To think a law against emotional cruetly to children is too vague and unenforcable

[ReallyTired]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26814427

Certainly many children do suffer an unreasonable level of emotional cruetly, but how would a "cinderella" law work in practice? Most cases of emotional abuse are not as clear cut as cinderella. Those who emotionally abuse children are rather more subtle and shrewd than cinderella's step mother.

Surely social workers have enough of a case load managing neglect, physical abuse and sexual abuse cases. What standard of parenting is good enough? Most parents need support rather than criminalisation.A child whose mother has the occassional mood swing, but is loved 99% of time is probably better off with a loving but imperfect parent than going into the care system.

Does it mean that schools will call in social services when there is a difference of opinon of parenting style or child complains when the parent does something the kid doesn't like. (ie. A parent remarries? Punishing appauling behaviour?) Sometimes children make malicious accusations, so how would you sort out the real emotional abuse from tall stories. Emotional abuse is next to impossible to prove in court.

How do we protect children against toxic parents without making it impossible to discpline our children or for parents to have some say how they lead their lives? (Ie. commiting the "emotional abuse" of putting a young baby in full time nursery so that everyone can have a roof over their heads or controlled crying.)

And actually, I think I knew stuff which went on in my house was not normal, but I was ashamed to tell anyone and I did not know who I could tell.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought they were bringing the law in for two reasons.

1. To bring the criminal law in line with the civic law
2. Because there are a number of cases where social services can step in to remove a child because of neglect etc but there is no criminal law available to then prosecute the parent or remove further children.

Thanks Devora!

Margery - I think policing this kind of thing is very difficult but it's likely that it'll be most useful in cases where the social workers are already aware of the family and working with them/considering whether to remove the children. If you look at that Action for Children campaign doc I put up earlier (here it is again*) you'll see that they did work with social workers and police. The social workers they worked with welcomed it as it would mean the police would take emotional harm more seriously and thought it would help in two ways (from the report):

"1. being able to warn parents and demonstrate the seriousness of their behaviour; and

1. allowing the police to collect evidence that would be of use in child protection proceedings, helping to improve the quality of evidence and speeding up decisions in care or other proceedings in the family courts."

so I imagine at lot of the time it is about police and social workers being on the same page - social workers being able to warn that the police will back them up if behaviour continues, police collecting evidence that might help overstretched social workers in child protection proceedings.

Also criminal law can be a good means of sending a message to teachers etc that certain kinds of behaviour are unacceptable so they should take signs of it very seriously.

I'm sure that the law here can't solve the huge problems that children in some families face but at least having a clear standard across the services would help.

*Disclaimer - I realise this looks like I am some publicity officer for Action for Children but I don't work for them! I have just been following their campaigns.

The objection that emotional abuse is 'subjective' could also be raised against the inclusion of that category in domestic violence. And yet I'm sure that none of us would argue that a man who constantly criticizes, demeans, and rages at his wife - even though he never lays a finger on her - isn't guilty of some kind of abuse.

I don't think this is about criminalizing parents who get angry occasionally. It's about having some way of dealing with the systematic emotional maltreatment of a child, which can have consequences that are every bit as devastating as sexual or physical abuse when repeated day-in, day-out. And yes, it will take a while to work out how we define that - but surely it's a good thing that we're moving towards a place where kids are treated as persons who are worthy of respect? It's simply not okay to say anything to a child just because you're angry, any more than it's okay to say anything to a partner, parent, or relation.

I also wish there were more prosecutions for 'harboring a minor'.
It is very difficult for SW's and parents to get police to engage with this, and even once a child can be persuaded to return home another child and family will become victims to the same people!

The burden of proof is far more stringent in criminal law.

Considering we haven't yet had a sucessful proscution for female genitil mutilation, I can't see the chances of a sucessful proscution for emotional abuse.

Teachers and those who work with children need complusory child protection. I think that teachers do take emotional abuse seriously, but its hard to know what to do.

I remember feeling an English teacher would understand and actually wrote about some of the things happening at home in a homework assignment. I got a 'B' and a note 'I hope you feel better for sharing this story :)'
Not particularly helpful. I was asked if I would like counselling when they discovered I was smoking, but not when my mum was calling threatening suicide or when she remarried an 87 year old with an alcoholic son who'd drive me to school hammered at the end of the weekend or even when she kept making the school take me to be checked for genetic illnesses because there was clearly 'something wrong' with me... Many teachers over the 10 years I was a weekly boarder at that school could have helped, but none did.

