Family Integrity

Tag: Police

  • Smacking question is clear enough

    http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/opinion/70140/smacking-question-clear-enough?page=0%2C0

    Smacking question is clear enough

    Tue, 18 Aug 2009

    Rex Ahdar takes issue with the idea that the “smacking” referendum is ambiguous and confusing.

    Unless you have been living in the Fiordland bush for the last few years, or have just arrived from Latvia, you would readily understand the fateful sentence in its cultural context

    People should exercise their democratic rights and vote in the smacking referendum.

    I believe the objections to it are misplaced.

    Some cry, what about the expense? Could not the money have been spent on tackling child abuse? Yes, but the promoters of the referendum are not to blame.

    The government was asked to run the referendum in conjunction with the general election, but it said no.

    The referendum question might have proved an unpalatable, additional reason for voters not to give Labour and the Greens another term.

    It is thus disingenuous for the politicians to cry waste when they had a straightforward opportunity to avoid it.

    Besides, $9 million is not a huge amount when considering an important parental practice and, as the abolitionists of smacking remind us, the welfare of children.

    If we can spend $80 million per year on possum eradication, we can afford a fraction of this on such an important matter of family governance.

    Next, the wording is said to be ambiguous and confusing.

    Really? Read in isolation I suppose one could quibble with its meaning.

    But unless you have been living in the Fiordland bush for the last few years, or have just arrived from Latvia, you would readily understand the fateful sentence in its cultural context.

    The referendum wording is read against the background of the ongoing public controversy over the merits of a law to permit mild corporal punishment of children by their parents.

    The real gripe is not so much that the wording is ambiguous, but that it is slanted.

    Perhaps.

    To me, the offending phrase simply sets the context in which a smack occurs.

    On the other hand, critics contend that smacking and good parental correction are cunningly linked, implying that the two are part and parcel of the same thing.

    Critics refuse to see how a smack can ever be part of good parental correction.

    But again, the proponents of the referendum are not at fault.

    As the Californian experience of referendums shows, the promoters always try to word the thing in a way that favours their desired result.

    Having invested a huge amount of energy to secure the minimum 10% of voters necessary to trigger a referendum, who can blame them? But the real culprit, if any, is the Clerk of the House.

    The clerk is the independent statutory official responsible for vetting the wording and ensuring, in the words of the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act 1993, the question put to voters conveys clearly the referendum’s purpose and is capable only of one of two answers.

    The so-called poor wording is the fault of former clerk David McGee QC.

    Next, is the current version of section 59 of the Crimes Act working satisfactorily? Have parents who engaged in a light, non-injurious corporal correction (a smack) been prosecuted? The answer, according to Family First’s investigations, is yes.

    And those who have not been prosecuted have still undergone the stress of a police investigation, and probably scrutiny by Child, Youth and Family personnel, too.

    Why the prime minister maintains the present law is working well (and thus no action is needed) is puzzling.

    Looking back, the whole rationale for the law change was suspect, if not illusory.

    Abolitionists, led by Sue Bradford MP, continually raised the spectre of the abuser who sheltered behind the section 59 defence and was thereby acquitted of blatant thuggery by a feeble jury.

    The celebrated and deliberately vague examples usually cite the father who beat his son with a hunk of wood and the mother who viciously used a horsewhip on her son.

    A closer inspection of the facts reveals another story.

    The Havelock North father hastily used a thin piece of kindling (a foot long and 2cm thick) on his 8-year-old son’s backside following an admitted incident of stealing by the boy.

    This is hardly the ominous piece of four-by-two that is typically asserted.

    The Timaru mother did use an 18-inch long and half-inch thick riding crop, but in urgent response to her 12-year-old son’s attempt to hit his stepfather on the head with a softball bat.

    On both occasions, the juries decided that the parents’ response was reasonable in all the circumstances.

    At best, this repetition of the-abuser-was-acquitted tales is sloppy.

    At worst, it is calculated and deliberate misrepresentation.

    The smacking defence-justified-abuse gambit is really just a specious ploy to undermine a law that was working satisfactorily.

    It is sleight of hand designed to divert attention away from the abolitionist’s real objection, which is philosophical from start to finish.

