Trying to Protect a Child from an Abusive Parent -- Maggie Blake

Maggie Blake, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Apr 9, 2007 




QUOTE:

For those who have found themselves in the painful position of needing to protect their child from an abusive parent, many have found that nobody seemed willing to help them do so. From the police and social service agencies, to family courts, these entities fail to protect thousands of children every year. This is confusing to most people, as there seem to be no good reasons why the powers that be who have the control to protect children from an abusive parent, often fail to do so. Frightening to many, is the apparent indifference many of these authorities appear to possess in regards to children who are being physically, mentally, and/or sexually abused by a biological parent.

When a parent first learns of abuse, the first thing they may do is call the police. And although police reports can play an important part in establishing documentation to be presented later during a custody hearing, it doesn't do much more than that. Technically, it's just a piece of paper, noted with the account of an event that you gave to an officer. Just because your child tells you that their parent sexually abused them, and you tell the police, and they write it on the report, does not mean that they will immediately go and arrest the offending parent.

In other cases, a child has been beaten by the abusive parent, or sexual abuse is disclosed, leading the protecting parent to take the child to the emergency room of their local hospital. After an exam, and necessary treatment, the hospital may elect to contact the police themselves as they are required to do if abuse is suspected. However, even this corroboration between the hospital and the police does not mean necessarily that the offending parent will be arrested or charged with anything. This is particularly true when it comes to very young children, who are generally considered to be "unreliable" in court. As it was explained to this protective parent whose child was a toddler at the time the abuse began, if the child is too young to testify in court, the police will not generally arrest one parent on behalf of the other parent. Especially if those two parents happen to be in the middle of a divorce.

A protective parent may see the necessity to reach out for further assistance by contacting their local child protective services department, asking them to investigate and evaluate the situation. This is what I did. After investigating, the representative of child protective services came to my home to meet with me regarding the results of that investigation. She explained to me that she fully believed that our case was flagged a "code yellow", meaning that the department believed that my tiny daughter was at least at "medium risk" of being sexually abused again if left in the unsupervised care of her biological father. When I asked what they would be doing next, she said simply, "nothing". When I called the police to ask if they would now arrest my estranged husband, they again told me that they would not.

The next step was to go to court, and ask that my daughter not be forced to continue to attend unsupervised visitation with her father. A temporary order for supervised visitation was ordered, pending a visit to a child therapist. At the next hearing, despite being armed with the medical exam results showing that sexual abuse had occurred, the police report taken at the hospital, the report from CPS, and a new report from a court recommended therapist stating that my daughter was exhibiting "textbook" symptoms of a child who has been sexually abused, the court appeared to absolutely disregard my daughter's need for protection, and ordered her straight back into unsupervised visitation.

This may seem  like a rare flaw in the system to those who have not been scarred by it. But thousands of mothers (and sometimes fathers, too) and their children are treated very similarly as they attempt to gain protection for their child from an abusive parent. Be assured, this enormous failure of the agencies put in place to serve children, families, and communities, is not an anomaly. And until the fact that so many children are denied safety from those elected and paid to provide it is commonly known among the masses in this country, there will be no hope of repairing the situation.

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