Police Priorities Skewed

Simeon and I are pleased to welcome Chuck Bird onto the blogging team on the Section 59 blog. Below is Chuck's first article.

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(An email to Leighton Smith, radio talkback host)

I received the following email yesterday.

Exclusive Child HARD-CORE ! Young and innocent little boys and girls, 8 - 13 years old.
Come also see new videos with small girls!

I have not included the website references.

I called the police and am appalled their lack of interest. They told to print it off and lay a complaint at my police station. I told them I would prefer to email. They were not interested. I told them they should get their priorities right and give a priority to real child abuse instead of harassing good parents.

I will probably print off a copy but not go to the police station but send it to the Minister of Police and the opposition spokesman.

Do you think I am unreasonable? Plenty of people would think if the police do not really care why should I go to any bother as the will file my evidence in the round bin.

Feel free to rear this if you choose. The officer who was not seriously interested name was John Fraser. No rank or department given.

Cheers
Chuck

Canada to Criminalise Smacking

The Suburban from Quebec, Canada reports on the passing of an Anti-Smacking bill.

"Recently, the Senate passed a bill that will eliminate the section of our criminal code that allows the use of “reasonable” force in order to correct a child’s behaviour. In the media it’s been dubbed the anti-spanking law and judging from the comments on websites that are reporting this development, many Canadians are livid about it.

I’ve read comments saying if the bill becomes law it will be a waste of government resources and will lead to a generation of wild children with no respect for authority. More than a few people seem to think this bill is over-the-top government interference and that spanking is an acceptable, non-abusive disciplinary tool. Some lawyers warned the Senate about a possible onslaught of criminal prosecutions that would label competent parents as child abusers.

I believe there is a difference between hitting a child in a controlled manner as a predictable consequence to unacceptable behaviour and letting loose on a child out of rage. Perhaps it’s because I’m old enough to have grown up at a time when getting spanked was an ordinary, though exceedingly unpleasant, part of childhood...."

Click here for the entire article

There's that 83% Again

...it just won't go away. www.littlies.co.nz is currently running a poll asking the following question:

One year on, do you think the anti-smacking Bill has proved to be effective?

Yes (8%)

No (83%)

Unsure (9%)

Anti Smacking Law Wastes CYF Time

Family First Press Release, 8 July 2008

Family First NZ says that the evidence is in that CYF’s limited resources are being wasted, with a ‘blow-out’ in CYF notifications but the levels of actual abuse not increasing, or at worst not being caught.

“This is perfect proof that the ideologically flawed anti-smacking law has resulted in unwarranted reports of good parents which is a waste of the limited resources of CYF,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

Statistics released by CYF to the Nelson Mail reported today showed that the total number of notifications received by CYF had increased steadily over the last four financial years. However, the agency's figures showed a significant drop in actual cases found to involve abuse or neglect.
And figures from CYF’s national 2007/08 Third Quarter report show a 32% increase in notifications over the previous 12 months but numbers requiring further action remaining the same.

“If the figures could be attributed to a rising intolerance to child abuse and domestic violence, we would be seeing an increasing rate of cases requiring further action - but we are not. That is simply because of a misguided law,” says Mr McCoskrie.

“CYF resources are being wasted because of a law that labels good parents as potential child abusers, and distracts CYF and Police from dealing with the real causes of child abuse and actual child abuse.”

“The police report released last month also confirmed that there had been a 300% increase in families being investigated yet less than 5% were serious enough to warrant prosecution. And the number of actual child assaults are now at almost the same rate as before the law change.”

Family First NZ continues to call on the politicians to change the law so that non-abusive smacking is not a crime (as wanted by 85% of NZ’ers according to recent research). Then CYF and Police will have the time and resources to focus on the ‘rotten parents’ who are abusing and killing their children.

"Don't Follow NZ" Warns Aus Lawyer

This article in from The Brisbane Times, emphasies my own.

Anti-smacking laws to punish Queensland parents who used "excessive force" to discipline their children could be too hard to prosecute, a lawyer has warned.

Moves by the Labor Party to toughen its stance on smacking were made at its state conference earlier this month, with suggestions the practice would eventually be outlawed.

But Brisbane lawyer Michael Bosscher, of criminal defence firm Ryan and Bosscher, said changes to the Criminal Code to make smacking illegal would be a legal minefield and would cause more problems than

He cited the example of New Zealand, where anti-smacking legislation had sparked a public backlash and had prompted calls for a referendum.

"It is amazing to think Queensland is considering going down this path when New Zealand is trying to reverse its decision," Mr Bosscher said.

"Our laws already provide the option to prosecute parents who abuse their children.

The move comes after shocking cases of children being abandoned outside casinos and hotels in South East Queensland while their parents socialised hit the headlines earlier this year.

Mr Bosscher said said practical difficulties would arise when police, lawyers and the courts tried to prosecute parents who smacked.

"The real danger with new laws is how you interpret and enforce them and there is a risk of zealous authorities prosecuting parents for minor smacks that would traditionally be seen as just part of parenting.

"There's this nanny state mentality here where the state government is imposing draconian laws upon families, in theory to protect children. However if you start prosecuting parents for smacking children, the potential to destroy families and therefore hurt children, is enormous.

"Anti-smacking laws would be a controversial issue to prosecute in the courts because one police officers definition of excessively hard smacking could be radically different from another officers view.

Mr Bosscher said Queensland laws currently allowed parents to use "reasonable force" to discipline their children.

"A change to the Criminal Code is not needed. The law already has provision to prosecute parents- or any person- who inflicts serious, grievous or bodily harm on a child," he said.

"What they are really talking about is changing the law to brand parents as criminals. This is wrong and is not needed in Queensland."

Call for a Parents' Liberation Movement

Here's a quote from an article entitled Why we need a parents' liberation movement, on www.spiked-online.com, which is so relevant for us in New Zealand today.

'Lecturing or hectoring' parents has become the only vocabulary in town, as parents are sternly instructed that they will be issued with Parenting Orders if their children play truant too much, drink too much, or generally behave 'anti-socially'.

From midwives and hospitals at a baby's birth to schools, parents are given a bewildering amount of information and exhortation about what to feed their children, how to touch their children, what to talk to their children about, and how to exercise their civic responsibilities in recycling and rubbish management. There no longer seems to be any sense that society-at-large should treat parents with the minimum respect, let alone the reverence that was once accorded the nuclear family. On the contrary – parents can be told to do anything, so long as it is 'for the sake of the children.'

State intervention is no longer geared towards keeping the family together, but on constructing direct relationships between the state and each family member – mother, father, each separate child. The autonomy of the family, once considered so crucial to its effective functioning, is now treated as a barrier to the therapeutic dynamic, which seeks to break down family member's reliance upon one another, substituting an official 'partner' for a parent.

How did we get to this point, so quickly and with so little opposition?"

Thanks to Ruby Harrold Claesson for the link to this article.

National and the Referendum

"We support the Referendum but...
We will ignore it anyway. Hahaha"

from www.stuff.co.nz