    The previous law did not permit physical abuse by parents to go unpunished.

    The social science evidence on the effects of smacking on children does not show that it is harmful.

    The Otago University Children’s Issues Centres 2004 report said: “While it is clear from the research that severe and harsh punishment [both physical or other] is potentially very risky for children’s development, occasional physical punishment occurs in many families and may not have long-term negative effects as long as it is used in a climate of warmth and love, where the predominant mode of relating to children is positive.

    “To say that smacking is associated with children’s aggression, under-achievement, depression is mischievous.

    “The observation that two things are associated [or correlated] does not mean there is a causal connection between them.”

    Faced with these inconvenient facts, opponents of smacking are relegated to asserting their personal convictions.

    I have no doubt that abolitionists sincerely believe that corporal punishment of children is morally wrong.

    They are entitled to their view.

    If their liberal sensibilities are offended, let them exercise their own parental prerogatives by adopting other modes of discipline on their children.

    I will let them grapple with the question of whether time out (false imprisonment, if an adult was the one being confined), removal of pocket money (deprivation of property) and so on raise no ethical concerns.

    Let me, along with the other 83% of New Zealanders who do not share their moral sentiments, choose the form of discipline that we consider is sound. – Rex Ahdar

  • Who can protect our children?

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10591094&pnum=0

    Who can protect our children?

    4:00AM Sunday Aug 16, 2009
    By David Fisher

    Our state services fail to protect some of New Zealand’s most severely abused children and allow them to be “revictimised”, according to research published in an international medical journal.

    It says the child protection system could be seen as a “poorly controlled experiment” through the inability of government agencies to work together on cases of child abuse.

    It follows two cases of alleged child abuse last week in Northland, one of which ended in the death of a 2-year-old. The child in the other case – a 17-month-old – was severely injured.

    Social Development Minister Paula Bennett met the families of the two children on Friday. “Protecting our most vulnerable children is of the highest priority to this Government,” she said afterwards.

    Bennett will this week announce the reintroduction of the Never Shake A Baby Campaign.

    “We are also progressing a plan on how agencies will better work together to ensure an abused child is protected if they have been hospitalised,” she said.

    New figures from Starship hospital show the number of children under two with “inflicted traumatic brain injury” has risen sharply over a 20-year study period. They show that in 1988 one child was admitted with an inflicted head injury. Numbers peaked at 13 in 2006 and most recently at 11 children last year.

    The report, published in the Child Abuse & Neglect International Journal, was written by two Starship doctors Patrick Kelly and Judith MacCormick, and an Auckland health board social worker Rebecca Strange, who works with child abuse victims.

    It studies the fate of 39 children aged under two who were treated at Auckland Hospital for “shaken baby syndrome” during the 1990s. It follows their health and development for up to 17 years.

    The “syndrome” has become a term for traumatic brain injury in infants. One of its common causes is hard, physical shaking of the child.

    Most of the children are referred to in the report as “survivors” – six died in hospital and two others have died since, one 15-months later after complications from the original head injury. They were also mainly Maori – a staggering 77 per cent of the 39 children admitted to hospital.

    By December 2007, the children had grown older – they ranged from nine years to 21 – and concerns about repeat abuse had been raised in 44 per cent of cases. This was a “major concern”, the report said.

    It is particularly critical of the former Child Youth and Family service, now part of the Ministry of Social Development. Investigations of “doubtful quality” by CYF meant reports to the agency of fresh abuse against children – even in front of witnesses – would be treated as unproven, when they likely indicated serious risk.

    While the report found CYF had records in all cases, it also found two of the child deaths were never referred to police. And it highlighted a death where a CYF worker rejected medical evidence of abuse to accept the caregiver’s explanation that the child had choked on a piece of bread.

    None of the surviving children was killed or suffered further brain injury from future abuse, possibly due to involvement by state agencies.

    But the authors said the high number who were again seen by agencies was a “major concern” when the object of intervention was not only to prevent death but to keep children safe.

    Sometimes the agencies were called in afresh to deal with cases of neglect and failing to meet a child’s needs – the tragic consequence of extended family trying to cope with a child who has suffered brain damage from earlier abuse.

