level of risk they are willing to countenance in private, respect the law in spirit if not letter, and be considerate of the risks they may be exposing others to in public. They may be tough on intoxicants in Scandinavia, but they have famously lax penal regimes and are exceptionally tolerant on sexual matters, Nordic countries being among the world’s first to legalise hardcore pornography.
I had to ask a parent to purchase the affecting and sensitive Swedish film “The Ketchup Effect”, which I saw in 2006 aged 12, due to the British censors’ puzzling insistence that a film about the misadventures of early adolescents was unsuitable for them to watch. In its home country anyone aged eleven could view it unsupervised, while all children were given entrance if accompanied by a parent. Romeo and Juliet or even The Sorrows of Young Werther it was not, nevertheless it is salutary more than salacious; the language was sometimes coarse, but in my experience teenagers do not for example say “I had carnal knowledge of her”. Perhaps there is a case to be made in the abstract that children and adolescents be taught to speak delicately, if at all ,of the matter- with society as it is though, Swedish censors do not see a need to prevent them hearing expletives and sexual talk at the cinema.
With respect to the main topic of the article, one of the reasons I strongly support the traditional system of courtship, slow development of relationships, assessing with discernment the moral character of any partner and their likely ability to be a good parent, and at least ideally reserving sex for marriage is the child protection argument. It is one I can use in discussion without any Biblical references, thus avoiding the regurgitation of debate over the existence of a deity or, among socially liberal theists, the validity of Biblical moral codes to today and forcing them to confront the baleful purely human repercussions of the decline in sexual morality.It can lead on gracefully to my traditional views on parenthood and the ease of access to divorce.
Western societies reverting en masse to the ancien regime of ethics for intimate relationships would, among other benefits, protect more children than any amount of no-touch codes, photography bans, compulsory safeguarding training, enhanced CRB checks and school policies. I would never gainsay one who said we need to have protocols in place for the protection of children by professionals working with them; only that such protocols are getting progressively more alarmist and inflexible and will do little compared to the reintroduction of the married two-parent family as the norm.
Having read several executive summaries of Part VIII reviews under Working Together, the same points become immediately noticeable. A child protection review that did not highlight the importance of prompt and appropriate information-sharing, for instance, would be an occasion for smelling salts. Yet it depends very much on what is considered “appropriate” and how much parents are prepared to co-operate. A “pupil support manager” at my school some four years ago told me that “she could sit back and just read (my files) to her heart’s content” under the CAF scheme. Incensed, I informed my parents who reassured me that in the event of my having a sensitive matter to deal with, they would pay for a private specialist to see me.
Conversely, I am against alcohol, tobacco or any substance being made artificially expensive to cool demand; I find this approach to be an unacceptable infringement on civil liberties. It is counterproductive in several ways which make its overall effectiveness dubious, while the loss of liberty it entails is real and tangible. I consider the decision of a person on whether and how to temporarily alter their mental state too personal to be decided for all in a realm by legislative fiat, let alone all who inhabit this little blue planet by a pangaean Single Convention. My mother makes the same argument in favour of the continued legality of abortion. De gustibus and all that.
I have medical school interviews to negotiate in the coming months. Thanks to Dalrymple for making me think, and I have already mentioned my reading of his work (Second Opinion) in my personal statement.
JK
Well we are seeing cases in Europe, such as one in England, where 4 children are taken away from a mother and father who are heavy themselves because the children are heavy, not morbidly obese, because of fears for the future that heavy children might in the future get diabetes which might cost the National Health Service money in the future and that the children might in the future be socially ostracized, and overlooking genetics. There is another case where a young son was taken away in Sweden, where the family was pulled off the plane on the runway, from his parents because they were Christian and believed in home-schooling and were moving back to India where the mother came from, and it was further proof of the parents’ unfitness, that when the mother was allowed to visit for the 1 hour per 5 weeks that she was allowed, that she cried. The child was prohibited from seeing his grandparents for unknown reasons, just because the government could, I guess. Given these cases, I have no fear that the definition of “child abuse” will continue to increase and will provide lots of work and job security for social workers. Given the obesity rate of children in the US, if the same rule were applied here, the majority of lower class and middle class children might be taken away for their own good of course.
Be very wary of “PC Gone Mad” stories from the UK.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2069986/Child-taken-care-obese-Parents-didnt-control-weight.html
Now and then, mad things can happen. But it’s nowhere near as common as tabloid newspapers like to make out. When you read a “PC Gone Mad” story in a UK newspaper, you should always assume that you’re being lied to until you can check the facts (i.e the ones they claim to be giving you, and the ones they didn’t give you). From experience, about 80% of them are just plain nonsense.
Children are not being removed from parents for being a bit plump. It’s not like any country has so many free foster places that social workers can afford to just grab any kid they want.
As for the story about sweden, that’s obviously a load of rubbish. Give me a link so I don’t have to waste my time looking into that one, because there’s just no way you’re giving us the whole story.
Techno
Not on child abuse but a “PC run wild story from the UK” : the other story that made it to the US all the way to California was this one: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2070496/Staff-parents-fury-head-turns-schools-heating-save-planet.html
That is an excellent example of what I’m talking about. I just posted a longer response but it hasn’t shown up. I’ll try again tomorrow. The short version is that it’s a planned event that’s taken place for the last three years running. Students are involved in the planning and it appears that it’s a ‘theme day’ without normal lessons but with planned activities instead. The UK has laws about workplace health and safety and there’s no way a principal could just go and switch off the heating without a visit from ofsted and the unions. Whatever one might think about the theme of the event, it didm’t happen the way the daily mail makes out, and parents knew it was happening – it happens every year. Notice that none of that information is contained in the article. It’s a beat-up, and it’s what the UK tabloids are best at doing.
