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Sunday, May 11, 2003In this particular case one of the children’s father and stepmother tried to do something, but they were accused of making false reports : The order, signed by Magistrate Deborah Matz, said that Brady Postlethwaite and his wife had ``previously established a pattern of false reporting'' and that ``such reports are subject to criminal prosecution.'' ....Lisa Postlethwaite, her voice cracking with emotion, said: ``We couldn't continue fighting. They threatened to put us in jail. They threatened to take away our other children. What could we do?'' There was a famous case in New York about ten or twelve years ago that made state legislature’s across the nation take note and force people to do something. The result, at least in Ohio is this: Although school teachers can be jailed or sued for failing to report even their suspicion of child abuse, the Ohio legislature never made failing to investigate that same report a crime. That means CSB workers generally can't be sued, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled. The lawyer in that last link is trying to make it possible to sue child protection agencies when they fail to protect children. But, the problem lies in the first part of the equation. Doctors, school teachers, and daycare providers face stiff penalties if they fail to report suspected child abuse, and people who know this often use it as a weapon in custody disputes. That way, they avoid being accused of filing false accusations themselves. At least, that’s been my experience. I’ve thankfully only had to report a few cases of suspected abuse (five or six in the past ten years) but only in one case did I suspect true abuse. The others were cases in which a parent brought a child in to be examined for signs of physical abuse - abuse that the child couldn’t describe. And, even though in my heart I know these parents were abusing the system, I still felt compelled to report each case on the remote chance that I might be wrong. One woman was in the habit of doing this on a weekly basis until I finally told her I didn’t believe her. My latest case was a woman who once looked me straight in the face and lied about her cocaine use, even as I held a positive urine screen in my hand. (She said someone must have put it in her fruit juice.) She did a fine job of making sure her child’s father would get investigated. Not only did she come to my office with an allegation and a silent child, but she went to her daughter’s school and asked the teacher to look for signs of abuse, too, thus insuring that two people would be calling the authorities. I never found any signs of injury on the child to substantiate the mother’s claims, but at the end of our encounter the mother asked me if I would be reporting the case to the authorities. Her response to my affirmative answer was cruel little smile. The upshot is that the social agencies charged with investigating these things get such a barrage of illegitimate reports that they have a hard time investigating them all: ``You have to weed out what's really a salient case,'' he said. ``Nationally, the statistics show that about 20 percent of those cases are bona fide. But you still can't discount totally that other 80 percent. It's got to be in some way examined and looked at beyond just a telephone call.'' Unless people think it’s worth spending enormous sums to investigate bogus claims, a good first step would be to repeal mandatory reporting laws and let teachers and physicians use their judgement in reporting abuse cases. Then, the child protection agencies could actually protect children rather than being used as a weapon between warring parents. posted by Sydney on 5/11/2003 06:37:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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