21 February 2007 - Lindsay Mitchell - Press Release - Removal of S59 Gross Failure to Tackle Child Abuse

Lindsay Mitchell - Press Release - Removal of S59 Gross Failure to Tackle Child Abuse


http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0702/S00293.htm

Wednesday, 21 February 2007, 3:56 pm
Press Release: Lindsay Mitchell
Media Release

Removal of S59 a Gross Failure to Tackle Child Abuse
Wednesday, February 21, 2007

"The removal of section 59 is covering up a gross failure to tackle the causes of child abuse," Lindsay Mitchell, welfare commentator said today.

"The first evidence I can find of government agencies acknowledging child abuse is from 1967. Child Welfare conducted a survey of the 210 confirmed cases that year. What they found was a strong association between illegitimacy and child abuse. Maori children were 6 times more likely to be victims."

"That's forty years ago and policy makers are still refusing to face this reality, wringing hands over unpartnered, teenage birth and claiming all these girls need is more support in bringing up their babies. The focus of that support has largely been financial thereby inadvertently exacerbating the problem. Pay girls to have and keep babies and that is what they will do, whether or not they are emotionally capable of parenting them."

"It snuck below the radar last week that the teenage birth rate had risen again. It has climbed for four consecutive years. The Maori rate is more than four times higher than NZ European."

"Rather than fiddling with section 59 we should be stopping welfare to teenagers, blitzing contraception use and encouraging adoption. Do we have any politicians brave enough to act on these ideas?"

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Excellent press release!

Removal of Section 59 will not stop child abuse. Instead, children and their parents and families will be open to administrative, physical and mental abuse. There are all too many tens of thousands of cases here in Sweden, that boasts to be the first country in the world to abolish smacking children.

Of course, it is absolutly terrible that some children are beaten to death, stabbed or shot by their parents or step-parents but that doesn't give parliament the right to forbid parents to smack their children when words and admonition are ineffective to correct bad or even criminal behaviour.

Children are also beaten to death, stabbed or shot by their foster parents.

But then, they are in the "protective custody of the state" so those cases are silenced.

The percentage of abused or rather ill-treated children is very small compared to the percentage of children who never see the light of day because the law permits their parents and medical staff to kill them before they are born.

The child protection lobby usually try to brush off any references to abortion statistics, but only 50 years ago two European women - the mother and her abortionist - were sentenced to death because they caused the death of an unborn child. WW2 was raging at the same time, killing millions of people.

There is a total lacking of a sense of proportions. In Sweden there is a saying "One sifts mosquitos, but swallow camels".


Ruby Harrold-Claesson