Are wealthy parents ever prosecuted for child abuse?

[Lemonsugarhigh]

Have seen about a lot of neglectful parents in court recently who have abused their kids. Almost all the cases covered in the press are about very poor families, generally living in pretty dire conditions. But abuse goes on in wealthy homes too, why does this seem to go under the radar? Is it just that SS overlook suffering kids if their parents have cash? Or is it that the parents are better at hiding abuse? Or does the press have a preference for covering the neglect and poverty combination?

That doesn't tally at all with the neglect so many children are living in currently with SS involvement. Only a court can remove them.

Some are shipped off to boarding school which is the higher class equivalent of a children’s home

What nonsense. Boarding schools bear no resemblance whatsoever to children's homes.

What’s your point? I provided two pieces of research on the relevant prevalence, what do you imagine one story has to do with the large-scale data?

No-one has claimed that no wealthy parents abuse their children.

What you’re doing here is the equivalent of denying the data on smoking and lung cancer by mentioning an eighty year-old who smokes sixty a day. It’s not a valid argument.

This...

Years ago I had a mum friend.
She was one of three from a very outwardly respectable middle class family. Her father was the verger at their local church.
Her told me dm physically abused her including pushing her down the stairs and breaking her arm. She didn’t abuse the siblings.
As a teen she plucked up courage to tell her headmaster.
He called her parents in who obviously denied all knowledge and she got a reprimand from the head for telling lies.
And when she got home she got another beating.
I met her dm once and I just couldn’t look at her. I’m sure she thought I was very strange.
The well educated are just better at hiding abuse and it’s harder for a dc to prove when every other aspect of their life gives an air of comfort and respectability.

@cringelibrarian bravo to your friend but it’s completely out of order to out this woman - because now her child’s identity is at risk. Abused Children need protecting not exposing.

Also it may not be true 🤷‍♀️ dodgy ground

I agree with others, the abuse is hidden behind a wall of children's activities, lovely bedrooms and full food cupboards.

I would also add that there is probably a higher level of emotional abuse compared to physical abuse.
So it's much harder to detect and act on it.

Honestly there’s always one

My parents were abusive and middle class. I told a teacher that my father had threatened to break my nose (this was back in the 90s), they called home, my mother said I was a liar and the teacher believed them. You can imagine the reception I received once I got home, so I never spoke up again.

Are parents of any social class prosecuted for emotional abuse where there is no neglect or physical abuse?

@CakeInAJar I agree with you

I was always surprised that Kate and Gerry McCann weren't prosecuted

When I worked in education we were always told there was only 1 case of prosecution for emotional abuse where there was no other abuse (neglect physical sexual) present in the UK. This was 4 years ago mind

I think richer people have fewer points of contact that might report abuse. I have passed on reports of possible abuse and it's been neighbours reporting suspicions based on noise they have heard from badly sound insulated close together flats.

If you hit a kid in a big detached house no one is around to hear (apart from staff you might be paying)

@cringelibrarian Even if your friend did the right thing, that’s a legal can of worms right there. If she didn’t face any consequences, you really can’t identify her or her child.

cringe-librarian You need to contact MN to remove your post if you can’t yourself. If this wasn’t in court already, it soon will be for the wrong reasons!

I'm pretty sure the mum who popped to the local shops leaving her young children home alone was prosecuted for neglect after her children died in a house fire. The Mccans left their children for much longer, were further away and left their children to eat and drink with friends.

@cringelibrarian had mumsnet about 17 seconds away from a defamation lawsuit there 😮

@HernesEgg that doesn't make a lot of sense, there are huge benefits to being care experienced if you want to go to Oxford- extra funding, allowances in grades, wider accommodation choices, free travel and accommodation for interviews... the list goes on.

It's unlikely that she intentionally killed the baby. Much more likely it died through neglect.

I’d argue that certain elements of abuse especially in the form of neglect are often a result of poor coping and life skills eg unpaid bills, unwashed clothes, improper diet, poor living environment and people with these issues are unlikely to be holding down responsible jobs and managing life stresses and providing a nice life for their families. Of course money is also a shield in some cases. A wealthy parent with poor mental health or issues with substance abuse can afford the childcare or cleaners for example which afford some protection from the problems that a child from a less wealthy background would experience in the same situation ie dirty house, potentially being left unsupervised which may alert social services to the issues.

My aunt borderline neglected my cousin. My cousin was born with a skin condition that meant daily baths and cream being applied multiple times a day.

My aunt barely did anything that the doctors said and my cousin had awfully red skin that most of the time was in bandages.

In the summer holidays my cousin would stay with my nana and over those six weeks my nana would follow all the guidelines set out by the doctor. My cousin would go back home at the end of august looking really well with her skin under control only for it to flare up again once she was back with my aunt. Should note as well my aunt didn’t work so she had time to carry out all the treatments my cousin needed.

I remember one time the doctors wrote in my cousin’s notes that my aunt had Munchausen by proxy and somehow my aunt saw this and then withdrew all medical support for my cousin. But tbh this Munchausen by proxy is exactly what my aunt had.

My mum and uncle always said if my aunt wasn’t middle class living in a 5 bedroom detached house in a sought after london suburb social services would have been involved. But because of her privilege she got away neglecting my cousin for years without any consequence.

I once baby sat for a very middle class family. Suddenly I never heard from them, turns out they mum and dad split up because the dad was secretly abusing the kids. I don’t think social were ever involved though.

I agree that money can mask neglect.
But if you look at recent cases.. Arthur Labinjo Hughes, Star Hobson, Logan Mwangi I could be wrong but I don't think any of the people found guilty we're living in poverty. Working class but I don't feel like that was the reason. Some people are just plain evil.

I can't speak to the accuracy of the study, but I'm certain there would have been some form of reporting or official involvement with my family had we not been well off and living rurally, with no other houses in hearing distance. So that's at least one for the 'wealthy families go under the radar' column, and I haven't disclosed anything subsequently that would have ended up in any study.

I remember watching a programme about the Newells in Jersey being murdered by their son. The boys had been shipped off to boarding school while their retired parents went sailing and they didn't even bother to come home for Christmas to see the boys. Pretty dismal parenting.