No doubt it will be difficult to prosecute. It's not just a new law on emotional harm though, it's an overhaul of the existing law on child cruelty. I've pasted the proposal below so people can see what it is about. Children often suffer a range of different kinds of ill-treatment so I imagine that successful cases will have several aspects of neglect/physical abuse/emotional abuse etc rather than being pure emotional abuse cases. This change lets the court see the whole picture and that might be especially important if e.g. the neglect isn't enough for prosecution but when put with emotional abuse it is.

Also see that it doesn't criminalise the occasional shouting through loss of temper or the vulnerable parent who doesn't understand how to parent. The parent has to act 'intentionally or recklessly' and the parents actions/omissions have to cause, or be likely to cause, significant harm.

The proposed new law:

“s.1 Child maltreatment
(1) It is an offence for a person who has attained the age of 16 years with responsibility for a child intentionally or recklessly to subject that child or allow that child to be subjected to maltreatment, whether by act or omission, such that the child suffers, or is likely to suffer, significant harm.

(2) For the purposes of this section:
(a)‘recklessly’ shall mean that a person with responsibility for a child foresaw a risk that an act or omission regarding that child would be likely to result in significant harm, but nonetheless unreasonably took that risk;
(b)‘responsibility’ shall be as defined in section 17

(c)‘maltreatment’ includes:
(i) neglect (including abandonment),
(ii) physical abuse,
(iii) sexual abuse,
(iv) exploitation, and
(v) emotional abuse;

(d) ‘harm’ means the impairment of:
(i) physical or mental health, or
(ii) physical, intellectual, emotional, social or
behavioural development.

(3) Where the question of whether harm suffered by a child is significant turns on the child’s health or development, that child’s health or development shall be compared with that which could reasonably be expected of a similar child.”

my mum is happy as long as she gets things all her own way. She cares not a jot that there is no affection or sex in my marriage and attempted to bully me into staying with DH when she found out about my affair back in 2003. (ive stayed but not cos she bullied me into it.) she cares more about how it looks to outsiders.
When i was a child i was an avid reader. still am But shes never seen the point and thinks that women should worry about how they look first and foremost. Looks are more inportant than anything else. When i was eleven i became short sighted and needed glasses She told me NOT to wear them because they made me look horrible.
When i was 14 i was being badly bullied at high school to the point that i was considering suicide. I had the whisky out of the cabinet and pills in my hand DB (golden child) panicked and phoned my mum at work She came home and shouted at me for interrupting her working day. She HATES women REALLY hates them Ive heard her slagging off female celebrities/actresses/ especially if they are over a size 12 /been married before/ ruined for all other men etc. She told me i was ruined for all other men when i lost my virginity at 18. Couldnt/cant talk to her about ANYTHING without her shouting the odds and desperately finding a way to blame whatever the problem was on me. Whenever i had a falling out with a friend at school it had to be my fault.
My dad enables to an extent A lad who was bullying me at school threw a can of Coke down a new skirt i was wearing one Sat in town and my dad insisted i must have done something to provoke him. Yep Everying was/is my fault because i happen to posses a vagina. Some of this is down to religion (Her interpretation of Catholicism) and culture Some of it is downright mysogyny.

Tess that sounds like this will make the difference then, which is a great thing.

I do wonder though what school's responsibility is in all of this? Possibly different for boarders than day pupils due to the onus of care? I think EA can be quite evident, especially in my example of the one time I opened up to a teacher, but there should be clear guidelines and communication between teachers who have contact with a child suffering EA. It felt a bit like the neighbours turning the other way upon hearing DV - as if it would shame my family if they asked what was going on or something.

Thanks Tess. There are loads of cases of serious neglect where one child only is picked on, locked in a room, abused. It is a sadly common syndrome and is appalling. If they just go after those cases, that's fine. However I fear it will give too much power to those in authority and hard to fight against so it troubles me a little.

Whether we can use it to right wrongs is interesting - eg if a family only lawfully smacks one child and never the others could we use it?
If a family for religious or cultural reasons pays loads of money for education of boys but nothing for girls or has girls not fed until boys are or the one sister has to wait on her brothers (the concept of girls ceding to older brothers is very common and absolutely disgusting in many families in the UK). Perhaps we could use it against such sexist families? That would be a win. Get the girls to report the fact they are treated worse than the boys. There is far too much of that about...
Ah just read Dark's post above and that has gender undertones too so perhaps it could be a useful piece of legislation to ensure someone is not picked on just because they are a girl and a message to all cultures in the UK that if you come here you must be fair on girls and boys and not discriminate whether in terms of who gets the most food, who wears what clothes , whose genitals are cut open or off etc.