    Kelly says New Zealand has seen a steady 20-year climb in the number of children being admitted to hospital with head injuries caused by abuse.

    Having two “fatal or near-fatal” admissions in a week was unusual but Starship normally had several children at any time being treated for serious abuse injuries.

    “Children die, children suffer serious damage, and sometimes it is the result of a few seconds of uncontrollable rage,” he said.

    No one from CYF would be interviewed but in a statement, deputy chief executive Ray Smith said the service had improved.

    “Can we do more? Absolutely – and I’m committed to finding new and better ways to keep children and young people safe.”

    High hopes for baby scheme
    Every new parent in the Auckland area will be spoken to about the dangers of shaking babies in a new government-funded trial.

    Dr Patrick Kelly, a paediatrician at Starship children’s hospital, said there were great hopes the programme would save lives. In it parents will be spoken to “in the first few days after [the birth] to talk about the dangers of shaking a baby”.

    They would then have to sign a sheet of paper acknowledging the discussion and the ways to avoid abuse.

    If successful, the pilot scheme may be rolled out across the country. In the United States it has resulted in a 40 per cent reduction in abuse.

    Health professionals at Starship hope to have it running by the end of this year.

    The Shaken Baby Prevention Programme is being funded by the Ministry of Social Development, and is based on a programme developed by US professor Mark Dias.

    Kelly said the programme was suited to New Zealand’s independent midwife network. The trial was awaiting the appointment of key staff and development of material such as a video.

    Read full report

  • Parents Still Flouting Smacking Law – And Still Opposing It

    MEDIA RELEASE

    25 July 2009

    Parents Still Flouting Smacking Law – And Still Opposing It

    Family First NZ says that the latest research on parental discipline by Digipoll shows that parents are continuing to flout the law and that the opposition to it remains at its high level.

    “Parents are ignoring the law because they simply don’t agree with it and because it is so confusing, but what is most significant in this latest poll is that even parents who choose not to smack are opposed to it being criminalized,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ. “More than a 1/3’rd of parents say they never smack yet only 11% believe it should be a criminal offence.”

    “On the other hand, 61% of mums and 67% of dads admitted that they are completely ignoring the law despite the potential for investigation, intervention and prosecution by CYF and the police.”

    “This research also reaffirms that parents use smacking sparingly (and have done for a number of decades), are experimenting with different parenting techniques, and that the ‘one size fits all’ model is unacceptable to parents. Parents are using different techniques for different children and that is part of the challenge of parenting – finding what works best for that particular child.”

    “The Ministry of Health’s 2006/2007 NZ Health Survey (“A Portrait of Health”) found that telling a child off was the most common form of discipline (62% of parents) yet was considered most effective by only 19% of parents who used it. 40% of parents admitted yelling but only 3.7% considered it most effective, and ‘time out’ was used 50% of the time yet only a 1/3’rd of parents who used it considered it most effective.”

    “Parenting isn’t for cowards but the expectations and laws being placed on parents are sure making it scary,” says Mr McCoskrie.

    “It’s time we acknowledged the difficult role of parenting, and started supporting parents – rather than eyeing them with suspicion and submitting to the organizations who are the self-appointed experts on child rearing,” says Mr McCoskrie.

    “It’s also time we targeted the real causes of child abuse and the rotten parents who are putting their kids at risk.”

    ENDS

    For More Information and Media Interviews, contact Family First:

    Bob McCoskrie – National Director

    Mob. 027 55 555 42



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  • England: ‘Evil destruction’ of a happy family

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5858902/Evil-destruction-of-a-happy-family.html

    ‘Evil destruction’ of a happy family

    A system involving social workers, police and courts took a child away from loving parents for no apparent reason, writes Christopher Booker.

    By Christopher Booker
    Published: 5:48PM BST 18 Jul 2009

    Comments 287 | Comment on this article

    Two weeks ago I reported as shocking a story as this column has ever covered. It described how a loving family was torn apart when the parents were arrested by police on what turned out to be wholly spurious charges, so that their three children could be taken into care by social workers. As reported on another page, it now seems this awful episode has come to a happy ending.

