Removing Children From Parents Who Abuse Them

Parents who are convicted of child abuse should have their children taken away from them. This is not a matter of punishment but of recognition of the fact that there is a problem society has to address and that the children need to be protected. First, those parents have abrogated their parental responsibilities and shown that they cannot be trusted. Second, the children will benefit by being taken away from an abusive situation and placed into a loving situation.

The alternative would be to work to preserve the family group. Attempts to do this are usually made by social workers, who might be brought in at an early stage, before adjudication becomes necessary. In such cases, the case worker develops a plan and implements it:

This plan ultimately becomes the case plan that outlines treatment services for the child and the family. The plan describes what actions are required of all the parties involved to correct the conditions that caused the maltreatment and, in some cases, the placement outside the home, as well as the time frames for accomplishing them. In addition, the plan must address a child's health and education needs, including arrangements for any specialized treatment by health care providers. The causes of child abuse and neglect are complex, and a case plan can involve referrals to an array of individuals, including caseworkers from other units in the child welfare agency, such as adoption or foster care specialists; private service providers, such

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so cause a variety of disturbances in behavior, such as overeating, anorexia, prostitution, other forms of sexual dysfunction, alcoholism, drug abuse, sleep disturbance, runaway and suicidal behavior. The victims continue to suffer in later life from such problems as frigidity, sometimes promiscuous behavior, sometimes unwittingly encouraging incestuous behavior in their own families. One study showed that over 75 percent of sex offenders in prison had suffered sexual abuse as children and 80 percent of their wives had suffered sexual abuse as children. May notes that the literature on incest emphasizes secrecy, and different family members build a wall of secrecy around the issue. The secret involved has an appeal to children and makes the problem worse. The secret begins as an invitational matter and becomes a forbidden game, though as the child interacts with others and learns that this is not normal behavior, guilt and shame are increased. Guilt and shame mount and help keep the secret secure, and molesters are masters at making use of this fact. The victim experiences a sense of betrayal on the part of the molester, an authority figure who is supposed to protect rather than abuse: "The abuser violates the child's right

Category: Government - R