Why is the abuse allowed?

[1tiredmama]

I have been reading this board for quite a while now. Here is what I don't understand.

If you are aware of the child abuse going on and where the child lives, why are you not taking action. Call the police, child welfare etc.

So many times I have read that another member here know where the child lives, and yet nothing is done.

WHY?

[anjulibai]

1) People have done things.

2) Sometimes the abuse done isn't legally abuse.

[TrueRebel1]

1) People have done things.

2) Sometimes the abuse done isn't legally abuse.

This. Also, in many of the situations, there is more emotional and spiritual abuse than physical abuse.

[Georgiana]

It's also difficult to know exactly what is going on within the walls of a home. We may surmise that the corporal punishment has crossed a line or that the environment is dangerous, but we may not have any proof. An investigation is rough even on innocent families, and departments don' t have the resources to follow up on every case as it is. Crying wolf will only delay action for those that really need it and/or put innocent families through hell.

Also, remember, this is the internet. Things escalate quickly here, sometimes without justification.

When proof is posted, it has been reported to the proper authorities.

[lilith]

The children tend to be fed and clothed, and blatant admissions of abuse are rare. A stranger from another area calling local authorities about something they have read online tends to get pretty low priority unless there is direct evidence of actual harm.

Posters here have and will continue to call when they feel there is a need to.

[FJismyheadship]

Proverbs Mom thread. I wound up calling when her eldest daughter wrote about being sexually abused by her stepfather.

[Jana814]

Proverbs Mom thread. I wound up calling when her eldest daughter wrote about being sexually abused by her stepfather.

Did anything happen? Good for u for doing that. As for the topic, I think many of the families know how to hide any outward signs of abuse.

[acheronbeach]

Lots of people HAVE called local children's aid services on openly abusive parents. (e.g. Under $1000 Emily, the Proverbs mother)

Unfortunately a lot of them only imply/drop hints about the abuse, and some (e.g. that filthy Australian hippie woman) keep moving around so much that it's impossible to pin them down.

[guidedbybobafett]

You sound like you haven't been here for very long and are looking to stir up some trouble. Good luck to you!

[1tiredmama]

Not at all....I had wondered why for a while...just finally posted.

[Mama Mia]

I have been reading this board for quite a while now. Here is what I don't understand.

If you are aware of the child abuse going on and where the child lives, why are you not taking action. Call the police, child welfare etc.E

So many times I have read that another member here know where the child lives, and yet nothing is done.

WHY?

I think people tend to underestimate the degree of physical punishment that seems to be perfectly legal in some parts of the United States. While using anything other than a hand on a butt without leaving a mark is the limit in my area, and anything else is reportable, in other areas hitting with objects and leaving marks seems to be okay. It must seem particularly barbaric to posters who live in countries where no physical discipline is allowed.

[16strong]

I don't think 1tiredmama meant to stir up trouble at all. Like the rest of us, she is here because she is curious and has questions. I think it is perfectly okay to politely answer any FJer who isn't throwing clear insults at others or trolling the board. As abuse seems to be an undercurrent to many of the households we speak of here, I think it's only natural to want to know if anyone has addressed the issue in real life. It's not something I personally have seen addressed in a specifically designated thread, so having one seems okay, if it clears up any questions/misconceptions people may have. My two cents, and of course I mean no harm either. Diversity of opinions and backgrounds is what I love so much about FJ. Let's keep the love and respect flowing around.

[jaynie]

I don't think 1tiredmama was meaning to stir up trouble, but I can see why it might be taken that way. Trolls are always throwing the "if you really cared you'd be doing XYZ instead of sitting around snarking" line at us. But absent any other kind of troublemaking I don't see any reason to take this question that way.

And it is dispiriting, reading threads like the Schrader thread and feeling powerless, wondering 'why can't anyone DO something? Why can't we help?' I can see how that feeling might lead to a post like this, especially if the poster wasn't aware how little there is that can be done.

[formergothardite]

As much as I want the someone to come in and help the Schrader children, I know that in the eyes of the law they aren't being abused. There is nothing to be done but watch in horror and hope he never makes it to Zambia.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Sometimes there is nothing we can do :(

I would love to help some of these poor kids, but I cant.

[Iokaste]

Have you ever tried to "do something"? It is a frustratingly long and hard process and I have yet to hear about a country, where social workers and CPS (or equivalent) wasn't already pushed to the limit.

As a teacher myself and coming from a big clan of teachers, doctors and pastors, all of whom have mandatory duty to report suspicions of child abuse here, I could tell you story after story about cases where people tried to do "something".

Often these cases begin with suspicions, subtle clues, things that just somehow doesn't seem right and the younger the child, the harder it will often be, since they talk about and interpret events differently from adults.

Some of the families discussed here are in my opinion guilty of at least neglect, some emotional abuse and some physical abuse , but I don't know the laws well enough to know if it sides with me in the respective countries and the one time I did get enough of one familie's blatant neglect of a child on TV (you do the math) and did some research it turned out that I had to be a US citizen to report a suspected child abuse case.

[Katydid]

1) People have done things.

2) Sometimes the abuse done isn't legally abuse.

Also, even when investigations are done, children get left in the home. This happened to me; I had my head smashed through a window and was beaten, but DCF did nothing after they investigated. My sister was being beaten (not just spanked) as well. We were left in the abusive situation.