    However a new case has lately been surfacing, if anything even more shocking. This also involved the arrest of two parents and the abduction of their child by social workers, in a story so bizarre that, at last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Gordon Brown was asked about it by the family’s MP, Charles Hendry, who has long been concerned with the case because the mother is a vice-chairman of his local Conservative Association. The family’s horrified GP says that, in 43 years of medical practice, he has never “encountered a case of such appalling injustice”.

    I first planned to describe this case in April, but was pre-empted by the draconian reporting restrictions on family cases, which, for reasons which will become tragically clear, have now been partly lifted.

    The story began in April 2007 when “Mr Smith”, as I must call him, had a visit from the RSPCA over the dog-breeding business he ran from the family home. He had docked the tails of five new-born puppies – a procedure that had become illegal two days beforehand. Unaware of this, he promised in future to obey the new law.

    Three days later, however, at nine o’clock in the morning, two RSPCA officials returned, accompanied in cars and riot vans by 18 policemen, who had apparently been tipped off, quite wrongly, that Mr Smith had guns in the house.

    Armed with pepper spray, they ransacked the house, looking for the nonexistent guns. The dogs, released from their kennels, also rampaged through the house. When Mr Smith and his wife, who was three months pregnant, volubly protested at what was happening, they were forcibly arrested in front of their screaming five-year-old daughter “Jenny” and taken away. Two hours later, with the house in a shambles – the dogs having strewn the rabbit entrails meant for their dinner across the floor – social workers arrived to remove the crying child.

    Held for hours in a police cell, Mrs Smith had a miscarriage. When she was finally set free, she returned home that evening to find her daughter gone. It was the beginning of a barely comprehensible nightmare.

    Her husband was charged with various offences connected with the dogs, including the tail-docking, but was eventually given a conditional discharge by a judge who accepted that he was “an animal lover” who had not been cruel to his dogs.

    Far more serious, however, was that the social workers seemed determined to hang onto the child, now in foster care, on the sole grounds that they had found the house dirty and in a mess (the “animal entrails” played a large part in their evidence). This was despite the testimony of a woman Pc (who had visited the house a month earlier on a different matter) that she found it “clean and tidy”. Two hundred horrified neighbours, who knew the couple as doting parents of a happy, well-cared-for child, were about to stage a protest demonstration when they were stopped by the police, on the social workers’ instructions that this might identify the child.

    For more than two years the couple have been fighting through more than 100 hearings in the courts to win their daughter back. From a mass of evidence, including psychiatric reports and tape recordings made at meetings with her parents (only allowed in the presence of social workers), it is clear she has been desperate to return home. It is equally clear that considerable pressure has been brought on the child to turn her against her parents,

    One particularly bizarre psychiatric report was compiled after only an hour-long interview with the little girl. When she said she had once choked on a lollipop, this was interpreted as signifying that she could possibly have “been forced to have oral sex with her father”.

    After Mrs Smith alone had been subjected to four different psychiatric investigations, which came up with mixed findings, she refused to submit to a fifth, and this apparently weighed heavily with the judge who last December ordered that “Jenny” should be put out to adoption.

    In the Appeal Court 11 days ago, Mr Justice Bodey ruled that, because the mother had refused that fifth test, indicating that the parents put their own “emotional wellbeing” in front of that of their child, the adoption order must stand. When this judgment was reported, an independent social worker, who had earlier been an expert witness in the case, wrote to Mr and Mrs Smith to say he was “horrified” to learn that Jenny was “not back in their care”, having assumed for over a year that “she must have been returned home”.

    Their equally horrified GP, saying that he had never “encountered such a case of appalling injustice”, wrote “the destruction of this once happy family is in my opinion evil”. So shocked was their MP, Mr Hendry ,that he last Wednesday took the highly unusual course of raising the case with the Prime Minister at question time. Numerous others who know the family well have expressed similar dismay. One neighbour, herself a former social worker, whose own daughter often played with “Jenny”, said: “I worked with children in social services for 25 years and I have never seen anything like this. It is disgusting.”

