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.)

Very disturbed but not surprised at the minimising on this thread. You see it all the time, on here and in RL - rushing to defend the parent's behaviour, they may have had a bad day etc etc. Where is the child in all this?!

I'm an emotional abuse survivor. Like a lot of folks on this thread, we were well-fed, beautifully dressed, had a warm and lovely home, holidays, tons of toys etc. We certainly weren't neglected, rarely smacked and not sexually abused. Father was an extremely highly respected teacher, mother was a nurse. I'm sure many people thought/think they are the most wonderful parents ever. They don't know them like I do though. I've been in therapy for the past 4 years and I have such a long way to go with coming to terms with my upbringing. Emotional abuse absolutely wrecks people's lives. I do support the introduction of this law but how it will be used, I really don't know. Outcomes for children growing up in care are horrendous

I do agree with tiredandsadmum that there should be more support for parents. I work with parents and young children in the NHS and we are pathetically underresourced. There also needs to be change in the culture of how we view parenting - 'trust your instincts' is just not going to cut it in every situation. Parenting is a job and as such it involves learning and developing skills, adapting to new situations, absorbing new information. And it's not for everyone.

If the government had any real interest in the need for children not to be emotionally abused, they would spend money on parenting classes, providing practical support for poor and stressed out parents, respite care to allow single parents the odd day off, youth centres, and so on. That kind of thing would make a real difference to children and their parents. But it would involve spending time and money. Much easier just to throw the book at any parent who is not seen to be parenting in an acceptable manner. And I predict that this will impact more on poor families, as with everything else. And will damage children.

I haven't read the whole thread, so apologies if this has been said.

Mark Williams, the MP who introduced a Private Member's Bill on this, used to be a teacher.

He said that sometimes children come to school who are physically well but being severely emotionally abused. Because the law doesn't recognise that, teachers, or others in contact with children, are not be able to put that forward as evidence.

It's an attempt to close that loophole and seems to make sense - especially since every time there is a high-profile child abuse case people always ask: were the teachers blind and deaf?

The answer is no, they just can't do anything.

He doesn't intend this to hit parents who ground their children for not tidying up their rooms.

Obviously, that may happen, but I think it's unlikely.

"Better that families be slightly at risk from injustice (though let's do everything we can to get it right for every child and family)
than children remain at significant risk of emotional abuse because it's not even legally recognised as a type of abuse in it's own right (as to some extent has been the case or is what some people are arguing for here, usually on the grounds that it would be too difficult to define."

I don't agree with statement. A cornerstone of our justice system is that someone is innocent until proven guilty. Even in the case of sadistic child murder cases the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove guilt rather than the accused to prove innocence. I am sure that there have been cases in the past when a murderer has walked free due to insufficent evidence and gone on to reoffend.

Children in care often suffer emotional abuse and a lot more. The corporate parent is not a good parent. Many children in care have horrendous attachment issues and are insecure due to being moved from foster home to foster home. Sometimes there is no one in world who loves the local authority care child. How must it feel emotionally that the only reason your foster carers look after you is that they are paid?

Lottapianos, I hope you do not think I am minimising. I was not talking about parents who make their children practise the piano, but of parents who through misdiagnosis have been suspected of emotionally damaging their children.

You are a survivor- but so is my daughter. After two suicide attempts. And what worries me is that if I had been tried and sentenced in a criminal court, she might not have been a survivor.

And if I had been deterred by fear from seeking further medical intervention her body might have been more damaged than we have already been told that it is.

cory, my comment wasn't aimed at you. I'm very sorry about what happened to you and your daughter.

Dinosaurs - I am afraid you 'gather' wrong.

Courts emphatically do NOT act simply on the say so of social workers. And what do you think those of us who act for parents are doing? Just sitting at the back of court reading Grazia and laughing as our clients children are taken away???

Spero - I have no trust in a system that is secretive. It needs to be out in the open and publicly accountable. I have heard plenty of scary stories about what goes on behind closed doors. Sometimes a really bad one comes out into the open when the judge is so shocked by how a family has been treated by SWs that he/she waives the usual secrecy. Those parents are the relatively lucky ones.
Anyone who thinks that we have a wonderful legal system that mostly gets things right doesn't know much about said legal system, which is getting worse all the time.

A couple of people, Cory and OP, have picked up on my "better this than that" comment.

My heart goes out to you Cory and to your family.

However my post was really about balance. Where there are different aspects to consider as here it's about doing our absolute best as a society to get that balance right for every child and their family.

I guess due to different experiences we will tend to balance those scales slightly differently. But I do think the occurence of emotional abuse should be considered as part of that equation/ balancing of the scales, and hence broadly welcome these proposals as I've said earlier.

