Parents: be afraid, be very afraid - CYFS is now the big threat.

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Parents: be afraid, be very afraid - CYFS is now the big threat

Source: http://www.challengeweekly.co.nz/story1.htm


Wednesday, 14.03.2007, 04:31pm (GMT12)

By staff reporters

The director of lobby organisation Family Integrity says the real threat to parents if Green list MP Sue Bradford’s anti-smacking bill is passed is not the police but something far worse – the Child Youth and Family Service. And Family First is warning politicians that an outcome of voting for the anti-smacking bill is that children will report their parents to the police when they don’t like parental discipline and correction.

Craig Smith, of Family Integrity, says section 2 of Sue Bradford’s bill makes the correction of children a criminal offence if one uses any hint of force whatsoever. That can be a gesture, a threat to withdraw privileges, intimidation, an appeal to conscience or any kind of physical force. “CYF will come threatening to take the children away. Nothing could be more traumatic to a child, especially since the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act, section 39, gives a single social worker, operating on his or her own, authority to use whatever force is needed to enter private homes and tear children from the mother’s arms.

“The social worker doesn’t need proof that abuse has taken place; he or she only needs to suspect that ‘ill-treatment’ is ‘likely’ to happen. And CYFS is not accountable if a mistake is made.”

Mr Smith says Section 1 of the Bradford bill lets a parent slap a hand over a child’s mouth if he or she is about to repeat an offensive swear word. But if the parent says, “Don’t do it again or you’ll be off to bed without dessert,” the parent has just committed criminal assault, worth as much as two years in jail.

“If there is uncertainty whether the parent’s actions were corrective or merely preventive, the bill says the corrective interpretation must prevail, putting parents outside the law. A core responsibility of parenting, the correction of children, is being thoroughly subverted.

“The Bradford bill appears to be the product of a fevered mind, corrupted by power, attempting to force its philosophy of child autonomy and minimal parental authority and maximum state powers of intervention upon us all to advance the utopia of a radical feminist agenda where so-called ‘patriarchal structures’ such as the nuclear family are completely destroyed or neutralised,” Mr Smith said.

Bob McCoskrie, national director of Family First, says prominent QC Peter McKenzie has given a legal opinion that highlights the danger of children dobbing in their parents in which he says that “complaints may be made by children who have resented their means of correction or denial of privileges”. “And this is consistent with international experience,” Mr McCockrie says.

Superintendent R. Logan, the deputy borough commander in Hackney, east London, and Britain’s most senior black policeman has said that parents no longer use physical punishment because they fear they will end up in court facing an assault charge.

He said that the results had been a decline in respect, a rise in family breakdowns and an increasing number of children being put up for adoption. He made these comments during an inquiry into patterns of crime among black men. In Sweden (where smacking was banned in 1979), the Nordic Committee for Human Rights says: “Children have been informed of their rights and so they use their rights to demand more freedom to do as they please. They report their parents with the aim of obtaining freedom, unaware of the consequences of their report to the social authorities or the police …

“When the children realise the seriousness of their accusations they try to withdraw them, but they are held to their stories - without any consideration of the damages that the children themselves incur.

“The resentment that the parents feel towards their children whose unacceptable behaviour was the direct cause of the charges against the parents, has resulted in the loss of normal, loving parental guidance for these children. The guilt felt by the children has also seriously damaged the parent/child relationship.”

Mr McCoskrie says that if politicians pass the Bradford bill, it will only increase the likelihood of disgruntled children making complaints against their parents because of resentment against correction, time out or denial of privileges.

“This will pit children against their parents, and will place parents under extreme pressure,” says Mr McCoskrie, “a totally unacceptable situation for parents who need a level of authority to raise their children in the best environment possible.”