    What is clear in this case, as in so many others, is that a system involving social workers, police and courts in what is an obviously very close alliance should yet again have left a happy, loving family destroyed for no very obvious reason, Almost equally alarming is the way that system manages to shield itself from the world, through reporting restrictions which it claims are designed to protect the children but which too often end up by protecting only the system itself.

    Leave your comment here:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5858902/Evil-destruction-of-a-happy-family.html

  • Police admit they may prosecute for smacking cases initially considered “reasonable force in the circumstances”

    FROM:

    http://www.big-news.blogspot.com/

    Police admit they may prosecute for smacking cases initially considered “reasonable force in the circumstances”

    Police have not ruled out prosecuting a parent who lightly – and with reasonable force – smacks their child, despite proponents of a law change on smacking saying it will never happen.

    Prior to 2007, if a parent was taken to court because they smacked their child, they were able to use a defence of reasonable force – and if that corrective action was minor, they would be acquitted. Currently,should that same parent be taken to court for the same action, that parent could have a criminal conviction as there is currently no defence in law for actions undertaken for the purpose of correction.

    Proponents of the law change say Police will not prosecute light smackers. Police, on the other hand, say it may well happen, adding the younger the child is, the more likely it is to happen. Police cannot say if a smacking prosecution – and there have been a few lately – would be of a kind that could have been successfully defended under the old law. As it happens one case in the last quarter was discharged without conviction, meaning Police thought it in the best interest to prosecute, but the court did not. One parent was prosecuted in July 2008 and subsequently convicted for smacking. That parent may well not have a criminal record had she been charged just over two years ago.

    This means that a smacker has been convicted under the new legislation. Yet the legislation has not prevented one child from being abused.

    However some events that are prosecuted as “minor acts of physical discipline” would generally be seen as outside what is considered reasonable in the circumstances. It is now the job of the police to determine this. However, police do not preclude reasonable smackers being charged for assault under a minor act of physical discipline either; all such prosecutions have progressed through the court system or the offenders are on bail.

    The way that Police are applying discretion is confirmation that Parliament has abdicated its responsibility in lawmaking. We do not elect a parliament to pass policy via an Act of parliament. Not only does parliament want police to do its job – make law – in deciding to use factors outside legislation in decisions to prosecute, parliament wants Police to do the courts job,in deciding what is reasonable in the circumstances under the guise of “no public interest to prosecute”. However, only for correction. In case of smacking for other purposes a reasonable force defence can be raised.

    If police get it wrong on correction, there is nothing the accused can do about it other than appeal.

    Labels:

    posted by Dave at 5:31 PM

  • Police in Christchurch on Smacking

    Keep listening – it is less than 1 minute

    Police on smacking.mp3 (audio/mpeg) 144K

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  • Read real-life stories of how the Anti-smacking law has hurt Kiwi families…

    Click on the writing below:

  • Referendum Cost Unfortunate Outcome of Political ‘Deafness’

    MEDIA RELEASE
    28 June 2009
    Referendum Cost Unfortunate Outcome of Political ‘Deafness’
    Family First NZ is not surprised by a poll today that says that 77% of NZ’ers think the Referendum is a waste
    of money, and says that the government should save the taxpayer $9 million on a postal referendum and
    simply fix the anti-smacking law now as demanded by 80% of kiwis.
    “It is incredible that in the midst of a recession, the government will be spending that amount of money to tell
    them what they already know – that the law should be fixed,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family
    First NZ.
    “But that is the unfortunate price of ‘political deafness’. The blame for having to even have a Referendum is
    pointed fairly and squarely at the politicians. Even supporters of the Referendum would say that the
    Referendum is a waste of money – but completely necessary in the circumstances.”
    “The Referendum has resulted in a huge amount of time, energy and resources being spent collecting the
    300,000-plus signatures to force the Referendum in the hope that the government would be spurred to amend
    the law and target the real causes of child abuse. Unfortunately they remained deaf.”
    “The law can be easily fixed  by removing the criminality of parents who use reasonable force for the purpose
    of correcting their children.
    “The politicians have tried to paint the Referendum as confusing. They should try explaining the anti-smacking
    law to parents,” says Mr McCoskrie.
    “NZ’ers are crying out for politicians to listen to the voice of the people and to tackle the real causes of child
    abuse, without criminalising and threatening good parents with investigation and interference from already
    overworked police and CYF social workers,” says Mr McCoskrie.
    ENDS
    For More Information and Media Interviews, contact Family First:
    Bob McCoskrie – NATIONAL DIRECTOR
    Mob. 027 55 555 42