And sometimes, depending on how bad the abuse is, the foster care system can be worse for children. Ideally, there would be relatives and a stable place for kids to stay with while their parents got help to become better caregivers, but it doesn't always happen.

[PopRox]

Also, even when investigations are done, children get left in the home. This happened to me; I had my head smashed through a window and was beaten, but DCF did nothing after they investigated. My sister was being beaten (not just spanked) as well. We were left in the abusive situation.

And sometimes, depending on how bad the abuse is, the foster care system can be worse for children. Ideally, there would be relatives and a stable place for kids to stay with while their parents got help to become better caregivers, but it doesn't always happen.

I'm so sorry that you and your sister went through that. That's horrible. *

[debrand]

In the United States, hitting children isn't illegal and what constitutes abuse seems to vary from state to state.

Michael Pearl is pretty open with advocating abusing children and several people have called local authorities against him. Nothing has been done and he continues to be able to publish abusive material.

[chaotic life]

Allowed? That seems to be a very broad generalization and assumption.

First, if you don't have first hand knowledge of abuse or neglect, you can call, but you aren't likely to even get someone to show up at the house, because an online stranger with no personal connection and no personal knowledge is generally not considered a reliable report in the first place. There some rare exceptions to this statement, but there are criteria that get such a report escalated and most online reports simply won't fit that criteria.

Second, there are instances where things ARE reported. The nomadic mess in Australia has been reported, and reported both by internet strangers and by people directly involved with her. She's nomadic, which makes it hard for any one office of Social Services to intervene. The closest anyone came was when her husband killed her infant son. She was under supervision but she met the requirements and the case was closed.

Third, only physical abuse and severe neglect are even going to ping a radar. There are no laws to protect children form verbal or emotional abuse, and as others have stated at least in the US it is legal to physically punish your children to a point. Where that line falls, it is rare for Social Services to actually remove children unless the physical abuse is extremely egregious. There is absolutely no way you are going to find the overworked and underpaid Social Services enforcing any efforts to not emotionally or verbally abuse children. And, frankly, removal should be an absolute LAST resort. Social Services in the US needs to be reformed dramatically reformed for a lot of reasons. However, the position to use removal for a last resort is not one of those issues.

Fourth, even when a report is made, even when it is credible, even when Social Services can and will do something, most commonly what they will do is provide services to a family and oversight. This is not a bad thing, but it is also not something you are going to see online.

I am a mandated reporter. I do something when it falls under my legal requirements to do so. However, I don't go trolling online to randomly report people whose lives I do not actually know and cannot give an actual report on. What someone writes online is not at all necessarily what really happens in a home. I have a son who entered my home from an abusive situation. While I gleaned a lot of what had happened from the woman's online posts (what were several years old at the time), I made a CPS report based upon my personal observations of the family's behaviors and the direct information the child told me. Despite abuse on par with what Hanna Williams endured prior to her death, CPS determined the report unfounded. The basic fact was since the family had removed this child from their home, and no one had any inclination that the biological children had endured any type of abuse like the adoptees did, so long as they never returned this child to their home, there was no merit to their current state of parenting. I think CPS took a cop-out. They didn't want to find fostercare for the eight biological children and the *only* abuse those children endured was verbal and emotional abuse. Thus, it was easier to simply tell the couple they had make an out of home placement for my son, that at his age they could not make any out of home placement for him that he refused to consent to himself, and that returning to our home was the only placement he would agree to. Once CPS forced them to return him to us, we hired lawyer and went through the family courts ourselves without CPS handling it, which worked far better than CPS would ever have done for him.

[mrs]

In the United States, hitting children isn't illegal and what constitutes abuse seems to vary from state to state.

Michael Pearl is pretty open with advocating abusing children and several people have called local authorities against him. Nothing has been done and he continues to be able to publish abusive material.

Twenty-one states allow some form of corporal punishment in schools.

Source: school.familyeducation.com/classroom-discipline/resource/38377.html

[debrand]

Also, even when investigations are done, children get left in the home. This happened to me; I had my head smashed through a window and was beaten, but DCF did nothing after they investigated. My sister was being beaten (not just spanked) as well. We were left in the abusive situation.

And sometimes, depending on how bad the abuse is, the foster care system can be worse for children. Ideally, there would be relatives and a stable place for kids to stay with while their parents got help to become better caregivers, but it doesn't always happen.

My SIL and another friend called authorities on a 16 year old girl that was in a family with a meth addicted step father who abused the mother. The mother was an alcoholic who was afraid to leave the house. They were both told that as long as the girl had a window that she could climb out of there was nothing that the authorities could do. In some rural communities, child abuse is not taken serious as long as the child lives through the situation. :angry-banghead: It is very frustrating.

[Melissa1977]

Someone here called CPS to visit Kendal's home. CPS could do nothing because spanking is legal in her state. We all know that she adopted later and who knows what is happening to her children.

[BravaAmica]

Also, if a family is outwardly Christian, they tend to get a pass on abusing their kids. I'm thinking of the Hana Williams case. Her adoptive family beat her, starved her and left her to die of hypothermia in the rain. Many people suspected the adoptive kids were being abused. But no one investigated the Williams' because the parents were such "good Christians."