to think steralisation should be enforced

[claw3]

on anyone who abuses children?

there won't be any evidence of that for a while, even if it exists, mabanana. doesn't fit the newsline.

Yes, of course they can be linked, but they are not always linked. And the degree to which drink and drugs can detach people from life and emotions and make them incompetent carers is obviously a huge problem if those people have children.

At the moment there will be no discussion of the motivation/history as there are quite draconian (IMO) restrictions on reporting, as the mother and boyfriend cannot be named.

i'm well aware of that, mabanana, but were it not for the restrictions i can assure you that the dm etc would not be publishing any mitigating factors for a while in any case.

claw3 on Mon 17-Nov-08 11:15:06
"Sorry Cory, missed your question.

Thats a good point, perhaps it should only be used in the most severe cases"

Problem is, what would you consider a severe case?

A child with big bruises and open gaping wounds whose parents' implausible defense was 'he did it crawling across the carpet' (Marfan's syndrome)?

Or a child with broken bones, whose parents can't recall a single incident that might account for an injury like that (osteoporosis)?

Or a child that suddenly collapses with massive internal haemorrhage for no reason (Marfan's again)?

Could mention more, but have to go to work.

I'm a bit uncomfortable about blaming everything on step-parents. Plenty of step-parents are more loving, more supportive, better parents than the departed bio-parent. Plenty of bio-parents are abusers.

I do think a campaign of education for women in particular might help - along the lines of you don't have to have a partner (ie don't put up with a complete shit just because he says he loves you when he isn't assaulting you and bullying your DC), yo don;t have to celebrate every new relationship by getting PG, and that it's important not to regard men as more important than women or always right or 'in charge'. Because it seems to me that this specific type of child abuse ie sadism, happens when a man tracks down a woman he can bully and controlm and extends that bullying to her DC.

YABU for all the reasons set out

would you be prepared to administer the chemicals to do so? or if you were medically qualified, carry out the procedure?

it smacks of nazism, which is think is something a civilised society should avoid

rather than hang em / flog em/ give em a taste of their own medicine, let's actually stop and look at the reasons they and their families have broken down to such an extent, why the right authorities were not intervening appropriately.

castrating an abuser does not address the real issues

i think it is a knee jerk and visceral reaction to something awful, but it is not useful nor apporpriate

Just a quick point on the abused/abusers thing.

I would venture that for every abused child that grows up to abuse others, there are probably several that grow up the complete opposite.

Anecdotal examples, my father was beaten growing up so wouldn't lay a hand on us, my grandmother was beaten and abused very badly by a very nasty man growing up and again, never laid a hand on her children as a consequence.

My partner had a lot of physical punishment inflicted upon him when he was growing up, again, he would never ever resort to hitting our child partly because of this.

It's down to individual personality and support network I think.

Don't know if anyone has read Blind Faith by Ben Elton? not one of his best, but it's set in a hypothetical future where there is no longer any right to privacy and not sharing details of your life with everyone over the internet is considered deviant. People are expected to 'emote' in public over every aspect of their lives.

one of the other aspects of this dystopia is that child death is once again very common (due to disease) but that if you are deemed not to show enough garment rending sympathy for the deaths of all these kiddies (his term not mine) then the mob is quite entitled to beat you to death and the authorities do nothing to stop this.

seems to me that since the public outpouring of grief over Diana this is the way our society is heading, especially if it's about children. to say that you would rather not discuss the case and don't want to beat the perpetrators to death seems to me to be viewed as suspect or odd in some way.

I don't know. I think unearthing a long line of dysfunctional parenting/abuse would be a very good story for all the papers, if we are talking about pure news values. A story of decent, ordinary parents who have other ordinary kids who cannot understand what happened to their daughter would also be a story. If reporting restrictions are not lifted then we will never know which - if either - it is.

abusive men have a radar for vulnerable women, sgb, it's amazing. it's like they can smell them...

If you mean me, SGB, then I can assure you I am not 'blaming everything on step-parents'. For one thing, I wouldn't call these transient thugs step-parents in the true sense. And of course, the vast majority of new partners are decent people. But it is absolutely true that the presence of an unrelated male adult in the house raises a child's risk of abuse.

This is interesting - it's about sex abuse specifically but I'm sure it has implications for victims of other types of abuse. sudy showing vast majority of those sexually abuse do not go on to become sex abusers

Cory - children who have broken ribs, broken back, fractured skulls, cigarette burns, bite marks all over their bodies, nails pulled out with pilers etc, etc.

Any child can break a bone, but its usually a long list of injuries in child abuse cases.

Doesnt stop them from having already abused, but would prevented them from having additional children that they can abuse again.

Interesting how many people put an adults human rights, above those of a child

solidgoldbrass; I also think you should be careful about labelling people, as I know several great stepparents. The statistics though are overwhelming, and it is a HUGE risk factor. My own DH and his sister were both a abused by stepfather.

I quite concur with supporting women to mean they are in a position to stop violence occuring.

I alos think there is is some deep rooted evolutionary factor that says that raising small children is bloody hard, challenging work, and I sometimes want to SCREAM at my toddler and give her a smack (I dont BTW)...and I am her mother and love her to bits. I can see how people who are not genetic parents would find these demands too much, and how the ill equipped of them will lash out. The kids can't say anything and can't fight back. Again, in the mists of time you would stay with the natural father of your children because he offered support/food...and a vested interset in continuing his genes by caring for your children. Leaving him whilst you had small children and moving on to someone else was a social taboo for very sensible reasons.

Please dont think I am saying that people should stay with the father of their children when he is a violent man etc....but there are reasons we have a family unit far beyond the religious/Daily Mail middle class ones people sneer at.

Yes, I do follow you lulabellarama.

I think I probably agree with what you've been saying, I guess I just put my little post in as a caveat against people thinking that being an abused child made it likely that you would abuse as an adult.

I also think that it's important that we make it as easy as possible for those who were abused to talk about it if they want to. Some people have the individual personality that allows them to rationalise what happened to them and use it to motivate them by turning away from it.

However, I think some people really need a bit of outside assistance and that if it was given at the right time then we might avoid some people for turning into perpetrators later in life.

I wish I knew how to achieve this, unfortunately no matter how many messages you put out in public, if a child is brainwashed at home they may never feel like they are able to speak out.

Can we not just collectively ignore threads like this?

It's hardly a good starting point for reasonable debate.

I think in cases like baby P, the mother should be sterilised. But it is a very grey area to go into.

Notyummy: I appreciate what you mean about what hard work DC can be (my DS drives me nuts sometimes too) - but I think the answers are less about trying to compel women to put up with unsatisfactory partners (lazy, selfish, mean with money etc as well as abusive) more about educating women to detect and avoid abusive new partners. DC growing up with parents who don't live together but with loving friends and relatives around and no arsehole cocklodger in the house do just as well as DC with parents who stay together.

Whatandwhy - Why do you say that?

Why not discuss the pros and cons?

This is just so depressing.

Do people really believe in sterilising convicted child abusers?

Renaissance - Do believe that convicted child abusers should be allowed to have additional children?

I cant beleive that the human rights of child abusers are more important than those of a child