  • Anti-smacking law insult to Tino-Rangatiratanga

    Anti-smacking law insult to Tino-Rangatiratanga

    Friday, 26 June 2009, 11:51 am

    Anti-smacking legislation counterproductive and an insult to Tino-Rangatiratanga

    Peter Tashkoff, Spokesperson for Maori issues

    Anti-smacking legislation is not simply useless, but is in fact making the problem worse. What’s more it is an insult to Tino-Rangatiratanga of whanau, ACT New Zealand Maori Issues Spokesperson Peter Tashkoff said today.

    “This well meaning legislation is based on a false ideology that attacks the Tino-Rangatiratanga of families, and has had the opposite effect to what even its supporters intended,” Mr. Tashkoff said.

    “Why do we have this legislation to begin with? It was sold to us as a way to stop kids being violently assaulted by their caregivers, but now we see that if anything, things have gotten worse. This is known as the law of unintended consequences; it’s what you get when you pass laws based on ideology. The supporters of the bill are now claiming that was never the intention, and that somehow the bill was just meant to make us all nicer people.

    “It’s rubbish of course, all that the bill does is move one notch closer to a situation where the people have no power and the state has it all. If a child refuses to go to school the whanau are not allowed to lift a finger to make them, yet a complete stranger working for the state is allowed to use whatever force is needed to do so. In the same way, you can’t smack a child that refuses to obey, but try not paying your taxes and just watch what extent the state can go to in order to force your obedience. This is an insult to the dignity of families and an insult to Tino-Rangatiratanga. When as a country did we ever buy into the ridiculous notion that strangers care more about kids than their parents do?

    “And look at the effect on whanau. Sure its fine if you have the regulation 2.4 kids, or your kids are very young, but look at the larger families, which is where Maori are at, and see what’s going on. I’ve heard reports of kids running riot the length and breadth of the country. This law, which was meant to make things better, has simply loaded more stress onto families and has led to more, not less, conflict in the home. Supporters of the law have tried to pass off this effect as being as a result of ‘higher reporting by the police to CYFs’ but that’s simply a rationalisation to excuse an effect that doesn’t agree with their ideology. Parents in these homes know that after the law was passed children became more challenging and more undisciplined, and that conflict and stress levels in the home rose, not fell. The law has made things worse not better.

    “Irrespective of a small number of criminally minded people that carry out extreme violence whether to children or adults, there can be no question that the people that care most about kids are their own parents, not strangers paid by

    “That’s some of the reasons why the

    ACT party stands for the repeal of

    this anti-smacking legislation, and

    that’s why I do too,”

    said Mr Tashkoff

    ENDS

  • Referendum

    CONFUSED?


    You soon will be

    For the past 72 hours, politicians and commentators have screemed that the Referendum question is confusing

    “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in NZ”

    It seems pretty clear to us! The law currently says that a good parent raising great kids who uses a light smack for the purpose of correction is committing a criminal offence – subject to a possible complaint, possible investigation and temporary removal of kids by CYF, and possible investigation and in some cases prosecution by the police. (these have all happened – view cases HERE)

    But please take a quick moment to listen to this…

    Green MP Sue Bradford attempts to explain the effect of the anti-smacking law to an increasingly confused National Radio’s Sean Plunket this morning

    LISTEN

    Classic Confusion!!!
    Try and listen to the whole thing – and then ask yourself “so what am I legally allowed to do??” (An excellent written summary by Blogger Dave Crampton HERE )

    Doesn’t it seem incredible that our politicians are confused by the Referendum question – yet expect parents to understand the anti-smacking law, how it will be enforced, and its effect on how they should parent.

    This is why the referendum question is worded the way it is – because not even Sue Bradford knows the present answer.

    And that’s why we’ll continue to fight to have it fixed.

    Have a great weekend


    Bob McCoskrie
    National Director

    http://www.familyfirst.org.nz