I too think there is minimising on the thread - lots of people on mumsnet don't really understand what child abuse looks like and I think this is good because they clearly did not suffer it. But for those of who did, the 'oh well its hard enough to cope with what we do know, let alone add this to the mix' is a bit shocking! But then again I think that people like that don't understand people like us, and here is an excellent case in point!

What I was coming on to say is this -

Mum, wherever you are, read and weep!!! I hope you see the small incremental changes that the govt try to make for today's children, all of which you did to me when I was young. All of the small shifts in legislation, all of the articles about how abusers deny and twist and blame and now this - shouting at, swearing at, not loving your child, not responding to your child, being a source of fear for your child - if you had been bringing me up today, you'd have been prosecuted. I am deeply gladdened by what those in the know are doing with this piece of legislation. I am delighted by it. Stuff it right up your bum you hardened lying witch. Now who has trouble sleeping at night!!! Not me!!!'

Spero, what a great page! I've bookmarked it - thank you. I think the addition of coercive control to the legal definition of domestic violence will be extremely helpful, particularly as it stresses the importance of 'ongoing & strategic' patterns as a defining characteristic.

Honestly, people, the fact that your bored 12-year-old cries "abuse!" when you push them to do their music practice doesn't make it true.
Mind you, if they always seem deeply reluctant to do it, perhaps you ought to stop pushing them ...

"if you had been bringing me up today, you'd have been prosecuted"

Wouldn't it have been nice to at least be heard, Something?!

Garlic - thanks!

Dinosaur - you might find this link interesting/useful.
www.marilynstowe.co.uk/2014/03/26/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-secret-family-court-by-john-bolch/

Of course there have been things that have gone badly wrong with our family justice system - as have gone wrong with EVERY system/organisation staffed by fallible human beings.

But if we go off again down the cul de sac of the secretive corrupt family courts, then we are not spending time on the issues which actually matter and are real in this debate - such as lack of support and services to help STOP families getting into such a bad way that coercive state intervention seems like the only option to protect their children.

I am all for supporting SW's and lawyers to do the best job they possibly can (and would be happy to pay more on my taxes to see that done). I think I have a pretty good track record for supporting SS on these threads and pitching into loony Hemming suggestions

I am still a little worried, though, by the question of evidence, seeing that the offence I could possibly have been charged with would (presumably) be regarded as serious emotional abuse. What kind of evidence would be needed for this kind of thing? In a case of suspected Munchausen the very fact that your child protests that she really is feeling ill could be seen as further proof of messing with the child's mind. In the past you would actually have needed to have done something to be charged.

Yes, what evidence? That is the problem. If the social workers had to have a video recording, quite a few on different days, which proved who said what that would be good.
If it is just one emotional difficult naughty teenager saying my mother always picks on me being enough because the girl is very hurt, has clinical depression or anorexia and is very bright and able to blame the parent that would not be good evidence. Which will we need.

"Honestly, people, the fact that your bored 12-year-old cries "abuse!" when you push them to do their music practice doesn't make it true.
Mind you, if they always seem deeply reluctant to do it, perhaps you ought to stop pushing them ..."... The end bit is the troubling bit. There are a range of ways of bringing up children which so far are all lawful and they differ widely.

For example I regard even the lightest slap as morally unacceptable and I wish it were illegal. most mumsnetters would not agree with me. I would like that law changed.

I regard giving girls chores when boys don't get them in a Muslim or fundamentalist Christina home as appalling but I don't think I would want the law changed to outlaw sexism in the home.

I don't like babies being left to cry whereas plenty of Gina Ford supporters think it's the bees knees.

I regard some families are ridiculously cruel but they are the norm. I've never done a time out or explicit punishment of a child ever and they are law abiding lovely and polite children. I don;t understand or approve of most of the modes of bringing up children others use in the UK. I see many of them as very cruel with grounding and parents swearing at a child and all the rest.

Do we really want so much discretion or even a Soviet style rule book that there is the one true way to bring up a child?

If a boarding school from age 7 with lots of school trips away in holidays, 4 weeks at US summer camp - is that going to be emotional abuse? Should it be? Conversely is the mother who never leaves the side of the child even at night until it goes to school so it never learns independence abusive?

Cory, Munchhausen's By Proxy is already a crime - actual bodily harm - while also flagging up concerns about mental health. What you went through was terrifying, especially in the light of the Roy Meadow farrago. But a new crime of emotional abuse would make no difference to that experience. Ultimately, you weren't prosecuted because you were proven to be right. This is what the justice system is supposed to achieve. We're still innocent until proved guilty unless we're served a frivolous nuisance order.

Depends whether you're exerting systematic coercion, Jane :) I would say quite a few British boarding schools are guilty, as it goes. And I would love to see them prosecuted for it!

This proposal is modelled on the law on child protection so the terms that it uses are already subject to extensive interpretation in the courts. That's not a guarantee that it will be interpreted in exactly the same way in the criminal courts but it would almost certainly be a significant guide.