Thanks Tess. I missed part of the news update and your post has added the context the headlines obscured - as they do!

Why on Earth wasn't it phrased like that in the first place? I listened to about an hour's worth of news on this and didn't once hear a phrase that meant 'bringing criminal law into line with existing child cruelty laws".

I am less afraid of abuses now.

I'm concerned about the implications for victims of domestic violence. One talking head on the news this morning said it would protect children against witnessing DV. Fine, if that means protecting them against the thug. Not so fine if it means persecuting the parent who is being attacked. (Which is not unknown amongst social services.)

I think it's going to be tricky.

I don't accept victims of domestic violence are 'persecuted' - the problem is that the dynamic in abusive relationships can be very difficult and sometimes victims find it hard to leave. Then they do risk losing their children.

I can see this issue playing put in the criminal sphere. Sometimes the line between victim and perpetrator isn't so clear cut.

I would rather see energy put into helping/working with families before things get so bad that care/criminal proceedings are seen as only response.

what Spero said

And sorry, I know I am riding my hobby horse, but I am worried to see again a number of people referring to children being taken into care on 'risk of emotional harm' and this is too nebulous.

That isn't the law. Children can only be removed if they have suffered or are at risk of suffering significant harm! be it physical, sexual or emotional.

Here is an explanation.

www.childprotectionresource.org.uk/category/the-law/key-legal-principles/significant-harm-key-legal-principles/

I don't think that is 'nebulous' at all but it will be interesting to see how the concept of 'significant harm' is developed in the criminal cases.

Again I totally agree with Spero!

Dawndonna you have indeed won and beaten her.

you survived with bells on.

I have read the thread but I still honestly don't know how this will be policed . I don't know if we were emotionally abused as children but these are some things I can remember:

• I had forgotten to do a piece of homework aged 6 and my father took my favourite toy and jumped up and down on it, screaming, until it was a pile of fragments on the floor

• when I put on weight he said that unlike my sisters I would not receive pocket money or be allowed other privileges. I developed an eating disorder and used to have nightmares about him catching me eating.

• aged 5, if my sisters wet the bed I was supposed to clear it up and I'd be shouted at for not doing so

• he constantly spoke to me like I was shit on his shoe, a really horrid sneering tone of voice. For years I would hear his voice in my head at random times. As a teen, I was often so angry with him that I really did think about killing him or myself.

• I was not allowed to have male friends once I hit puberty because they would only want one thing and he once threatened to call the police after a male friend sent me an AOL message - I was about 15

These are a few of many memories. I suspect many of them would qualify as EA.

But who would know?

And, what should have happened? He also provided me with a materially comfortable childhood, and stimulated me intellectually. In good moods he would spend ages talking to me about politics, history, current events. I graduated with an excellent degree from a top university and now have a good professional job. His support is largely responsible for this. I do love him. It is no coincidence that he was abused as a child.

Would it have been better for me to have been taken away? Or what? Parenting classes would not have changed him.

If this was really EA, what should have been done?

My point is, the fact that we were left in our situation was actually fine in the end and intervention would almost certainly have been worse.

I think you encapsulate the problem.

Violence in terms of punching etc is going to be much easier to prosecute because there is usually a clearly identifiable act with clearly identifiable consequences.

Emotional abuse is going to cover a much broader range of behaviour, with some legitimate arguments about whether or not it can be proved 'beyond a reasonable doubt'.

I do think that awareness of emotional abuse should be raised however there is potential to take it too far. My friend's neighbours called as as she shouts at her kids. In my opinion this is totally ott and kids sometimes need a good sound telling off but others would disagree and argue that shouting is emotional abuse and that children should always be spoken to in a calm tone of voice and reasoned with rather than dictated to.
There are so many grey areas but of course , obvious neglect and maltreatment should be dealt with but not to the point where parents are frightened of telling off their own kids.

Social services that should read, not as as.

I should hasten to add that I don't see shouting as great parenting and I try to avoid it if at all possible but if dd goes too near a road or starts hitting her friends with a stick for example I will shout ( mostly so she can hear me above the noise of traffic).

Dawndonna i think you are an amazing person

I don't see how shouting every now and then if children are naughty/you are at end of tether could ever been seen as emotional abuse.

It must be more to deal with treating children badly pretty frequently so that they are harmed by the behaviour. So unless you shout/belittle/ignore on a daily basis I don't think you are the kind of person any new criminal law is designed to deal with.