14
Nov
Suffer Little Children
Fancy an emetic? The Herald is running a series of articles on child abuse today. Here is a nauseating recitation from a single article:
- An average of eight children are killed each year, and many more end up battered in hospital at the hands of family members.
- Children under two are especially vulnerable; each year 59 are admitted to hospitals for what doctors call “non-accidental head injury” (often known as shaken baby syndrome) and more than 2000 confirmed cases of child maltreatment come to the attention of Child Youth and Family.
- New Zealand has the fourth-worst child murder rate in the OECD at 0.9 deaths for every 100,000 children.
- In August alone two children were beaten to death and another two critically injured.
- police have just confirmed they are investigating the alleged murder of 2-year-old Karl Perigo-Check, son of Wanganui gang member Karl Check
- Last year an average of five children a day were re-abused within six months of the first offence coming to light.
- Research led by Dr Kelly shows a staggeringly high level of repeat abuse in children under two admitted to Starship Hospital with non-accidental head injuries between 1988 and 1998 – 44 per cent were renotified to Child, Youth and Family and one child was re-abused six times.
We know what causes this:
- Poverty
- Broken families
- Drug and Alcohol abuse
- Any previous history of violence, particularly domestic
- Family history of child abuse.
- Poor family/whanau support.
What we lack is the political will to change this. I don’t see Paula Bennett doing much more than tinkering around the edges of CYFS and the health system. But addressing the causes requires massive structural change. At a minimum:
- Phase out the DPB
- Mandatory drug and alcohol rehab for first time offenders
- Zero tolerance for all gang activities
- Strong community-based monitoring systems for incidences of domestic violence
- Strong community-based support systems for ”at risk” families.
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Nov 14 09 11:07 pm
Many of these children are in my opinion the victims of the destroyed hope that I commented on in your previous post.
Nov 15 09 2:25 pm
Good post. You’ll never get Bennett or National to listen or to change much though, socialists in drag, too. Really sad indictment on NZ, agree with Andrew as well.
Nov 16 09 11:52 am
Are you sure poverty is a cause and not just a consequence of the same personal and cultural traits that cause child abuse ? There are many poorer societies than NZ without the same abuse prevalence, and many with more relative poverty as well. Broken families are also partly a common variable, but certainly biological parents are less likely to abuse. Not that they don’t, just less likely.
Nov 16 09 9:25 pm
Ed:
That’s a good point. It is entirely possible that poverty is merely a surrogate marker for addictive, violent personalities prone to abuse children. I also suspect that it is only relative poverty that marks this. As you point out, absolute poverty is NOT a marker for child abuse.
Nov 16 09 10:59 pm
Interesting theory Ed.
So, what could possibly be the root cause of things like poverty, child abuse, alcohol and drug abuse, alienation from wider society and a consequent tendency to join anti-societal organisations and the resultant greater likelihood of involvement in crime for a certain, more than vaguely definable, group of New Zealanders? What could motivate people to adopt such a lifestyle, rather than the civil, law abiding and stable lifestyle the vast majority of New Zealanders choose to live?
Could it possibly have something to do with attitudes, perhaps attitudes formed from beliefs that such people have that convince them that the law abiding mainstream lifestyle is either not an option for them, or simply an option they don’t desire? Perhaps they choose to dismiss it as a desirable option because of deeply held convictions that it’s an option that’s unavailable to them? But if that’s the case, why would they be convinced, or have convinced themselves of that?
And why is it that so many of these people are Maori? Is it possible that these two things are related? That the high correlation between these negative lifestyle features, and being Maori, aren’t just coincidence? Perhaps they believe that being Maori and being poor Maori, from poor Maori families, is an impediment to them having those civil, law abiding, and stable lifestyles of those “privileged” Pakeha, and rich “privileged” Maori New Zealands?
Perhaps they think being a member of their race is like having a millstone around their necks, perhaps their up-bringing has instilled in them a (in my opinion largely false) conviction that in this society they are discriminated against, and this belief turns them away from even trying that stable mainstream lifestyle?
And that is why I see racism by minorities as being far more damaging than racism by the majority in this country, it’s so self destructive, and it is, in certain sections of society, so thick it smothers the children.
I base this theory on a couple of conversations I’ve had with Maori friends from families that are in that lifestyle, they’ve told me that when growing up, the (to put it politely) anti-Pakeha talk, often bitter, was going on all the time, these kids escaped from it, but they’re exceptionally bright independent thinkers, most just buy the messages that they’re brought up with.
Nov 17 09 1:03 am
MacD, I’m more or less with Ed.
I believe that the ’causes’ you have listed are not etiologies but symptoms of the same disease.
It’s a spiritual disease called welfarism, and the etiology/cause is universal welfare. It pays the people most unsuited to parenthood to have babies. Also, it is nigh impossible to sustain the self-destructive lifestyle that many people do without welfare removing the need to work.
Then there’s the fact the ‘free’ health care patches them up so that they can go and do the same thing again. When you’ve worked in hospitals have you had the sense that the ED door is a revolving one?
More detail here:
http://kiwipolemicist.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/slices-of-life-from-auckland-hospital/
Kiwi Polemicist´s last blog ..• So-called abused children to go onto database
Nov 17 09 7:29 pm
KP: When you’ve worked in hospitals have you had the sense that the ED door is a revolving one?
More like motorised…
Nov 19 09 7:10 am
Now I could be way off with the above theory, but if I’m right I think it explains why the problem of a persistent underclass that is never effectively addressed remains, it’s dirty laundry that those involved don’t want to air, which means few in wider society are aware of it, and if people do become aware of it, there’s no obvious political up-side to addressing it.
For lefties the ideological solution is to give them money, and the mind boggles at the potential political cost to a right wing politician who claims that many poor Maori condemn themselves and their children to poverty by alienating themselves from society and therefore success in society, because of their own rabidly racist attitudes, what exactly would he present as evidence, and what solution is there that he could he propose that would be politically acceptable?
So for all intents and purposes it’s a problem with no immediate solution.
Nov 23 09 1:31 pm
Bit confused as to how removing the DPB will end poverty…
And I sort-of disagree about the rehab: it’s a lot easier for people with addictions to ask for help if they know they won’t be criminalised for it and have their children taken away. Not sure if there are places one can go for drug addiction help that won’t get you arrested.
Nov 23 09 8:09 pm
Katherine: Bit confused as to how removing the DPB will end poverty
We are talking about child abuse, not poverty, Katherine. The DPB, though originally a well intentioned attempt to make it possible for women to escape abusive relationships, quickly became a way of life for many. Most solo mums are keen to escape the poverty trap of the DPB and make something of themselves. Unfortunately a significant minority use the DPB as a lifestyle, moving from one poor relationship to another. These are the ones who have by far the highest rate of child abuse. reducing DPB to a limited support vehicle (as originally intended) would stop this dreadful incentive with minimal downside to the mums looking to move out of DPB as soon as possible.
Not sure if there are places one can go for drug addiction help that won’t get you arrested.
Actually, there are plenty of places you can access rehab without involving the law. My point is that, as soon as an addict or alcoholic offends, s/he should be given no choice but to attend some form of rehab. This will never be as successful as voluntary rehab, but it is certainly better than leaving them unsupported in a prison environment designed to pander to their addictions.