This weekend’s LA Times featured a story, “Duggar scandal: What should parents do if a child touches a sibling?” which gives a road map for what a parent should do if one child touches another inappropriately.
Dr. Karen Kay Imagawa, director of the Audrey Hepburn CARES Center at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, which offers services for suspected victims of child abuse and their families, offered these steps: “Upon learning of inappropriate touching, parents should do three things immediately: Believe the child who says such touching occurred, protect the victim, and get help from a trained professional, Imagawa said.”
Well here’s the problem… sure you SHOULD protect your child and you SHOULD get therapy for both the child touched and the child doing the touching. But what if that will cause the one doing the touching to be placed on the registry for life. No parents want to see their child suffer for life.
Reading through the comments to the article gives some insight into the danger of “mandatory reporting” requirements, which turn one family member over to the criminal justice system in order to get the other help.
– “How much abuse goes on unaddressed in a positive way because, by reporting the abuser (almost always a male family member – often the breadwinner) and subjecting him to punishment worse than a murderer, the family sentences itself to a life of poverty and hardship. …That is hardly productive and does NOT protect anyone. Least of all children”
– “Let’s say your four-year-old touches your three-year-old, what is most likely going to make it traumatic and mentally damaging? The memory of the act itself (if any), or the Child Protective Services coming to the door and doing their thing?”
– “I know several people who ‘live’ with the label of registered sex offender. For things I do not consider particularly heineous, decades ago. I add the quotes because it is not much of a life, and it truly is a life sentence. If my children were involved I would consider moving to a foreign country where all involved could get help. That is how grave the consequences are in these cases. Getting help from ‘a trained professional’ in this country is going to trigger the reporting requirement. That is not something I would have considered doing in the Duggar parent’s position. Not in a million years. …Any parent who delivers one of their children knowingly into this living hell needs to have their head examined”
– “Yes. Then the other child can grow up with the lifetime label of “Sex Offender”, and never ever have the ability to go to school, travel the world, find a decent job, have a normal relationship, and face the annual “what law will they pass” game, where maybe your home is compliant, or maybe it’s not, and you’ll have to move. Effectively, they’ll be banished to a lifetime of lonliness, living under a bridge (assuming said bridge is outside the 2,000 foot buffer zone, or other “child safety zone”)”
– “To do all the things suggested in this article could ruin these kids lives, and their families, for absolutely no reason.”
– “Unfortunately, Child Protective Services and the courts assume every child who inappropriately touches another is going to become a serial rapist when they grow up. Going to a counselor doesn’t help much because they are legally bound to report it to CPS and the police, just like teachers and doctors. Until we, as a society, get past this knee-jerk reaction child sexual abuse will remain hugely under reported and abuse will continue to last for years rather than once or twice.”
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