To be convicted on this the prosecution would have to show the maltreatment has " caused, or be likely to cause, significant harm. " So it is not enough for a child to say e.g. that they don't like doing repeated music practice, you would have to show significant harm (and that's further defined - see the definition I posted further up the thread). That's the standard for taking a child into care and is already very well understood.

That's not to say that anyone who has a child taken into care could be prosecuted. The prosecution would also have to show that the maltreatment was inflicted intentionally or recklessly (recklessly meaning that you understood the risk but did it anyway). So the parent who is incapable of understanding the problem or genuinely didn't appreciate the risk of harm would not be prosecuted (even if they child might be taken into care).

Put on top of that that this will all have to be proven with evidence to the criminal standard then i don't think this fear of people being prosecuted for following Gina Ford or insisting on music practice or otherwise deviating form a state prescribed norm are realistic concerns.

This is about parents who intentionally or recklessly subject their child to mistreatment and cause them serious harm.

GarlicAprilShowers Tue 01-Apr-14 17:20:03
"Cory, Munchhausen's By Proxy is already a crime - actual bodily harm - while also flagging up concerns about mental health. What you went through was terrifying, especially in the light of the Roy Meadow farrago. But a new crime of emotional abuse would make no difference to that experience"

You misunderstand. I am not talking about cases where there is evidence of actual bodily harm. I am talking about cases where supporting a child who complains of invisible symptoms could be taken as evidence of emotional abuse/messing with their heads.

I never was blamed for hurting dd. I was blamed for somehow making her imagine that she was in pain when the doctors "knew" she couldn't be.

If there had been evidence of actual bodily harm I would have been the first to say that an investigation should be made.

YYY, Tess

Minimisers & worriers on this thread might like to look here at the debate over criminalising marital rape in India. Extracts:

"There are a few main lines of argument used against the idea of marital rape. First, that there’s no way to prove that it happened. While it’s true that there can difficulty collecting evidence, this is a red herring. Start by defining the crime, then we’ll think about how it should be proved. As of now, a man can openly claim in public that he violently rapes his wife all the time and the law cannot touch him! That is the problem."

Correlations: A woman can describe her child as a 'useless little fucker' all the time; a man can publicly boast of letting his children know who's boss ...

"If he tries to force himself on his wife he is a criminal plain and simple regardless of what the laws say. Sometimes the legal system is an ass and deserves to be ridiculed. This is one example."

Correlation: If an adult uses their power over children to harm those children ...

"The government feels that the introduction of marital rape laws will 'destroy marriage'. Let me point out that the government has no Constitutional mandate to protect marriage. It does however have the duty to protect the rights of its citizens! Which is more important?"

Correlation: Parents feel that the introduction of emotional abuse laws will interfere with family life ... The Government has a duty to protect children.

"The solution is to have well drafted laws that are less amenable to abuse. Not to forgo the very idea of a legislation itself!"

Really. The arguments on this thread are THE SAME as the arguments against marital rape laws.

Jane, I think what is important to bear in mind is that - if I understand the proposals properly - emotional abuse will be a crime only if it causes significant harm.

I am not sure from what I have read whether it would also encompass treatment that poses a serious risk of future harm - this is the area where it gets difficult and where the anti adoption groups get most worried about accusations of 'nebulous'.

I don't agree because I see the levels of evidence that are required to find risk proved in the family courts, on the civil standard but I can appreciate this causes some to worry as on one level it seems unfair to punish someone for something they haven't done or which hasn't happened yet.

But when you are talking about child protection, the justification for this seems clear to me.

Was DD taken into care, Cory?

There is one difference though. A child is dependent on its family in a way a wife is not on her husband.

If the family is emotionally abusive, obviously that is no good to the child and that argument falls. The child needs a replacement family.

But if the family was not abusive, if there is a miscarriage of justice is likely to do far more harm to the child than a similar miscarriage of justice would do to e.g. a married woman.

Going into care is not guaranteed to be a safe situation either: the child in the Rochdale case was in care.

A child who goes (by some mistake) from a non-abusive family into care may well be going into a situation of greater risk of abuse and poor outcome.

GarlicAprilShowers Tue 01-Apr-14 17:43:46
"Was DD taken into care, Cory"

No she wasn't, by the merest chance. By sheer coincidence she happened to have had another medical appointment made months earlier with another doctor, and this doctor happened to recognise her condition. But it was made quite clear to us that if she had not already had this appointment we would not have been allowed to take her home from hospital, as they did after a period of several days. The consultant who was in charge in hospital refused to do further tests, though I overheard his junior trying to persuade him.

Other children with her diagnosis have been taken into care, before the error was discovered.

Thanks for answering, Cory. The circumstances that led to her not being taken into care would also have prevented you from being charged with an offence. Had you been charged, the burden of proof would have lain with your accusers, not with you. That's the difference between social process and legal.