Techno:
Even if the kids planned it, I am still against it and see it as PC run wild so much so that the kids are brain washed into doing what their head master wanted them to do, like good little brain washed true believers, and doing their agenda all over other kids’ rights. I also found it interesting how the newspaper worked, and how much censorship was used on comments on the story, and that is frightening because in the US, other than Leftist, or white supremacist websites, you don’t see censorship on comments based on content. On most American websites, they have rules which are objective. Someone does not get to censor an opinion due to a difference of opinion, or to protect adult readers from a thought.
You might be against it, but the point I’m trying to make is that the way the story was framed by the daily mail was designed to misrepresent what happened, by leaving out important information and adding “outrage” elements – like unnamed teachers and parents voicing their surprise and anger (I’ll wager that none of the quotes is even real – once you understand what actually happened, it’s beyond belief that a parent would be shocked when their shivering child arrived home from an unexpected chilly day in the classroom).
So the school had a “no power” day. They also have an electric car project and keep animals and were awarded some sort of “green flag” award for environmental something or other – I think that was in 2010.
Incidentally, according to the school’s news and events page, they have also recently had events involving a trip to a “german christmas market” and something to do with christian aid and poverty. So we appear to have a headmaster who is keen on raising thinking children who are interested in the world.
So … do you understand what my beef is with that story?
Techno,
Ok I had not noticed that they did not give the names of the outraged parents who were quoted. If they had covered up the names I would have understood it because it could have made their kids the target of blow back from the school authorities. You could give them feedback in a comment and see if they publish it.
At the same time many journalists get a person’s name and then make up a quote.
We are having Occupiers in the US who are raising costs for the town they occupy, because of clean up costs of tons of garbage and poop and policepeople over time. I am annoyed with them creating more expenses for towns who are cash strapped and for trashing park space in towns by killing the grass etc while they are self-righteous about being “environmental” and upset at the economy and how it affects them, and I am annoyed at public schools training kids to be insensitive to their effects on other people. If they want to do something, fine, go for it. As someone once said years ago “Don’t do your thing all over me.”
As for Dominic Johansson, why don’t you google the name since it comes up easily. You can also google Dominc Johansson’s father.
Had a look, and the case is extremely strange. There’s no way that’s down to home-schooling. Armed police don’t storm planes for home-schooling. If they did, this wouldn’t be the only case you hear about. So … why are they picking on this one family? The open letter from the father suggests that there’s more to it, but if he knows exactly what is going on, he’s not telling us.
To quote one official:
Gustaf Hofstedt, president of the local social services board in Gotland, earlier told WND by telephone from Sweden that there is more to the dispute than homeschooling, but he refused to explain.
“I understand the public debate has been that is a case that is only concerning the fact of homeschooling,” he told WND. “But that is not the case.”
Asked to explain, he said, “I can’t answer that question because of secrecy.”
Now – as I said, mad things do happen. Google the stories of satanic panics in the US for some really brilliant examples of the abuse of power (one particularly disturbing case involving janet reno). But I suggest that we actually don’t know what’s going on in this swedish case. Lots of people have jumped on the bandwagon, but I’m not sure that THEY know what’s going on. A lot of people seem very focused on the home-school aspect as well – and even the father’s all but admitted that’s not the whole story any more. Home-schooling seems to be a bit political issue in a few countries (but mostly the US), so I think it’s become a bit of a “cause celebre”.
But from reading what’s online, I’m pretty sure I don’t know why that kid has been taken from his parents. That itself is a problem – child protection authorities need to be far more transparent than that, even while balancing the child’s right to privacy.
Techno,
I gave a specific answer to your question about Dominic Johansson in Sweden and instead of the comment posting,it said it was waiting for review,I am not sure why that one got held up.
Dunno. I’ve been having the same trouble. Weird.
Techno,
Regarding Dominic,it is hard to know the exact timing because the date something shows up in the press is not necessarily the date of an event, but if the judge cut the family a break in October and if the father turned around and “Kidnapped” his son to take him for a visit with his grandparents, that would not show good judgment.
Techno,
The words “awaiting review” have disappeared.Most of my discussion with you is here. Your longer comment to me is not here. One of my comments to another poster Liberty46 I think it was, talking about bullying and criminal intent is gone, where I mention the movement towards replacement of the family and the authority of the family, by the state, which necessarily means the police, has been edited out of this discussion.I had previously made the comment that European blogs edit for content, but American blogs don’t, but I guess I was wrong. Maybe they don’t like length of comments. Maybe if one breaks up thoughts into different posts,they get through. I thought giving examples helped.The thing about censorship is that people never know what they missed.
“but I guess I was wrong”
I thought about responding to that. Comments here ARE moderated, and people (or at least their IP addresses) are sometimes (very quietly) banned. It’s fairly lax compared with some sites, though. One important thing to remember is that some countries have (effective) defamation laws. There are comments posted on this site that would lead to very expensive civil suits if they were published in, say, the UK or australia.