I believe that those who babysit and protect children must be accountable, professional, and uphold the highest standard of care. I also believe there are some situations where caregivers have been falsely accused of child abuse. In some cases lives have been ruined because of modern day witch hunts. When it comes to child abuse I have read some interesting information about why false accusations occur. The fallowing paragraphs are information found on. (www.menstuff.org)
Child abuse has been a nationwide concern since the early 1980's.The problems have occurred because of governmental structure, and legal system. Most people would agree that there is nothing worse than a child suffering abuse put upon them by an adult. Unfortunately, due to the decrease of standards in reporting, investigating, and gathering evidence to assist child victims. It has been proven that there has been an increase in cases involving false accusations of child abuse and neglect. “There have been studies witch shows that only one third of all child abuse cases reported are have been found legit” (www.menstuff .org) .
According to this website listed below, “False cases are primarily due to over-reporting, the lack of proper investigation procedures, the lack of training for those who investigate, and misdirected and biased analysis of the alleged victim and the alleged perpetrator. Is spite of the legal presumption that anyone accused of a crime is to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, in child abuse cases the general presumption by the public is that of guilt. Such a departure from the standard presumption of innocence is largely due to the system of belief that was popular during the late 1970's and the 1980's, which was based on the popular, but sometimes erroneous, belief that "children never lie ". Unfortunately as this belief system infiltrated the training programs of social workers and law enforcement, this bias runs throughout the child protection system. Subsequently, the falsely accused individual faces an uphill battle in proving a negative: that they did not commit the crime of child abuse” (www.menstuff .org).
The website also claims, “False accusations occur for the most part in situations where the accused is vulnerable, such as in divorce custody proceedings where one parent comes to believe the behavior pattern of the child is due to abuse rather than separation trauma of divorce. Foster parents are also victims of false accusations, as foster children sometime utilize the allegation to avoid discipline or to be placed in a different home. School teachers, school bus drivers, playground attendants, virtually anyone whose private or professional life puts them in close contact with children are susceptible to false accusations” (www.menstuff .org).
As we can see child abuse accusation have increased because of the legal system and government procedures along with the assumption that “children don’t lie”. There has been an increase of accusations in the last century and I think it’s because parents want custody of their children and they are willing to lie and get their spouse or x-spouse to get in trouble with the legal system in order to gain custody of children.
Like the website said “There have been studies which show that only one third of all child abuse cases reported have been found to be “legit”. So this shows that more than half of all cases are false and the people that are being accused are facing a life of turmoil and their livelihood ruined just like the play The Crucible, people that were accused were either hung or rejected from society because of the accusation.
(http://www.menstuff.org/issues/byissue/falseaccusation.html#accusations)
No comments:
Post a Comment